High Ground

A small white church with a red roof, a short tower and a star on the finial, sitting up on the slope above the town with the crags of Reynisfjall behind it. It was built in 1934 and from a distance it is almost a toy — the red is that bright against the green and the black.

The reason it’s up there is not the view. Katla sits under Mýrdalsjökull a few kilometres north and has erupted roughly twice a century for as long as anyone has kept records; when it goes, the ice melts fast and a wall of meltwater and rock comes down onto the plain that Vík is built on. This hill is the assembly point. The whole village practises going up to it.

So it’s a pretty little parish church that doubles as the last high ground, and every person living down there knows exactly how long it takes them to reach it. I stood in the car park for a couple of minutes with that in my head and then we drove on east, across the plain the water would come over.