Bless Bless

Shortly, I will be lugging my luggage to the bus station and leaving Iceland. I have mixed feelings, as one might expect. While I am terribly excited to go home and see my friends and family and cuddle with my dogs, it feels strange to leave a place I have lived for so long, not knowing when I will ever come back. (I sure hope I come back. I mean, come on! I didn’t even see the phallological museum this time!) This semester has been a wonderful experience. I have done and seen the most incredible things; I have learned about a fascinating culture (especially its folklore—ask me about trolls sometime!); I have lived alone in a foreign city and felt completely comfortable, and my experience here has made me excited about the possibility of returning to Europe for grad school. (Though my attempts to learn Icelandic were somewhat underwhelming, I’ve recommitted myself to improving my German—so something good came out of that, right?) I’m glad I decided to study abroad, and very glad I decided to study abroad here, amid the sheep and glaciers and lava fields and indie bands. Some aspects of the program were less than ideal, but even still, this semester was ten kinds of glorious. Já!

What follows are some lists. Oddly enough, quite a lot of items on both lists seem to involve food. In no particular order:

Top Ten Things I’ll Miss About Iceland

1. Skyr. If I have not already sung the praises of skyr to you, then read up. (One key detail not mentioned on that site is that skyr is not yogurt. It’s technically a cheese. Right? Right?!) Also, as skyr is apparently now offered at Whole Foods, maybe I won’t be deprived of it when I go home. Delightful prospect!

2. Gamli Garður and its lovely residents!

3. Pedestrian-friendliness (Jón Ingvi, our Culture professor, tried to tell us that Reykjavík is a terrible city for pedestrians. Sir, you have not been to Cobb County.)

4. Snowy mountains! (Ohio has one, Georgia has the other, but alas! neither has both.)

5. Getting to walk by a statue of a wizard smacking the Devil with a book every day.

6. Swan pond. Thing 6.5: frozen swan pond.

7. All the things that are somehow cuter in Iceland than in America. This includes horses, sheep, and babies.

8. Flatkökur…I want to try to make some when I get home, but I fear it just won’t be the same.

9. Magnús’s crotchety one-liners. Magnús is my elderly Brit Lit professor, who delights in irony and always has a smile on his face while saying things like:

On Pamela:

"I highly recommend that you don't read this book. You'll never be the same, just from pure boredom."

On the madness of King George:

“If it is true that King George III had porphyria, then it should still be in the family of Windsor, so maybe we have something to look forward to.”

On Thomas Gray's academic career:

"He managed to find a fellow position at Cambridge that didn't require teaching... something I've always wished we had here."

10. The outrageous, beautiful, magnificent landscape.

Top Ten Things I’m Looking Forward to About Home

1. Family and friends

2. Reasonably-priced lattés. Actually, reasonably-priced everything.

3. Hot water that doesn’t smell like eggs.

4. Color. (I think every time someone’s asked me how Iceland is, I tend to say something along the lines of “Well it’s pretty flippin awesome EXCEPT, my god, is it ever GRAY.”) I’m going to dress like a rainbow every day. Might even dye my hair again…

5. Mexican food

6. No more 24-hour clock. Seriously. This has given me FAR more trouble than you would ever expect.

7. Dad Chili, Mom Bread, and other family-specific food.

8. Hulu. Sad, but true. I need me some 30 Rock.

9. Guilt-free English. I want to sound my loud vernacular horn over the roofs of the world.

10. 10 WHOLE HOURS OF SUNLIGHT. As a very pale person, I’ve always considered the sun to be my natural enemy. I was wrong! I take it all back! Can you ever forgive me?

Our only goal will be the western shore...

One Last Photodump

All the things I always wanted to take pictures of in Reykjavik, and never got around to until today:

Very beautiful cemetery...

...which comes complete with a black cat lurking about.

It's been in the 40s the past couple days, so the ice on the pond melted. Watching the birds walk around on the partly-submerged ice was pretty amusing...as evidenced by the number of pictures of swans that follows...

A last pot of tea at Eymundsson

I don't know what this is all about, but it's cool.

Same artist? I don't know. This mural is on the side of the city library:

Catholic church...little more traditional than the Hallgrimskirkja

I read Sir Gawain and the Green Knight at this bench back when it was still almost reasonable to consider sitting outside for an extended period of time.

