Fast Ruins. Nature and Modernity in Iceland
by Gavin Lucas
A common contemporary perception of Icelandic ruins aligns itself with the familiar trope of European ruin gazing since the 18th century – an aesthetic of beauty and heritage linked firmly to both the rural landscape and the past of the nation. While in part associated with older ruins now visible only as grassy earthworks, the subtlety of these features as ruins often eludes the average person – indeed, ruin finding as part of routine archaeological surveys, often requires a lot of experience and a trained eye.
Perhaps a more common ruin is the 19th and early 20th century farmhouse; often these are built from traditional turf and stone and reference a 1000 year vernacular heritage. The site of Hörgsdalur in the northeast of the country is a typical example, one I visited several years ago now and abandoned in 1957. It displays all the characteristics of an authentic ruin to use Andreas Huyssen‘s terminology – a structure in the full process of decay and collapse, and is in distinct contrast to the stabilized or actively preserved ruins which characterize the dominant theme of European heritage.
But it is not just such traditional turf and stone buildings which are the subject of modern ruin gazing in Iceland – even more recent, concrete farmsteads have become a focus of interest, as expressed well in the work of the photographer Nökkvi Elíasson who has been around the country visiting many of the hundred of abandoned farms (www.islandia.is/~nokkvi).
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