Snæfellsnes and Friends

So it turns out Iceland can get even more beautiful than the thermal springs, volcanoes, and geysers of the south.  Enter Snæfellsnes, the finger-like peninsula on the west coast above Reykjavik.  It may sound like a children's show character, but this place is shockingly beautiful.  It has its own volcanoes and glaciers to brag about, and it was the setting of Jules Vernes' Journey to the Center of the Earth.  It is also believed to be a place of great spiritual energy and supernatural activity, if that floats your boat.  Chakras and novels aside, our weekend was spent climbing volcano craters, exploring hidden caves, walking cliffs, and watching Northern Lights in one of the most stunning places I've been.  Two thumbs up to you, finger-like peninsula!

View from Stykkishólmur lighthouse

The fjörd of Kolgrafa, of course...

Now before we'd left for our adventure, my supervisor's boyfriend had given us some tips about what to see in Snæfellsnes.  He advised staying in Stykkishólmur overnight.  The smaller towns of Ólasvik and Grundarfjörður were worth having a coffee in, but he told us that they were the kinds of towns that if you went to the pub at night and said you were from the wrong country, you'd get a punch in the face.  Oh, those types of towns... As it turned out, the hostel we stayed in was in Grundarfjörður but we avoided the pubs, and thus returned home with our noses intact.  Our minds may have received a bit of a battering with the ontological conundrum that met us in the hostel, however...

"This is Not Here." It's not? But..I could have sworn...isn't the...it's...never mind.

Mind games and disgruntled locals aside, Grundarfjörður had its own gems to behold.  On the Saturday night we were treated to Northern Lights over the sea.  Add good company and a can of Polar Beer (yes, the mascot is a polar bear), and you have one very fine evening indeed.  It ended as only such a night could, watching Lawrence of Arabia with Icelandic subtitles.

Back in Sólheimar, we've reached that irksome time of year when Spring is trying to begin, but Winter doesn't want to relinquish its hoary grip.  It's as heartening as watching a doberman and a chihuahua fighting when you've put all your money on the under-dog.  The snow is followed by rain, which is followed by hail (wash, rinse, repeat) and the subsequent slush lies in waiting on the dirt roads, ready to ambush oblivious feet everywhere.  Wet socks abound.  This is the springter of our soggy discontent.  

Things soldier on regardless.  This month is "Environmental March" (the pun only works in English, alas), a collection of recycling workshops, sustainable cooking classes, and the like put on by the interns for the home people and helpers in the village.  

Ok, so it's in Icelandic, but you get the gist...

The goal is to raise more awareness about sustainable living and to get the villagers involved in acting in a more eco-friendly manner.  So far Claire and Yvonne have held recycled craft classes and Paulo has put on a "Will my Grandchildren See this Plastic Bag?" quiz game.  Pami and Will are preparing their locally sourced cooking class for next week, and Paulo and I are getting our forest walk and planting workshop organised for the following week.  They're small things, yes, and deal with issues that should have been addressed a long time ago in an eco-village, even one that focuses primarily on reverse integration for people with disabilities, but it's a start. 

Sometimes, you just need to stop stressing about the monumental task ahead, and get on with it.  It's like reading all the news about climate change deniers, the constant slips and setbacks in green policy that governments undergo (most recently Republicans in the US voted to bring back Styrofoam to their canteen, because it's more "fiscally responsible".  First of all, idiots.  Secondly, why is their attention focused on the utensils in their canteen and not something a bit more important like, oh I don't know, pretty much anything else?!), the droughts and natural disasters that are setting us up for a potential global food crisis this summer, the fact that roughly one third of all the food produced in the world is wasted and could potentially feed one billion people (it is speculated that the irrigation water used to grow all the food that is thrown away is enough for the domestic needs of nine billion people - see here for more facts and figures if you're interested)...It all gets pretty grim after a while, and it inspires the two most useless emotions: guilt and helplessness.  Most of what's going on, depending on how it's presented, will cause an "Ah feck, this is all really bad, and I'm a part of it, and sure I can't do anything because it's too big, so what am I meant to do like?!  God, I'd love a pint..." reaction and we'll want to just ignore what's going on because we feel like there's nothing we can do.

But the answer isn't to ignore it (I included the links on purpose); the important thing is to not get overwhelmed by the issue.  Sure, we're all doing things that are adding to the problem.  We all could be doing a bit more of this and a little less of that.  But instead of feeling guilty about it and then clamming up because we don't want to listen to things that make us feel guilty, change something.  Just something small.  Start composting food scraps, or make an effort to buy foods with less packaging, or try to buy fresh fruits and veg at a local farmers' market if possible instead of buying grapes from South Africa and watermelons from Brazil (unless you happen to be from South Africa or Brazil, in which case, congratulations for being the most international reader!).  And then concentrate on that thing you've done, bask in the warm fuzzy feeling of benevolence, and use that warm fuzziness to fuel another change.  Is composting a few old apples or using a canvas bag going to save the world?  No.  But doing those little things to start, and feeling good about them, is so much more productive than becoming stagnant in a flurry of guilt and denial and running to the nearest bar of chocolate to make yourself feel better.  

And on a larger scale, we need to be aware of what's going on, but also make sure we look for the good things as well.  I recently read an article about new technology that uses seawater and solar power to entirely fuel and irrigate greenhouses.  I then came across an article about six "Ethical pioneers" who are fighting the good fight online, through activism, in economics, and more.  I came out on the other side thinking, "Hey, we can actually do this.  We're a bit of sticks in the mud sometimes, we humans, but look at all these great ideas.  We've been in space and built a 27 km tunnel that crashes protons into each other; we can fly, for feck's sake!" We are capable of sorting this out, this and far more besides, if we just get down to it.  Sure, funding is in the wrong place and the system in which the world currently operates holds profit as the bottom line and there are plenty of barriers, but concentrating on why we can't succeed isn't going to do anything.  As a fortune cookie once told me, "The person who says something is impossible should not interrupt the person doing it." We've got a lot of work to do, lads, and we're not going to get it all sorted in one go; but what do you say we start anyway?

~~~~~

Soap box is resolutely put away for the moment.  Since we've given back the cars, we're having our first quiet weekend in a month, unable to galavant around the countryside like the good old days.  We considered renting horses for this month, but alas, we have no hay.  It's just as well we're about the village I suppose.  Apparently last time we were in Reykjavik my wine-induced loquaciousness arranged to play a concert with an Icelandic opera singer in the church this weekend.  So now I find myself practising the guitar solo of "Let it Be", on violin, to be played during mass, with an Icelandic opera singer.  The things I get myself into...

More photos of Snæfellsnes, caves, and the like can be found here.