December 2023
Skúmaskot, Iceland
I’m sitting on a rock on the beach, singing. I don’t sing words, but the song I sing means revenge. I don’t know how or why. I can feel the vibrations of the melody in my throat, the knowledge that each note unleashes retribution filling me with joy.
I look down at my body. I’m naked to the waist, but I don’t feel the cold. And instead of legs, I have a long, black tail, like a seal, fading at my waist to pasty human skin.
When I wake, I feel pummeled. What the hell does all of that mean? Subconscious body dysmorphia? A hidden desire to sing?
It’ll be the door handle I touched last night, the horrible feelings that were stirred up. The voice in my head hisses, but I put on my coat and go outside before the words get too loud.
My mood lifts when I set eyes on the scene outside. The Ormen is lit up by sharp morning sunlight, her long bow buried deep in an outcrop of pitch-black rock, white tide lashing the stern. If you can imagine those big oil paintings by the Romantics you find in the National Gallery—the Ormen looks just like that. Like something coming into harbor instead of a wreck.
A word drifts into my head and comes to roost: Lovecraftian. That’s what the shipwreck looks like, the precise adjective I’d use to describe its macabre, strange, and slightly monstrous grandeur, sitting on the black sand like something conjured from the depths of the ocean. I don’t think I’ve ever read anything by H. P. Lovecraft, but that word has unfurled in my mind without my bidding.
The rocky outcrop at the mouth of a horseshoe-shaped bay is Skúmaskot, and I can see a row of rooftops on the other side of the water, mushroomed by thick snow. The bay is dotted with small islands—or skerries—of lava rock, all thickened with snow. The stretch of beach runs as far as the eye can see, and behind me rises a dormant volcano silkened by snow, the bend of a phoenix’s head rising from white ashes. To my right, three razor-sharp rocks needle up out of the sand, several headlands running along the coast.
Lovecraftian indeed.
There are no trees, which is strange. I heard the Vikings had pretty much used up all of Iceland’s forests, but it lends this place a breathtaking sterility—a black-and-white desert. My wanderings have taught me that “dead space” is a misnomer—nothing is ever really dead. If anything, abandoned places are strikingly fertile, blooming with mold and vermin. The ruins I have visited are all saturated with the typical signs of neglect—rot, shit, asbestos, hanging cables, collapsing walls, dead things all but consumed by the riot of new life that tends to explode into derelict spaces. Wildlife, weeds.
Go to any museum and you’ll find fragments presented in glass boxes, cleaned up and pristine, as though it’s the actual past, distilled in its purest form. Ruins and abandoned places—they make you work to find their secrets.
The ecosystem of decay is rarely aesthetically pleasing, but barren? Never.
It’s still bright, but the air is bracingly cold, sunlight sending the virgin snow alive with gold sparkles.
I scan the cliffs at the back of the bay and the fields beyond. The rock formations are impressive—hundreds of basalt columns, some of them four stories tall and occasionally running horizontal. There are caves here, too, but I only step inside to shield myself from the wind when it grows fierce.
I find a pathway that leads all the way to the top of the cliff, and there, right on the side of the volcano, I see movement. A white flash of fur, the flick of a bushy tail against the rocks drawing my eye. Two pointed ears. It’s an Arctic fox.
Holding my breath, I stay absolutely still, elated to have seen it. I’m about thirty feet away, close enough to see the gold of its eyes. I remember hearing that regions like this were teeming with such creatures, but if you spot them it means they are probably struggling to survive. The flicker of joy I feel at spotting the fox quickly turns to worry. If Arctic foxes are struggling, there’s not much hope for humans. Still, it seems healthy enough, poking its nose in the snow, and when it plucks up the small body of a rodent in its jaws I can’t resist taking my camera out of my pocket for a photograph.
As I do, I slip on a rock, disturbing the silence with a loud crunch. The fox snaps its head up, its eyes meeting mine. But it doesn’t dart off. I lift my camera and begin filming, crouching down and moving slowly, very slowly, toward it.
I’m curious how close I can get. Maybe it has never seen a human before. I manage to get within touching distance before it jerks its head up and zips off across the heath, vanishing into the snow.
