Living in Skerjafjörður

I am not the person in my family who takes a lot of photographs; my partner generally does that.  I have taken many more photographs here than I have taken in years.  And one thing I have noticed is that I keep taking pictures of some of the same locations.  One place I keep photographing is the coast line right next to the neighborhood where we live; it is always beautiful, and always different.

We live in a neighborhood in Reykjavík called Skerjafjörður. Unlike most parts of the city this neighborhood is really set off by itself.  It is just south of the domestic airport, right along the southern coast of the peninsula. This photo of the neighborhood, taken from Perlan ("the pearl", the geothermal plant turned restaurant/museum), gives you a sense.

The trees in the foreground were planted in the 50s and 60s and there are walking and biking paths through the trees up to Perlan and down to the coast; then you can see the airport buildings and runway, and behind that is Skerjafjörður, and then the ocean.  There is only one road that leads into the neighborhood; to the east (left) along the coast there is a walking and biking path but the air field is right next to the path, so there is no road to the east.

The university is north of the airport (not in the photo, but it would be to the right).  So every day when I head to the university, whether on foot or by bus or by bicycle, it is along the coastal path and the one road, which then turns and runs past the university. The neighborhood ends at the west end of the airport, and there is just a thin area of coast between the ocean and the road.  So once you get past the last house of the neighborhood, this is what you see:

At least, it's what you see on an overcast day in early March, or a snowy day in mid-March. But if you walk a little farther and turn around, and it's a sunny day after a beautiful snowfall, this is what you'll see:

 This doesn't even begin to capture the many ways that the clouds and the sky change, in just a few minutes, or the difference made by high tide on a windy day and low tide on a calm day, let alone the difference made by the quickly changing light, now that our days and nights are about of equal length.

I take the photos because being in this spot makes me happy, each day, in the transition from home to work and work to home.  This includes days when I have nearly frozen as the wind whips from the south directly off the ocean, and days when it's hard to believe how quiet this stretch of coast is.   Because this stretch of coast is always beautiful, and at least for now, a part of my daily routine.  Not bad.