I'm back in Sauðárkrókur now, after a few weeks home in the US after the end of the summer season, and I'm settling in to start my Fulbright year of writing and research. I've lived in this town for at least two weeks out of each of the last seven summers, bar one (in 2010 it was Greenland instead). I think I know this town and this fjord reasonably well by now, but moving from a temporary summer visitor to a more longer term resident is already changing my perceptions, little by little.
For instance, this evening there were a lot of low clouds in the back of Skagafjörður, and clearer skies with just a few clouds to the north. In summer this often portends a lovely sunset in both directions, so I went out with my camera. Of course, I knew the sun would no longer set to the north, over the fjord- it had already stopped doing that by the middle of August at the end of the field season, when I and my American colleagues went home. I climbed up the hill behind the track, in search of a vantage, to find that the sun no longer even sets over Tindastoll, but much farther south and west, already over the next mountain. With so much solid rock between me and the evening sun, I may be all out of sunsets for the year- if I learn otherwise I will report back!
Here's the best photo from tonight, looking far to the west of town (if I'd been thinking I'd have moved a bit so as to avoid the horse trailer in the foreground):
