Friday, January 28, 2011

Thorrablotted Out

The daylight is making visible progress: I can now just about make out my hand in front of my face as I trudge through the darkness to the morning meeting each day. 9 o'clock isn't pitch black any more!  And really, with a gain of 6 minutes a day, the increase in light is quite significant.  Now if the thick blanket of clouds which has settled over Sólheimar for the last two weeks would shove off, we might actually get some sunlight around here...

I'm sure you've all been awaiting tales of last week's Þorrablot, so I'll keep you in suspense no longer.  The ceremony was fun (as it was entirely in Icelandic, we passed it nodding and grinning obliviously, as has become our custom), our performance proved non-fatal to all in attendance (if you're interested the song is called A Sprengisandi and is about getting lost in the desert in the center of Iceland), and the food was...interesting.  Since the whole month is Þorra, these ceremonies will be happening all over for the next few weeks, and they all have a similar structure.  Most involve large amounts of alcohol, but ours was better behaved (though if we had imbibed enough, the evening might have been easier to understand; Icelandic is apparently one of those languages that is best spoken when tipsy).  They did have cans of Viking beer, but it was only 2%; poor show for Vikings, really...


The Master of Ceremonies was the same universal cheesy jokester with a large smile and a repertoire of absurd dance moves. Highlights included "That's Amore" - Icelandic rendition - and an Icelandic party song the meaning of which escaped me, but which involved linking arms and swaying, á la "Rock the Boat".  I'm sure the sentiments were similar. 

You completely can't tell we're miming...
But then the MC ominously broke into English and announced, "Welcome to our Rotten Food Fest!", and the real task of the night began.  The buffet was arranged around a Viking longhip with little gnomish talismans scattered here and there.  The gnomes would have been a bit disconcerting themselves, had I not been distracted by the large pile of sheep jaws they adorned.  These Icelanders don't joke around.



But hey, you only eat rotten shark in Iceland once, right?  I live in hope... So I selected a small svið (boiled sheep's head), some súrsaðir hrútspungar (ram's testicles, boiled in lactic acid and pushed into blocks), and the infamous kæstur hákarl (putrefied shark).  Much of the distinctive taste comes from the traditional preservation methods used: smoking, drying, or pickling.  The verdict?  I'll let Will's face speak for me...


The tastes were kind of indescribable, but to put some words to the expressions people made, I'd say:
  •  Sheep's head: a big mouthful of smoky, rubbery skin
  •  ram: smelled disconcertingly sweet, like berries; tasted like something you just shouldn't be eating, like earwax
  •  rotten shark: smelled like really really really stinky cheese; tasted just kind of wrong
After experiencing them first-hand, I can say the traditional Icelandic dishes are an acquired taste.  But not acquired the way Guinness or red wine is acquired: drink your first few and you'll get into it; I'm pretty sure the only way to get used to some of this stuff is to live in the raw elemental wastelands of Iceland for a few generations with nothing else to eat.  Most natives love the stuff, but I can firmly state that I am not a native.  

"Say sheeeeep"
As a non-native I'm quite enjoying our Icelandic language classes, although they just further illuminate what a difficult, albeit fascinating, language Icelandic is.  Icelanders are very proud of their language, and they set up an Icelandic Language Committee to make "authentic" Icelandic translations for new words that come out in order to preserve the integrity of the language.  However, there are only so many completely new words you can create, so they'll often use old words that have gone out of the vernacular, at times with quite humorous effects.  For instance, gemsi used to mean a young sheep, but since the word is a bit archaic, it's been recycled to mean "mobile phone".  They also have some interesting compound words: the word for "computer" in Icelandic is tölva, which is a combination of töl ("number") and völva ("witch" or "fortune teller").  I always knew there was some shady black magic going on in the back end with my laptop... My supervisor also taught me my first Icelandic swear word yesterday: andskotans, the equivalent of "bloody" or "hell", which literally means "Anti-Scottish".  The Irish, however, are very well-liked.

