Gleðileg jól - snow, fire and excitement

Norðfjörður

Happy Christmas everyone. Gleðileg jól.

We are in Neskaupstaður which is a town set in a deep fjörd (Norðfjörður) on the east coast of Iceland. I´ve been here once before, in February last year for a trip to the neighbouring uninhabited Viðfjörður. Then it was warm enough, rather strangely, to be outside comfortably in short sleeves. Now, returning in December for Christmas and New Year to spend time with Óli´s brother and family there is ice and snow. Ice coated the road all the way to Kirkjubærklaustur, around a third of the way from Reykjavík to the east then as we drove along the coast passed Jökulsálón we felt as if we were driving through the night, the longest night of the year. Even in the pitch black of 4pm the ice-choked lagoon sparkled beautifully with blues and greys and the odd bright shimmering fairy-light on the icebergs as the full moon reflected off the glistening surfaces.

A walk in the snow

Now we´ve been here for almost a week. Snow fell on the 23rd to give us a white Christmas and like last year we opened our parcels after dinner on Christmas Eve, still making me feeling rather naughty breaking the childhood rule of not opening any presents until Christmas Day. This year, being with Icelandic and South African family the house was swarming with supernatural beings. Jólasveinarnir dropped by at night to leave presents in shoes for good boys and bigger parcels on the 24th and then on the night of the 24th or early morning of the 25th Santa made it to Iceland, flying down into the deep valley, thankfully missing the cold sea water and not slipping too badly on the ice to leave more presents beneath the tree and fill Christmas stockings. Then, K lost his first baby tooth and the tooth fairy left something under his pillow on the night of the 25th.

Where the tooth fairy lives

Today is the 29th and things are calming down. The best toys have been selected (torches and protective eye glasses meant for fireworks), the excitement is diminishing and the house has been spirit and sprite free for a few evenings running now. However, New Year nears and Óli and I have been helping setting up the fireworks display. Of course everyone will set fireworks off and the town will be wreathed in smoke but before midnight, from the sneak preview of the size of the fireworks being laid out and placed into massive barrels, I expect there will be a pretty good show from S and co. Fingers crossed that my fuses don´t fail.

Big bomb, happy boy

It is good to be out of Reykjavík and to see the snow-clad hills all around. I will however, be quite glad to be rid of the supernatural visits for a year! You would too if they were stealing things from the fridge and sniffing around doors, worrying the sheep and licking your pots and pans!

Approaching Yule

It is 8.30am on a Sunday and I am uncharacteristically awake due to Óli´s shift patterns just now. It is quiet and still feels like night (it will be dark until around 11am and then get dark again around 2-3pm) so once I´ve had my dose of tea for the morning it is quite possible to con myself into thinking that it is night and my night-owl can spring into action and start writing. Of course, the papers of "geomorphology of a glacial foreland" and "sedimentology of jökulhlaups" lay untouched .. perhaps a little too early and not enough tea for those. However, while they eat away at my conscience, I can finally find some time to write here for a change.

Mulled wine

Christmas is just 8/9 days away depending on which celebrations you opt for.. 24th in Iceland, 25th back home. I try to get both in, being greedy and wanting two Christmases a year. So, today there is little to do other than prepare and go Christmas shopping and really what else can one do when there is snow outside and the shops have candles lit outside their doors and the cookies and mince pies are all ready, the cake is being fed with brandy and we´ve already had our British Christmas dinner. We started early with a small party in the second week in January and ate turkey and trimmings and drank mulled wine into the night.

It was a good celebration of the end of a very hectic time. Ceilidh classes and the ceilidh night had filled up so much time but I am so glad to say that it was a great success. The band were brilliant, giving up their time for free to play because of a love for this lively, jumpy, toe-tapping music. 60 people came and actually our biggest problem was that the room was too small. So we are now dreaming of holding it in Iðno.. a real stage, a big dance floor and beautiful decorations .. no scruffy edge of the world stuff next time. However, we´re not sure if we have enough spare limbs to afford that. Still, the first mini ceilidh was held in a warehouse with stage props, dust and old, unwashed cups scattering the dark corners, in an out of the way place between the oil tanks for the ships and a building site. The next place was an old wartime-inspired nissan hut by the thermal beach, a bit easier to find but building works over the winter meant you had to navigate the mud-bath, the swamp and search in the dark for a road which bore little resemblance to a road, even in Iceland.. Both excellent for their purpose and within our budget but I´d say we can only move up in the world.

