It's one of those days, where the sun drapes over Iceland, full of the golden promise of brighter days. It's six thirty in the evening and the sky is that just-setting cerulean blue color, striped in peach and pink. I came home this afternoon to a living room bursting with sun, rainbows bouncing off walls and turning my couch to a lazy, dozy place for an afternoon read with tea and biscuits. The difference of a week has brought out the summercolor of the light, and it's choked with yellow now.
One of the grand things about living here is discovering new things to love madly that you would never have known about if it weren't for living in this new place. This week it's the white bean and garlic veggie burgers from Grímur Kokkur, a company from Vestmannaeyjar that's lacking in website skills but makes a mean hvítlauks- og hvítbaunabuff. These little nuggets o' tasty are splendid chopped up, grilled with mushrooms, and tossed over pasta. I discovered these back in the J days, but forgot about them until I moved. Hurrah for rediscovery!
The other how'd-I-miss-it is Finnish music. Thanks to faithful commenter and now in-real-life friend DTW, I'm tuning into RinneRadio, Kaksio, and Giant Robot. Back in the pre-Iceland days, I was always looking for the foreign tunes as a cheap way to feel like I was traveling, so this is a continuation on an old theme. This time though, I'm getting it directly from the source. Hurrah for new tunes, and weekends that in typical Icelandic last-minute fashion, yawn empty on Thursday but then are suddenly populated with activity by Friday afternoon.
*Monday modification: This isn't enough to warrant a whole new post, but I have to say that another "where HAVE you been" recently is Ragnheiður Gröndal's album After The Rain. Although her website's all in Icelandic, she sings in English on this one, her voice is lovely, and plus, she's absolutely adorable. Probably impossible to find her albums elsewhere in the world, but for those of you who travel here, I highly recommend having a listen, particularly the second-to-last track, In Its Place. Makes Monday morning come in a little easier.
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6 comments:
I love reading your stuff but most often just like to leave them as they are without commenting. Today I thought I'd comment just to give you the writing support. Hope I have. Keep it up.
An afternoon read with tea and biscuits, eh? How British of you! Maybe I'll need to wear one of these sometime for meeting you.
I suppose that this constitutes as my 15 minutes of fame, takk fyrir! I adore you for the way you look at the stuff. Now when I think of it, listening to Rinneradio probably is one of the things closest to travelling in Finland without actually doing it. I still have at least two bands which would have the same effect, but I'd love to save them until Finnish music needs to woo you again! :-)
Although with your enthusiasm you might've found them already, and even if that would mean I've lost a couple of ways to surprise you with, I wouldn't call that a bad thing!
I also have a Monday addition, since I didn't realize to Youtube before. If the Rinneradio puffs haven't been convincing enough, see the video for the song Airo. Ought to be a rather good audiovisual sample of Finland.
Ragnheiður indeed looks extremely adorable. Can't say anything about her music at the point, but that picture certainly made a Monday more tolerable. :)
Great recommendations. Thanks, E. I adore Icelandic musicians and was a bit shocked that Screaming Masterpiece wasn't given greater legs here.
And good on ya for biscuits, a book and a sunny living room! Sounds nice. We've a matte white sky here this week. It can be tiring on the eyes, as you know....
-cK
hulles: thanks for the encouragement! It helps :-)
dtw: I think you'll become famous in other ways soon enough, and I'm not trying to steal your Finn-thunder by exploring other tunes- it's just being fed to me!
must check out YouTube video.. I got distracted when I was there last time by Björk music videos. Some of them have great footage of The Land.
cK: I saw screaming masterpiece back in the J days, and we were trying to not write about the same things. He covered it back in June 05, but to be honest I wasn't really blown away by the movie. Too much Björk, not enough other stuff, and some other reasons that I wasn't impressed that I've forgotten already, so un-moved was I.
As for Icelandic music, an Icelandic friend was looking through my iPod and remarked that I had more local tunes than he did. Such is being a foreigner!
Thanks for telling about Ragnheiður Gröndal, she has an amazing voice and her songs are charming. I have to say, I had never heard about her before, though I often listen to Icelandic music.
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