Green Sky at Night, Quite a Delight...

So Monday night was Valentine's night, and I arranged a light show for my fellow interns to commemorate the day.  Of course, by "I" I mean the magnetic pull of the Earth's poles mixed with solar flares, by "arranged" I mean I was a lucky fool to witness, and by "light show" I mean the most ridiculously amazing natural thing I've probably ever seen in the sky (so I suppose that last description is still fairly valid).  I've seen the Northern Lights already on two or three occasions in the last month and a half, but never anything like this.  Before they were just faint wisps of green in the night sky; last night they were undulating streams of electric rain shooting across our entire field of vision and beyond, curling, waving, and pulsating before fading away again.  Definitely an encounter with the Sublime, one so powerful it would have knocked poor Wordsworth right out of his little paddleboat - the only thing we could do was slump to the ground and lie on our backs, mouths agape and appendages slowly numbing in the snow.  The Lights were so strong, you could actually hear them, a slight swishing now and then.  Much louder, and perhaps more atmospheric, was the fitful sound of the unseen horses left to pasture in the field behind our house.  The horses apparently didn't see the romantic side of this mesmerising display; I suppose if I were a horse, I'd have been a bit freaked out too.

Because the Lights were constantly moving, I wasn't able to get decent photos of them.  However, take two parts the photos below, one part the swirling waves from "The Sorcerer's Apprentice" in Fantasia (if your memory is failing you, see from 3:45 onwards here) and you should have the right idea.  If you really want to get authentic, mix in some uneasy horse whinnies and lie down in a pile of snow/ice for half an hour.

Since last we spoke (well, since I spoke; if this is a conversation I'm not being very equal with the discussion. That said, please do comment and discuss and revel in the new cultural pastime of blogmenting; Talk to me!) I've been to Reykjavik and back in one piece - although it was fairly touch and go at times - and we made a "class trip", so to speak, to Geysir, Gulfoss, and Þingvellir.  I won't bore you with the details of Reykjavik, but the other three are worth a mention.  

Þingvellir (pronounced "Thingvellir") was the site of the meeting of the Icelandic Parliament from 930 to 1789.  All the laws were discussed and decided there, so it's a very important place for Iceland's history.  It's also a hotbed of geothermal activity.  It sits on the continental drift between the North American and Eurasian Plates, and it's literally ripping at the seams.  Last week alone, they experienced something like 12 earthquakes there.  

The craic was mighty in Þingvellir...

Gulfoss is pretty self-explanatory when you see the pictures, but it's also pretty, hence the pictures.  

Geysir is even self-explanatory without pictures, but here are some anyway.  This geysir goes about every 7 minutes.  The larger one has been dormant for the past few years.  For a while they were able to prod it into activity by dumping loads of salt into it, but they gave that up after a while. 

Along with reading A Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy and attempting to knit myself a pair of mittens, the discussions and debates that naturally arise when nine liberal-minded engaged people are put under the same roof are proving an interesting way to while away the Icelandic evenings.  Some of these conversations are less articulate than others; I have recollections of attempting to explain to Paulo how shareholders in a company work using cold, leftover chips as my medium after a decent amount of the cheapest wine we could find last week.  However, sharing insights and resources is always going to be valuable.  Thanks to Yvonne I've been watching Zeitgeist, which is a documentary that attempts to analyse the current malaise affecting humankind, addressing it from a cultural, religious, and financial standpoint.  I haven't finished it yet so I can't speak for it as a whole; what I can say is that it's free (you can watch it on YouTube or on the site) and that it raises some very good points.  I find its critique of corporate capitalism particularly interesting.  It's 2 hours and 41 minutes long, so if you're looking for something engaging to watch of an evening, I'd recommend it.  No indoctrination, no brainwashing.  Just have an open mind and you never know what it might inspire.  

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We're currently awaiting the potentially mind-blowing Northern Lights tonight, caused by the biggest solar flare in four years.  The only thing that might rain on our parade is the clouds (Sorry, couldn't resist...); last night was supposed to be even more spectacular than Monday, but there was nary a flicker seen through the foggy blanket.  We found our own spectacle, though - we went adventuring to an obscure natural hot pot, hidden away in the side of a mountain, nothing but a little snow-covered path off a dirt road (off a dirt road off a gravel road off a side road) and a No Camping sign to indicate its existence.  

On a night like last night, I can see why the Icelanders are so superstitious about elves.  There we were, sitting in volcanically heated water in what for all the world looked like a stone and peat-lined grave, surrounded on all sides by rolling hills bathed in eerie moonlight, the only sounds the trickling water and the howling wind.  So I did the only thing an able-minded, logical person would do: I sprinted out of the hot pot, soaking wet in the frigid wind, and dove back into the little hut we had put our clothes in to get my camera and take some pictures.   See if you can spot the elves.

The hardest part of hot-tubbing in Iceland is the entering and exiting.  As you're changing into your swimsuit, listening to the wind outside, you do question your sanity.  But once the barefoot speed-shuffle carries you to the water, you're grand.  You relax, forget about the whole thing, and turn to mush.  However, then comes the getting out bit.  It took a good 10 minutes to steel ourselves for the task.  When we all piled back into the little shed, we had to exercise our changing-in-the-dark-as-quickly-as-possible-before-hypothermia-onset talents (which I apparently do not possess, as I realised once we got home that the majority of my personal effects had been donned backwards and inside out.)  Despite its perils, it is always worth it, especially in as magical a setting as we were fortunate enough to enjoy last night.  Cheers, Mother Nature, you've done it again.

More photos here (also includes some pretty great Northern Lights shots from last week).

Not So Vik-torious This Time...

