A trip to the Westfjords of Iceland can feel like a trip to the end of the world. Especially when you have been confined to the concrete and urban surroundings of Reykjavik for over a week, there is no bigger contrast imaginable than the empty and out-worldly landscape there. And even more so when the last time you have driven a car on gravel roads was ten years ago, and you have to skid around 50-metre cliffs on the one side and crumbling mountain flanks on the other.

But yours truly proved himself worthy of driving the rallye Paris-Dakar, and did not steer the car into any abyss. On our way up motorway 1, overland-route 60 and gravel road XX we passed loads of awe-inspiring mountain passes, little coastal inlets, abandoned cars and (living and dead) sheep. We finished the first day of our trip in the huge fjord of Djúpavík, right next to the disused fish factory that was one of the concert venues for Sigur Ros’ Heima-shows.

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So, our blog is finally online. This is of course not the finished website, but does more represent our urge to share this project with the world right from the start. So please feel free to comment, to send us mails and by all means follow us on Twitter and Facebook to participate and exchange. There’s still so much to discover.

As both Kai and I have pointed out before, this whole thing started as a spontaneous “come on, let’s do this”-idea, after we both watched Heima once too often. But after the first chaotic brainstorming we had it all kicked off very very well: we already made loads of contacts in Iceland and met many interesting people – and keep excavating so many interesting things about Iceland that not once in the last three months did I feel unmotivated or bored by this whole thing. Despite the incredible amount of work that both us naive webguys have underestimated big time. We still have to pay some bills, even though I could keep on reading sagas and travel reports from the Thirties all day without doing anything else.

And there’s a light at the end of the tunnel, though it may just be another freight train coming our way due to the short preparation time: we have pretty much established that we’ll be in Iceland the whole of June; and Kai will be flying over in a week to scout around for a couple of days, and to visit the Aldrei Fór ég Suður-festival in Ísafjörður.
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