The Church Mountain

I arrived at this one with my arms folded.

It is on every calendar, every phone wallpaper, the cover of every book about the island, and there is a car park and a formalised path and a spot on the rock where several million people have put a tripod. I do not usually enjoy standing in that spot. I went anyway, because it was on the way and because refusing to look at something because other people have looked at it is a stupid rule.

And it is genuinely, structurally good. That’s the irritating part. The mountain stands completely on its own — the ridge behind it stops, the plain runs flat to the fjord, and this one lump goes up in a cone with the strata banding around it in horizontal rings like contour lines drawn on it. Sediment and lava, laid down, then scraped on all sides by ice that went round it and left it standing. The name means church mountain and you can see the argument.

Then the foreground does the rest of the work, which is the actual reason for the photograph: Kirkjufellsfoss comes over a low lip of rock in three separate falls, so you get white water across the whole bottom of the frame with the cone sitting behind it. Two subjects, one composition, and no effort required from the photographer whatsoever.

Sometimes the famous view is famous because it is the best one. You just have to stand there and get over yourself.

The wind on Snæfellsnes was doing about forty knots and the cloud was moving fast enough that the light changed every thirty seconds — mountain lit and plain dark, then the reverse. I waited for the version where the sun was on the grass at the base and the sky behind the summit was still bruised, took it, and drove on toward Borgarnes to find somewhere to sleep.