The Blue Hand

Last Monday (before we bought the car) my husband and young son were on their way to a meeting at Neskirkja, and had just missed the bus by a few minutes.  They started walking, and as they did, Jim waved to a passing car.  The driver stopped and offered a ride which Jim accepted.  They had a pleasant conversation about the neighborhood and living and working in Reykjavik, such as strangers might have. When the driver dropped them off at the university, Jim thanked the driver, again gave his and our son's names, and asked the driver his name.  The driver replied with surprise, "You mean you don't know me?"  He then proceeded to tell Jim that he was Davið, that he was the former mayor of Reykjavík and former prime minister, and that he was internationally known.  Jim replied, "Oh, you're that Davið," (which seemed to amuse the driver) and thanked him for the ride.


If you are an Icelandic citizen, or someone who has been paying attention to Icelandic politics, you know that this was Davið Oddsson, former prime minister from the Independence Party, who was PM at the time the banks were privatized in the 1990s and was in charge of the central bank of Iceland at the time of the financial collapse.  One Icelander said to us that he is easily the most hated politician in all of Iceland (which is saying a lot as the approval rating for politicians is hovering around 10 percent).  Many see him as primarily responsible for the financial crisis (here's a London Times article from right after the crisis that makes this claim), a charge which he denies. But other Icelanders have said that at the time he was in office, he was both hated and loved and was a charismatic conservative leader.  He does indeed live in our neighborhood.  And he was on his way to his job as editor of Morgunblaðið, the conservative newspaper.  He was (controversially) appointed to that position less than a year after the financial collapse.  (At the same press conference that his editorship was announced the paper announced that it was laying off about 40 staff members).  The paper regularly criticizes the current left democratic government. 


So, Davið had offered a ride to one of the very few residents of Reykjavík who did not instantly recognize his face:

It's taken me a week to write about this very funny incident because I have been thinking about what the "takeaway" is from this story.  It is clear there are several.

This is a green Subaru

We bought a car today.  Here it is:

It is not green.  It is not a Subaru.  It's a 1999 Daewoo Nubira (The Korean GM that went bankrupt and is now owned by GM).  But of course, there's a story.

One way to buy a used car in Iceland is to go online to the website bilasolur.is.  Note:  on Icelandic websites, there is usually an indication of what other languages the site has available along the header of the site, most often just indicated by a flag.  English is always denoted by the British flag.  This car sales website has more languages than I've seen on any other Icelandic website, so it is worth looking just for that purpose.

At any rate, here's how this works:  most of the cars for sale are being placed by current owners through car dealerships.  Most of them are not actually at the dealership, and most (we have learned) are being offered for more than the owner is actually willing to accept for them.  This latter part is not different from the U.S., but in the U.S. cars sold by dealerships are generally owned by the dealership.  Buying from private parties happens through e.g. Craigslist, or if you are old enough to have bought a car before the invention of Craigslist, through the classifieds.   This Icelandic way seems nicer, and more efficient, because you can deal with the dealership to arrange to see the car.  All of the paperwork happens very quickly, thanks to the Icelandic kennitala (national ID). You might not meet the owner.

But we are glad that we met the (now previous) owner of our new vehicle.  His name is Siggi, and, it turns out, he had not owned the car for very long.  He was a really funny guy, and told us that everything that belonged to him was for sale--except his wife, he wanted to hold on to her--and that relates to the reason for the sign (keep reading, my feminist friends, don't be offended, he wasn't saying that he owned his wife).

Siggi told us fairly quickly what his actual bottom line price was (even less than the 15% difference from the asking price that we had been advised was a good way to start the bargaining process).  And he told us the story of the sign on the side of the car.  It seems he had owned a green Subaru, and his wife really liked it.  But he sold the car, and she keeps telling him that she really liked that car.  So when he bought this car, he decided to put a sign on it that says "This is a green Subaru," so that his wife would like this car.  But of course, it is not a green Subaru.  And so he sold it to us.

So now we have a car, partly to get around Reykjavik more easily when the buses aren't running, but mostly to travel around the country and see more of Iceland. When I told my brother that we bought a car from a guy named Siggi, he asked whether Siggi wore white shoes and had a great sense of humor--that would be our great uncle Siggi.  Maybe the sense of humor goes with the name.  At any rate, now we have a car.  And a story.

