A lazy morning greeted us with Eva’s famously huge breakfast spread in the hotel’s dining room. We swarmed around the buffet table, piling our plates high and going online to do some research for the coming day’s excursions. After I’d consumed enough coffee to fuel myself into the following week, I reacquainted myself with Djúpavík on foot with my camera in hand.

Heading directly to the herring factory, I circled around the huge storage tanks, looking for the portals inside the one that was dry. I crawled inside to admire the space and acoustics. While there, I heard what I thought were power tools, and I popped my head outside the porthole to be met with an older couple on an ATV right outside the tank. The man laughed and gestured to me that he wanted to take my photo while I was in the tank’s hole, and I obliged and clambered out.

I examined the partially restored exterior of the herring factory’s main building, looking for an entrance to Claus’ exhibit. Having only ever been inside the factory while on a tour with Eva and Sandra, it felt slightly illicit to slip in alone and wander around freely.

In the airy upstairs hall, I found the exhibit space where I recalled Eva peering out a window to call out to her Arctic tern colony on the roof of the factory years before. Sitting down at one of the listening stations in Claus’ installation, I tuned into a moving audio-visual tour of Iceland. He had made a book of images with short descriptions, each with a corresponding sound clip he had recorded at the same time.

As I told him at dinner that night, I had always thought of Iceland as being so silent, so having the focus put on these sounds I had been subconsciously hearing over the past two weeks made for a very immersive experience. After I finished the sound-tour, I moved on to the photo exhibit hanging from the walls by strings. It was nice to see a cross-section of the urban life in Reykjavík mingled with the intimate day-to-day behind-the-scenes workings at the heart of the very remote Djúpavík—Eva and her family along with the other now-familiar summer workers. I also noticed images from another obviously abandoned herring factory, with a name I didn’t recognize—Eyri.

Continuing my walk to the water’s edge, tempted by the rusting hull of the old steel ship, the swaying seaweed, and the swarms of Arctic terns, I wound my way back to the hotel to see if I could find Claus to ask him about Eyri. Instead, I found Eva, who said that it was not too long of a drive and added that with the 4x4, we should have no problem, though the road that leads right into Ingólfsfjörður was rather steep. I went back to Álfasteinn to meet up with Sandra and Ugglan to report what I had found out about Eyri.

We gathered at the sitting room table to have some lunch from our travel supply of tube cheeses, krispbreads, bananas, cookies and instant coffee. In the midst of nibbling and plotting an afternoon foray, a family of seven or so rambunctious Icelanders came into Álfasteinn and all strangely filed into the sitting room to examine both the décor and us very closely while we were having our lunch.

As they filled the remaining rooms in the cottage, and we thought that right then would be an ideal time to leave and investigate Eyri. With that, we mixed some bottles of saft to drink, tossed our bags into our car and I drove us all down to Ingólfsfjörður.

The mist had lifted a little but not quite enough to let the sun through. When I had popped on the Internet long enough to get a feel for what to expect, I had read about the tern colony at Eyri being rather aggressive. Having crossed the path of many disgruntled terns while in Iceland, I didn’t think too much of it. When we made the last rocky hairpin turn into the all-but-deserted village—maybe two houses were still inhabited, or at least maintained—I shut off the engine.

Upon stepping outside of the vehicle, we were immediately assaulted by the shrill, angry cries of the resident tern colony. I had my tripod in one hand and camera in the other as I walked toward the decaying buildings on the other side of a field that was stacked with driftwood and rusting debris.

Before I had gone 15 paces from the car, one of the terns grabbed and tugged on my hair. Its cohorts were dive-bombing the three of us, and from then on out I carried my tripod overhead. They were relentless, but the site was well worth the attacks. There were several buildings in the complex, the smallest being a house I had recognized from photos I’d seen when searching for a translation of Aðgangur Bannaður (“No Trespassing”)—which was scrawled in red spray paint on the side of the building.

One look around the corner of the house revealed there wasn’t much of the floor inside that hadn’t collapsed, though from several paces back you could see the bunkbeds where the factory workers likely slept, all clinging to the edges of the room with some tattered blankets and straw mattresses.

Moving quickly between the buildings to avoid being nipped by the screaming kría overhead, we all clung to the walls as much as possible. I peered in the windows of the single-story central building, which appeared to contain offices and a kitchen area, mixed with some more industrial machinery in other parts. I only stepped inside one room, but didn’t go any further as the floors and roof looked rather weak and collapsed in areas.

Weaving around, tripod held up for protection, I made my way back to the enormous fish meal holding tank beyond the other buildings. It was nearly three times the capacity of the tanks at the Djúpavík factory, though the portal to enter it was much smaller.

My arms were starting to get tired from hefting my gear overhead, Sandra had been pooped on by an angry tern and Ugglan was growing weary of being an easy seven-foot-tall target for violent winged attacks. We packed it in and headed back to the hotel, just as the sun was starting to show itself, briefly, for the last time during our trip.

Rolling back into town not long before dinnertime, we went over to the dining room to examine photos from the day. We all enjoyed a delicious dinner of pan-fried cod followed by Eva’s much-coveted rich skyr dessert with blueberries from the garden.

Afterward, we talked with Eva and Claus about how things have changed, or not, for the West Fjörds in the past couple of years. Eva, despite being a very vocal member of the community board, had faced continual refusals from the government for more improvements to the roads in the West Fjörds, as well as for shorter periods of closure over the winter.

A recent assessment of the roads by the Icelandic road administrators had declared the roads there to be 20 years behind the main roads in the rest of Iceland, while the main roads in Iceland were themselves 40 years behind the quality of roads in mainland Europe. Eva’s family came for a visit later that night after dinner, while we were still lounging about reading and processing photos until nearly midnight.

We had to say our goodbyes to Eva that night, as the next morning when we were leaving it was her day off and since she was still recovering from a bout of pneumonia, she wanted to get some extra sleep. After many hugs and kisses and Eva trying to talk us into visiting again in the winter when it was much more peaceful and relaxed, we all crept back to Álfasteinn to bed.