On an unrelated note, I'm doing some research into biodynamic farming to enrich my internship, as some of the techniques have been incorporated into the nurseries here, and organic farming also leans quite heavily on it.  I won't go too much into it at the moment, but the basic philosophy behind it comes from a man named Rudolf Steiner, an Austrian philosopher who founded anthroposophy.  Anthroposophy itself can get a bit out there for the casual reader, as it's a spiritual movement, but the ideas when applied to farming actually make a lot of sense.  In the '20s, when farmers were concerned about the constantly decreasing yields from overworked soil, Steiner introduced the idea of biodynamic farming, which sees the farm as a connected entity and recognises the interdependence of soil, plants, and animals on the farm.  Among other things, he called for the use of animal manure as fertiliser and the reintroduction of certain minerals leached from overused soil by specially structured compost treatments and through planting complimentary crops.  For instance, a companion planting method used by Native Americans centuries ago uses beans, corn, and pumpkins in the same field.  The beans put nitrogen back into the soil, the corn provide support for the growing crops, and the pumpkin provides ground cover to keep the other plants moist.  Pretty simple; very effective.
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I discovered there's a horse farm about 20 minutes down the road from Sólheimar, so I was able to get some equestrian zen over the past few days.  There's only one breed here, the Icelandic horse, and it's over 1000 years old.  All other breeds are banned because the authorities are afraid the introduction of a foreign illness would wipe the whole population out.  The horses here are quite small and stocky, with a good thick coat on them, and a penchant for chewing on zippers and hair.





We the interns have finally gained our freedom by all chipping in to rent a car for the month, so our first road trip is this weekend!  With a bit of luck, we'll be heading to Vik in search of frozen waterfalls, arch rocks, and a bit of craic.

More photos here.

Friday, January 21, 2011

Parsley, Sage, Rosemary, and Thyme

So I've finally had a chance to experience the eponymous ice of Iceland.  The weather here is like an excitable little child in a sweet shop who can't make up his mind: "Snow! No, rain! Wait, no, hail! Yeah, hail. No just wind. Snow and wind? Hail and rain? No...everything at once!"  And so everything at once is what we got today, a snow-wind-rain-hail-pocalypse.  Ok, maybe no pocalypse, but it was still pretty serious.  When we get just snow though, as we did this weekend, things begin to look very pretty indeed.  Exhibit A, B, and C (and my new snazzy header, oooh):

Susseljuhús - the sustainability centre in Sóhelimar where I work


Things turned not so pretty when the rain melted the snow and froze to ice, turning all the dirt roads in the village into ice roads.  Not so much fun in the darkness of morning.  But after today's efforts everything is now covered in a layer of sludge, which makes everything a bit safer, albeit not as pretty.

I've begun work in Ölur, the forestry initiative in Sólheimar.  At the moment it's still too early to plant, so I've been sorting poplar saplings into five categories (tall, tallish, short, really short, scutty) and making cuttings of herbs in the greenhouse.  The past two days I've spent my time enveloped in a perfume of rosemary and spearmint; it's a tough life.  Most of the trees are grown to be bought by the government for a reforestation scheme - Iceland is one of the most deforested countries in the EU; although from what I understand, the forests were neither all that plentiful nor impressive to begin with.  There's an Icelandic joke that goes something along the lines of "What should you do if you're lost in an Icelandic forest? ..... Stand up."  (Readers should note that Icelanders are generally a good bit funnier than this.)

Paulo and Matt struggle through an Icelandic forest
The rest of the plants, mostly herbs and a few types of flowers, are grown to sell to the general public.  It's an organic nursery, so everything has to be grown to fairly strict standards.  No pesticides, hormones, non-natural fertilisers, etc.  There are ways and means, though, of making the garden grow without creating mutants.  For example, when I was making cuttings of rosemary, mint, and pineapple salvia this week to make new plants, I dipped the ends in lemon water.  Most hearty plants will re-root on their own without the aid of dangerous hormones, but lemon juice gives it an extra boost.  Oh, and all the vegetarians out there may want to skip this: organic fertiliser?  Ground up fish bones and blood.  You may be vegetarian, but your vegetables aren't... As the logic of Hazel (who is also a vegetarian) goes, we're more vegetarian eating cows that eat grass, than vegetables that eat fish.

The head gardener of the forestry programme is a quiet woman full of interesting surprises.  She lives in Sólheimar with her boyfriend, a big jovial man who likes to talk loudly about politics over tea breaks, and Popeye the sheepdog.  I found out she's an installation artist who has taken a sabbatical from her craft for an indeterminate amount of time.  Yesterday as she trimmed an unruly cloud of lemon balm she asked me, "Do you play Facebook games?"  I told her I didn't, and she went on, "I play Fairyland.  The object is to have a garden and grow plants."  She fell silent after that and moved on to watering the oregano.

