Wind

There has been sunshine for weeks. Blue skies. I even got a pink nose one day doing fieldwork in Þingvellir.. which means it is summer. Yesterday things changed... which means it is Iceland.

The wind started to whistle through the ventilator in the bathroom and our open windows created a pressure difference between the flat and the hallway which sucks the door shut behind you if you step out for a minute. That is pretty spooky. The door to the cleaning room in the communal area bangs as if a little child is playing in there. The blinds are rattling and I can hear the trees swirling around. Still the wind is warm. It is ten degrees C outside, raining and there is an 10 metres per second wind (22.4 miles per hour). It is also almost 00.30 and you can still the weather on the webcam from Veðurstofnun.

Although the house makes spooky sounds I find it rather friendly. It reminds me of lying in bed in the wood-clad bedroom I shared with my sister and hearing the little window rattling in the wind. The swirling trees outside sound bigger than they are and that is nice .. it is like being back home with proper big trees in motion. The odd sucking of the door also reminds me of home and opening the curtains one morning after a storm to find that the wind had taken the slates off the roof of the little byre and stacked them neatly at the foot of the wall.

The weather change is maybe because we are thinking about wind in the flat and Óli particularly has been dreaming of soaring on thermals. We both started paragliding classes today. It will be weeks probably before we even get the wing to sit above our heads and perhaps take a little foot-high hop off the ground, but it is step one. Unfortunately you can´t paraglide when the wind is more than 5 metres per second (11.2 miles per hour) or when there is rain.. so I wonder how often we´ll fly in Iceland?!

Some other useful info on the Icelandic weather situation:
Veðurstofnun´s nice new webpage,
BBC´s 5-day forecast for Reykjavík which is more reliable than Morgunblaðið´s veðurkort
and .. my favourite .. Do I need a jacket.. in Egilsstaðir.. I wonder how often the answer is "Yes".

All colours .. ert þú þessi Erlendur?

The International Women´s Rainbow Choir

Bellydancers from Kramhúsið - "Shams el amar": Fífí, Margrét and Solheir

Ghanan dance, picture from Morgunblaðið

This is a weekend of festivals .. the festival of the sea for sailor´s day at all ports, particularly in Reykjavík, bright days festival in Hafnarfjörður and today the Festival of Nations or Þjóðahátið in Hafnarfjörður, with participants from more than 40 countries. We Scots were there and had a popular stall .. we were giving away samples of whisky, fruit cake and cups of tea .. sang some Scottish songs and we went for a record breaking attempt at the longest strip the willow in Iceland .. 24 brave participants from Ghana, Germany, England, Japan, Iceland, Scotland, Hungary and Bulgaria .. perhaps more .. joined in and span and span and span across the hall. Pretty amazing for a two minute lesson beforehand and we are fairly sure that this may be the longest Orcadian Strip the Willow in Iceland so far and most certainly must be the most international Strip the Willow in Iceland! Next year we´ll aim for even more. Congratulations and thank you to all who joined in!

Whisky sampling!

The best bit for me was seeing people and pictures from countries I knew nothing about - Bulgaria, Lithuania and Ghana particularly. And wow, Ghanans really love shortbread! The dancing was also so fun .. so many types of bellydancing, beautiful elegant Thai dancing and Carlos´ infectious high-spirited salsa. So much colour .. proud to be a foreigner .. and delighted to meet Icelanders with open eyes to the world! Takk fyrir daginn!

More pictures can be seen on the Bulgarian Community's (BG Islandia) web album.