Drangey, Djupavik, and birds nesting in the crevices of history

 My inaugural blog post! Before I get into this post, I thought I would give a quick introduction of myself, and how I found myself aboard Teddy this summer. My name is Wriley Hodge, I recently graduated from my undergraduate where I studied seabird through the lenses of biology and visual arts. After I graduated, I received a fellowship from the Thomas J Watson Foundation to follow the migratory pathways of high latitude seabirds nesting in the Atlantic Ocean while trying to understand the interface of humans, seabirds, and islands. As part of this fellowship, I had traveled to Grímsey Island, a small island that crosses into the Arctic Circle off the north of Iceland, in order to look at the puffin harvesting that still continue there today, and this is where I met Nick and Frank, and hopped aboard Teddy! Sailing aboard Teddy has given me a new perspective on the birds that I am studying and following — whereas before, I had been looking at these birds from the perspective of humans; watching seabirds from land. Aboard Teddy, I get to see the birds from their perspective, whilst careening through the swells and the wind on the high north Atlantic. Teddy has also brought me to places I would not have found myself in otherwise, and this post will focus on two of these places: Drangey Island, and Djupavik.

Drangey Island, Skagafjörður

Getting to sail past Drangey was a lovely and unexpected surprise. Drangey is both an incredible seabird island, and a place of importance in one of the old Icelandic Sagas. We sail to Drangey from Hofsós, a small village with an incredible outdoor hot tub and pool. Our day in Hofsós the day before was overcast and grey. The mountains were long gray and blue shapes in the horizon, and Drangey drifted in and out of a blanket of fog all day, it was a grey shape looming in the clouds, with an alluring sea stack off the west end. In the morning, Nick asks me to take us off the pier, and head towards Drangey. The fog has not lifted, and seems to be coming in even thicker than yesterday. I get a course using the compass mounted on the mizzen mast just before the fog consumes Drangey. For about an hour, we head towards the fog bank. At one point, I see another island way off to the east, and fear that I have completely gone off course, but my fears are quickly alleviated as Drangey takes shape in the fog once more. As we approach, Nick takes the helm, and guides us in close to the cliff edges. I am immediately struck by how different the geology of Drangey is to the headland that we sailed past as we came into Hofsós. The headland (two pictures below) was a mind twisting jumble of basaltic columns. The columns swirl and churn; there is no uniform direction to the columns across the cliff, as one might normally see in basaltic columns. The geologic forces that shaped this headland must have been phenomenal indeed!

Drangey, in comparison, seems to be completely composed of volcanic tuft. Drangey is the remnant of a 700,000 year old volcano. It seems to be the sort of remnant core or plug of the volcano; it must have cooled when there was a lot of air still stuck in the lava, resulting in the tuff cliffs. The island is ochre and sienna, and the irregularity of the cliff face makes the pattern of seabird nests joyfully unique. At most seabird cliffs I have seen in iceland, the distribution of birds is pretty uniform. Many of the cliffs are formed by layers of basaltic lava flows, separated by thinned layers of hardened soil. The layers of soil are softer, and erode more over time, giving spaces for the birds to build their nests. From a distance, this gives the cliff faces an ordered stratification (the bird nests are very visible from a distance due to their stark white guano). On Drangey, the geology has created a very different stage for the birds to nest on, the ledges have sweeping arcs, and this is where the birds build their nests. There is something deeply wonderful about how these events in deep geologic time determine the ephemeral patterns of nesting birds. 

The surface of the island is covered in a thick blanket of vegetation. As we approach, I see huge clouds of puffins take off from the top of the island. Puffins nest in burrows that they dig in the soil, and so they generally need thick layers of soil in order to nest. Additionally, they prefer areas that have a gentle slope; puffins have incredibly small wings for their size, which makes them excellent underwater divers, but it can make flying quite difficult! If they are nesting on a slope, it is easier for them to take off. The puffins, reduced to small black shapes against the grey and blue sky, come and go in a thick swarm, circling and wheeling around the island. Large waves crash against the cliffs, sending up sprays of white water that mingle with the white swarms of kittiwakes that contrast the black cloud of wheeling puffins. As the waves hit the cliff, they make an immense booming noise. As we circle the island, I make note of the unique shape, it seems to be held up by three pillars at three corners, and all the sudden I understand an Icelandic creation story about the island. The story goes like this, two trolls wanted to bring a favorite cow across the fjord, but they had to do this during the night in order to avoid the sunlight that would turn them to stone. The crossing was much slower than the trolls expected, and they ended up being caught in the sunrise and turned to stone. The trolls and their cow turned into the three pillars of Drangey. I also find myself thinking of the story of Grettir the Strong in the Icelandic Sagas. After being exiled as an outlaw for lighting a house on fire and killing the people inside, Grettir, his brother, and his slave escaped to Drangey. For three years, they found safe refuge on the island. They survived off the abundance of birds, and a small herd of sheep on the island. One day, however, they forgot to pull up the ladder, and Grettir's enemies snuck on to the island in the night, and killed Grettir with his own sword. Today, the birds are all who live here, tucked into the cliffs rich with the history of people and story.

Djupavik

In the American west, towns went up overnight and became abandoned within a matter of years during the gold rush. Tucked into the high desert or deep in the Sierra Nevadas, their ruins remain, and are a stark reminder of the boom and bust industry that brought countless people seeking to make a life for themselves in this landscape. In Iceland, you can find this same boom and bust story, but they come alive and die by the coming and goings of the fish. Djupavik is one of these places. The small town is located in a deep fjord on the southeastern edge of westfjörds. Today, it is comprised of a quaint hotel that is guarded by two charming and overweight bulldogs, and an old cement herring factory. The family that runs the hotel has breathed a new life into the factory, and turned it into an art exhibit and museum. We end up sheltering in Djupavik for three nights while we wait of some nasty weather, and we slowly learn the story of this interesting piece of history. The factory was built in the mid 1930s, and had closed by the mid 50s, however, while in operation, this small fjord was in complete boom. The factory itself was state of the art, it was the largest concrete building in Iceland, and one of the largest concrete buildings in Europe. They processed herring into a few products, but the most valuable export was fish oil.

One of the huge old concrete oil tanks outside the factory ruins now houses a plastic monster. It is part of the art exhibit, the intent seems to be 'this is the monster we have created through pollution.' It is weird and has lots of tentacles and mostly made of plastic bottles. There are holes in the ceiling where the rain seeps through, which has left the monster in a puddle, and a small colony of Arctic Terns nest on the roof. Looking up, you can see silhouettes of the birds flying against the grey sky, and occasionally, a curious tern chick will look down at you! It's hard to explore the factory without the tern's persistent diving — they are the protectors of this odd remnant of history. I can't help but feel a certain fondness for this factory with the terns. Arctic Terns are a special bird for me and my fellowship. They have the longest migration of any animal, they travel from the arctic to the antarctic and back each year; they are sometimes referred to as the bird of light because, in their epic migration, they experience more daylight than any other animal on the planet. And here they are! The young chicks are just starting to fly, and I can't help but marvel at the fact that these little lives, who've been alive for a mere few weeks, are about to take off on a journey that will bring them across the world. These birds travel the length of the world, and yet here they are, nesting atop an old concrete oil tank from an abandoned factory, nestled into a small crevice of history.