I am dreaming of a resurrection of folk dance enthusiasm here .. though lets not call it folk dance please. I am searching for some other phrase - ceilidh is doing for now.. though it means nothing to most people. Any suggestions are most welcome. The phrases in use with other groups are folk dance or old dances.. neither of which seems to capture the lively nature of the thing! I also hope this can involve all ages and be something to help bring Icelanders and foreigners together more .. so far we´re doing fairly well with Scots, English, Norwegians, Icelanders, Slovaks, Russians, French, Mexicans, Swiss, Danes, Germans, Finns, Swedes.. and probably more, trying this thing out.

On holiday in Spain, wearing bellydance silk to a restaurant!

Bellydance sparkles - Margrét - picture from balletstelpur

Meanwhile I´ve been dancing belly dance and spend time peering around the stage wings being awe-inspired by the sparkly costumes of the other dancers at Kramhúsið´s Christmas show and I´ve been battling technology as the computer, the car and software at work refuse to behave. Many are helping to try to persuade them that the holidays are not yet here (thanks Óli, Egill and Anil). However, maybe these well-used and tired technological creatures are justified. The weather has been crazy with storms ripping the roofs of houses, tipping over lorries and requiring the radio stations to announce that people shouldn´t go out unless necessary and that children should be kept home from school. Seems strange for the capital area. Or maybe the car and computer have been struck by the Christmas holiday spirit and are on strike until after New Year .. or out shopping along with the rest of the country. Perhaps they are in a bookshop stuck in a queue as the whole nation tries to buy those essential expensive hardbacks with big glossy photos or the latest novels and poems by their neighbours!

Anyway.. I have things to do.. Christmas markets to visit and hot chocolate to drink.., oh yes and glacial forelands to be writing about.

Midnight love notes

Ceilidh in Reykjavík!
December 6th 20:00 - Live music "The Reel Thing" - 500kr.
www.skoskurdans.org

It has been a busy few weeks recently with preparations for our ceilidh on the 6th December and with thoughts turning to Christmas! Tonight I sat up late with Óli and K sorting out just what a ceilidh band should play at a ceilidh .. when, for how long, . and what to do when all turns to chaos on the dance floor. It was a most productive evening.. fueled by tea and disappointingly soft fruit shortcake biscuits (note: do not store fruit shortcakes and fig rolls together).

A love note from a mug, actually by no mug, maker of lovely mugs and teapots, Emma Bridgewater.

This is the catch in my evening.. now it is tomorrow and I am still awake, randomly looking at news and trying to get Christmas present ideas from the internet. A troublesome business which really is fairly useless but passes the time and solves any small cravings for actually going shopping which is dangerously expensive here. However, I find presents are probably more suitably chosen when you think more about the person than randomly looking in every shop window, dragging yourself along the high street jostling with other rather panicked shoppers .. or trawling through gadget and gift websites full of neon flashing things and wind up plastic old people with fighting ways..

Someone else I read about has the same sleeping problem as me in Patreksfjörður in north-west Iceland, but has found a lovelier way of spending time. Sneaking out at the dead of night he or she (or it) creeps into people´s gardens and lurks around their cars, their garden fences and the lamp-posts outside their houses. Then.. unseen and unheard they leave a message, a neatly plastic-wrapped note of love for their chosen to find in the morning. Not just one, one dear to heart, secret lover this.. this person leaves notes all over town .. a bringer of happiness and gladness to the dark winter mornings. Sounds to me like a lovely winter story plot come true.

