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Though the discovery was accidental, no one who encountered the dragonfly that week mistook it for anything common. The island of Viðey, situated in the tidal stillness of Faxaflói Bay, had long served as a modest waypoint for ecological surveys and seasonal research—its mossy bluffs and basalt-lined coves more often catalogued for bird migrations and lichen drift than for anomalies in entomology.
Yet on the evening of August 14th, just before sundown, the air turned unusually windless, the way it sometimes does before a shift in weather. That stillness, combined with the faintly sulfuric warmth rising from the island’s shallow geothermal seams, allowed for the appearance of something both unlikely and, by all accounts, remarkable.
Resting atop a patch of blooming stonecrop near the ruins of Viðey Monastery was a dragonfly broad of wing and muted in motion. Its flight path, if it could be called that, resembled more the movement of a glider or a paper lantern caught in a low current—designed, it seemed, not for distance but for presence.
Observers noted the geometry of its wings first: unusually broad, squared at the tips, and etched with an angular venation that resembled glacial fracture patterns or the tessellated tiling found in medieval Icelandic manuscripts. The color, though not overtly vivid, presented a palette so regionally exact it was difficult to overlook—tones of lichen green, oxidized bronze, volcanic glass, and a blue that matched the North Atlantic just before fog. In direct sunlight, the wings caught the light in discrete panels.
The body of the insect was neither long nor narrow, but compact—modest in length and seemingly overbuilt, as if the species had long ago sacrificed speed for stability. Its eyes were round, copper-toned, and strikingly reflective, giving the impression that it was not simply observing its surroundings, but remembering them.
Taxonomic Debate and Preservation
The dragonfly was later catalogued as Caelopyris glacialis tesselata, its Latin name referencing both its suspected cold-adapted evolutionary path and its geometrically patterned wings. Though early hypotheses suggested it might be a drift specimen—a continental vagrant borne northward by wind or migratory coincidence—subsequent environmental alignment, and a second unconfirmed sighting weeks later, began to point toward something more deliberate: an isolated glacial relic species, perhaps preserved by the island’s geothermal anomalies and the relatively stable microclimate of its moss-covered interior.
The only known specimen was preserved unintentionally on a handmade sheet of seaweed-dyed cotton paper, laid out to dry by a Reykjavik-based artist working on a public project during the same week as the discovery. The dragonfly, drawn to the saturated surface or perhaps merely exhausted, settled there and did not rise again. The resulting imprint—a near-perfect mounting of wings and thorax—revealed delicate flecks of residual pigment and pressure impressions in the pulp. Blue and yellow watermarks, abstract and barely visible, remain visible beneath the wings.
Today, the specimen is held in archival conditions by Fly Design, gifted from Hólar University. It remains the subject of both academic study and quiet admiration.
Cultural Reflections
Among island locals, mention of the Bláfjall Spanglewing tends to elicit either recognition or dismissal. Older residents recall stories told by grandparents—of “glass-bugs” or “wind-fliers” that appeared during strange weather or just after earthquakes. These were not mythic insects, nor revered, but noted. A feature of the landscape, spoken of the same way one might refer to a long-shadowed hill or a place where the fog never quite lifts.
In some traditions, dragonflies were thought to be silent messengers between stone and sky—creatures that crossed layers of time, carrying little but evidence that they had once been here.
Note: High quality archival glicée print on acid-free paper, a method that creates fine art reproductions with exceptional color accuracy and longevity. Pigments-based inks are designed to resist fading and discoloration and capture the finest details and subtle color variations with great precision.
Housed in a 4×6” crystal-clear acrylic specimen block, its 1” depth allows freestanding display. Each piece is designed to exhibit on desk or shelf..
Fly Design uses a practice known as entonology — the study of fictitious insects — to reimagine the natural world through scientific storytelling and poetic design.