On the Photos you can see the Budirkirkja with northern lights. I was lucky to be able to take this photo. The northern lights were weakening and it was already late at night, I was really tired, freezing and I could slowly feel my feet or hands start to feel numb. 

I had already taken my photos of the church and was back in the car. When I looked at the photos on the screen there, I noticed that they were minimally out of focus. So I went out again and took new photos, the auroras became stronger again in that moment and I took this photo.

Another stroke of luck was the fact that from the 12th of December in Iceland every evening one of the 12 yule lads will visit your house and you will get a small gift each time. So on the outbound flight to Iceland we got 2 wool blankets as a gift from the airline.
But what does this have to do with the church?

The church was illuminated by a spotlight and I wanted to use the chance because it was late at night, my girlfriend and I were alone in this place and she covered the spotlight with the 2 blankets so the place darkened. 

In addition, I was lucky with the Christmas lights inside the church and the moon light illuminating the horizon. What I like best about this picture are not the northern lights but the contrast between the warm and the cold colours.
On Instagram I wrote the following about it:

It was long after midnight on a cold and calm winter night. The moon was already low, setting on the horizon. The wind howled softly in the mountains and the sea roared in the distance. It was almost quiet. The dark landscape surrounding this place and the wide starry sky gave me a feeling of loneliness and melancholy.

There was always a touch of sadness in all this beauty.

The black church and the old graves stood out against the darkness of the night. The windows of the church shone warm and bright as if it was a place of refuge, a place of security and hope. A small, warm glow that rebelled against the cold darkness of the winter night.

And me? I stood leaning against the old cemetery wall, tired and freezing. My hands were so cold that it was difficult to operate the camera. As the moon slowly departed and the night threatened to become darkest, the lights of the north began to dance above me, illuminating the night with their colours and stretching towards the moon.

So I stood there in this cemetery, so close to the dead, so far from the stars, darkness at my back, the light in front of me. That’s how I stood there, so close to everything yet so far away from everything. That’s how I stood there as part of this World.