Where in the world is Kelly?

Standing on the lava fields I breathe in, filling my lungs with cold, fresh air as I gaze at the stark, flat panorama; a bleak yet stunning foreground to the spectacular, white mountains, bright against a pale winter sky.

The wind whips at my hair as I wander across the lava and to my delight it is not the barren landscape I was expecting. The rolling hills, grey-black, rippled and cracked are full of life. Tiny flowers, smaller than my fingertip bloom and the soft, carpet-like moss is thick and warm against the chill wind, a perfect place for trolls to nap.

I embrace the old Icelandic tales with childlike glee, seeing elves small and fairy-like peeping from behind flowers and peering between blades of thick, yellow grass. I imagine Vikings arriving on black rocky shores and dusky, pink sunsets with silhouetted trolls lumbering across the horizon.

At the Jokulsarlon glacier lagoon icebergs float down the river, slow and silent, like ghost ships sailing out to sea.

Ice is scattered over black, sand beaches. Chunks as big as cars emanating a cloudy aqua are battered by the rough grey surf. Smaller pieces, clear and glassy, glitter like diamonds in the soft afternoon light, each piece unique, like the snowflakes that fell a thousand years before to form them.

I strap metal spikes to my boots, don my helmet, grasp my ice-pick and impressed with my outfit I step onto the glacier, listening to the crunch of each step as my spikes dig in. We walk across frozen waves, step over deep clefts and tap away at the crusty white surface to reveal the blue glow of the glacier beneath.

I spend evenings in small bars with new friends, the barman pours an extra beer and seats himself at our table, keen to know where we’re from and tell us the best places to see.

Finally one night they appear.

‘Stop! Stop the car!’ someone yells and we pull up, pouring out onto the gravel.

A bitter, cold wind almost jerks the car door from my grasp and the temperature is below zero, but we barely notice as we shout and jump, craning our necks at the sky.

In the sky to the north we see a cloudy, green stripe. It spreads becoming more solid, growing brighter and the colours shift from deep greens to bright yellows. Soon it reaches the southern horizon and large parts have a powdery look like they’re falling, giving a depth to the sky that makes it looks so amazingly large. The smile I have is so big my face hurts and my lungs feel ready to burst.