If I Were An Angel

If I were an angel in Heaven and I looked down and saw this, I’d quit my job and turn in my wings and fall to Norway as fast as I could. I’d give it all up - my halo, my harp, my cloud - and spend all eternity on the Lofoten Islands. Of this I am certain. 

Perhaps I’m a hopeless romantic, but there was something about being in Norway that was transformative for me. Yes, the winter-scapes are so breathtakingly beautiful they’ll break your heart. But it’s more than that. It’s this startling sense that you are entering a world where religion isn’t relegated to a building. It’s everywhere you turn. It’s the mountains. It’s the ocean. It’s the sky. The sacred is inexorably married to the profane in Norway, so much so that even the cod racks felt like cathedrals.

I wish I was back there right now with my wife and two daughters, far from the sound and fury, cocooned in stillness and snow.

(Photographed as part of an extensive project on the fishing culture of the Lofoten Islands - a culture that has remained virtually intact since the Vikings ruled the earth over a thousand years ago.)

“What if we did our work like the snow, quietly, quietly, leaving nothing out.” Wendell Berry