A red roof before winter

/ Life at Lækur
Red barn at Lækur with a freshly painted red roof, Sæmundur Þorvaldsson standing beside it, mountain and blue sky behind

There is a window in the Westfjords autumn, usually a short one, when the rain stops, the wind drops and paint will still dry. This week it opened, and I drove west to catch it.

The building in question is the old barn at Lækur, which belongs to my uncle Sæmundur – Sæmi, Zoffi’s brother. It is not much to look at from the road, but it matters to us more than most: this is where our eiderdown is dried after the spring gathering, spread out and turned in the dry air until it is ready for cleaning. The barn had done its job for years without complaint, but the roof had gone grey and streaked with rust and, frankly, it was letting the place down.

Red corrugated-iron barn at Lækur with a grey, rust-streaked roof, mountain behind
Before: the old roof, grey and streaked with rust.

So we hired a boom lift, a Genie S-45 that looked entirely out of place among the willows, and Sæmi and I got to work – he has painted more roofs in Dýrafjörður than he would care to count. Anyone who has painted corrugated iron from a basket in a Westfjords breeze knows it is one part painting and three parts waiting for the gust to pass.

Blue Genie boom lift parked beside the red barn at Lækur, Dýrafjörður and the sea in the background
The Genie S-45, looking entirely out of place among the willows.
Sæmundur Þorvaldsson in an orange jacket standing in the basket of a boom lift at Lækur, low autumn sun behind the mountain
Sæmi on his way up.

The reward is the view. From the top of the lift you see the farm the way the eiders must see it coming in over the fjord in April: the farmhouse, the track, the plantation, and the sea beyond.

View from the boom-lift basket over the corrugated barn roof at Lækur, hillside and plantation beyond
One part painting, three parts waiting for the gust to pass.
Newly primed silver corrugated roof at Lækur with Dýrafjörður and its mountains in the background under a blue sky
The view the eiders get when they come in over the fjord.
Lækur farmhouse, gravel track and autumn fields in Dýrafjörður seen from the top of a boom lift
Lækur from twelve metres up: the farmhouse, the track, the plantation.
Snorri Páll Jónsson in front of the Genie boom lift at Lækur, the farmhouse on the hill behind
Ground crew.

And here it is: red, like a barn on an Icelandic farm ought to be.

Red barn at Lækur with a freshly painted red roof, Sæmundur Þorvaldsson standing beside it, mountain and blue sky behind
Red, like a barn on an Icelandic farm ought to be.

That was the last of the painting for this year. The next weekends belong to the autumn jobs: taking down the fox fence around the colony for the winter, and finishing the little watch hut from which we keep an eye on the nesting ground in spring. More on that soon.

Follow us on Instagram – @zoffi_eiderdown – for the small moments from Lækur between diary entries: the first eiders in spring, the fjord in every weather, and the work in between.

From nest to duvet