Living in Skerjafjörður

I am not the person in my family who takes a lot of photographs; my partner generally does that.  I have taken many more photographs here than I have taken in years.  And one thing I have noticed is that I keep taking pictures of some of the same locations.  One place I keep photographing is the coast line right next to the neighborhood where we live; it is always beautiful, and always different.

We live in a neighborhood in Reykjavík called Skerjafjörður. Unlike most parts of the city this neighborhood is really set off by itself.  It is just south of the domestic airport, right along the southern coast of the peninsula. This photo of the neighborhood, taken from Perlan ("the pearl", the geothermal plant turned restaurant/museum), gives you a sense.

The trees in the foreground were planted in the 50s and 60s and there are walking and biking paths through the trees up to Perlan and down to the coast; then you can see the airport buildings and runway, and behind that is Skerjafjörður, and then the ocean.  There is only one road that leads into the neighborhood; to the east (left) along the coast there is a walking and biking path but the air field is right next to the path, so there is no road to the east.

The university is north of the airport (not in the photo, but it would be to the right).  So every day when I head to the university, whether on foot or by bus or by bicycle, it is along the coastal path and the one road, which then turns and runs past the university. The neighborhood ends at the west end of the airport, and there is just a thin area of coast between the ocean and the road.  So once you get past the last house of the neighborhood, this is what you see:

At least, it's what you see on an overcast day in early March, or a snowy day in mid-March. But if you walk a little farther and turn around, and it's a sunny day after a beautiful snowfall, this is what you'll see:

 This doesn't even begin to capture the many ways that the clouds and the sky change, in just a few minutes, or the difference made by high tide on a windy day and low tide on a calm day, let alone the difference made by the quickly changing light, now that our days and nights are about of equal length.

I take the photos because being in this spot makes me happy, each day, in the transition from home to work and work to home.  This includes days when I have nearly frozen as the wind whips from the south directly off the ocean, and days when it's hard to believe how quiet this stretch of coast is.   Because this stretch of coast is always beautiful, and at least for now, a part of my daily routine.  Not bad.

The University of Iceland's Strategic Plan

On Thursday, March 17, I attended a presentation for international staff of the University of Iceland (in English) about the University's new five-year strategic plan.  The plan is available on the university web site here (it's a pdf file).  The university has just finished its previous five year plan for 2006 to 2011; obviously a few things have changed in the Icelandic context since then!  The time frame was partly designated because the university is celebrating its 100th anniversary this year. Below is a photo of the Main Building which the university moved to in 1940; it's also the building where I teach my class.

I have been affiliated with universities for more than twenty years now, long enough to have a healthy skepticism about official pronouncements of strategic plans.  But I find this one interesting.

According to the presenter, Jón Atli Benediktsson, who is Pro-Rector of Academic Affairs and who headed the committee for both strategic plans, the University continued to implement its goals from the previous strategic plan, and provide reports to the Alþing, despite the fact that the strategic plan ceased to be funded after the financial crisis in 2008. The university met most of its goals, many of which had to do with improving their status as a research institution, particularly with more outside funding for research, more faculty publications, and more graduate students.

First Week of Lent in Reykjavik

In addition to International Women's Day, last week was also the first week of Lent, and so we enjoyed learning about Icelandic traditions, and joining in where possible.  Thanks to our landlady, Jytte, we were able to read the section of Saga Daganna by Árni Björnsson in English that discusses the history of many celebrations in Iceland.

So Monday was bolludagur, or "bun day".  Björnsson says that documents from the 13th century indicate that people in Iceland began their observation of Lent by refraining from eating meat for the two days prior to Ash Wednesday.  But bolludagur dates from the 19th century (Björnsson suggest it may have been promoted by Norwegian and Danish bakers) and involves in particular a bun with whipped cream in the middle and chocolate glaze on top.

Our version was not necessarily the most beautiful but it helped us participate in the day.  Bakeries turn out thousands of these for the bolludagur; the grocery stores also sell prepackaged buns, so that all one needs to do is add the whipped cream and the chocolate glaze. This was our method, though we did whip the cream ourselves.

