Things I will miss

We leave in less than 24 hours, and so a list of some of the many things I will miss:

The kindness and generosity of Icelandic people, and the many lovely colleagues that I have met here.
The indescribable light.

June 18, sun over Mt. Esja, about 4 a.m.

Child friendly public spaces; play stations in banks, public offices, restaurants, and abundant playgrounds.
Skyr.  Including the fun little folding spoons that come with the single serving variety.
The students at Haskoli Islands who are smart, interesting, skeptical, and fun to teach.  (Fortunately my Rutgers-Newark students are all of these things too, in different ways).
The abundance of beauty.
The soups at the cafeteria in the University of Iceland student center.
Hearing Icelandic, and the occasional joy of understanding bits and pieces of what is being said.
Being able to safely ride a bicycle throughout the city.
Hearing birds throughout the light summer nights.
The adventure.
Seeing women, and men, knitting in all kinds of places (including walking down the street).
The geothermal beach. And generally, public swimming pools and hot pots.
Seeing lopa peysas everywhere.
Looking for, and now ever more frequently, seeing, the Snaefellsness glacier from our neighborhood.
Our fun, handy car. (Which we are leaving in good hands).
The very pleasant office space at Haskoli Islands.

And lots more.  So we will just have to come back.

"Harpa, Húsið þitt"

This is the slogan on the publicity materials about Harpa, the beautiful, recently opened concert hall in Reykjavík. It reflects the hope of the designers that Icelanders will see it as "your house"--which it is, since the financing of the building was taken over by the public after the financial crisis. The building of course was controversial in the wake of the crisis, given the expense of such a project. But the artist, Ólafur Elíasson, expressed his hope that the building be seen as belonging to the Icelandic people in a recent extended and very interesting interview with the English language newspaper The Grapevine.  It is a slogan that our two year old has taken to heart; whenever we are downtown, he has expressed his desire to "Harpa, go!"


Like everyone in Reykjavík, we have been watching the construction of Harpa since our arrival in January.  Of course the structure by then was basically completed, though this spring we have had the additional excitement of the facade needing replacement (on which, see the Grapevine story noted above). Harpa construction has had everything that a two year old could want: cranes! diggers! dump trucks!  And so we have been frequent visitors to the exterior of the Harpa building site, even before the building opened in May.  

January 2011 viewed from Arnarhóll

January 2011

March 8, 2011

May 1, 2011.  Yes, that is snow on the ground.
We were sledding on the hill.

We have now been to two lovely concerts, one in Eldborg, the main hall, and one in Kaldalón.  And we have been in the building many more times; it has wide hallways with fun places to sit, it has a great view of the harbor, the light is wonderful, always changing, and it has escalators!

Riding the escalator June 16.

May 13, 2011

May 13 2011.

The first concerts were May 4th through 6th, and the official inaugural concerts were the next weekend, May 13th through 15th.  On May 6, right after a concert, my husband visited the building, and the security guards let him look around, no problem.  But on May 13th, a few hours before the official inaugural concert, we tried to visit and were turned away at the door by security.  Evidently there was heightened security since some rather unpopular people including the original financier behind Harpa, which entity failed as a result of the financial crisis, were going to be present at the concert, according to this post on the Iceland Weather Report.  We still enjoyed looking around the outside of the building, though it was a bit disconcerting that there were so many heavy machines still doing their work.

The west side with a view of the boats.

But since then, we have been in the building and enjoyed its beauty and light, and the continuing presence of construction equipment, many times.  Yesterday, during Iceland's national independence day celebrations (Þjóðhátíðardagur), we were among the many people who went into the building just to see it and enjoy it. Feeling a part of the process of Harpa opening has been a lovely part of our experience here. So we hope the space and all that it will be as people enjoy it over time truly comes to be seen as the house that belongs to all of the people of Iceland.

Looking up from near the first floor stairway.

There are places to splash out front!

It must be Þjóðhátíðardagur
 if there are antique cars.

Nice places to relax in the
midst of celebrating June 17. 

The cafe has a children's table, of course.

And there is still plenty of construction equipment to see.

Snow and Ash

We had planned to do the "ring road" tour in May, continuing on from Vopnafjörður to Egilsstaðir, on to Höfn and the famous Jökulsárlón (glacier lagoon) and then to Kirkubæjarklaustur to see the basalt formations.  But the weather was terrible the day we were scheduled to leave Vopnafjörður, and there was so much snow on the mountain road by the time that we were leaving that there was no way we could leave that direction.  


