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.