Dream Angus

A few weeks ago a read a lovely, quite curiously strange book by Alexander McCall Smith called Dream Angus. It is quite unlike his Number 1 Ladies Detective series or the Philosophers Club books. More beautiful, more subtle. A semi-mythical character who leaves dreams for you and makes you fall in love, who makes the world better by solving your problems at night.

May you be visited by night-time fairies and imps to brighten the next day. Much better than what we´ve got coming .. Icelandic yule lads who raid the fridge, lick the dirty dishes and terrorise the sheep.. but more on that another time.

First days of winter

Saturday was the official first day of winter... and sometime during the evening I poked my head out through the curtains and the world had turned white with big, soggy flakes of snow falling. It has been snowing almost continually since and the hedge outside my living room window is encrusted with snow, with leaves that look like sugar-coated sweeties and reminding me of Christmas cards.

Kjótsúpa .. picture from Morgunblaðið

Free Icelandic meat soup was given away in the streets on Saturday and African dancers took to the streets with cool drum rhythms. Tonight I go back to bellydance class. Time to get back to hobbies that remind us of warmer climes.

Sheep in the fold

Last Friday we went away for the weekend to get peace and quiet, to read and to sleep. We set off too late of course, after work on Friday, met with a friend in Akranes en route and I tried her yummy chicken and rice soup.

By the time we were heading into the country, leaving Borganes and its two greasy burger joints behind it was really really dark. I was surprised. Not so long ago it was almost 24 hours of daylight.. then I sat with a friend in a hot tub at 2am and watched the faint brush of the northern lights in the dusky sky .. and then suddenly it is dark at 8pm. Okay, maybe it was more like 10. Anyway, this must mean I´ve spent too long inside and I feel like despite a glorious summer with wonder continental weather I have let the summer slip by.

Hestfjall in Borgarfjörður, picture taken by Halldór Eiríksson

I am glad now though of the change in season. It all happened on Friday with the darkness. We drove and drove, skipped the turning for the fisherman´s huts, passed the summer houses and between the cliffs, round the bend and down the hill .. then passed the big rock by the road (sure home of elves), goat rock and up the hill through a flock of sheep all eyes gleaming evilly in the headlights, up the hill and into the darkness away from all the lights. We began to wonder if we missed the cottage that we were told we couldn´t miss.

Then, two small lights appeared in the distance and the narrowest road bridge I´ve ever come across with a two tonne limit.. how heavy is the car? Less than one ton surely but when you add in the rucksacks, the tins of beans, bottle of whisky and us.. I chickened out and reversed in to the path of a van (but not quite) racing up the hill, so feeling like stupid tourists we thought we´d ask directions. Well, not a lot of help .. in that there was pretty much nothing further on in terms of warm cosy cottages.. but I am still wondering what a guy travelling alone with a suitcase in the middle of the night was doing driving into the wilderness. Óli assures me that the suitcase was too small for a body. Is the habit of exiling people to the hills still in existence here?

Well, we turned back.. passed the dark lake we´d missed on the way up, passed goat rock, the elf house rock, the freaky-eyed sheep, the cliffs, the summer houses and back to the main road. So we´d missed it again. We turned back. This continued for some time.

Once found the cottage was unmissable, inviting even in darkness and cold and a most thoroughly welcome shelter from the wind that was gathering. And it blew, and it blew and it blew all night, through the morning, the afternoon, the evening and the next night .. and when we drew the curtains on the next morning there was snow on the mountains and a bite to the air and winter was there. Perhaps the man with the suitcase was somehow responsible.

The farmers on horseback spotted the weather change before us and went to get the sheep (maybe the suitcase man was delivering whisky to farmers rounding sheep up in the hills?) and as we left they brought at least 300 sheep, white, black, muddy and fluffy, small and scruffy down the hills, along the road, passed the narrow bridge (not more than 2 tonnes of sheep at once), along the shore of the dark lake, alongside goat rock and all around the elf house, up the hill, passed the summer houses, through the cliffs and into the fields of home.

On Sunday night we settled back in to our little flat in town and thought of the party being had to celebrate the round up in the country and we shared a whisky in celebration of the start of winter and the coming of the snow.

