Staying proximate: :

Landscapes within walking distance.

Methodological approach: :

Stay with the landscape and breathe through it. Walk-with us.

Main concepts: :

Walking-with, more-than-human intimacy, atmosphere, rhythms, narratives.

Tips for future research: :

To walk-with, to sense, to feel, and to embody.

This is wonderful; this connects you with Earth and helps you be yourself. I am walking and everything else in life is on hold. It is just wonderful! …All senses are awakened; you are physically tired and somehow mentally relaxed—calm.

A small group from the Reykjavík area was on a four-day walk in Barðaströnd, northwest Iceland, its members sharing their experience on the last day of the walk whilst sitting under a big stone called Grásteinn that sticks out in the landscape. With the quote above, one participant expressed how the walk positioned her in the world and helped her be herself in a mindful and physical way, awakening her senses. The walk was structured to bring out these feelings and sensations. It was led by one of the authors, Elva, who was born and bred in this area, along with Rósa, who was the group’s spiritual guide. Rósa’s friend Sigrún had asked them to plan this kind of activity, an event designed around walking together with nature and each other. Elva and Rósa planned the four-day walk, employing diverse approaches to nature walking in slow rhythms. The group had been walking on the seashore and over mountain passes, by a lake and through shrubs, always amongst a range of Arctic flora, stones, fossils, ruins, and other earthly material, which allowed for the awareness of their vital qualities in the middle of the short northern summer. Additional components, like swimming, nipping into warm pools, and spiritual ceremonies were also included as the trip unfolded.

Writing a book chapter is also a journey. Just as we—Elva and Katrín—set off on a warm morning in June 2021 together with other authors from the research group Intra-living in the Anthropocene (ILA), we now head towards an unexplored process of writing together, weaving Elva’s experience into a book chapter. Elva has the story and the experience of guiding and walking with the group. Katrín has the theory, analytical tools, and experience of writing alone and together with fellow academics. Together we deconstruct the walk, analyse it, and give senses and thoughts meaning and connections. Step by step, thought by thought, together we write the story of a walk that meanders around the moments and happenings (Casey 1996; Massey 2006; Lund 2013) to which the landscape directed the group, and thus played an important role in shaping the whole experience. In doing so, we demonstrate that the process of walking demands that we acknowledge our surroundings as vital agents with whom we walk, rather than a backdrop we merely walk in (Ingold 2011), underlining the importance of what we call more-than-human intimacy to tourism. This focus on intimacy does not only consider humans as actors in the process of travel but also acknowledges the direct involvement of the more-than-human actors who both affect and guide the process of travelling, often in unexpected ways. Thus, by ‘intimacy,’ we refer not only to the physical human–nature relations that walking requires but also the sensual, emotional, spiritual, and personal entanglements it includes in a constant and thorough proximity. Our focus is on the concept of landscape: a landscape that is, in the words of Rose and Wylie (2006), a tension, multi-layered and multivocal (Bender 2002)—an assemblage of happenings that emerge in the intimate process of walking with it.

Airy Intimacy

The walk was initiated by a trek over Hagavaðall, an old fjord that through the ages has turned to shallow waters because of sand reefs that have built up in its opening. When tides are low, it is possible to walk along and across it on firm, smooth, almost clay-like sand. As guides, Elva and Rósa thought that a walk over to its outermost tip was ideal for the evening of the first day the group met, with its low level of difficulty allowing an opportunity for the group members to socialise and get to know each other. Also, looking out from the tip over Barðaströnd would provide an overview of the extraordinary scenery of the area the group would be walking through during the days to come (Fig. 7.1).

Fig. 7.1
A photograph of a foggy landscape with huts in the background.

In the fog, (Image, EBE)

Full size image

The plan was to walk barefoot to intensify the group’s connection with nature through direct and moving bodily touch (Lund 2005). The landscape itself nevertheless suddenly took over and intensified its presence in an unexpected way when thick fog came crawling in from the sea. The intention to capture an overarching view had to be given up. Still, the walk continued. The sense of touch deepened as the wet sand squished through the toes of the walkers, their soles feeling the tickling texture of tussocks when treading dry land. The fog forced the attention of the participants towards their sensing bodies (Morris 2011; Edensor 2013; Lund 2021). It immediately started tuning the performative rhythms the participants would continue to improvise during their four-day journey (Lefebvre 2004; Edensor 2010a; Lund 2005). Its thick and intense texture simultaneously created a sense of warmth as it embraced the walkers and opened up dreamlike visions as it swirled around in slow and soft motion: ‘It felt mystic,’ one of the participants stated. Another said, ‘It was warm and embracing and just wonderful and enfolding and just great.’ All one could do was to allow the landscape to take over and control the conditions, to rule over and fill the body with energy as one became intensely aware of its presence. One participant expressed:

I have not walked that much before, but I have travelled a lot by car in [the wastelands of] the Highlands. What fascinates me most [when travelling] is when I see nothing! For me the first day was the best one, when we saw absolutely nothing…it was just really nice to just be, then you are exactly present.

