Iceland Again: the sea all round and the waters within

Consider this a postcard to everyone.

This is a message coming to you from Iceland, my home away from home. I wish I could stay here for ever and so does everyone who comes here! I know you’d love it.

I took a ukelele. My friends, Shawnee and Ana, made fun of me for doing so but now they know it was a good idea. That’s not true, taking the ukelele was a ridiculous idea but they love it here anyway, and showing Iceland to them is a thing I like to do. I’m really happy that it’s made as strong a first impression on them than it has on me.

Look how happy they are!

Ana

Shawnee

And I am as well!

One last picture before I go. We found this by accident and it’s the most potent argument for why Iceland is the best country. Natural hot tub!

Lots of love and see you soon,

the further north i go

Photo by Anne-Lise, a French school teacher who I met volunteering for the Red Cross in Christmas of 2010. She has a wicked sense of humour, patience and a strong sense of self.

Iceland changed and saved my life in more ways than I can go into detail here. I could never quite explain what it means to me, but here I shall try. By quoting myself. 

“A symbol and theme throughout my life has been that the highest form of joy and achievement is to be myself all of the time, and I have often said that the further north I go, the more I can do exactly that.”

“In the overwhelming love I felt for a number of people I met in Iceland, it’s easy to look over the love I feel for Iceland itself. It’s so honest. I would like to go back and discover its power. Escape the cities and just run and swim and roll and laugh and lie and chew the cud in the fervent mountains and rivers, lakes and shores, caves and grassy banks and soaring arches and watertumbles, fjords and faults and cliffs and endless sunshine.”

“I’m so full of inspiration and energy and just… joy! I can’t remember the last time I felt like this… Coming back from Iceland, I am so inspired and uplifted as if I feel like I’ve just taken a deep breath, like the air in my chest is fresh as mountain air and my speech is all in sheer italics. I feel like the grey film from my life has been shifted and lifted and wiped away and now I can see the cloud forests in Madagascar and the sweet dew in the morning breeze and like I’m walking on clouds and silver linings are all around and all other saccharine thoughts and clichés are cushioning my step.”

“Apart from anything else, I think I love this country because I sometimes feel like Iceland: remote, unlike anything else, sometimes overseen yet unexpectedly explosive and troubled, beautifully complex, ruled by nature, creative and full of impossible dreams, always changing (literally), full of oddities and fucking awesome.”

I haven’t even mentioned the elves or Retro Stefson or the yellow lighthouses or the weird obsession with liquorice or the alcohol which tastes like dust and piss and cough syrup or the wind chill factor or the smell of whale or the volcanoes or the hitchhiking or the opera singers and Viking cowboys and prison guards or the Blue Mountains and the mountains of waffles or the green smiling faces or Babalu or the waterfalls or the moon or the hot tubs.

Eugh. Splurge.

What is my life.

Bjork’s Shoes

I want these shoes! More than I’ve wanted a lot of things. I’d pick these shoes over a banjo. That is how much these shoes. I mean, look at them!

I’ve wanted chunky neon multi-coloured trainers since I saw some woman in Iceland wearing similar once last December. The woman turned out to be Bjork, which I didn’t found out until after she had left, but that’s not the point. THE SHOES. Nike allows you to design them yourself, which I thought would massively bring up the price, but no! £90!Relatively reasonable, considering I’m a person who never buy shoes. WHY couldn’t they be something ridiculous like £250?

Facts

I've watch l'Auberge  Espagnole twice in as many days. It reminds me of Iceland in a bittersweet way. And it's a wonderful film.

I miss Iceland so much and I berate myself for leaving, for being a coward, and homesick, and uncertain, and weak - for being young, in fact, and when I think that I have to stop. There are the Young and Reckless, and the Young and Tentative. Much as I may protest, I am the second. It's not all bad. And you shouldn't dislike yourself for being young.

I'm still sad, but keeping my head up as much as I can. I will try to reenter the world now.

“Viti” is Icelandic for Lighthouse

I’ve always had a dream of living in a lighthouse. And even though the red-and-white New England ones are pretty as a picture book, Iceland’s saffron towers are also very impressive and somehow manage to balance being stern, hardened, functional structures while retaining that national playful silliness. Which is typically Icelandic; if you have to live in a freezing, remote, cold tower – why not make it yellow?

This poem is about that, and inspired very much by Keri Hulme’s ‘The Bone People’. Sorry it’s in French.

Suis le phare! (Les vagues le battent.)
Il brûle pour moi! (Les vagues me battent.)
La gardienne du phare, c'est moi.
Je suis la tour du phare, le phare tournant -
C’est mon donjon!