Ceilidh classes resuming

Come and try this out on Thursday at Flugröst,
email scottishdance@gmail.com if you would like more information.

Storm

Storm rising by Pamela Theodotou

A storm is coming. The shadows of the trees are battering the windows. It feels like winter, and there is a chill sliding in through the window and covering the bed with an icy blanket. I am sat wrapped up in wool with a fluffy pillow under my arm as I type, cheerful colours about me. The shadows are on the edge of my vision and are waiting for me to go to bed.

19:00, 3rd September 2007

It seems a night for mysterious things to be about out there. I am reminded of the elf houses we saw this summer in Hellisandur. And one elf there perhaps..

IL at Gúfuskáli, Hellisandur

Busy August

Holtasóley (Dryas octopetala), the national flower of Iceland

August has gone quickly. I have a big backlog of things to do that I imagined I´d do tomorrow and tomorrow somehow slipped by. I´ve been west and north and south .. and might go east within the next month. I´ve been to four volcanoes and passed by numerous others. No activity.. nothing .. no explosions or mild sizzles at all.. shame. Kind of. I did though see some holes in the ground made by the June 17th and 2oth earthquakes in 2000 ..

Fracture from the June 2000 earthquakes, magnitude 6.5

and walked on a recent lava flow from Krafla (1980s) which felt and sounded a bit like walking on the crispy caramel of a creme brulee.. exactly the same crunchy noise as you make when you crash through the caramel with your spoon. I crashed through the top of the lava flow.. All the while I kept wondering why there was so much traffic, as the roar of the jet-engine boreholes at the power station crept into my thoughts.

Krafla

I saw the drilling rig for a borehole in a new geothermal power area, where they have just announced that there will be a power station built to fuel another new aluminium smelter if they find enough steam. The town major there says there are no reasons not to go ahead with the plan. I suppose he won´t work there. Imagine working in an aluminium smelter the next time there is a major earthquake there. It was strange mix that place.. green grass and grazing sheep, hot springs and bubbling grey-blue mud.. the mix of smells of sulphur and grass under your feet, and then the drill rig.

I took a dip in Víti at Askja .. "Hell" .. kind of felt like Hell might be close to freezing over. But then we did walk through a mini blizzard to reach the blue-green tinted crater and slid down a mud bank to reach the water. It wasn´t Askja´s most sunny day.

Went for a walk and looked back on a tuff cone in the evening light:

Hverfjall from Dimmuborgir

And what seems months away now, on Menningarnótt, we taught 40 people to dance the Victoria Reel in Ingolfstorg, the square in Reykjavík city centre, and made a few newspapers and first mention on that night´s 7pm news. Classes will start in the next few weeks .. let me know if you want to come.. will be emailing with news and posting notices soon.

North

Jökulsá á fjöllum

Mývatn

Landmannalaugur and Landmannaleið piccies

Ceilidh Culture on Iceland´s Culture Night

This year if you are in Reykjavík on the 18th of August, Reykjavík´s Culture Night, come along to Ingólfstorg in the centre of town to dance. There will be dances from all parts of the world.. including ceilidh.There will be two ceilidh classes taught by Óli and I during the day:

14.30 - 15.00 "Orcadian Strip the Willow" - perfect for families. Children love to spin. I used to make myself sick and dizzy regularly spinning around in the middle of the kitchen as a child.

20.00 - 20.45 "The Dashing White Sergeant" - to kick start your evening and warm you up for the night.

Everyone welcome. No partner required. No experience necessary. Even dance-haters will smile! Really!

For more information about Menningarnótt / Culture Night see the Reykjavík city´s website
and for more about ceilidh dancing in Reykjavík see the class website, Ceilidh in Reykjavík!

