Snæfellsjökull

He added that he would return to his friends if he should succeed in finding this country.

Eric sailed out from Snaefellsjokull and found the land.

He gave the name of Midiukull to his landfall.

This is now called Black Sark.

Those are two enormous basalt pillars rising from the ocean, and according to local legend, elves used them as their church, which is why that area was never developed or turned into farmland.

So you can just take a look at them from the viewpoint, and from the parking lot for that viewpoint, you also get amazing views of the Snæfellsjökull Glacier.

So that's also something to keep in mind worth stopping.

Very close by to those cliffs is Vatnshellir Cave.

Um, it's a tough one to say [laughs], so just read the name in my guide.

This is the white church with a red roof that you often see in a lot of pictures online, sitting on the hill with a narrow road leading to it.

Um, we just visited recently, and to make that picture complete, just add massive fields of lupines on both side of the road, and the view of the Snæfellsjökull Glacier from the church.

It is beautiful.

Mm-hmm

... who was worshiped in his barrow, and another, an Icelander named Baðar Snaefellsás-

Mm-hmm

...

For me, it's often travel to interesting places or visiting museum exhibitions that I know will have nuggets of fascination that may result in full-blown story seeds.

On the morning of my 50th birthday in March 2025, we woke up in Iceland, next to the Black Church at Budir on the Snaefellsnes Peninsula, a few hours' drive northwest of Reykjavik.

The small church and graveyard sit on a bed of ancient lava under the gaze of a glacier, and there is a sense that time has stopped in this place.

As we walked around the church that morning, the place itself became a story seed, and I later wrote The Black Church from that spark.

Questions As a reader, do you love an author's note? What do you like them to include? For whatever story you're working on what are the elements you could include in your author's note? If readers want to do further reading on the topics of your short story do you have sources from your own research you could share? How could you connect with readers on a more personal level through your author's note?

The Black Church Written and narrated by J. F. Penn Darkness came early in Iceland, swallowing the landscape by three in the afternoon.

David Thornwell gripped the steering wheel of his rental SUV, his knuckles white as he navigated the final stretch of road toward Budir, out on the remote Snaefellsnest Peninsula.

The local weather service had promised a brief window between storm systems that should have given him enough time to reach his destination, but it seemed the gap was closing.

He added that he would return to his friends if he should succeed in finding this country.

Eric sailed out from Snaefellsjoko and found the land.

He gave the name of Midiuko to his landfall.

This is now called Black Sark.

He added that he would return to his friends if he should succeed in finding this country.

Eirik sailed out from Snaefellsjokull and found the land.

He gave the name of Midjukull to his landfall.

This is now called Blaksark.

We need aspirational dreams.

But recently, I had a chance to actually live in a small village called Rif for a month out in western Iceland on the Snaefellsnes peninsula next to the Snaefellsjokull glacier.

And while Rif is only about 100 fisher folk, making it somewhat smaller than neighboring Helisander, which boasts a few hundred more residents, I was actually living inside an even smaller village of sorts, an artist residency program called The Portal, taking place in the weeks leading up to the Iceland Eclipse Festival.

Living with 50 other artists, astronauts, channelers, and assorted weirdos was a beautiful experience, highlighting all the wonderful things village life provides that were sorely lacking in the modern world, as well as plenty of the challenges us profoundly individualistic modern creatives will need to adjust to in order to make any attempt at larger-scale communal living more than a hazy, hopeful pipe dream.