Mais maintenant

Sans souci les vagues, elles battent

La falaise, la craie; les vagues attaquent
La paix, mais sans considération,
Tranquillement. Et puis
Il ne reste que son et bruit.
(Donc, est-ce qu'elles me battront aussi?)


Oui, elles battent la paix, et mon pays dedans, 

Et le sol dans le pays, et la poussière et le sang
et les cendres des flammes, et les os de mes gens --
Mais les vagues, elles s'avancent sans cette connaissance.


Sans hâte, sans haine, elles cherchent mes haleines.

Je disparait dans la tour, mon dos tournant et mes os protégeant.
Pas loin jusqu'au point que ma voix s'éteint.
Mais la flamme dans le phare
Et mon âme dans la tour
Nous restent sans souci.
Parce que dans le phare

Je suis.

I miss Iceland

In the overwhelming love I felt for a number of people I met this year through SEEDs camps and other means in Iceland, it’s easy to look over the love I feel for Iceland itself. It’s so honest. I would like to go back next summer and discover its power.

Escape the cities and just run and swim and roll and laugh and lie and chew the cud in the fervent mountains and rivers, lakes and shores, caves and grassy banks and soaring arches and watertumbles, fjords and faults and cliffs and endless sunshine.

My one aim and motto, a symbol and theme throughout my life is that the highest form of joy and achievement is to by myself all of the time, and I have often said that the further North I go, the more I can do exactly that.
So. I miss Iceland.

I’m Explosive

I’m so full of inspiration and energy and just… joy!

I can’t remember the last time I felt like this… Even after Eyrarbakki in the summer, I wasn’t so inspired and uplifted as if I feel like I’ve just taken a deep breath, like the air in my chest is fresh as mountain air and my speech is all in sheer italics.

I feel like the grey film from my life has been shifted and lifted and wiped away and now I can see the cloud forests in Madagascar and the sweet dew in the morning breeze and like I’m walking on clouds and silver linings are all around and all other saccharine thoughts and clichés are cushioning my step.

When I sat down to write this blogs my thoughts were much more ordered! But in reality they’re not; I’m still on a high from the camp and I genuinely feel like I’ve had pure spirit injected into my veins.

I want to cry so much because music is touching me as I write this and I just want to moksha into musical Brahman and smudge the dirt away and fly in the shining wohooooooo

I’ll come back to you when I calm down a little.

Music is my one force. I don’t want to go to University but I will go. I want to travel and see the world. I’m wonderfully naive. Hating people who are happy is easy, but I didn’t know that happiness was actually a feeling not a lack of!

I’ll come back to you when I calm down a little.

I’m so bleeding happy.

Advent 2010 XI: Reminiscing

It is now my fourth day of the camp as I write this. On Saturday we stood on Laugavegur – the main street in RVK – giving out hot chocolate to passers by and asking them to give a donation to the Icelandic Red Cross. I was paired with a South Korean girl called Sing-Sing. Despite the fact that we had not decorations and, most of the time, no hot chocolate, we did pretty good work. Sing-Sing was very enthusiastic, and I spoke more Icelandic than I think I have in my whole time here. On Sunday I worked with James AKA Jimbo well as two other girls (Debby, a very shy New Yorker and Sony, a German living in Barcelona) in a Christmas market which was raising money for an organic village for people with mental disabilities called Solheima. I got a t-shirt which reads in Icelandic “I am a friend of Solheima”. And yesterday after much indecision on my behalf I went with others to the Blue Lagoon. It was not worth the price. 5500 kr – about £35 - just to swim in a blue pool? No, I don’t recommend it.

I am starting to realise how much Iceland means to me and how much I will miss it, and I already am planning my next trip here. Also I am planning vaguely in my mind a trip around Europe to visit all the amazing people I came to know here in Eyrarbakki in the summer.

But I’m not stupid – I won’t write it off just yet. Instead I will quietly love Iceland and when I’m lonely, reminisce. And also I will do things with these people and wait for relationships to develop.

One saving grace is that I have my guitar. When I play I feel safe and comfortable, and as there’s a bloke here who is a musical wonder, full of energy and ideas and life, playing together is really great.

Don’t think I’m having a bad time! Sometimes I feel a little lonely, but most of the time I am happy to experience it in my way, knowing Iceland a little more, observing people and of course talking to them too. I’m not shy, just coming at the camp from a different direction to the others which may be why it’s taking me a bit longer to fall in.

Here are some photos for the Advent calendar

Giving hot chocolate to reluctant Icelanders.
View from Hallgrimskirkja in the direction of our house.