One of the things Elva, as a guide, had intended to get out of the walk over Hagavaðall was a sense of direction, an overview for the days to come, which the presence of the fog obscured—but it simultaneously offered a different sense of orientation. This orientation was directed towards the presence of the body in a more-than-human intimacy with an unruly landscape that was to shape the atmospheric texture of what was to come (Böhme 1993; Anderson 2009; Lund 2021). The foggy landscape took control from Elva and demanded physical proximity (Gannon 2016). It tuned the rhythms and shaped the atmospheres for the journey ahead, or what Anderson (2009, 79) has called affective atmospheres (see also Hurst and Stinson in Chapter 10 of this book) that are ‘always being taken up and reworked in lived experience’ as they continuously fold and unfold when improvised. Therefore, although the fog faded away during the evening, it continued to loom in the background throughout the journey, shaping and reshaping the affective atmospheres it engendered. Thus, we will continue to follow the rhythms the walk took to examine its performative agency in creating those atmospheres, which stem out of the foundations of the more-than-human intimacy shaped by the fog in Hagavaðall.

Landscape Narratives

The Fossheiði route is a 16 km long and 450 m high mountain trail that connects Barðaströnd to the fjord further north, Arnarfjörður. It was the main commuting route between these places from the beginning of settlement until it was displaced in the 1970s by a modern road. The group had been walking along this route for some hours, tracing the cairns that guide the trail over rocky hills and rivers and through vegetated areas. Sometimes the paths were visible, but occasionally the cairns were the only landmarks to follow apart from the bodily feeling of the continuity of the trail, which often ‘made sense.’ The group followed the footsteps of past bodies, stirring up narratives as their walking meandered through multiple layers of memories (Aldred 2021; Tilley 2005) (Fig. 7.2).

Fig. 7.2
A photograph of three female tourists on a high mountain landscape.

Travellers on the Fossheiði mountain route (Image, EBE)

Full size image

The travellers proceeded along the route, and the landscape introduced a variety of flora, fauna, and special erosion on the stones and brooks that use the old route as a riverbed. These features caught the attention of the group and brought forth stories connected to certain places along the way, encouraging Elva to tell them, narrating the landscape as she moved with it. It was warm, over 20 °C, with still air and a clear sky. It was almost too warm, and the group used every opportunity to cool down by nipping into rivers and swimming in a mountain lake, thus merging with their surroundings. Such were the rhythms of these twenty-first-century travellers along this route on a warm summer day, and they ‘loved to hear old dramatic stories about what happened on the way,’ as one participant said. People have not always had the ability to wait for the right weather for their trip along this route. Travel was required during all seasons, and the circumstances could shift dramatically. Therefore, the landscape holds stories of trauma (Mortimer-Sandilands 2008a), and the stories that are available in oral or written sources are mostly about sad or even terrible happenings. They tell about people that became lost or exhausted, even sometimes losing their lives whilst crossing this often demanding route. In fact, Icelandic landscapes are full of ghostly presences because sad stories seem to cling better to landscapes and shape their appearances. In turn, the landscapes shape the stories. The landscape’s narratives help us to connect to our surroundings and gain a sense of compassion and understanding (Mortimer-Sandilands 2008b). They intensify more-than-human intimacy, understandings about being there in different circumstances and how humans and non-humans react to these landscapes.

Coming down from the mountain, the group, whilst crossing a small river, was suddenly confronted with fading roses floating in it. Elva had emptied her bank of stories and was conscious about the amount of trauma she had mediated. Here, one more layer appeared and almost forcefully demanded recitation—an extra layer that once again was about remembrance and grief but at the same time tells a story of love and care. Elva told the story. Fifty years ago, a young man from a nearby village in the fjord, Tálknafjörður, drowned in the river when he was on his way home late at night from a dance in Barðaströnd. The whole community searched for him for days and finally found him here, where roses were now floating. The tragic death of the young man caused collective grief in the community, the one in which Elva grew up. The group tuned in to the story and the act of care that the roses revealed: someone had taken the effort to remember the young man on the fiftieth anniversary of his death by bringing red roses to the place where his body was found. As long as someone remembers you or knows someone who remembers you, it is your time, the author Magnason (2006) tells us. The life of a young man that so dramatically ended here continues in the intimate narratives that the landscape brought forth through the presence of the roses.