Something flicks in the corner of my eye, at the place where the fox has just looked up at me.
A figure, facing the ocean. A woman.
I step back in shock, then look again, focusing on the spot. This time the beach is empty. I blink. I saw someone, right by the ship, standing on the sand.
But I can’t have. There’s no one there.
I scan the beach and squint at the tide in case the figure appears again. It’s strange—I can’t recall why or how I thought it was a woman standing there. Perhaps a feminine outline, but I can’t envisage the figure. I must be tired, or paranoid. My excitement at finding the Ormen last night is already wearing thin, all the shit that spirals around my brain starting to kick up again.
And there’s no movement now, other than the crashing waves and the wind ruffling the heath.
I head toward the spot where I saw the woman, a little nervous. How odd that I thought I saw someone. Maybe it’s an effect of the light against the water, or a shadow. A lacy tide nudges at a patch of fresh snow, and long fronds of seaweed streak the black sand like strands of hair. No footprints.
I’m completely alone out here, thank God. I don’t like being around other people. No phone signal, no data—just the sea exhaling up the sand, and the birds calling in the sky above. True wilderness.
In the daylight, the extent of the Ormen’s damage becomes apparent. At the mouth of the bay, I find parts of her scattered in the icy water: sections of the mainsail roll against rocks like tree logs, and lumps of metal and several wooden tubs lie strewn about. Rusted hooks, striking in their size.
At the starboard side I notice that the black rocks holding her in place have pierced the hull, a gash about four feet wide visible from the ground. It’s too high up for the tide to get in, and it’s facing away from the sea, but even so—I’ll need to check it out to see if she’s at risk of sinking, or splitting off from the bow. The metal girders running vertically up the sides have warped, strakes of wood splitting at the chine. Waves beat heavily against the stern, and I can see that the whole bow section sways a little, as though the rocks and waves are creating pressure on the midsection. One day, maybe even while I’m here, her whole frontage will break off.
That would be so epic, but also sad. And very, very dangerous.
Using the cracks in the hull as footholds, I climb up the side of the Ormen to take a closer look at the hole in the bow. Long icicles skewer down like fangs, the splintered wood slimy with seaweed. Through the gap, I see crates and barrels strewn everywhere, their contents long since spilled out and lost to the sea.
It’s a thrill to climb up the ladder to the upper deck. Mercifully, it hasn’t succumbed to rot. Much of the old ship remains—the masts are broken, yes, but they’re enormous, thrusting up high above. Remnants of sails and rope hang down.
I explore the upper deck, filming everything. Later, I’ll upload the footage for my followers. I created a social media account for this place, named The Whale Ship. It’s got a few hundred followers so far. I’m not tech-savvy, but I noticed that other explorers were filming their explorations and garnering quite a number of views for people who want an armchair adventure of abandoned places. So I’ve done the same, and I’ve even brought an internet satellite terminal and solar batteries.
I find the ship’s wheel under a sheet of old tarp. It’s about four feet wide and all the spokes and handles are still intact, and I can’t help but yell, “Arrgh, me hearties!” I take a selfie of my best pirate grin, too—it’ll make a good reel. Then I stand at the stern looking down at the waves and the beach below. It’s foggy now, the morning sun already retreating behind dramatic white clouds, but I can see all along the coastline from here, a long run of black rock punctuated by caves. The land above is spring heathland, like the bay, coated with snow.
The heathland must be where the horses came from last night, but there’s no sign of them, no movement at all. Just me and the fox, out of sight. Watching me.
In the daylight, the cabin appears at once larger and more disappointing than last night. By disappointing, I mean that the amount of work it’s going to take me to clean it up is considerable. There are a ton of books scattered about the place, a toppled bookcase indicating the source. Mounds of seaweed among fishing tackle. I pull a sheet of tarp from a corner and find a kitchenette, a fairly new kettle there. So there have been others visiting this place. Good—it’s likely they’ll have left their gear behind, stuff they didn’t want to carry on the journey back. I see other newish items—a throw blanket, cushions. Home comforts. Not too moldy, either. A desalination tank. My heart leaps at that. Fresh drinking water. Better than my little water purifier. If I can get that tank working, I’ll be made.
