Hiraeth

Maybe it’s the fact that this week marks 3 years since my trip to Iceland. Maybe Taylor Swift’s new Folklore album has me in my feels. This week I have felt Hiraeth intensely.

I have always felt a longing to travel. A longing to go to certain places. A longing to return to a place after a vacation to somewhere I can’t seem to get out of my head.

I felt this longing before I even traveled to Iceland. I felt connected to a county I had never been to. I have felt it every day since—a longing to return to a place that feels out of this world to my heart and soul.
I tried to put this feeling into words many times and could never say it just right.

I came across the word Hiraeth, and it seems to fit this feeling pretty well. I connected with this section of the definition “It’s an unattainable longing for a place, a person, a figure, even a national history that may never have actually existed. To feel hiraeth is to feel a deep incompleteness and recognize it as familiar.”
I found this definition on this website that describes the word in-depth: https://peterwarski.com/longing-for-a-home-ive-never-been-to-9ce208aa384c
Also, the way you pronounce it is “here-eyeth”.

Hiraeth more accurately describes what many call post-vacation blues for me. Many times it isn’t just sadness of leaving a beautiful place. I connect to certain places and yearn to return and experience them again.

Traveling is stunning, exciting, and fun, but not many people talk about how you feel after you return from a trip. The longing to return to the place that captured your heart. In this time of not traveling as much as you typically would, please take care of yourself if you are experiencing hiraeth. You will travel soon again and see all of the places you long for.