I spent three weeks participating in a walking artist residency in Seydisfjordur, Iceland during the summer solstice.
The sun would not set there, only disappear behind the surrounding mountains, leaving the town and the wider region in a limbo of perpetual twilight.
I began taking daily midnight walks, usually anywhere between 10 pm and 3 am, drawn by this persistent deep blue light.
From my house, three roads were within walking distance, each leading to different trails in the mountains or along the fjord.
The feeling of walking Iceland’s mountains, coastlines, rivers, towns, and old and modern ruins, while everyone is asleep, is a mystical one.

There are no dangerous animals in Iceland.
The lack of pressure to get back anywhere before it gets dark and the overwhelming sense of safety in the landscape, mixed in with a good amount of bodily fatigue, felt satisfyingly numbing.
This absence of urgency created the perfect premise for midnight dérives: slow, intuitive drifts across the terrain.
With no destination or obligation to return at a set time, I would walk wherever my body led me, until it no longer wanted to.
I could truly let my intuition be my guide in this weirdly safe unknown terrain.
These Icelandic midnight walks were the quietest edge of the dérive, where movement truly lost its urgency.