Advent 2010 X: Hver er i Reykjavikur?

…ég er í Reykjavíur!
Everything went supremely smoothly of course and now I’m in Reykjavik again. SEEDS house (this is a different one to the October one) is good and five minutes after arrival I was painting signs with a bunch of other volunteers, after which we played cards and now I’m in an internet cafe updating this here blogsicle.

Mine are the blue one on the top row, the third one in the third row (mainly hidden by a bench), and the first and third in the fourth row. I’m a very productive painter :P
Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays, Fröhliche Weihnachten & Gleðileg Jol!
xxxF

Advent 2010 IX: Ready to Say Goodbye

I’m off tomorrow, and I think that saying good-bye has never been easier… But I know that when I’m in Reykjavik, my access to the internet will be briefer and more infrequent than it is at present. So partly as a celebration of my last day, and partly to make up for all the days I expect I’ll miss, I took a photo an hour today to show you how I spent it. I hope you enjoy the photos, and the song above which is currently my earworm.

My alarm was set for 8:00, as it has been for over a month. And for over a month I have not been out of bed before 9:20.

Last Adventbreakfast of this style, and I ate a roll with Nutella. The world outside has been eaten by fog.

Writing letters and birthday cards to friends and family. ‘Shanastasia Olavale’ is of course not a real name; it’s a mixture of two of my friends who are so close they’re practically one person!

Setting my earphones in their rightful place, ready to listen to outpourings from the world of British comedy as I go one a walking mission to Selfoss.

Stopping off at Lóa’s shop to have a cup of coffee.

After trying to buy Euros at the bank (and being rudely repulsed as I have no flight ticket to a Eurozone country!) I posted the letters I had written earlier.

The fog has really eaten planet Iceland! You should be able to see a mountain! Walking through the fog in utter silence and solitude, I pretended first that I was a deity and I had just created the world and I was the only person and the birds flying through the air were only there because I had just invented  them with a thought a moment before and that this small foggy patch of land was all there was in the whole of existence. When that got boring I pretended I was playing Myst or Riven, because it felt like one of those hyper-realistic RPG games. I love Myst and Riven.

Then my brain went WAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHH PACKING. I was shaking the whole time… but that might be because I’d had three cups of coffee an hour or so before.

All packed! it only took one and a half hours. The reason is I didn’t have to spend ages deciding what to take or what to leave. It just all went in. And I made it fit.

Fini! Fertig! Búin! Done.

So, wish me luck and see you soon.

Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays, Fröhliche Weihnachten & Gleðileg Jol!
xxxF

Advent 2010 VIII: Imagination

Today’s photograph is not something particularly Icelandic: my iPod.



The reason for that is that I spent today cleaning windows. My last day here, and I literally cleaned windows for 6 hours. Inside and out. Yet even though my hands are dehydrated, raw and so numb I had to massage them for quite a while before they regained the ability to type, it was quite a pleasant day thanks to my iPod. If I could actually post a photograph of what I saw today it would involve extracting an image from my imagination and that’s not really possible.

First of all, I finished listening to Villette by Charlotte Bronte, which my friend Lola recommended to me months ago… and it has taken me months to finish it. The ending was bittersweet and suited the tone of the whole book. This morning I walked through pretty French town houses and gazed at elaborate religious ceremonies celebrated in the traditional French Catholic style.

Then I moved on to – I won’t lie – my preferred aural digest. The BBC produces many wonderful programmes, the least of which is not The Infinite Monkey Cage, where celebrity physicists and mathematicians-turned-stand-up-comedians battle wittily and thought-provokingly about the purpose of philosophy, the meaning of ‘modernity’ and the development of probability.

I finished the day with a good old slice of Stephen Fry’s boundless glory, which is how I plan to continue the evening. I’m going to babysit Magnus at 7, but I will convince him to sleep and then watch part two of his (Stephen Fry’s, not Magnus’s) very personal The Secret Life of a Manic Depressive. I spent half of part one marvelling at how much mania sounds like traditional madness, and how foreign and frightening it sounds… and the other half nodding in rapturous delight at hearing an iconic figure describe some of my most personal anxieties.

Eugh, can you tell that his style of speech is rubbing off on me? Well, I’ve just spent over half an hour being told that language is an art form intrinsic to all of us and yet one often laid aside in favour of a harp or a paintbrush. So I took up my linguistic easel, and tried to paint you an image of my day.

Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays, Fröhliche Weihnachten & Gleðileg Jol!

xxxF

Advent 2010 VII: Lights out!