As all of the interns get more involved with their projects, I'm able to really see the connectivity of the community shine through.  The clippings of rosemary I made the other day in the herb greenhouse were used by Will and Pami in the bakery today in their herb-infused oils experiments.  When fully grown, the tomatoes and cucumbers Flor is cultivating in the greenhouse will be used for lunches.  The herbs left over at the end of the season will be dried and used in the candle workshop where Hazel's working, and the natural cleaning products Paulo, Claire, and I were creating in the soap workshop will be used to clean the guesthouses.  Ideally, it would be cool to take it a few steps further: use the natural hot springs to plant more fickle fruits and veg all year round (nine bean rows shall I have there...), keep bees to provide the beeswax for the candles (a hive for the honey bee...), and most importantly, set up a microbrewery and open a little sustainable pub - really missing the aul pint or two here...

At the risk of sounding more like a hippie than people already think I am, "It's all, like, connected, man..."  There's only so much intrinsic worth an object can possess; after that, it's up to personal and social influences to put a value on something.  If you have a bag of dried herbs that comes from southeast Asia that cost you a fiver in the local supermarket, it's not going to be as valuable to you as the herbs your friend picked and dried for you.  It reminds me of The Story of Stuff (which if you have 20 minutes, I would highly recommend watching), which traces the true cost of a radio and explains how we never pay, or often consider, the true cost of products.  Aside from the cost element of an item, though, is the value, and this is something that we can consider and influence on an individual level.  I know it's not as easy as walking down to the village greenhouse to say howdy, nor would completely localised economies solve all the world's problems.  The poorly planned, grossly unequal globalised production line as it stands today is a massive issue to tackle; but being more mindful of where our stuff comes from, and the real people who were involved in getting it to us - conscious consumption - is something we can all do.  It's a good place to start, don't you think?

The Lake-isle of Sólheimar?

In other news, all is well on the set of Iceland's Next Top Intern.  After a surprise birthday dinner on Monday for Claire's birthday, we all sat around listening to Sigur Rós, waiting for more snow to come.  Though we still can't understand most of what they're saying (Takk - "Thanks" - and goðan daginn - "good day" are all the meaning I can salvage at this stage), all the same there are few things more fitting to do in Iceland than blast post-rock Icelandic bands by candlelight.  


Tonight, we Þorrablot!  This will involve fermented shark, sheeps' heads, and the interns performing their rendition of an old Icelandic folk song.  Stay tuned for the aftermath.

More photos here

Thursday, January 13, 2011

A Stitch In Time Saves...A Lot More than 9 Quid

Informed that there was the chance of a party in the village this weekend, the other interns and I managed to procure a lift to the nearest town, which is about half an hour's drive away, to buy supplies.  Given that this was our first time out of the 100-person village in a week, we were duly excited.  However, a trip to the off-licence served to dampen spirits a bit; they weren't kidding when they said alcohol is expensive up here.  And I mean really expensive: a 70 cl bottle of Captain Morgan, which would retail in Ireland for about €25 or in the US for about $20, was the guts of €50 or $60.  Yes, feck's sake indeed.  You'd think as a country that has named grapes vínber - literally "wine berry", they'd have their alcohol price priorities straight, but apparently not.


But no fear.  Since drinking will be financially non-viable most of the time, I've taken up the next best thing: knitting.  Drinking and knitting actually have quite a few similarities: they're great hobbies for rainy days, they both encourage thoughtful conversation, and in large quantities both will keep you warm in the cold Icelandic wind.  Sorted.

Last weekend we decided to explore our surroundings a bit, and so trekked down to the Ölfúsa River to see the sights.  It was about a 45-minute walk through tufty fields covered in frozen horse crap and dissected by channels of ice here and there.  




The area was so flat that the river began to seem like a mirage; it stayed about a 10 minute walk away for at least half an hour.  Apparently this optical illusion has to do with the clarity of the air here - objects seem much closer than they are.  We eventually did get to the river, and much revelry ensued.  Large quantities of ice are great fun.  




