Multiculti Holidays

Having my family here has been a special kind of special this year, the cross-pollination of my two worlds in a new way. They've taken to the traditions here with gusto, from the candlelit midnight mass on Christmas eve to the must-have stack of books I received as gifts. My mom added her own special twist to the Icelandic traditions herself, with a glaze on our hryggur that's made a few Icelanders wrinkle their noses when I described it but was to-die-for delicious. We're swimming all the time, exploring Þingvallavatn in the murky gray of a December Day in Iceland, and exploring power stations where I've had to figure out how to eplain things like "turbine efficiency" in Icelandic for a stoic hydro engineer.

Christmas day was a three-country meeting of my family, K's family, and my German friend F over the most Icelandic of meals, all the trimmings included- hangikjöt, potatoes in cream sauce, Ora beans*, malt og appelsín, laufabrauð, red cabbage, carrots. I was rather uncertain about many of these things last year, particularly the malt/orange soda blend and the beans, but they've grown on me, rather like my high-school's traditional and initially frightening combination of stewed tomatoes and peanut butter on toasted bread. These things take a little time but then you're wedded to them for life, it seems.

After a fantastic evening of swapped stories, great wine and too much food, my family and I took a detour up to the church that overlooks Mossfellsbær and the entire city of Reykjavík. I'd explained the tradition of illuminating the graves for this time of year so we went to see it for ourselves. It was nearly midnight but there was still another visitor, paying respects to his ancestors in one corner of the cemetery. We wandered slowly through the rows of graves in the crunchy dusting of snow, many stacked with flowers, plants, and garlands, the smell of the flaming paraffin candles wafting on the breeze off the not-too-distant sea. It's a strange way to end a Christmas celebration, there on a ridge of illuminated graves but it seemed like the right thing to do that night.

*I just learned that if anyone's either curious enough about these, or living abroad and missing them enough, it's possible to buy them here. These products are the most authentic flavor of Iceland I can imagine!