Miðgarði

4th April, 2019

In Old Norse mythology, it was understood that Miðgarði was the realm of humanity. Writers anglicise that name today to Midgard. To Tolkien, it became his inspiration for Middle Earth. The Fyrby Runestone, dated between 990-1010 AD, mentions Miðgarði explicitly.

Iceland is a place that encourages you to think, to reflect on just how old the civilization that surrounds us here is. Places affect me deeply; I am loving the time spent drinking this place in. We have been in wide, wide places.

Fljótsdalshérað is high in East Iceland, a vast, flat plain where NASA brought some of the Apollo astronauts in 1967 and 1969 to train them for their Moon landing. NASA considered this place to be the most moon-like terrain on earth.

We stopped in the middle of the highest part and walked away from the road, stood still and listened. Silence. The sound in the video is just the shuffling of our feet on the snow and the wind; there were no birds, no movement except us. The urge to start walking and just keep going was compelling, to get further and further away from the realms of man and what masquerades as “civilization” today.