Aside from off-licence trips and ice rivers, I've finished my first week here at Sólheimar.  The supervisor of the forestry programme was on holiday this week, so I'll be properly starting into my main internship next week, but for the past few days I've been concentrating on using my online marketing experience to do what I can to help.  The Facebook page has been created, the YouTube channel is up (though no content yet, I have to ask around the village for videos to upload so stay tuned on that one), and there's even a LinkedIn profile if anyone is so inclined to search for Sólheimar there, although LinkedIn's connectivity policies are very restrictive if you don't want to pay them for the honour of being in their network.  While I'm eager to learn a new set of skills, something that I can hopefully expand upon as I venture into a new field of work, it's also good to know that what I've been doing for the past two and a half years can actually be valuable to organisations such as Sólheimar.  

So that's the work side of things for the moment, but this place is a lot more than just the day to day work.  Everyone who works in the village lives in the village, and the work that is being done directly effects the village.  You can see the fruits of your labour pretty much immediately, which can be something of a luxury in our global society, where so much business lies in the online or theoretical realms.  If you help cook lunch for the village, or plant five trees in the nursery, that's a measurable, tangible action.  I'm so used to talking in terms of advertising return on investment and search engine marketing, where "customers" or "$500K" are just terms that are tossed around every day, without any real thought as to what they actually signify.  It's a bit funny, I suppose, that I find myself more in touch with reality working in a tiny eco-village in the middle of nowhere in Iceland than working for one of the largest companies in the world in a major metropolitan area.  

There's a lot to a sustainable community, especially one that focuses on caring for people with disabilities.  There are some interesting things going on beneath the surface: the politics and ethical questions for instance, some of which I may broach later here.  But the people here really do have a very good life; they're encouraged to be as independent as their capabilities allow, and everyone has an individual role to play in the community.  Sometimes the lines blur between the "home people" and the carers, and really that's the way the founder, Sesselja, would have wanted it.  I've caught myself wanting to know who's who, and then questioning why it should matter.  The answer, I guess, is that it shouldn't.  And sometimes it's just as simple as that.

There's a lot to learn here, from the internship itself, from the community, and from the other interns.  The house we live in is suspiciously like something out of a reality TV show: 10 twenty-somethings, travelling to Iceland in the dead of winter, live together and battle the wind, elements, and mystical trolls in the hopes of being crowned Iceland's Next Top Intern... the house could easily be bugged with hidden cameras.  But the experience, the mutual respect, and the unusually high level of insanity we all have blend together very well.  A really great bunch of lads, all around.


Oh, one more thing before you go.  We saw more Northern Lights!



More photos here.





Sunday, January 9, 2011

Sólheimar, House of the Sun

After a whirlwind one-day jaunt in Reykjavik, we were off to Sólheimar, ready to get our hands dirty.  We arrived on Wednesday morning, had induction for two days, and began our respective internships on Friday.  For the moment I'm working on the online marketing side of things (can't seem to get away from it...), getting the organisation linked up to Facebook, YouTube, etc.  After next week I'll be working in the Forestry programme, although still not entirely sure what that will entail.  I get the impression it will be more raising baby trees than lumberjacking.  Which, although I'm much happier to be planting trees than cutting them down, in a way is a pity; I stocked up on plaid shirts and suspenders in anticipation...


The journey from Reykjavik to Selfoss, the nearest town to Sólheimar, is worth a mention, as it involved the most beautiful, surreal sunrise I've ever seen.  Take a bit of the landscape of the Moon, mix in artistic renditions of life on Mars, and add the second part of Pink Floyd's "Echoes" as the soundtrack, and you'll probably have the right idea.  On either side of the road the rough landscape was in shadow, broken only by puddles of ice that reflected the growing light in the sky.  In front of us was a mountain range, and behind it the sun was beginning to rise.  The sun itself we wouldn't see for another hour, so the ever-intensifying pink, then yellow, then orange hues had an unfamiliar, ethereal quality to them.  We were flanked to our left by a line of rocky foothills, and dotted along these were smoldering geysers.  The plumes of steam rolled up through the air, and the stench of rotten eggs followed a few moments later.  As we travelled towards the mountain we travelled towards the sun, and when we reached the top of the slope the view cut away to the valley below, to a town completely bathed in this sunless light (for those following along at home, 3:35 suits nicely for this purpose).  We wound down the other side, a few last billowing geysers here and there, and through the valley on our way to Selfoss.