Earthly Narratives

Why is it that the material that is supposed to be on the surface of the mountain is now its foundations? The Icelandic explorer Eggert Ólafsson considers this topic in his travel book from the mid-eighteenth century (1974). Eggert’s ponderings take place as he is at Surtarbrandsgil canyon, a place recognised for its 12-million-year-old fossils of plants and trees. He wonders about the formations in the stones, the trees, leaves, branches, and boles that were meant to cover the mountainside but are now the very foundation of it, becoming the layers that the remainder of the mountain rests upon. It is a history of deep time, earthly narratives: a history of geology that reveals how our earthly foundations are built up layer by layer, each narrating different temporalities and circumstances. When Elva told her group about Eggert’s wondering, it made them think about the ways that knowledge continuously shifts and changes. Today, we utilise knowledge in a way that illustrates that we have become a geological force, not only the subject of our environment but also the operators of it (Clingerman 2020). We change our environments and strip them of wonders similar to the ones that explorers like Eggert confronted. Places like Surtarbrandsgil are no longer a mystery; they are sites that give us a glimpse into geological history that science has turned into common knowledge.

The walk to Surtarbrandsgil canyon is an hour long and follows a narrow trail that ascends hills along the river that has formed the canyon, an erosional force bringing fossils to the seashore down below to further erosion. The group read the landscape as it went along: the fjord, mountains, and islands that were formed by the glacier in the Little Ice Age, the canyons, brooks, and rivers descending from the mountains, and the human-made landscape, the harbour, road, fields, ditches, remains of peat holes, and empty green spots in the woodland around the fjord that are abandoned farmlands.

The opening of Surtarbrandsgil canyon is narrow. As the group entered, the canyon opened up and rendered visible the grey layers of fossils near the bottom of the rocks between the steep cliffs, along with a landslide of grey fossils and brown coal. Lignite, boles, and tree branches reached down to the canyon floor and the river. Above the landslide, there were layers of rocks, between which lie columnar basalt and younger rocks from different eruptions in more recent times. Twelve million years ago, there was a lake here, and the surrounding vegetation fell into it to be preserved in the clay at the bottom of the lake (Grímsson et al. 2007). The layers of the grey and fragile fossils could be read as easily as a book when opened up or torn apart, layer by layer (Fig. 7.3).

Fig. 7.3
A photograph of intricate Fossils, layers, and patterns from the old period.

Fossils in Surtarbrandsgil, layers, and prints of another time (Image, EBE)

Full size image

A fence has been put up to protect the fossils from intrusion, and Surtarbrandsgil is now a nature reserve. Its attraction is so great that the canyon has been closed for traffic and is only accessible in the presence of a ranger once a day, seven days a week during the summertime. Therefore, we were not alone in the canyon. Other visitors wanted to witness this trace of deep time, its earthly narratives, just as our group of walkers did. Comfortable stones acted as seating for the group whilst they were having their packed lunch and wondering about the history of the place. Their thoughts wandered far back to times before humans existed, providing an intimate sense of the power of earthly agency. In fact, the land had undertaken formations and transformations long before humans existed. Now they were confronted with a wound of the earth revealing layers of time through fossils that are fenced off for conservation from the potentially dominating and overpowering presence of humans.

The landscape continued to bring forth stories. Now these tales came up from within, from deep below surface as earthly narratives, like the day before. They were present absences, narratives seeping out through the texture of landscape, sometimes exposed through the act of care and remembrance, as in the case of the floating roses. These multivocal narratives continued the rhythms that the fog forced in when it turned attention to bodily intimacy with the landscape. Walking, feeling the terrain, ascending, descending—the group had felt the landscape, carried it with them, and been with it (Edensor 2010b; Rantala et al. 2020). Its members had witnessed the efforts that former generations accomplished through the traces of these landscape narratives that they had followed. Now the group felt thankful that they live in an age when it is known why trees are at the foundations of mountains. Still, the group had been experiencing all kinds of wonders that the landscape brought forth although the questions they asked were different from what Eggert Ólafsson contemplated as an eighteenth-century explorer. At the same time, the group was reminded of its responsibilities and how humans continue to layer the landscape (Löfgren 2015). Different layers tell different stories and can reveal different worldlings by narrating how humans and non-humans continue to leave their traces upon landscapes.

