I don’t know about you, but I keep a list of remote islands and islets that I find fascinating and would like to visit some day. I’ve written about some of them at Looking North (Sula Sgeir, St. Kilda, Fugloy) and my Google Map is cluttered with “Want To Go” pins on many others: Jan Mayen, Stora Dimun, Tindhólmur, St. Helena, Foula, any of the Aleutian islands. While reading about the Olympics this week I added another to my list — Ailsa Craig, an island off the west coast of Scotland where all the granite for curling stones comes from.
According to this article in CNN Science, the granite on Ailsa Craig has an unusual chemistry, and is “extremely low in aluminum.” It’s apparently so perfect for curling that the Olympics has never used any other granite source in formal competition since the first winter games in 1924. I love stories like this. The world is freaking out about geopolitical chokepoints for rare earth minerals, but nobody seems concerned about single sourcing for curling stones?
The NYTimes has a great piece on Ailsa Criag and curling stones, but it’s in their Athletic section, which my subscription doesn’t include because I’m generally uninterested in sports stories. Fortunately, a mirror is available on archive.today so check it out there. The embedded video showing stones being made doesn’t work in that archive version, but it’s available on Facebook.
The big news in Iceland this week was the dramatic changes at Reynisfjara black sand beach on the south coast near Vík. It’s a popular tourist site, which I especially love for it’s massive basalt columns. The site has been in the news recently due to numerous deaths caused by its massive sneaker waves, but now the beach has mostly disappeared. Persistent easterly winds and high waves all winter have washed the sand away, filling the previously accessible basalt cave with water.
I was there in early December with my brother, and while I’m surprised to hear how quickly this erosion occurred I can believe it, given the conditions we experienced there. The waves were incredibly powerful, and the wind was so strong it knocked me to my knees twice. From what I’ve read it may become more accessible again if the winds reverse direction, but nobody knows how long that will take. In Iceland, the landscape is always changing.
I met up this week with a small group of other Americans in Iceland to begin planning some kind of event here for the upcoming No Kings day on March 28. It’s hard to know what the right kind of event is in a remote foreign outpost, but it feels important to have some kind of representation. Go sign up to learn about what is happening near you and hold that Saturday on your calendar.