International Women's Day in Reykjavik

March 8 is International Women's Day, and we celebrated by going to two different events here in Reykjavik.  First, we went to the offices of Stígamót, the counseling center for survivors of sexual abuse and sexual violence.  They were hosting an open house to release their annual report, which you can access on their website. It's in Icelandic, but the tables tell you something even if you don't read Icelandic. Here is the cover of this year's report:

In case you don't recognize them, this is the current Prime Minister of Iceland, Jóhanna Sigurðurdóttir, and her cabinet.  She is the one in red, at the head of the table, of course. The PM and her cabinet graciously agreed (as described by the Stígamót staff) to pose with "gender glasses" for this photo to indicate their support of the work done by Stígamót.  The glasses have a pink lens and a blue lens.


In good Icelandic fashion, the open house featured waffles and hot chocolate, tours of the facilities, conversation, and some knitting was accomplished during the event. We particularly enjoyed the photos from Stígamót's history, and posters from their awareness campaigns and informational events. 


The second event that we attended was in celebration of UN Women, the newly reorganized agency for women's and gender issues at the UN.  This was an event in downtown Reykjavik to unveil a poster that is part of a project sponsored by the UN Women's organization in Iceland by the artist Kitty Von-Sometime called The Weird Girls Project.  We were a little late so we missed the speech but were there for the celebrating, and the balloons.  Here are a few photos of the poster and the event:

The little one especially like the orange balloons.


Below you can see the poster, the large one with the yellow background.


One thing that I have noticed is how much the arts and the use of creative expression (e.g. gender glasses) are part of feminist events here.  There are many artists who are feminists, of course, but the incorporation of the arts seems (to the outsider at least) to be quite seamless; it is not "political art" but rather art as part of the process of feminist work.  It certainly adds an element of fun and of creativity to doing the sometimes difficult work of gender equality, in all of its forms.

Thingvellir and other Travels

We began doing some traveling outside of Reykjavik in February, and started of course with a trip that included the site where the Icelandic parliament met starting in 930.  On the way we stopped at Gljufrasteinn, the home of Halldor Laxness, the Nobel prize winning author.

The photos of Thingvellir in tourist materials are always from summer, but it was truly beautiful in the snow and ice.  Here is a photo of the lake, Thingvellirvatn:

Going to Iceland always meant going to Thingvellir to me; it was one of the first places I knew about when hearing about Iceland growing up.  And we do want to go back when the weather is better, so we can spend some time hiking around.  But I'm glad our first visit there was in winter.

Of course, our two year old found a place to splash, right next to the sign indicating that UNESCO has designated Thingvellir a world heritage site:

We stayed at a wonderful farm between Thingvellir and Geysir, called Estidalur2.  And there were cows, and horses, so the little one was happy.  He even got to go in the barn to see the cattle and calves, and cats.  

The next day we completed what the tourist materials call the "Golden Circle"; that is, Geysir and Gullfoss, but also went on to Skalholt, the historic site of the southern bishopric, drove through Solheimer, the eco-village, and ended the day with a swim at the Selfoss pool.  We drove home to Reykjavik late in the evening, happy to have started exploring a small part of this beautiful place.

Fantastic Graphic

I just had to post a link to this graphic for the RIKK spring lecture series here. Partly because I'm giving a talk next week.  Mostly because the graphic is just so great. (Sorry that I'm not skilled enough at blogging yet to actually insert a pdf file into my post. The photo below is in jpg format, which is easier to add).

For those of you who don't read Icelandic, part of the reason for the graphic is that the first lecture was about the current controversy here about surrogacy. Using a surrogate mother to have a child is illegal here in Iceland, as it is in Europe generally.  But an Icelandic couple has nevertheless used a surrogate mother in India to have a child, who was born in November of 2010. There was delay, however, in getting permission to return to Iceland. The family began their journey home in February.  But the larger question regarding surrogacy is not settled.

Comparatively speaking, my talk will be much less controversial.  It's about the way the Obama Administration has tried to update the "responsible fatherhood" program of the Bush Administration, which was strongly criticized by feminists and poverty advocates.  But I'll be talking about the way that this graphic from Ms. Magazine, January 2009, is a visual representation of the kinds of questions that the responsible fatherhood initiative raises. I'm especially interested in how Obama has personally identified himself with the policy (small and low budget though it is).  So the lecture is on Thursday, March 10, at noon, in Askja room 132.