Sabbatical over, perhaps

I thought I´d drop by and say hi and comment on the weather and the lengthening days in Iceland.

Snow showers and sun are alternating, toying with my optimism by offering the carrot of spring and then slapping me in the face with another unnecessary helping of sleet, snow or a howling gale to blow me off my not-wintery-enough shoe-clad feet. This second there is sunshine, blue skies and a dusting of snow on Esja.

Jóhann Ísberg´s photo of Esja looks similar to the view today.
Perhaps it will all change tomorrow.

I´ve been busy thinking about ceilidhs but just now we are searching for a drummer to allow us to continue getting up on stage and making a lot of noise for folk to dance to. If you play the drums and live in or near Reykjavík please get in touch.

On top of that I´ve been dreaming.. of books and book stores and sitting in continental cafés for hours alternately burrowing my head in a good novel, sipping a hot chocolate and watching the world go by. One day I will open a good book store where I would want to spend time. I will serve homemade fruit loaf and let people pick their own mint from a pot in the window to make their tea. I dream of folk gathering to knit of an evening in the cosy atmosphere or to talk about their latest books chosen from the theme of warm sunny countries in winter and long starry nights in the summer and exchanging reading rights to students for book reviews in Icelandic.

Recently, I read an interesting blog about a woman in Scotland setting up her own book shop, not far from Edinburgh (Inkspot and Silverleaf Booksellers). One of her recommended book stores is Shakespeare and Company, set on the left bank of the Seine, looking over to Notre Dame de Paris. This is a key indicator of her wonderful taste and hopefully bodes well for the future and atmosphere of her new shop. Shakespeare and Company is perhaps the best book shop in the world.

Shakespeare and Company, Paris

Meanwhile I am actually actively and busily employed on a variety of projects in geology: learning how to tame the technology of ArcGIS to make beautiful, useful and accurate hazard maps, which can be clever enough to lend a hand at analysis to give the pocket calculator and map pens a rest; collecting information for a database on all people and projects to do with marine geology around Iceland which is proving a fun way to meet new people here and is turning up a few gems of knowledge that apply to my other work and interests; modeling volcanic ash fall from the majestic volcano Hekla. Day in day out I sit at the beautiful wooden, carved desk that Sigurður Þórarinsson once sat at, studying the ash of Hekla and the great eruption of 1947 among many other things including penning a few lively folk songs and I hope some of his wisdom, breadth of knowledge and great motivation to publish will seep into my veins. I take heart from his song-writing times that mixing folk music, ceilidh dancing and geology can be good for the soul and general productivity.

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.

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.

Ceilidh classes resuming

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

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.

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!

For tango lovers everywhere

Sisilly has made the most beautiful, stylish pack of notecards and t-shirts with her uplifting sketches. They remind me of winter nights in Cafe Cultura with beautiful M and many friendly people and candlelit elegant dances .. and tangoing in obscure places .. which I like best.

Bellydancing dreams .. or a little girl in a sweetie shop

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.

Basket weaving

Boogie cartoon from butternutsquash

It was pointed out to me at ceilidh class tonight that so many dances are about basket weaving. In and out, round and about. I think it is true. I wonder what a Strip the Willow basket would like? I think I´d like one. We also had a go at making a basket of people.. (see the video here for an example). I hope nobody is injured after all that. In the UK I feel we would have needed a few thick piles of paper to fill in to ensure we carried out a thorough risk assessment. Things thankfully are a little more laid back here. One man down .. a few more left still standing .. thats okay then.. Still I am teaching a lot of foreigners so perhaps I should be more careful. Everyone up for slow waltz? No really I think it went well, lots of fun. I am really enjoying the classes and am glad I finally went for it. Have been thinking about this idea for at least 12 months!

First steps on stage

This was my belly dance class' first steps on stage at Þjóðleikhúskjallarinn on the 13th of April, performing a choreography by Aida Nour. Our teacher, Margrét, had a fun duet with her very entertaining teacher Maher, dancing a choreography originally danced by Mahmoud Reda and Farida Fahmy.



I was really impressed by Fífí´s solo:



It was fun and great to see the experienced dancers, so relaxed and fluid, cat-like, in their amazing costumes. I suspect belly dance costumes are like shoes.. can you have too many?

Oh, how we ceilidhed!

Circling dancers in Linlithgow

Today I held my first ceilidh class in Reykjavík. I enjoyed it, I hope others did.