Yesterday when I got home from work, there was no electricity in my room or in the room next to it, so I carried a load of candles into my room, which is what today’s advent photo shows. I hope you’ll accept it even though it’s from yesterday :P

Until Anna got home and fixed it by flicking some switch, I sat at the dining table watching Breakfast at Tiffany’s. It was better than I had expected, but I had expected syrup poured over dolls so that’s not saying much. I was mildly entertained, and impressed by Audrey Hepburn’s acting. The fact that it was adapted from a novel saved it, I think, and gave the conversations a subtler humour than most Hollywood writers achieve.

I have pretty low energy-levels again today, but on Friday I’m going to Reykjavik and I’m very excited for that!

In the last few days I’ve also been thinking about how excited I am to see my family again three weeks (and a few hours) from now! I really miss them, all three. <3

Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays, Fröhliche Weihnachten & Gleðileg Jol!

xxxF

P.S. In the mornings I have been listening to the Beebadeeb radio, in particular the Northern Irish ‘Colin Murphy Show’, the wonderfully geeky ‘Inftinite Monkey Cage’ and of course the Nicholas Parson’s led ‘Just a Minute’. I love the BBC!

Advent 2010 VI: Vitamins

Today’s post will be short because I have a headache and for some reason I’m really tired.

This bowl of fruit appeared today in Loa’s house, and it made me far happier than I ever thought a bowl of fruit could.

The sun began to set about half an hour ago (it’s 4.10 now) and so I can see a beautiful pink-peach-lavender watercolour over the mountain.

What does/did/will your sunset look like?

Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays, Fröhliche Weihnachten & Gleðileg Jol!

xxxF

Advent 2010 V: December Lights

Haha. I went to the ‘Winter Garden Christmas Market’ in Selfoss today… fail. It was closed, for a start. I was told it was open all days on weekends, and after six on weekdays, so I thought that 5.00pm would do it. But no. Maybe it’s because it’s a Sunday. Great thinking there, Fiona! Also, as a German, I thought it was kind of pathetic. Three stalls, one of which sells jam, one of which sells hot chocolate and candy floss, and one of which is a mystery to me. Maybe I’ll go have another look but to be honest I’m not that driven.

Sorry that the post today is so blah, but my thighs are so cold they’re burning and I’m a little bit miffed. No, not miffed. More… unimpressed.

Anyway, the sunset was quite nice and I tried to take a photo of Icelandic Christmas decorations, but they were quite blurry. Hope you enjoy them anyway!

Didn’t get much else done today since I set no alarm and woke up at 12:30… nice to have a lie in once again, but it was a bit of a shame since my day feels like it never really got started! I looked over a friend’s submission for a German assignment and watched a lot of New Zealand’s Next Top Model because I am seriously in love with New Zealand at the moment. New Zealand accent, art, fashion, countryside and so on and so forth. I had a nice Advent-y ‘morning’ listening to carols on Youtube and eating biscuits.

So… see you tomorrow!

Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays, Fröhliche Weihnachten & Gleðileg Jol!

xxxF

Advent 2010 IV: Krummi

Magnus is asleep. I love it when Magnus is asleep!

Today’s photograph is one of a common sight: a crow. But in Iceland, you're almost just as likely to see a raven as a crow. They're everywhere. Their squawk sounds a bit like a screaming dog, and they’re big enough that they can carry a small lamb, and to me they still remain majestic symbols of visceral force and instinctive fear.

To quote from a website which sells interesting clothes hangers in the shape of ravens, “Ravens, for instance, discovered Iceland for the Viking Hrafna-Flóki, who set two of them free to find land. The Norse god and sage Ódinn had two of the birds, called Huginn and Muninn, on his shoulders, whispering words of wisdom into his ears.”

Big Magnus (remember him?) told me a story in the summer about Krummi. Krummi is a folklore character, the embodiment of Hrafni, the raven. In this story Krummi was annoying an old woman who owned a drove of sheep. He would tease her and make her run from the house, leaving the sheep to wander away freely. One day he was more annoying than usual and she followed him very far, intent on catching him once and for all. When she later returned home, empty-handed, she discovered that her house had been destroyed by an avalanche, but her sheep were safe as they had roamed the length of the valley while she was gone.

There’s not much wildlife in Iceland – I think there aren’t many wild animals. There may be a couple of escaped horses and elk, and possibly foxes. But no wolves, bears, badgers… I’m not even sure they have rabbits. The country is just so barren that there isn’t much food or shelter.

In other news, I’m counting down the days to lots of things. 3.5 more days of work, 6 more days in Selfoss, 20 days until Christmas, and 23 days until I’m home!

Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays, Fröhliche Weihnachten & Gleðileg Jol!

xxxF