Odds 'n' Ends

There are a couple interesting things I did AGES ago (both were back in October, I believe), but between RIFF, Airwaves, and Denmark, I forgot to post about them. So, real quick, before I run out of time, here they are!

On October 9^th, I took the ferry over to Viðey Island to see the Imagine Peace Tower lit. This odd bit of artwork is the doing of Yoko Ono, who wanted to honor John Lennon’s memory by creating this gigantic beam of light that shoots up into the sky from a base that has “Imagine Peace” written on it in 24 languages. I was late getting there, so I was on the ferry and missed most of the ceremony. I did get to see an Icelandic children’s choir sing while the tower was lit, which was very nice. After the formal stuff was over, however, there were some belligerent hippies in the audience who wanted everyone to hold hands and sway while singing, endlessly, the chorus of “Give Peace A Chance.” Most people were like, “Nei takk.” I, personally, would not be too upset if I never heard anyone sing that song ever again. Sorry, John Lennon.

Hippies look a lot cooler when they're blurry.

You can see the beam from all across the city, and I think it’s kind of nice. I know some people complain about the light pollution, which I understand, but Reykjavík’s already a pretty bright place; I don’t think it contributes a significant amount. It was just turned off a couple days ago—it’s lit between Lennon’s birthday and the anniversary of his death.

The other event I attended was a football match! Iceland vs. Portugal! Guess who won? Yeah. Portugal. We had good fun cheering on Iceland, though! Painted our faces and everything. Áfram Ísland!

Forgot to take my camera to the match, but took a picture of Becky's excellent paint job afterward! Do I possibly look a little bedraggled? We trudged through a violent downpour between the stadium and our car.

Christmas in Iceland, Part 2: Less Fraught With Peril Now Than It Once Was...

Last Sunday I visited the Christmas Village in Hafnarfjörður (a suburb of Reykjavík).

The town of Hafnarfjörður

It was very charming, and I got to see some Yule Lads! If you watched the Best Party campaign video, you might remember Gnarr saying something about needing to economize, and that Iceland doesn’t need thirteen Santas. What he was referring to are the Yule Lads, which are only like Santa in that they both turn up around Christmas. The Yule Lads are the thirteen sons of an evil she-troll named Grýla. (How evil? There are a variety of stories about her; they usually involve eating children. In 1746 a decree was issued that parents could no longer use the threat of Grýla to control their kids. Yikes.) The Lads arrive one day at a time for the thirteen days leading up to Christmas, then depart in the same way. Each has an irritating habit, which is reflected in his name—Spoon-Licker, Door-Slammer, Window-Peeper, etc. Consequently, anything that goes wrong around the holidays is blamed on the work of the Yule Lads. These days, however, the Yule Lads wear red suits and give children presents, because, oh man, cultural imperialism. And, somehow, kids would rather get presents and/or ice-cold, refreshing Coca-Cola for thirteen days instead getting eaten by a she-troll or a giant cat. (Did I mention there’s also a cat? They have a cat. It eats kids who don’t get new clothes for Christmas.)

I was trying not to look too much like a dorky tourist, so sadly I didn't get a good shot of the dancing. There was dancing! A couple people onstage were singing traditional songs, while kids and adults alike danced simple circle dances around the big tree in the middle. Three Yule Lads (looking pretty much like Santa, only skinnier) were running about making antics and entertaining the young folk. There were also a variety of booths where local artists were selling handcrafted gifts.

Some Reykjavik Statues, and Why Icelandic Wizards Are the Best Wizards

Reykjavík is full of statues. Here are some of my favorites:

Ingolfur Arnarson, first settler of the Reykjavík area (of napkin fame!):

St. George (I took this picture so long ago! I feel like I forgot that anything was ever green anywhere.):

Leif “The Lucky” Eriksson...looking like the bamf that he is:

Which stands in front of the Hallgrimskirkja, largest and most unusual building in Reykjavik:

And my very favorite statue in all of Reykjavík, located in front of the University:

Saemundur and the Devil!