Jeeps, romance and the yearly bath

En route to Landmannalaugur

Last week I decided it was time for the yearly bath of my little Ssangyong Korando jeep, named "Koriander". It was time, I felt, since I could no longer see the colour of the car. I hope Óli´s Dad approves since he has diligently pointed out that my little jeep is not a Landrover and needs a little more care and attention, and doesn´t look so good all bashed up. Next comes a whole long list of small fixes that are needed and then .. I want a snorkel. Korandos are pretty fine off road; they have a short wheel base and, with 31" tyres, fine ground clearance, but they have air intakes in a ridiculous location, just behind the front bumper. Who wants a jeep in Iceland if you can´t drive through a river in it? Well .. you can.. .. with the aid of a plastic survival bag, some sticky tape and a heavy accelerator foot..

Post-wading picture of Kate, pre-wading picture of Koriander.
Picture taken by Claire Robertson, summer 2006.

.. but the engine- and nerve-destroying potential is too high. Anyone know of a good person to adapt a 4x4 in Iceland, someone that can take some odd bits of drainpipe and make a waterproof snorkel?

So, you may be thinking.. why is a girl interested in tyre sizes and snorkels. Well, firstly my enthusiasm for jeeps might come from my Dad .. see here, and here.. and here, below:

My Dad with his Landrover, Seipnir II, prior to big-wheel modifications.

I have always, I think, liked big cars, dating back to trips in tractors and lorry-spotting on long distance car trips. I always thought it would be cool to be a lorry driver but never quite made it. I was reminded again recently about how cool trucks are as I goggled at the beautiful lines of the North American trucks.

The knowledge about tyre sizes is infectious in this country. When asked about your car the second question is always what size tyres.. not about fuel efficiency. Men might ask the size of the engine or the make first, girls might ask about the colour.. now that I´ve washed it I should be able to check.

Many many people drive around Reykjavík in monster jeeps with 38" or more tyres that never leave town, a bit like a souped up version of the school run jeep. They are good on glaciers though and in snow but in town you NEVER need them. If a little car breaks down in the winter in front of you in town you might be able to drive around them but not over .. for that you need caterpillar tracks. And don´t get me started on studded tyres.. (road-chewing-up, dust-creating outmoded abominations..)

North of Mýrdalsjökull, November 2005, picture taken by Erik Sturkell

Flo the Landrover, coming out of Tröllagjá, north of Þórsmörk, Summer 2005.

However, Iceland´s roads are not that modern and if you want to go somewhere really beautiful or interesting it is often best to have a jeep to tackle the cobbles, boulders, steep inclines and rivers. I like Þórsmörk, but am not taking my little Korando across those rivers by the plastic bag method. Not even if I want to be romantic.. like a Swiss guy recently who proposed to his girlfriend in the river Krossá while they were trying to escape their flooded rental car. She agreed once rescued. Krossá in Þórsmörk, is a big river, fast flowing and not suitable for anything other than big jeeps. Please don´t try it. Take the foot bridge together and visit one of the caves in the hills between Húsadalur and Langidalur, walk hand in hand along one of the prettiest woodland paths in the country or try out the sauna or new hot tub at Húsadalur.

Well, so I washed the car .. and then we took a 15 hour day trip to Landmannalaugur and Hrafntinnasker.. to look at freakily coloured mountains and lava flows that sparkle in the sun. Some photos arriving shortly.

Spoke too soon

The sun has gone and we have drizzle and haar or Scotch mist .. or Icelandic normal summer weather. It is a relief, in a way, to know that the world has not gone mad and swapped the norms of life around too much. The air smells clean and fresh with grass and flowers. The school children outside tending the gardens around the University are not impressed and walk like zombies in their green rubber outfits. I feel sorry for them, and slightly less than amused that today was to be my first day of fieldwork this month.

A strange bright light in the sky

My family have been visiting us in Iceland. We live in a matchbox so they have been moving around, staying in my bed while Óli was away in Denmark teaching Strip the Willow to Icelanders and Danes, being looked after by Óli´s folks in Kópavogur and now with my sister trying out the Hotel Cabin.. each with a cabin sized room.

The weather has been glorious, we´ve sat outside most days to eat, my sister can´t sleep because of the light and we gave up trying to sleep through the bright nights and finally bought some blackout curtains. It took some time to find some without blue trains or pink fairies but I made it in the end once the sales assistant realised I meant they were for me, a funny foreigner who wants to cut out that light and sleep through the night rather than party in the 24 hour daylight.

