Every human journey has two destinations. The one where expectations are to be met and the one that the traveler accommodates. The one that travels to the furthest point far away from any comprehension and norms first loses the memory that points back home. The one that travels into the desert without a recognizable horizon desires the intelligence and the aesthetic sense of the Bedouin. He desires also his thoughts and his cunning ways to survive; he desires the beauty of the desert and values it just like the freshness in a drop of water.

The Arctic has no paradigms other than those that have to do with the Arctic. No scale is steep enough, quiet enough, old or unmindful enough. Those who dwell there have gone to accept a beauty that consumes the cardinal points and the head itself, from north, south, east and west.

This is a beauty that doesn’t ask for the opinion of the traveler, it is not participating in a dialogue that expects any answer. This beauty is whitish-yellow by fat and is of raw dolerite under the lurid turquoise coloured sky and doesn’t care about your opinions or ideas. It crawls forward busily gnawing at the cliffs and grinds it intosubmission. It eats nature’s clockwork and sweeps from you all the seasons you’ve reserved for rest and outdoor activities. It doesn’t look away out of consideration of the inexperienced or waits while you put your shoes on your feet.

No, this beauty is only verbalized by itself. It doesn’t stagger about with the public opinion or shows consideration for anybody. It stands against you absolutely in as personal way as it can by ruining your meaningless existence and opinions. It pushes you and follows you and towers over you by unreserved act of cruelty. It forgets you just as easily as it didn’t notice you at first. It renews itself for each layer of time it iscovered with and pushes it towards the excruciating grinding of creation. Like a fickle crown jewel of the invisible pearl necklace of the pole it is the mother that watches her children drop into the sea to vapourise and turn again into snow. The silent but gurgling onrush of this relentless glacial world repeats itself less frequently than empires rise and then perish.

(Daníel Þorkell Magnússon)