Other-Worldly Intimacy

We are now at the point where this writing journey began, under the rock called Grásteinn. It was the last day of the walk, and the group had gathered there to share their thoughts about the walking journey and to take a rest, tired and overwhelmed by the previous days’ experiences. Grásteinn bears witness to yet one more earthly layer, moved to its position by an Ice Age glacier that carried it from the nearby mountains where Surtarbrandsgil canyon is. On its top, two green grass tussocks have grown as a result of bird droppings; Grásteinn is much appreciated as a resting place for birds and, simultaneously, offers a view over the surroundings. Just like birds and other animals, humans choose to rest by the rock. Grásteinn can thus be described as a landmark, a magnet that affects and attracts more-than-human beings. Yet, it is not only a temporary resting place—for some, it is a home for the hidden people (huldufólk) who have lived in it for centuries. The hidden people in Iceland look like humans and live the same lives as they do, but they do so in another dimension and are hidden from the human world most of the time, only visible when they themselves choose to be so. Nevertheless, their close co-habitation with humans means that their presence is sometimes felt, and there are many stories about direct communication with them, for good and for ill. The main demand from the hidden people is that they and their livelihoods be respected. Anthropologist Kirsten Hastrup (2004) claims the existence of the hidden people is merely a belief extending from the past. Her statement has been criticised by those who point out that contemporary Icelanders recognise the presence of hidden people through their everyday activities (Lund 2013), for example, by leaving a boulder in place during construction work because it is their home.

However, sometimes, when the two worlds get too close, a certain care needs to be taken, and sometimes the exchange is not friendly. Hidden people have, for example, been known to take human children to their world and leave in their place a shapeshifter, usually some old and unruly character they want to get rid of. This trade happens most often when the infants are left alone in the house whilst the grownups are busy outdoors attending their business. However, most often this relationship is peaceful. Though they are invisible, the hidden people are next-door neighbours for many people in Iceland. Sometimes they visit people in their dreams. Elva’s mother has experienced such a dream when her neighbour, who lives in a stone in the mountains overlooking Elva’s childhood home, paid her a visit. Their presence also plays with senses other than sight. Once, when Elva’s auntie was taking a nap by Grásteinn, she woke up smelling pancakes, which urged her to go home and cook some.

Being at Grásteinn provokes thoughts about the hidden people. They are a timeless layer in the landscape. The group listened to stories about the hidden people with gentle smiles on their faces—they knew stories like these ones, and they knew how they would end and what the punchlines would be. Stories about the hidden people are a kind of theme: when telling and listening to them, we are acting up on the connection we feel with our surroundings. The group sensed this hidden layer and welcomed it, recognising it in tune with more-than-human-intimacy, the earthly connections that have characterised the walk, and the layers the group has produced whilst walking together (Fig. 7.4).

Fig. 7.4
A photograph exhibits a group of visitors relaxing at the Grasteinn stone amid a mountain landscape with a clear sky.

The group resting at Grásteinn at the end of the walk (Image, EBE)

Full size image

The proximity of the first day has stayed with the group in their intimate relations and improvisations with the landscape. The feeling of walking-with the landscape (Rantala et al. 2020) is tangible, and the landscape has been a part of the walk, a companion that allowed for interactions and play. Elva’s guidance helped in connecting to these landscapes and tuning into its rhythms. The first act of this intimacy was the barefoot walking in the clay, which grounded the group, together with the enfolding fog that brought forth rhythms for the group to improvise and provoked intensity and a feeling of being with the landscape, even wrapped up in it. Different terrains evoke different proximities, sensations, and thoughts, different spatial and temporal connections that affect rhythms of the body in the landscape with its outermost feelings and sensations. We believe the words of one of the participant deeply describe this intimate process:

It has been such a great experience […] for the eye and ears and all senses. And somehow to merge into this splendour: flora, birds—the environment—swimming in the lake completed it. I merged entirely with nature—alone with everything!

However, as pointed out in the introduction, writing together is a journey we undertook together. It required Elva to bring out her notes and re-embody the journey of a few years earlier. She needed to follow the footsteps of the journey, to feel the earth and get a sense for their surroundings—now in the company of Katrín, whom she had to guide through the walk during the process of writing. Together, we needed to feel the rhythm of walking, as well as that of thinking and writing. It was an intimate process, a process of proximity to landscape, data, words, and co-working, of being with, staying with, and feeling with, sensing the tension that the more-than-human brings forth. Not only, then, is it the proximity that intimate journeying, such as walking, involves that is important—but one also needs to treat seriously the memories, data, information, and feelings that it generates by continuing to walk with it and stay proximate.