There is something strange going on in Iceland. We´ve had sun .. real, warm sun, sit in your smallest little summer dress type sun, get pink shoulders and a silly pink tip to your nose type sun.. for weeks and weeks. I don´t want it to go away. It is of course now too hot to sit inside our matchbox house with no ventilation but we are living in the garden, which I like.

Irish days

Irish days in Akranes are celebrated every year now with music, games and competitions. Irish days in Iceland? Akranes, just a little north of Reykjavík and reached through the long tunnel beneath Hvalfjörður (whale fjörd) was founded by two Irish brothers. So for the last few years all things Irish have been celebrated at the start of July in this little coastal Icelandic town.

This year, on the Friday afternoon and on the Saturday night I joined a Scottish friend and her friends for a spot of music and song. I really enjoyed it. The girls were so much fun and so talented and three guys joined us .. two Icelanders on banjo and Ukulele and a Quebecois fiddle player. I hope to go next year too.

Photos taken by Sylviane Lebon

First steps in North America

I am back in Iceland now. It is a true summer here with temperatures almost reaching 20 C and blue skies for the last week. I have worn my newly acquired summer dress bought to survive Montreal temperatures and I have sat by the beach and watched the warm waters from Öskjuhlíð trickle into Nauthólsvík making a small sun, sea and pale sand oasis along these normally dark, chilly northern shores.

Nauthólsvík sand castle, made September 2006.
The sand is just a touch too shelly for great architectural feats.

I have returned also with lots of thoughts and ideas stemming from my trip to North America. I had expected something rather different. I was nervous of those big cities I planned to visit. I thought I might get lost or maybe I´d feel in danger walking through streets alone. I certainly didn´t expect to feel at home.

At home in a bookshop on Commercial Drive, Vancouver

The best things .. I didn´t feel like a foreigner, particularly in Montreal; seeing chipmunks and blue jays; talking to people I´d heard about and finding that they are really decent people; feeling the sun on my skin and watching the world go by from the shade of a tree or a balcony with a book in my hand; looking an old friend in the eyes. The worst things .. wearing woollen trousers at 30 degrees C; trying to be a tourist and see the highlights of Vancouver in one day; trying to stay in touch with home with a 7 hour time difference.

Mt. Rainier snowman, mid June.

Some spell has been cast over me that has opened my eyes to what I like about different lifestyles. It is nice to have clarity and a different perspective. The life of a city, the bustle, the freedom of not needing a car and the friendliness of strangers. I don´t know if this can be achieved in Iceland. Outside a 10 minute walking zone of the centre of Reykjavík you are in the suburbs already because it is a city serving a pretty small population, and is definitely car-dominated. No corner shops, no high frequency public transport. No general openness to strangers. In general it can take time to feel the friendliness of Icelanders though it is there, just gradually revealed and true and long-lasting once found.

I am also re-inspired about work. I met some interesting people and saw some interesting sand and gravel! Avalanches deposits and mud flows. It is funny that sediment can create such enthusiasm in me but since it does I take this to assume I´m not in the wrong field of work. Nice news.

Osceola mudflow deposits.. and trees. A massive mid-Holocene lahar. Much more about the Osceola mudflow on the US Geological Survey site.

So, last week I started something new at work. I start working with others more, I start thinking about a project that is less specific than jökulhlaups / glacier floods. I start writing again.

Mount St. Helens

This picture of the crater at Mt. St. Helens was taken in mid June this year and shows the base of the newest dome and it is just possible to make out the snouts of two glacial tongues to either side of the dome. The cloud base is just sitting at the elevation of this newest activity. The foreground shows rock avalanche and lahar deposits from the 1980 eruption, dissected by later streams and lahars. The little chipmunk below (can you see him?) is sitting on a tree knocked down in the blast from 1980. Much of the area has been reforested all around here after incredibly intensive replanting of commercial forestry areas (by hand!) and these trees, only 27 years later, are many metres tall.

Mount Rainier.. birds and folk