Iceland review - 2013, Síða 49

ICELAND REVIEW 47
we really appreciate this
kind of beauty,” Nína
Ivanova says, glancing
out at the fjord just vis-
ible from the dining room corner window
of their house in Ísafjörður, the largest
town in the West Fjords, located within the
fjord Ísafjarðardjúp. “It was the main reason
we moved here. It’s hard to define beauty
but these big mountains are wonderful,”
Nína explains. “There is nothing oppres-
sive about them—they don’t make you
feel small or unimportant. I have seen some
mountains which do that,” she continues.
Oppressive, no. But, dramatic nonethe-
less; the mountains plunge into the ocean.
The region is especially beautiful in the
autumn, Nína describes, always referring
to the structure and line of the landscape,
as only an artist does. “There’s a rich color
Drawn to the West Fjords by the region’s beauty, artists
Nína ivanova and Ómar Smári kristinsson decided in
2005 to make Ísafjörður their home. They tell Zoë Robert
how they found their dreams in the small coastal town.
InspIred by Ísafjörður
scale of reds, oranges and splashes of light
and dark green. And unlike in the fjords
in Norway, for example, there are very few
trees so you can see the skeleton of the
mountains, their form.”
While the physical surroundings were
key to Nína’s choice of Ísafjörður, the local
community was also a factor. “The people,
how they worked and how they thought,
was also important, as was the possibility
“We’re not afraid of eating horse meat,”
Nína says, as we discuss the horse meat
scandal over a dinner of horse sausage and
Russian beetroot salad in their backyard.
“People don’t realize that this kind of meat
is a luxury, and we only eat it very rarely.
We buy our meat directly from farms, not
that processed meat from the shops.”
DETAIL OF AN ILLuSTRATED MAP OF ÍSAFJöRðuR By ÓMAR SMÁRI KRISTINSSON.
PuBLISHED By EyÞÓR JÓVINSSON
PHOTOS By ÁSlaug SNorraDÓTTir