The Troll's Gate

Þjóðbrókargil takes its name from Þjóðbrók, a troll-woman of Icelandic folklore who was said to make her home in this gorge. Standing on the riverbed at eight in the evening, hemmed in by basalt on three sides, it is not hard to see why the story stuck. The walls lean in. The light comes late and leaves early.

I set the camera low, almost in the water, and let a slow shutter run — long enough for the river to lose its edges and turn to smoke around the boulders, short enough that the rock stays sharp. The vertical frame stacks the whole gorge into one climb: the near stones, the channel, and at the end the pinnacle standing in the notch like a gatekeeper.

The colour is the gorge as the eye remembered it on a grey evening — warm basalt, green moss on the far slope, silver water.