Want to know what the heck is going on in this statue? Read on! So Saemundur, he’s a priest/magician, right? He goes to Norway to ask the king for a particular church position in Iceland, but there’s another fellow who wants the same job. King of Norway tells them whoever gets there first can have it. Saemundur summons the Devil, and promises him his soul if the Devil will carry him to Iceland without getting him wet. “Sweet deal!” thinks the Devil, and promptly turns into a seal, which carries Saemundur across the sea. (That creature he's riding in the statue, btw, looks like no seal I have ever seen, but I guess it is a devil-seal, after all.) As soon Saemundur catches sight of land, however, he takes out his psalter and smacks the Devil in the head with it, causing him to drop the wizard and violate the bargain. Saemundur swims the rest of the way himself, gets the job, and keeps his soul intact.

I love this story. It’s classic Iceland—to value books both as sources of knowledge and, when necessary, blunt weapons. Very pragmatic. Icelanders really do love their literature—even back in the days when they were living in turf houses and eating pickled fish all winter there was still a rather high literacy rate, and manuscripts were passed around from farm to farm for everyone to read.

(The Devil, incidentally, is rarely a serious threat in Icelandic folklore. On the contrary, he’s often quite stupid, and is easily outwitted by clever magicians like Saemundur. You’d think he’d give up on Saemundur’s soul at some point, but no—he is the Elmer Fudd to Saemundur’s Bugs Bunny. Not only does he always fail to steal the soul, more often than not Saemundur forces him to do some tedious or humiliating chore instead.)

Christmas in Iceland, Part 1: O Jólatré, O Jólatré

It’s getting down to less than five hours of sunlight a day, which means that I’m really tired all the time because the sky keeps telling my brain that it’s the middle of the night when it’s only 5:00 in the afternoon. However, this also means the Christmas is rapidly approaching, and last Sunday Leah and I attended the tree-lighting ceremony in downtown Reykjavík!

Lots of people were out skating on the pond that day!

Every year the city of Oslo, Norway sends Reykjavík a Christmas tree, because trees don’t really grow well in Iceland. (There’s a bad joke some Icelanders are fond of telling: What do you do if you get lost in a forest in Iceland? Stand up.) Before the tree was lit, a local school band (I think…) played Christmas carols for a while.

I'd just like to draw your attention to that rad glockenspiel, which has the largest tassels I've ever seen in my life.

The choir from the Dómkirkja sang, and then the ambassador from Norway presented the tree to…

Jón Gnarr! The man himself! He gave a speech in Icelandic, and I wish I knew what he said, because all I could tell was that he was going on about Moomins again. The guy really has an obsession with Tove Jansson. That, and I understood when he asked us to count down to the tree-lighting with him, which I could totally do, because even if my Icelandic is lousy, at least I know numbers. Tíu, níu, átta, sjö, sex, fimm, fjórir, þrír, tveir, eitt!

In Which I Eat the Shark

At the end of our last Folk Tales lecture, our professor brought out an assortment of Traditional Icelandic Food. And by Traditional Icelandic Food, I mean, Things Preserved In Questionable Ways (Except For The Bread Which Is Actually Delicious). He provided us with flatkökkur (flatbread), laufabrauð (fried flatbread), and Rúgbrauð (rye bread)—all tasty—aaaand then there was the meat. Hangikjöt (smoked lamb) is pretty normal, and excellent on flatkökkur. Sviðasulta (jellied sheep's head)—less normal—looks and sounds alarming, but really tastes about the same as the hangikjöt.

This is sviðasulta...

Hákarl (putrefied shark), on the other hand, mmmmmmmm weeeellllll...

It's poisonous when fresh, so it's subjected to a lengthy process to make it "safe." This involves being buried in the ground for 6-12 weeks, then hung up to dry for several months, all of which gives it a stomach-turning odor of ammonia. As I held a cube of it between my fingers, its slimy exterior glistened with menace. And then I ate it. The hákarl has an unsettling, rubbery texture, but the taste is, um, NOT THAT BAD. Now, don't misunderstand me—it is, quite literally, PUTRID, and I'm not about to put it in my mouth again any time soon. However, I'm also not prepared to declare it the worst thing I have ever tasted. Mostly it was just salty. I mean, there was definitely some saveur de rotten shark, but the primary taste was salt. I may have felt a little queasy for a while afterward, but I DID NOT PUKE, which at the very least means I am more manly than Gordon Ramsay.

FINALLY--the Aurora Borealis!

