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.