Photograph: 92 x 62 cm

Framed size: 124 x 100 cm

GARÐAKOT, MÝRDALUR 1995

Guðjón Þorsteinsson was walking along the shore at Dyrhólaey, hunting down a mink that had been wreaking havoc on his nesting eider ducks. His frequent companion on such outings was his dog, Gái, an accomplished mink-killer. The air was misty and the surf was roaring. Heavy waves crashed over the boulders lining the coast below a nesting eider. Guðjón crouched beside the bird and spoke, “This duck must be psychic or at least very good at predicting the weather,” Guðjón said. “There might be a nasty storm where the waves reach way up the shore.”

Guðjón lived at Garðakot with his brother, Óskar. Together the brothers took over the farm from their parents in 1970. The brothers were a lot of fun, like volcanos when the moment struck, but quick to rally. They liked to kid around, exaggerate a bit, alternate between seriousness and jest, though the line between the two was often unclear. It was all in good fun, although outsiders didn’t always get the joke.

Though Guðjón showed his age, he was agile and had a youthful way about him: he scaled the cliffs at Dyrhólaey and collected eggs from Lundadrangur rock arch as if it were a walk in the park. On one such egg-collecting trip, he let a visitor come along who peppered him with questions. Guðjón had enough of the interrogation when in the middle of the climb the man asked, “What’s the name of area just south of the rock arch?” In exasperation Guðjón peered down at the man who hung by one hand from a fine cord 20 meters over the sea and answered curtly: “That’s what we call the Atlantic Ocean. It’s been there for quite some time.” The questions stopped abruptly after that.

Guðjón enjoyed life by the sea. For a while there were seals that watched his walks along the shore, but by the time I visited him the number of seals had dwindled and Guðjón found that he missed the onlookers. The coast had changed, he said. The seaman’s ghost, Eiðisboli, could no longer be heard wailing in Bolabás cave at Dyrhólaey, it was once considered an omen of drought if his moans could be heard on the farm.

Guðjón and I walked home from the shore along a winding road. Gái, the dog, had managed to kill two minks. Guðjón peered up to the mountains with a knowing look in his eye, as if he had seen someone he recognized: a spirit that followed us along. When I took his picture, it was as though time stood still: he seemed immortal, as if part of the landscape and the mountains, a creature of nature who descended only briefly to the human world to lift our spirits.

Guðjón died in 2006 at the age of 81.