As for Sólheimar itself, I've very much enjoyed getting to know the other 9 interns over the past few days.  We're quite an international bunch: 3 from Portugal, 2 from Germany, 2 from the UK, 1 from Belgium, 1 from Canada, and myself, and we also share the house with a man from Chile.  This makes for some very interesting multilingual conversations/confusion, especially because we're all trying to learn Icelandic as well.  We're all getting on very well though, lots of group meals and weird games to while away the long Icelandic evenings.

Home Sweet Home
As I mentioned before, the 12th night of Christmas (The Epiphany) is a big event here, and Sólheimar pulled out all the stops for it.  Most places around the country cancelled their ceremonies as a result of the strong winds that day, but Sólheimar decided to soldier on, and Matt, the environmental scientist from the UK, and I were tasked with lighting the candles to line the path up to the field where the ceremony was to be held.  This proved to be an exercise in futility, and a very cold one at that.  By the end of a frustrating and wax-encrusted hour, we were ready to call it a night.  However, when we re-entered the hall where everyone was getting prepared, we were whisked away to get costumes and face-paint.  The ceremony involves dressing up like one of the Yule Lads or their troll parents and celebrating the end of Christmas around a bonfire.  And so I donned wig and face-paint (I'm pretty sure I ended up being a troll, though it was all a bit unclear), as well as all the fuzzy fake fur I could find in the hopes of keeping warm.  We processed up the hill (a very skilfully-lit hill, might I add) behind a drummer and a line of torches to the bonfire.  The scene was pretty stunning, the last traces of sunset draining from the sky and a crescent moon alongside. (Bonfire photos courtesy of Hazel.)


The man with the top-hat tied to his head is the chef - "the most important man in Sólheimar", as he refers to himself.



They then proceeded to sing songs in Icelandic (we the interns proceeded to mime along), and set off fireworks.  This was followed by a hasty retreat down the hill and a bowl of hot soup at the end of it all.  A very odd, enjoyable evening.  

But wait, there's more!  Paulo, the biologist from Portugal, has been religiously checking the skies every couple of hours each night for any sign of the Northern Lights, and late on Thursday we got lucky.  It may have been -15°C, but man oh man was it worth it.  They were a bit faint as far as the Northern Lights go, but they were still a sight to behold.  Eerie, silent, and completely mystifying; a sight I never thought I'd really get to see in person.  After a few minutes of jaw-agape staring, I ran in for a make-shift tripod - a chair and a bag of flour - and so was able to get a few shots before they started to fade away.



Look for the shooting star towards the lower right.

So that was pretty ridiculously cool.  Northern Lights, one to check off the list.  For more photos, check here.  Stop by again soon (hoping to update at least once a week) for more tales of the unknown in the Land of Ice!






Wednesday, January 5, 2011

Re-gales in Reykjavik


Since I have only just been acquainted with Reykjavik, and the first meeting was under a compressed time frame and under the influence of sleep deprivation, it's perhaps a bit premature to publish my view of it.  However, since my opinion is already very favourable, I'm sure it won't mind too much...

Reykjavik is so small that it seems it shouldn't really be a capital city - the town centre is composed pretty much of just one main street and a high street.  But its quirky charm won me over; Reykjvavik can be whatever it wants to be, it's so lovely.  With peculiar bookshops and cafés nestled at nearly every corner, the only thing unwelcoming about the city was the 40 mph wind buffeting us around all day.  I arrived at the hostel around half 7 in the morning, and as soon as I got out of the van I was very glad I had brought a big poof of a jacket rather than opting for a more streamlined pile of layers - the wind here is seriously cold.  But, always the trooper, I persevered and spent the day walking around the city with three of the other interns.  Because none of us are able to pronounce the road names yet, never mind understand what they mean, once we familiarised ourselves with the area directions were then given using landmarks.  The two-headed lamb proved handy for this task.

Here's looking at ewe, kids...
There's still much to see on subsequent visits, but we were able to soak up Laugavegur (the main road in the city; the name means "Wash Road" because back in the day women would travel it with their washing to take to the hot springs), Hallgrímskirkja ("Church of Hallgrímur", Icelandic poet and clergyman; also the largest church in Iceland and a pretty cool structure, especially at night), and the Perlan ("The Pearl", home of the Saga museum and ridiculously strong winds on the observation deck).

