Our walk on the morning of June 24th began in a thick, quiet fog. I set out with Jen and Rowan, moving down along the Blanda river toward the black sand beach just north of town. Jen explained that June 24th marks Jónsmessa—Icelandic Midsummer. In local folklore, it is a night and day when the veil between realities wears thin. The old stories say that on this day, the huldufólk (hidden folk) are active, and seals shed their skins to step onto the shore as humans.
As the fog drifted over the water, we came upon a seal resting quietly on a rock. It didn’t startle or dive away. Instead, it stayed perfectly still, watching us and keeping us company for a solid fifteen minutes. In the context of the heavy morning mist, it felt remarkable—almost as if we were interrupting a transition, a nod to the selkie legends exactly when they are meant to come alive. You can see the quiet stillness of the moment in the image I’ve included.
The sense of enchantment didn’t dissolve when we left the shore. Rowan and I made our way up the hill to to see a striking white horse standing in the landscape. Under the flat, misty sky, its profile was so clean and pristine it looked just like a unicorn.
The sight instantly pulled me back to my childhood. Growing up, there was a field near my house with an orchard, and inside it lived a single white horse. I used to call it the unicorn, spending hours projectting that childhood magic onto a familiar creature. Standing in the foggy, north-Icelandic air, seeing those two animals back-to-back, the gap between past memory and present landscape completely closed.
