Most Unimaginably Strange
An Eclectic Companion To The Landscape Of Iceland by Chris Caseldine is a new and stunning book published by Reaktion. Pretty articulated, this book spans through history and actuality; through the scientific history of Iceland that can't be by-passed, because it's the main topic of interest of the country and its legends, sagas, minerals, studies and stunning places to visit.
Iceland: a country where people, also strangers, foreigners were and are attracted by the unique differences that they found and find there but mainly by scientists passionate because this country is still in perennial mutation.
Why these strong mutations when the rest of the countries in the world knows a stability earned thanks to million of years of mutations? Iceland is a sort of new land; old just 1,8 million of years, it is an extreme land where the panorama changes rapidly and is never the same one in certain areas because of the presence of many vulcanoes, little, in grade of mutate the face of the places interested.
Man lives a good relationship with nature: animals are less stressed than our ones. A place, iceland, with cordial people and an extreme but absolutely unique experience for whoever wants to afford there.
The author writes at some point: "The prisms through which we have been able vicariously to view the Icelandic landscape provide us with what the geologist Marcia Bjornerud describes as ‘a clear-eyed view of one place in Time, both the past that
came before us, and the future that will elapse without us’. Iceland represents our past, the formation of lands, seas, places, something that we wouldn't comprehend anymore if not going there, where everything is still young and can permit to scientists of discovering what happened in our lands million of years ago as well.
It's a great priviledge this one: seeing our past thanks to Iceland.
For tourists, the impact of a country like Iceland offers immediately a great emotion because of its visionary land, where volcanic phaenomenon are naturals and where glacial landscapes are close to them.
Unfortunately the arrival of mass tourism, but also of some big productions like Game of Thrones as you will read, brought a lot of problems to a country more fragile than any other one in the Planet, with strong traditions and great respect for its legends.
Technical book as well I know that you'll enjoy this reading a lot! If you didn't know Iceland, you'll start to know this land better than anyone else thanks to Chris Casaldine: if you knew it, you'll learn much much more. Trust me!
Highly recommended book.
I thank Reaktion Books for the copy of the book.
Anna Mara Polidori
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