We were lucky enough to see the northern lights on the drive back from Snaefellsnes on Tuesday night, but I thought the pictures deserved their own post!

Not a very good shot of the lights, but I thought the cars looked cool in this one!

A Journey to Snæfellsnes (among other things)

Last week, my parents came to visit, and with the aid of their rented car we got to go to some pretty nifty places.

When they got there on Sunday, we drove the Golden Circle, which was challenging to accomplish in the limited daylight hours, but we got to Gullfoss just as the sun was fading. One interesting difference from when I saw it back in September was the geysir—the air was so cold that you could barely see the water shooting up when it erupted because of all the steam.

Once I got out of class on Monday, we drove out to the Blue Lagoon. The Blue Lagoon has a reputation for being a tourist trap, but it's not very busy in the winter, and, unlike your average tourist trap, it is actually amazing. The “lagoon” is a man-made pool in the middle of a lava field, fed by water from the output of a nearby geothermal plant. The water is very warm, even hot, and filled with silica and sulphur, which are apparently good for the skin. Because of the mineral content, the water is an opaque, pale blue, giving one the impression of bathing in bantha milk. There are also boxes around the edge of the lagoon filled with light-gray silica mud to put on your face, which I could compare to the mud Buffy puts on her face in that one scene in “Restless,” giving this paragraph an extra-high nerd reference content (yesss). Or I could just say that it was a very nice facial. We drifted around the lagoon for a glorious few hours, and it was definitely one of my favorite Icelandic experiences!

Tuesday we indulged our collective literary-nerd interests and drove out to Snæfellsjökull, the volcano made moderately-famous by being the gateway to the Center of the Earth, according to Jules Verne. I’d skimmed through the first half of A Journey to the Center of the Earth since arriving to re-read the bits about Iceland. (Thanks, Project Gutenberg! You are an endless source of distraction.) This was entertaining, as the Reykjavík of 1864 was little more than a village, yet the descriptions of Icelanders’ personality and culture was familiar to me from both my Folklore class and actual experiences. Anyway, we didn’t see any dinosaurs, but the Snæfells peninsula is just as beautiful and dramatic as the rest of Iceland.

I think this and the next two photos are from around Hvalfjörd, which we drove around on our way to the tip of Snæfellsnes, where the volcano is.

Icelandic horses: so adorable

Snæfellsjökull

We also saw this wicked cool lava formation:Local folklore says that the elves use it as a church.

Before the Norse settlement, Iceland was home to a small group of Irish monks, who apparently went there for the solitude so they could meditate in peace. (If that’s what you want to do, then Iceland’s a pretty good place to do it.)

One of the few relics they left behind was this well. If it was really built before the settlement, then this well is over 1,100 years old. What’s that on top of it, you say? Oh, just a whale skull. No big.

The remainder of the week was spent doing things in Reykjavík. We went to the Culture House to see the manuscript exhibition (so cool!), the Saga Museum, and Reykjavík 871 ±2. The Saga Museum has life-sized silicon figures representing the characters from key saga stories; as you walk through the exhibit, you listen to an mp3 player narrate the stories, taking you through the history of Iceland (according to the sagas, at least). I was a little skeptical of this one going in, but it was actually very interesting and cool. There’s almost a ridiculous amount of blood and screaming—all in the name of authenticity, of course.

View of Reykjavik from the Saga Museum

I just really like taking pictures of sunsets.

My parents at the top of the Saga Museum!

Reykjavík 871 ±2 is a wild, futuristic exhibit surrounding the foundations of a longhouse excavated a few years ago. The house is one of the oldest signs of settlement found in Iceland, and the name of the museum refers to the estimation of its date. All around the excavation, you can see ghostly figures going about their lives in a cyclorama representing what the Reykjavík area looked like in the 9^th Century. (Spoiler Alert: it looks like a whole lotta nothin. By which I mean, it was green and beautiful and almost completely devoid of people.) By touching buttons, you can illuminate particular features of the house, and touch screens allow you to learn more about the Viking Age, and what daily life was like during the period of settlement. No description of this museum I’ve ever read fails to compare it to Star Trek. So: think of it as part holodeck, part tricorder, except the technology isn’t THAT good yet, except it’s actually still incredible and more history museums should look into doing this kind of exhibit.