“It’s easy to lose your mind there, it has nothing to do with Denmark,” the bishop warns the young, ascetic priest Lucas before he embarks on a mission to the "wilderness". But Lucas doesn't heed his advice: despite impossible conditions, he brings along a load of books and heavy photographic equipment, travels by horse instead of a boat and demands the locals speak Danish. On top of which, his moral principles are compromised when he meets the daughters of his host... Shot in the 4:3 format, the film was inspired by wet-plate photographs taken by a Danish priest that are the first known images of one of Iceland’s more remote coastal regions.
“I think the Danes definitely looked down on the Icelanders at a certain time in history. They don’t anymore, but there was a time it was like that, and if you read the notes or the diaries by seafarers, for example, people travelling between the countries during that time, you see that. People – Danish captains, boat members, sailors – tended to think the Icelanders were, if you read those texts, smelly and ugly, wearing ugly clothes. They were probably right. I like that both sides have flip sides, or both sides have good qualities and negative things.”
- Hlynur Pálmason