Ceilidhs to warm us up, up here

We played ..
Photo taken by Jonas Damulis

I´ve been gone for a while from here but thought I´d drop by. The ceilidh world in Iceland has become busy this month with Vetrahátið (winter festival) and various yearly festivals among companies trying to find something novel to do this year to cheer up their winter-weary employees.

Vetrahátið was primarily marked by .. snow, storms, crazy wind .. well, winter really, and a proper winter at that. Yippee.. there have been so many weeks of snow here that I have lost count. I need 4x4 to get the little jeep out of the car park by our house because it has been covered in ice for weeks. Maybe we should call it Fossvogsjökull. I think that could be an excellent address. Last weekend the winter decided to really kick in and be festive (for the festival). Big snow drifts piled up against the house and frost rimmed the doorways.. we had to break into our own home! The police even asked people to stay at home, quite something for a country where folk head out into the highlands in January in crazily big jeeps or where 25 metres per second is a mild breeze.

So, on the most wintry night of the winter we headed into town, against the advice of the police.. to our first big venue.. The Reel Thing played at NASA! Woohoo! And people danced!

..and they danced at NASA.
Photo by Jonas Damulis.

So, the next one is on Friday 22nd. If you´re in town come along, we´ll be just by the pond at Iðnó, at the gap in the ice where the ducks and swans and geese are hoping for another bit of bread. Poor things. You can walk right across the pond just now. I want to go skating but maybe I´d need a small snowplow in front.

Hopefully I´ll drop by here again at the weekend with some snow pictures before it all melts, once I´ve got all the Dashing White Sergeants and Gay Gordons from spinning around my head.