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.

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!