sjálfstæði

Smelling gunpowder and seeing the explosions flash over another city, I think of independence and of Námaskarð, where I stood peering into the stinking paintpots on a solo circumnavigation last summer, a sulphurous pause before setting out again on the open road.

Hringvegurinn is of course anything but an open road. It is a closed road, a ring, a serpent biting its tail. I imagine that if it unhooked its hindmost barb from behind its foremost teeth, it would rampage over the earth, spitting poison and destruction. Something to be avoided.

Thinking of independence and what people may be willing to do to gain it. This country used a fair amount of gunpowder in wresting itself free from King and Parliament, some if not all of it made with sulphur from northern Iceland. Iceland, on the other hand, used very little of its own stores (or anyone else's). Considering what sort of independence movements are, at the end of the day, most or least destructive.