SPLENDID ISOLATION
If a Norse saga reflected the zeitgeist of our times, it’s that of Bárður Snæfellsás. Half-troll and son of a giant, Bárður fled the tyrannical King Harald of Norway to Iceland’s remote Snæfellsnes Peninsula. Mythology recalls he killed his two nephews after they slighted his daughter, and thereafter vanished into in an ice-cave within Snæfellsjökull Glacier to find eternal self-isolation.
Snæfellsnes was my first journey outside the UK since the coronavirus lockdown. I arrived days after Iceland began admitting international travellers without quarantine. But while I wasn’t seeking the austerity of Bárður’s self-isolation, I was certainly keen on those wide-open spaces, away from urban crowds, where I could feel free to travel without the threat of the virus.
The legend of Bárður came to me during a coastal walk between the villages of Hellnar and Arnarstapi on the Snæfellsnes Peninsula’s southern coast. On an evening bathed in perpetual light, supernatural enough to summon elves and trolls, I found a 6m-high stone statue commemorating him. With hunched shoulders and knuckles resting on the ground, he gazed towards the mighty Snæfellsjökull where he ended his days, alone. His isolation wasn’t lost upon me. During the next two days of my week-long visit I would not see or speak with another living soul.