Every time I nip back to Scotland I try to fit a ceilidh in. Actually I bend backwards, sideways and spin round about to make one fit in. This time we fared outside Edinburgh in search of the best ceilidh to be had and we definitely found it. The Linlithgow Rugby Club Ceilidh with Last Tram Tae Auchenshuggle. We shuggled, we hopped and we both learnt some new dances. I really liked the Siege of Venice! And the Cumberland Square Eight .. aka the Basket Dance. We even showed off with a little tango.

A basket performed by Magnus and friends to Last Tram.
One for Keith!

Our feet were still hurting days after and Óli´s arm was bruised for days due to the rough handling he got being spun by the ladies! Still, thats a mark (literally) of a good night with lots of dancing.

Ceilidh classes in Reykjavik

Beginners Ceilidh classes start in Reykjavik in May.. I'm teaching! Ceilidh dancing is wonderful fun. Scottish country dancing the way real people do it. A great night out, really sociable and not too worried about the perfect steps. I love it! Being back in Scotland just now I am working away in the labs and writing occasional blogs with pretty pictures to remind me that it is spring outside .. or summer if you believe the Icelanders. I am dreaming however of the ceilidh we are going to next Saturday .. Last Tram Tae Auchenshuggle are playing in the Linlithgow Academy. Woohoo!! Never mind kicking up my heels for a dance, I'll be kicking off my shoes!

So, classes in Reykjavik! Dates are:

Sunday 6th May, 14:30 to 17:00
Sunday 13th May, 14:30 to 17:00
Sunday 20th May, 14:30 to 17:00
Thursday 24th May, 20:00 to 22:30

A further class is being planned for the last week in May to have social dancing and rehearse a demonstration set of dances for the Festival of Nations on June 2nd. This is the start of Ceilidh culture in Reykjavik. It's going to be fun and so easy everyone can join in. Have a look at Ceilidh in Reykjavik site for more information and updates.

Bellydance show

My bellydance class are performing at the basement of the National Theatre on Friday. Today I saw some of the more experienced dancers practising and they are really fun to watch. Maher Kishk will also be performing. Hope you can make it.

New enthusiasms - dance and blogs

I always wondered what the appeal of this blog-writing thing was but since I finally went for it and made one of my own I have been exploring other people´s thoughts, pictures and stories and playing with my own. Its´s fun. How can it be harder to write a scientific paper with a pre-determined outline with pre-determined language guidelines than it is to write an ad-hoc freestyle piece of prose about something far more personal?

I have the same question about my more long-standing obsession. Disco dances were always a minor trauma in my teenage years and clubs are still almost as horrifying despite now being aged over 30. The idea of having to make up a dance was just too much even when the music was inspring and it was hard to stop your bottom wiggling or toes tapping. Now, ceilidh dances with set steps or even ballroom dancing were more my thing. More recently there is tango which is fairly constrained and mostly it is the man that has to be inspired. But now.. belly dancing and salsa. Have a go girls (or boys) - they are both wonderful. And you can celebrate all those curves or your beautifully flat tummy. And you can improvise, feel sexy and sneak in a bit of exercise into life without really trying.

Maybe by the time I´m 70 I´ll be out there in the nightclubs taking my place on the floor having finally taken to improvisation and spend my days writing stories of all the adventures I´ve had and those I´ll still be planning.

Anyway, what better way to brighten up the long dark nights of winter. It is March now, nights are taking longer to set in but it is still cold and the wind gets into all the gaps between your buttons and into the creases in your scarf. I can see that spring is on its way but it is creeping its green fingers very slowly into the north. Perhaps scared of frostbite.

You can find out more about belly dancing in Iceland here and salsa here. Good dance pages in Scotland can be found through Edinburgh Salsa.

Tango

There is an amazingly active Argentinian tango scene in Reykjavík. Its apparently just like walking and certainly easy to get started with, though I´d say you need to keep practising to be any good. Well, in an attempt to meet people I started going to tango nights at Alþjóðahús, the Intercultural Centre in Reykajvík and met friendly people, and then joined classes ran by Kathrin, where I met my boyfriend, Óli.

We have kept dancing ever since and have taken classes at Kramhúsið with Hany and Brýndis. Regular dances, called Milongas, are held at a number of halls in town and a festival in September and they are such fun to get dressed up and dance, especially in the winter when it is dark and snowy outside but warm, romantic and elegant inside.

You can find out more about tango in Iceland here and here.