Kvikmyndaverstöðin ehf.

This film is about the painter Sveinn Björnsson (1925-1997), and his struggles to perfect his art. Following a wide-ranging exhibition at the Kjarvalsstaðir Art Gallery in 1989, he has become tired of the fantasy style which he had been developing for thirty years. What needed to happen in order for him to create something new? What sacrifices would it involve? This film is about that struggle experienced by creative artists. The film is not a biography, or a learned review of the painter's style, but it does show a side of the man which very few see. One evening, he feels he is not alone in his studio; it feels as if some being is there who wants to help him.

This one winter's day encapsulates a thousand years fishing and seamanship in Iceland. We gain an insight into an inner and outer world, where manual labour, man's beliefs in nature, Christianity, superstition and even magic are interwoven. We are questioned if we could imagine how this world of the rowing boat crew, wich reflects the ancient class-divided society, really looked like? How did they percive the nature around them, their God in this nature, it's unstable weather conditions, it's harshness when they go to sea to harvest its riches to make it possible for themselves as well as their nation to keep on living on the edge of the habitable world? Here we are face to face with the very foundation of fishing nation's culture.