Dolmen Project (Year Twelve) Confessions of a “Guerilla Artist”: Cairns in Iceland

Our very first glimpse of Cairns during our
2007 visit to Iceland

Day 2 (8/21/13)

It was really hard for me to decide which of my blogs to put my Icelandic trip on. On one hand I usually put my vacation stuff on my Onion River Site, but on the other hand if there was ever a cairn heaven it would be Iceland. In reality we saw our first ever cairns while spending a day in Iceland on our way to Norway in 2007. I did not get pictures of them this time because I was on the wrong side of the bus. They are still there though and look like they will be for quite some time, although the area around them has really grown up with buildings. I decided to compromise and post my daily blogs at: onionriver.blogspot.com and make one posting about cairns on this site. We saw many areas around Iceland where people had built hundreds of Cairns. Unfortunately on a bus we didn't always get a chance to photograph them. I told Eileen that if we drove around the island it would take us months with everything there is to see and build. Because of the fragility of the environment there are some areas which they do not allow cairn building. If at all possible we tried to build cairns at spots that we visited. Often somebody had built there before us. In Iceland there are many places where they utilize cairns as marking stones and in one instance we followed cairns for miles and miles that marked an old border or road. In my reading, I have found of more than one life saved in the winter because they were able to follow the cairns. I don’t think a day went past that we didn't see a cairn of some type. At first people on the bus were a little curious when we would start building at our stops but soon they expected it and even joined in and built one o f their own. Of course we also had to pick up some choice little stones for Eileen to make cairn necklaces when we got home. It was wonderful being in a place where rocks are such an important part of life and people still appreciate the simple things in life.