Last weekend we set out for an adventure with our newly acquired wheels, and an adventure we received, albeit not in the manner we had anticipated.  It was probably the worst weather we've had since arriving: raining, sleeting, windy, cold, fairly miserable all around.  However, in Iceland if you let the weather scare you off you won't get up to all that much, so we piled into the cars anyway and headed along Route 1 (the only major road in the country outside of the capital) to Vik, which is the southernmost point of the island.

Our first stop was Seljalandsfoss, a waterfall just off of the Ring Road.  Its claim to fame is the fact that you can walk behind the water, making it a pretty impressive sight. My poor camera got fairly soaked between the rain and the spray from the falls, but I managed to get a few shots before scrambling up the snow-packed slope on the other side.

Ooooh, streaky...

We then proceeded down the Ring Road towards Vik, passing the infamous Eyjafjallajökull - you know, the one that caused all that chaos with European flights last year?  (Oh by the way, to all the English and Irish readers out there, I've been informed Iceland wants the ash back.  And yes, I can finally pronounce the name, more or less, correctly; my main goal in coming here has been accomplished.)  This particular stretch of road took quite some time, as every minute or so Paulo made us pull over because, "This is the farm that was in all the photos when the volcano erupted!"..."Actually I made a mistake back there, but this is the farm that was in the photos.  That other one, that was in some photos too."..."Look, guys, this is all ash from the volcano when it erupted!" At this point we thought it was appropriate to point out that the entire island was made up of volcanic ash, and it was time for lunch.  But here are the fruits of Paulo's labour anyway:

Famous Farm and Eyjafjallajökull

Well, if you can't beat them...

The weather worsened as we drove higher into the mountains; the rain became heavier, the fog thicker, but none of this mattered because we were nearly in Vik, and could scarcely imagine the wonders that awaited us there: quaint coffee shops, a cosy pub for a pint with the locals, perhaps a trendy hostel where we could spend the night revelling in the atmosphere of the town.  And then we arrived, after two and a half hours of driving, and we found...well, not a whole lot.  It was only after we got there that I learned the factoid of Vik's population: about 300, give or take.  And on a wet, stormy day in January, there may as well have been no-one there; we didn't see a soul.  

Spirits were a bit soggy at this point as we discussed what we should do next.  It was decided that those who could brave the elements would trudge a few minutes to the black sand beach Vik is famous for, and the rest would go in search of life to find out if there was any diversion to be found in the area.  I joined the ranks of the first group, and I'm really glad I did.  After scrambling over a hillock, down a ravine, through a running track (oddly enough), and over the dunes I was faced with a very pissed off Poseidon, and it was simply awesome (in the true sense of the word, inspiring awe, not in the "Dude, this piece of cheese totally looks like a turtle, awesome!" sense).  The sand, actually pulverised lava, had an inky sheen to it, and the waves were foamy masses of pure elemental rage.  The wind spat freezing rain at us, and its roar combined with the waves made talking to each other nearly impossible, so we just stared in silence.  It's one of those places that really needs to be experienced first-hand, and I'd encourage anyone who finds themselves in Iceland to do so.  Staring off into the Atlantic Ocean, being taunted and battered by the sea and wind, it makes you realise that despite all our civilisation and fancy habits, we really are at the mercy of the elements; we're just very poorly behaved guests.

On the way back to the cars, Paulo told me a bit about the town.  The church is the emergency meeting point for the villagers; when Katla erupts - it is a case of when rather than if: Katla is active and hasn't erupted since 1918, leading to speculation that it will erupt very soon, maybe even this year - it will completely obliterate the town, and the church is the only building high enough to potentially survive.  Now, since Katla's explosive tendancies are well-known, and Vik has had these issues before, it kind of begs the question why they didn't shift the town a few hundred meters up the mountain and to the left or right, out of the direct line of lava, but...I don't know.

                                      

Anyway, the other half of our group also had a successful jaunt.  While there was absolutely nothing open in the town, there was a good viewing point about a half hour's drive away that we could visit.  With the weather we were a bit concerned about the conditions of the road, but the locals had said they should be fine (remember this point; it will come in handy later).  We headed back up into the mountains, and turned off the paved road onto the gravel one.  Not great, but not too bad.  A minute or so later, we turned from the gravel road onto a dirt, now mud, road.  Not good, very bad.  Within half a minute both cars were stuck.  A Skoda and a Ford Focus do not an intrepid exploration convoy make.  

"The Crunch" in a bind

For the next hour and a half, the eight of us mucked about in the lashing rain, piling rocks under the wheels and bailing out mud with our hands and a couple of shovels we'd found by the nearby empty farm.  It all looked a bit futile, and we only had about an hour of daylight left.  Soaked and cold in the dark on a deserted road is not a fantastic situation to be in, all things considered.  However, one of our group had made friends with a girl who worked in a sandwich shop last time he was in Iceland.  That girl then went on to become part of Iceland's Search and Rescue team, and was stationed in Vik.  She also happened to be home that evening, and answered her phone.  I know, we are jammy dodgers indeed.  So after a very wet and muddy period of time, a massive wheeled Jeep came and pulled us out.  We all grinned like the very silly tourists we were and murmured "Takk fyrir" over and over until the poor cars were freed from their mucky graves and we were back on terra firma, scuttling our way back to Sólheimar.

All in all, I do believe our first excursion was a success.  We wanted an adventure, we got an adventure.  All the same, this weekend we've decided to play it slightly safer and head to Reykjavik, where hopefully the biggest mire we'll get ourselves into is trying to decide which pub to patronise.  

More photos here. 

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.

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. 

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.

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.