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.

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.

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

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

Heart in flight

Spot the heart.. it escaped in the wind and soared across the bay towards the summit of Snæfellsjökull, for once clear and magestic. I am up passed my ears in photos and diagrams in preparation for presenting my research in Canada next week. I came across this en route through the folders, piles of papers and notebooks covered in muddy smears.

Untamed beauties!

The contestants have been announced! Read more on this blog.

Untamed beauty

Beautiful. This image of a woman’s eye was photographed and titled by her 15-year-old granddaughter. JENNA KARLSBERG

Icelandic women are famed for their beauty. Icelandic men, for reasons I just don´t get, are not. But then I like men with beards and character and fall head over heels for musicians. In this country you are outcast if you can´t play requests straight from memory on at least one instrument. Or thats how it seems. I am making a rushed attempt to learn some Scottish folk songs before it is time to reapply for my residence permit.

Beauty pageants are something I always associate with America and prom queens or swimsuit beauties from the 1970s. I think of myself in a swimsuit at my most sleek and still see a different creature from the high heeled, long legged beauties of pageants. There are giraffes and then there are Scottie dogs.. it takes all types. But then, I like being my shape and size and not having to discuss world peace. Sure, we´d all like it but it is most likely virtually impossible and chocolate cake is so much more attainable. Perhaps I am the shallow one.

Anyway, Ísafjörður in the northwest of Iceland has a different take on the value and definition of beauty and I was most impressed when I first heard of the idea of Untamed Beauty, bizarrely on the world service radio show the other morning. I haven´t spoken to anyone in Reykjavík yet who has heard of it , perhaps in the city they prefer the high heels and swimsuits .. and Ísafjörður is admittedly rather remote and windswept. It has its own untamed beauty I´m told and I really want to go there. But I like windswept, in landscapes and people. Maybe foreigners are more romantic about wilderness and the untamed? This is the land of the superjeep after all.

Time will tell. It is not too late to enter, just register before April 11th. You can be male or female, must be over 20 and are not encouraged to loose weight for the event. Don´t make too much effort with your hair either .. the west of Iceland is windy. They state that they want to celebrate wrinkles and timeworn hands as stories of your life and this idea really appeals to me. I hope I will be a wrinkly old grandmother with sparkling eyes and tales of wonder to tell. Perhaps I´ll wear purple. I found my second white hair last week.

Snæfellsnes

Snæfellsnes is by far at its prettiest in autumn when the light is low and there is a dusting of snow on the mountains. Step out of the car and you´ll probably be blown away.