Tilting occupies a windswept, subarctic landscape of rock- and kelp-smothered shore. The weather is often wild, but on the morning I arrived, the water of Tilting Harbour was so still it crisply reflected the red ochre buildings perched on stilts and the wobbly fishing stages and flakes (platforms used for drying and salting fish) that were tightly... See more

When the first handful of Norwegians showed up on the shores of Iceland in the ninth century, the papar decided the country had become too crowded—even though it was still all but uninhabited. The monks’ response was to climb into their curraghs and row off toward Greenland. They were drawn across the storm-racked ocean, drawn west past the edge of

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