Páskaegg með Málshætti

We enjoyed the Easter holidays, including some traveling, celebrations with a children's service at Neskirkja, and some quiet time out of ordinary routines.  And we enjoyed the chocolate Easter eggs.

Easter is a national holiday here.  The Easter holidays start on Thursday and go through Easter Monday; the shops are closed, even the grocery stores (which open only on Saturday of Easter weekend).  It is a very family oriented holiday, and people spend the time with their families, and relaxing, and enjoying some wonderful music in the churches and concert halls.

And then, there are the eggs.  The word for egg is the same in Icelandic as in English (though of course the plural and possessive forms are different!).  The grocery stores are filled with chocolate eggs of all sizes, just as they are in the U.S. But the eggs are different.   In the U.S. the chocolate eggs are sometimes hollow, but sometimes they have a filling of some kind.  Here, the eggs have málshætti:  sayings, or proverbs.  Some of them are from Hávamál (usually translated in English as "sayings of the high one" it is a poem from the Poetic Edda)--and when they are, the source is identified.


We started Icelandic class in April, and my teacher gave us an assignment for Páskafrí (Easter break): get an Easter egg, retrieve and read the saying inside, and translate it.  So on the Tuesday after Easter we all brought our sayings in to class.  Here are just a few of my favorites:

"Mörg eru dags raunin."

This saying is from Hávamál and was from my egg. Raunin can mean experience, but it can also mean trouble or adversity.  In this case, it probably means adversity.  Literally, it says "many are days trouble" or perhaps the meaning is closer to: life is hard.

"Bylur hæst í tómri tunnu."

This one was translated as "the loudest noise comes from an empty vessel".

"Settu ekki kommu, þar sem samviskan segir þér að vera punkter."

Don't put a comma where your conscience says there should be a period.

And my personal favorite, also from Hávamál:

"Þjoð veit ef þrír vita."

"A nation knows when three know."  Or, news travels fast, as many people have told me!

Our son enjoyed the children's service, the Easter egg hunt, the very large bunny who handed out the eggs, and actually eating the egg.  He wasn't very interested in the sayings!  But we all enjoyed the holiday.

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!

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.