Snorri Freyr Vignisson

Memories of a Land

The ground is the medium of the past, present, and future. In Hvítanes in eastern Hvalfjörður, the past is ever-present in military ruins and agriculturally tamed land. Human intervention in the land has disturbed the ecosystem through the ages, and the ground has been unrecognizable from before human settlement. The Icelandic Archeological Institute has declared the site unusable; it’s stuck in between. Is it possible that a human settlement could bring life back to the land? The village is a folk high school where pupils learn to work for the land and rethink their relationship with the past by taking part in soil reclamation and rewilding of ecosystems—acting for the future while taking precedence over the past of the ground.