As I move the junk that has piled up in the cabin I notice stains on the floor, dark spatters, like oil. Definitely not water. Underneath the toppled bookcase I find a big stain, about three feet wide. It has a rusty hue at the edges.
I start searching them out, using my torchlight to help, even though it’s still light. The garish brightness of the torch pulls stains out from every corner, which isn’t unusual for an abandoned structure. But I take note of the ones that are rust-colored—they appear up the sides of the wooden posts in the cabin, and on the stairs through the hatch.
I think they’re bloodstains. The pattern of dots around some of the larger ones is familiar. Bile rises up my throat, but the voice jumps into my head: Every surface touched by humans is a crime scene. Every. Surface.
The Ormen was a whaling ship for decades, and the mariners would have butchered their catch on board before storing it in barrels inside the hold. Still, it became a research ship in the mid-twentieth century, and I can’t imagine they’d leave stains everywhere . . . Maybe they were hard to get out of the wood, so they just covered them up.
I decide to do the same, arranging the furniture and rugs to cover up the bigger marks.
I’ll be warmer if I stay in the cabin, so I make myself a quick tub of noodles before pulling on my gloves and getting to work. I decide to store rubbish in one of the cabins on the lower deck, staying well clear of the one at the end with the weird handle. I’ll check it out eventually, but for now I need to stay focused on making the wreck a little more comfortable. I set up my phone to film myself cleaning. It gives me a sense of purpose. It helps to distract me from the voice.
As I clear the cabin of debris, I notice signs of previous visits. There are marks on the floor, odd stains here and there. I find more books, some published in the last ten years, and some from the 1970s. I find a long row of nicks in a wooden post by the cabin door, made by a knife. Dozens of them, about a centimeter apart.
Some of the nicks are fresh, the wood beneath the cut quite pale and new. I finger them, wondering what they mean. Maybe someone was counting off the days. Two hundred eleven of them. That’s quite a long time to spend on a shipwreck. I’m impressed.
And suddenly the sun disappears. It doesn’t so much set as flee, a thin light withdrawn abruptly just after two o’clock. I’ve forgotten to set out my solar batteries to soak up the light. I have standard batteries in my torch, but I’ll need to be more organized from tomorrow. I can’t rely on these forever.
I move my tent to the springy heathland beyond the beach, intent on sleeping out here until I see if I can clean up the wreck and make it a livable space, but the wind grows fierce, whipping the groundsheet from my hands and scattering the poles. I don’t have much choice after that—the combination of impenetrable darkness and ferocious gales make it impossible to gather the dispersed components of my kit, so I jog to the wreck and clamber back up the ladder, heading inside.
The upper cabin has too many broken windows to be habitable; I head down through the hatch to the lower deck, where the howling wind doesn’t reach. The air is dry, not as cold. I avoid the room at the end of the corridor, the one with the creepy handle, and find a cabin that doesn’t smell too bad.
I clear the rubbish out and set up my tent, minus a few poles. It’s still cold, but I light a candle and make myself a coffee, the double insulation of the wooden cabin and the tent warming me up pretty quickly.
It’s quite cozy in here; I sit for a few hours just listening to the ship, thinking about the voices that have passed through here, now silenced. The feet that have walked these floors. The waves pound the stern, causing the room to sway a little. But it’s soothing to me now.
I’ve been lulled into a false sense of security. At first, I think the creaking sound is just the ship offering up her complaints, but something on the back of my neck prickles and I freeze, listening hard. A rhythmic sound. Footsteps sounding across the floor above me.
Someone is crossing the floor of the cabin.
Quickly I blow out my candle, as if I can really expect to hide from intruders. They’ll definitely have torches. They may even have knives.
Creak. Creak.
I hold my breath until I feel I might pass out, listening hard and trying to work out what to do. Oh God. I can’t lock the door, and there isn’t anything in the room I can use to block the doorway. Carefully, I unzip my tent and crawl out, feeling around the room for my knife. My fingers touch it and I clutch it to me with trembling hands.
A beam of light shines down the stairs, brightening the corridor. My heart hurls itself against my rib cage, again and again.
“Where is she?” a voice says.