IMPORTED LANDSCAPE
Imported landscape
When you travel through the Scottish highlands you sometimes come across a mountain which has a peculiarly Icelandic character and even stands out so sharply from its surroundings that it does not seem to belong there. There is a normal geological explanation for this, because in all probability it is an Icelandic mountain that has moved. If you knew your land better you could no doubt often figure out these mountains’ native haunts in Iceland; many of them have a shape that would earn them the name Horse Mountain there. This has probably happened when the mountain followed an Icelandic farmer on his shopping trip to Scotland and was left behind when he went back home. Such things are known, people even forget their nearest and dearest somewhere and do not realise until it is too late; this happens to the best of us. But there the mountain will patiently sit it out there and accept being called Ben this or Ben that, which is a Gaelic loan-word meaning mountain. There are also instances when a Scottish landscape finds its way as far as Iceland and it often makes a splendid sight when it is wooded, as if the land in the north has reclaimed the shrubland that originally covered it. I think this was how Skorradalur valley and the lake in it came about, and the singularly calm weather that sometimes reigns there, as if snatched straight out of the Scottish highlands. I could well believe that this landscape set off across the ocean with the young farmer from Borgarfjörður who fought the Scots in times of old. He lost his brother in that battle and in his rage he seized this beautiful valley and loch as booty and took them back to Iceland. I have sailed on this loch in a little sailing boat with two girls while my friend pranced around the shrubland on the north shore, catching bumblebees in a plastic container.
Sveinn Yngvi Egilsson. 1993. Aðflutt landslag. Mál og menning.