Hallgrímskirkja. Yer man is Leif Eriksson, a thank you present from the US for having discovered them.
So far the best things for me were the oddities.  We stumbled upon this bookshop - we think it was a bookshop, though none of the books were priced - that was some sort of nostalgic shrine to a well-read communist childhood.  Besides the teetering piles of literally thousands  of books, there were old dolls perched here and there on top of book clusters, and quite a few faded framed portraits of Stalin.  If it was a personal collection then the owner didn't seem to mind us there; he remained behind his desk, hidden from view by a few towers of yellowed paperbacks, reading away.


Walking around the streets at night, the shop windows were all done up nicely as well.  Many are still decked out for Christmas as the festive season doesn't officially end here until the sixth of January, which is the twelfth night and the departure of the Yule Lads.  



We finished up the night in a pub called the "Dubliner" listening to an Icelandic man singing Beatles and Neil Young covers (yes, it was an Irish-themed pub, but the only reason we went there was for the live music), and I got to sample the local drink.  It's called Brennivín, or "Fire Wine", and it was introduced just after the Prohibition was lifted here in 1935.  I had heard warnings about the stuff - its nickname is svarti dauði or "Black Death"- and the snickers coming from the barstaff when I ordered it indicated that I was showing myself to be a very big tourist indeed, but I actually really liked the taste: a bit clovey and quite nice mixed with coke.  

Another pleasant surprise I had was with regard to the daylight.  At the moment Iceland gets around four hours of daylight, so I was expecting a lot of bleak trudging around in the darkness.  However, dawn and dusk both last about an hour each, which extends the amount light significantly; furthermore, they've both been breaktaking so far.  Imagine a particularly beautiful sunrise or sunset, now extend that by around three or four times the duration.  Not so bad after all, eh?  

Tomorrow we head to Sólheimar; check back in for the update on that!

More photos can be seen here

Sunday, January 2, 2011

Why, Hello There!


Family, friends, random Brazilian man who stumbled here through a misspelled Google search…welcome!  For the next indeterminate amount of time, I hope to document my thoughts and adventures as I navigate the ambiguous realm of the twenty-something.  I recently left my job to gain experience in the field of environmental sustainability in the hope of pursuing it as a career.  Over the next few months I’ll be travelling around to various – and mostly undecided or unconfirmed – locations to develop my individual views on the matter, on what’s working, and what role I might possibly be able to play in the whole thing.
First stop, a three-month internship in a sustainable eco-village in Iceland called Sólheimar, where my time will be split between the sustainability center and forestry internships.  Why, you may ask, would I move to Iceland in the middle of the winter, with only four hours of daylight, and lots of cold things and not so many warm things?  Well, sure why not?  Iceland is a bit of a dark horse, a country you wouldn’t often catch yourself thinking about of a rainy afternoon, but which nonetheless seems to be unexpectedly popular.  The most common reaction I’ve received since I found out in early November I was accepted to the internship has been something along the lines of, “Oh wow, I’ve always wanted to go there!”  (Actually, to be fair, the most common reaction was an uncomfortable silence followed by a forced, “Oh, good for you; that’s interesting…”, but that was before I adjusted my explanation of the internship so that it didn’t sound like I was running away to a puffin-ruled communist enclave on an isolated fjord.)  It’s a bit of a mysterious fire and ice wilderness type of a place, and so the fascination is understandable, really.  Who wouldn’t want to sit in a hot spring in the middle of the snow, or frolic with puffins partake in completely non-communist activities that are in no way dictated by avian overlords?  Exactly.
Puffins and breathtaking scenery aside, Iceland has a unique and rich culture due to its physical isolation, and from an environmental standpoint is strides beyond most nations because, among other things, of its use of geothermal energy.  According to the Iceland Energy Authority, 87% of Icelandic buildings get their heating and hot water from geothermal energy (and additionally 75.4% of the nation’s electricity comes from hydro power, bringing their usage of fossil fuels to just 0.1% of their overall energy consumption).  I can’t do much more than regurgitate statistics at the moment, but I’ll hopefully get to learn a lot more about a culture that is sustained this way in the coming months.
So I have two days of gratuitous frantic packing left, and then I depart for the wintery, constant night of Iceland.  Until then I’ll leave you with some of the natives to set the mood.