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ICELAND — After losing her brother to cancer and then being involved in a serious car accident a little more than a week later, Katherine Loveless resolved to spend a year in Iceland for a change of pace.
Her journey allowed her to pursue her love of photography while working as an au pair. It also led her to meet another photographer, Rúrik Karl Björnsson, who recently became her fiancé. The pictures and video of their engagement in an ice cave have since gone viral.
“I feel like it’s all connected — they’re not really separate things, because if my brother wouldn’t have died, I probably wouldn’t have been in the car accident I was in, which wouldn’t have propelled me to want to go to Iceland," Loveless said. "It was just fate. Everything really fell into place years ago, almost."
Loveless had never been to Iceland before moving there for a year and had no contacts in the country, but said she was inspired to go there because of her younger brother Alex, who died at age 23. She said the decision to go was a risk, but it allowed her to grow and turned out to be a magical experience.
“It was really personal for me to be in Iceland after my brother’s death because he had always wanted to go to Iceland and he didn’t get the chance," Loveless said. "It was very healing — I felt like I got really close to my brother somehow with just being there on my own, but with him in spirit and that was really important."
Surviving a serious car crash just a week-and-a-half after her brother's death prompted Loveless to start a Kickstarter campaign before going to Iceland so she could create a photo book that would tell the story of her experiences.
The photography project, titled "A Year in Fire and Ice," turned out to be a key instrument in bringing Loveless and Björnsson together. Another photographer had seen Loveless' Kickstarter campaign and posted her information on a photography forum in Iceland, saying that if anyone was going on a photo shoot she would pay for their gas.
Björnsson, a photographer who recently graduated with a master's degree in international business, saw the post and contacted Loveless. It took a few months for them to arrange a trip together, but soon they found they had a lot in common.
“We went shooting together and then slowly but surely — well, maybe not too slowly — we just fell in love,” she said. “It was very unexpected, but the best sort of things can be unexpected.”
He proposed on March 20 in the Crystal Cave at Skaftafell, Iceland. The couple had decided they wanted to get married, but Loveless said she didn't think he would do it until after he met her family in Mapleton, Utah, because he was planning to come visit in April. Unbeknownst to her, Björnsson had been scheming with her sister to propose in Iceland before she moved home.
Loveless said she later learned he had been planning to propose at a different location a day earlier, but that they were unable to go with her mother and sister, who were visiting, because of a snowstorm. Then their car broke down on the way to the ice caves, but they were eventually able to make it and caught a stroke of good luck when they snagged two unclaimed tickets for the ice cave tour, which is usually booked months in advance.
Björnsson let the tour guides know about his plan, and when they were far into the cave they stopped to take a picture. Then he got down on one knee.
"It was like the furthest thing from my mind because I was already kind of claustrophobic and really excited to be there — it was beautiful — and then they told us to pose for a picture and then that’s when it happened," she said. "It was a total surprise, in the most amazing location I could ever imagine."
Loveless posted pictures of the proposal on Reddit and they were quickly picked up by bloggers and news sites. She said they were surprised by the response.
“I think it’s really nice that people felt they could relate to it or that it was something they wanted to support,” she said. "It’s really touching, because we would never have guessed that in a billion years that people would care that much or that it would be such a big deal. It was an incredible location, so that makes sense, but it’s so interesting how so many people want to know our story."
The couple hasn't set a wedding date yet, but they hope to be married in the Fall, depending on when Björnsson's visa is approved. Right now they are planning to live in Utah after they are married.
Loveless is hoping to release her book, which will feature the story of her experience in Iceland and landscapes of the country, this summer.
