Abandonment

The highlights of last week were an exploding laptop, a leaking sink, a dead mink (the rats will inherit the earth), a new crisis with my older son and the discovery that I have a lung infection. As none of these things make a particularly edifying blog post, I'm posting some photos I took of some abandoned buildings in Iceland.

If that seems a bit 'random' - as the kids like to say - I should add that I've just been reading Andrew Moore's superb 'Detroit Disassembled' and have been thinking about why ruined buildings are often so more interesting than well-maintained ones.

These crudely-built structures, with their rusted, corrugated iron roofs, were once a hive of activity for Iceland's fishing industry. Why they were abandoned is a mystery.

 

It looked as if the buildings had been abandoned in a hurry. Sou'westers were strewn across the floor of one room, while another had mattresses propped against the walls. But the thing that unnerved me most was a small entrance to a dark, unlit basement, which I nearly fell into. After adjusting my eyes to the gloom, I could see a chair and lengths of rope, as if someone had been held captive here.

It was like being in a Mike Nelson installation, but without the irritation of being constantly distracted by other people. Here, your imagination - and paranoia - could run wild. I've no doubt that everything there was related to the fishing industry, but the murky basement and discarded syringes were a little unsettling.

It is shocking how quickly buildings fall into decay. As the roofs of these structures rust, the late rains will seep into the walls, freeze and create fissures until, eventually, the inside is hard to distinguish from the outside.

Every ruin is a reminder that even the most solid-looking building is in a state of flux. We struggle to maintain the illusion of permanence, but the moment we abandon the fight, we find ourselves in Detroit.

We wonder,—and some Hunter may express
    Wonder like ours, when thro' the wilderness
      Where London stood, holding the Wolf in chace,
    He meets some fragment huge, and stops to guess
      What powerful but unrecorded race
      Once dwelt in that annihilated place.