About Becoming Iceland
These landscapes folding all over the country (I almost said planet) say what’s churning underground, what’s running things. Unsteadiness is the country’s deepest force.
—Eileen Myles, The Importance of Being Iceland
Becoming Iceland is an ongoing project interested in building an image archive of Icelandic weather as captured by the Icelandic Meteorological Office. Part climatic inquiry, part calendar landscape, the project visually catalogues and looks for patterns in what escapes meteorological abstraction – first snow, midnight light, sideways drizzle. While removed from lived experience on the ground, the images aim to gesture toward an understanding of weather and climate as phenomena tied to bodily and place-specific engagement with a world in motion. Datasets and poetry.
The project is led by Barbara Prezelj, who has been following the Hveravellir weather station’s webcam since 2015 and, since 2 April 2020, organizing her observations as part of an online archive. The Hveravellir webcam captures images at irregular intervals, every ten/twenty/thirty minutes (or more). At any given moment, the eight most recent images are available to view online. From the few dozen images, the project selects and archives one Hveravellir image per day. Gaps in the archival record mark days when life turns busy or when the IMO’s web servers experience technical difficulties.
The Hveravellir manned weather station (64.867°N, 19.562°W) was established by the Icelandic Meteorological Office in 1965. At the time, it was the only manned research and monitoring station within Iceland’s uninhabited highland region. In June 2004, the station became fully automatic and now relies on sensors for its work, though it is still frequently visited by IMO staff. Its observational programme has included measurements of temperature, precipitation, atmospheric pressure, wind speed, wind direction, humidity, solar radiation, visibility, cloud cover, cloud base altitude, northern lights, ground temperature, snow cover, snow density, snow water equivalent, snowdrift, and icing. Since 2004, all manned observations have been discontinued.1
Hveravellir is a nature reserve and geothermal field located in the central highlands of Iceland, on the edge of the 7,800-year-old Kjalhraun lava field. The area lies between two glaciers, Langjökull to the west and Hofsjökull to the east. The surrounding Kjölur landscape is barren and inhospitable, yet Hveravellir has for centuries served as an oasis and a much-needed shelter in a vast expanse of rock. Situated near the ancient Kjalvegur highland road, it historically offered travellers a warm resting spot, provided outlaws with refuge, and today remains a popular destination known for its hot pools and geothermal activity.