So, after a bit too much excitement, sliding around in the snow on a steep hillside, we turned around and returned to my cousin's house to regroup and find an alternative way.  My brother and his wife needed to rearrange their flights; we just needed to reorganize our plans.  With the help of my cousin and her husband, who kindly led the way, making tracks in the snow and ice with their four wheel drive vehicle, we managed to take the coastal road (85) north from Vopnafjörður and on west, eventually to Akureyri and, for us, home a day earlier than we had planned after making some lemonade with our changed plans, by visiting Hofsos and Holar.  And it was good that we headed out that day; the roads were closed for several days after that due to this late May snow storm.


We were scheduled to be in Kirkubæjarklaustur on Saturday, May 21, staying at a farm near the town.  But by that evening, we were hearing on the news that the Grimsvötn volcano was erupting.  By Sunday afternoon, Grimsvötn was spewing much more ash than usual, and the roads near Kirkubæjarklaustur were closed as the ash was causing a complete blackout.  Airports in Iceland were closed.  But fortunately, because of the snow in the northeast, we were not there!


The international press tends to cover stories about volcanos as they affect international audiences--especially air travel.  But of course that is not the only effect.  Both last year, with Eyjafjallajökull, and this year, with Grimsvötn, the volcanoes erupted during peak lambing season in April and May.  Most Icelandic farmers do not have space in their barns for the ewes and their lambs (most ewes have twins), and the sheep are put outside during lambing season and for the summer.  So in both cases, it was the worst time of year for the farmers who are downwind of the volcano ash.  The Iceland Review did a good story about the volcano last year and its effects on farmers; the Grapevine has a great story in its current (June 2011) issue on the Grimsvötn volcano. 

We still wanted to get to Höfn, Jökulsárlón and Kirkubæjarklaustur, and so we traveled this last week across the south.  And we encountered some blowing ash during part of the drive each day, in the area south of Grimsvötn, depending on wind speed and direction.   I should point out that most of the time the air was clear, and this is not what most of the south looks like most of the time!  My main point is that Icelanders are living with the effects of the volcano long after the rest of the world has lost interest.  There are several large fields south of the Eyjafjallajökull area with ash collected from last year's eruption, including some of the hay that was ruined by the ash.

We saw many beautiful places and enjoyed the journeying, and found the blowing ash interesting, annoying, and not something to experience outside of a house or vehicle.  But we don't have to live with blowing ash; we just had to put up with it for a few days.  Of course, Grimsvötn has stopped erupting and eventually the ash will have blown enough or been soaked by moisture enough to stop blowing.  But even the the volcano is no longer erupting, its effects are still present.

 The wonderful glacier lagoon; the ash on top
of the ice is from the most recent eruption.

Ash on the ground and on the snow, east of Skaftafell.

Driving west on June 9, early evening, east of Kirkubaejarklaustur.

Rainbows in April

April in Iceland has been a good month for rainbows.  The famously changeable weather means that we have had frequent rain/sleet/snow followed by clearing skies and sunshine--and the cycle repeats itself every half hour or so.  So we have seen many rainbows this month; here are just a few:

This is the view from Skerjafjörður, with a rainbow over Vesturbær and Seltjarnarnes, right at the beginning of April.  The view from this little part of the island is still just wonderful; a few days later it was clear enough to see the glacier, Snæfellsjökull (I'll post photos of this in another posting).  We are told this is common in summer when there are more clear days; there have only been a few days so far that it has been clear enough to see that far.  But the rainbows are great.
 

We took a trip to the south of Iceland on April 15 and 16, and stayed at a lovely guest farm right near Eyjafjallajökull, a bit west of Vík, called Sólheimajáleiga.  It is a working farm, and the cottage we stayed in had been the farm house, the traditional kind that is attached to the barn. We enjoyed seeing the sheep and the cattle, talking with the family about farming in Iceland, the effects of the financial crisis and then the volcano last year on their farm.  In the morning while visiting the sheep we enjoyed seeing this rainbow.

Then on the drive from Vík to Kirkjubæjarklauster, 

we saw more rainbows, including this one:

On April 20 we drove around part of the Reykjanes peninsula, and on our way through Hafnafjörður, we saw this rainbow.

And finally, on a trip to the north last weekend, we saw this rainbow a bit south of Laugarbakki.  It's a little hard to see (hard to catch rainbows on an ordinary camera) but from the road we could see the whole rainbow, the left side here, and the right side stretched down into the river that you also cannot see in this photo!

The weather cleared today (April 27) and it was a bit warmer. April has been stormy, but we have enjoyed the rainbows.
April 28 postscript: As I came home in the late afternoon, this rainbow was visible over the airfield; it looks like it is coming from Hallgrimskirkja, so I just had to share it too!

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.