tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-118022562024-03-07T14:59:35.806+01:00Reykjavík Harbor WatchECShttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03980638224399713624noreply@blogger.comBlogger389125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11802256.post-47884356381758316252013-10-21T21:48:00.000+02:002013-10-21T21:48:00.584+02:00to be continued...I haven't stopped writing entirely, but my other project has thus far not had such a cohesive theme as this blog. It's been a collection of thoughts that didn't fit here for the past two years, and continues to be where anything non-Icelandic goes.
For anyone interested in reading further, see here. I'll update whenever something entertains or amuses, so keep it in your feed for sporadic ECShttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03980638224399713624noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11802256.post-5624541747953632142013-10-19T22:11:00.002+02:002013-11-19T22:07:47.393+01:00on the flipside<!--[if gte mso 9]>
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ECShttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03980638224399713624noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11802256.post-15371341529320530282013-06-25T22:30:00.000+02:002013-06-25T22:38:19.689+02:00the ship has sailedA few days ago, the piece of paper arrived at my new home that signifies I am officially no longer a resident of Iceland. The reasons for my departure are numerous, involving work possibilities, my relationship, and the need for a change after the family events of earlier this year. It's been a difficult few months, with competing interests on both sides of the Atlantic and my life suspended ECShttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03980638224399713624noreply@blogger.com9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11802256.post-40868397913886388962013-03-20T00:41:00.000+01:002013-03-20T00:41:04.342+01:00in the windMy father died a few weeks ago. In the surreal few days that followed his passing, I kept myself busy with the many logistical details that had to be handled, threw myself into cleaning and helping my family. In the back of my mind, the winds of Iceland swept through my head, holding me together until I could return to the solace of the wild winter nature.
Two nights before he died, I saw some ECShttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03980638224399713624noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11802256.post-2860853284119515592013-02-02T23:36:00.002+01:002013-02-02T23:37:12.731+01:00wintry weekendBack in December, my company had the (first!) annual Christmas dinner, an essential work tradition for any Icelandic company. Since our headquarters are located in Akureyri, I went up a few days early to work in the office before the Saturday party. I've always been in Akureyri either for work or on my way through to somewhere more remote, with an occasional stop to stock up on groceries or wine,ECShttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03980638224399713624noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11802256.post-2650337094400619402012-02-29T17:11:00.001+01:002012-03-06T18:50:01.622+01:00outdoor essentialsOne of the things that really surprised me about housing in Iceland when I first arrived was that balconies are considered a nearly essential feature of home life. In Boston, I never lived in an apartment with a balcony, and none of my friends had balconies either. What's the point when winter is so long and tedious, when you only get a few months of use out of it? And yet, when I first arrived, ECShttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03980638224399713624noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11802256.post-59804546883513268302012-02-06T20:52:00.000+01:002012-02-06T20:52:00.174+01:00for the love of knittingOne thing that people have probably noticed when visiting Iceland is that the lopapeysa really is taken quite seriously here. It was conceived as a very serviceable garment in thick unspun Icelandic yarn, only in natural sheep colors, and usable as a replacement for a coat, with the patterns on the yoke and openings serving a practical function as well as a decorative one. Adding a multi-thread ECShttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03980638224399713624noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11802256.post-30383583798038189092012-02-03T21:09:00.001+01:002012-02-03T21:31:10.502+01:00chapter newThe past three months have been an abrupt shift in quite a lot of my life parameters, and although late November was a rather rough phase, the outcome so far has been far better than I could have imagined. I'm working for a new company now, with people I've known almost as long as my time in Iceland, and I'm pretty sure a better group of colleagues can't possibly exist. They're smart, reliable, ECShttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03980638224399713624noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11802256.post-50832540665907728302012-01-29T00:27:00.001+01:002012-01-30T13:45:24.742+01:00girly things, episode twoAs I discussed some years ago, Icelanders are very prone to trend mania, and just like a few years ago, I decided I had to try out the latest craze and see what it was all about. Last time I went through duty free, I bought the smallest size of the #1 best seller in the cosmetics department, the EGF serum. This thing has been gushed over on the international press, and stories go that women in ECShttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03980638224399713624noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11802256.post-55424097236754539722011-12-29T10:43:00.000+01:002011-12-29T10:43:43.193+01:00Icelandic new year flavorA few months ago one of the members of my choir announced that she had a plan to make a disc of musical favorites related to New Year celebrations, and she wanted us to be part of the effort. The director whipped up a new arrangement of one of the Icelandic classics, and during our annual weekend retreat rehearsal, we performed it along with several other favorites to an attentive recording crew.ECShttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03980638224399713624noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11802256.post-41755390248313782332011-12-13T00:36:00.000+01:002011-12-13T00:36:17.874+01:00musical magicLast week my choir held the usual Christmas concert that I've mentioned here before, and the event turned out to be one of those classic Icelandic evenings. This year's program was Bach's Magnificat, a glorious piece of baroque frivolousness, paired with a piece newly written over the past few months. The choir director has been in a composing program at school here, and decided to write a ECShttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03980638224399713624noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11802256.post-18019306013500729322011-12-01T02:52:00.000+01:002011-12-01T03:41:27.064+01:00midnight memoriesIt's past midnight and in my little corner of Reykjavik, I just spent 10 minutes with my chin leaning on the edge of my bedroom skylight, propped slightly ajar. It's quiet below, the sidewalks glazed with a crust of ice, and above me curves a smudge of northern lights. Christmas decorations have gone up, so although the inhabitants are mostly asleep, the houses along my street glow with fairy ECShttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03980638224399713624noreply@blogger.com4Reykjavik, Iceland64.135338 -21.8952164.07992200000001 -22.0531385 64.190754 -21.737281499999998tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11802256.post-4198268661370059352011-11-28T23:36:00.000+01:002011-12-01T03:42:06.446+01:00nammi number oneOne of the things I love about being able to speak Icelandic is that it's given me access to the mysterious world of small talk, Iceland style. As you might expect, a lot of it is pretty much the same as it is anywhere else in the world. For example, a few weeks ago I was waiting for the bus and an elderly gentleman ambled up to wait at the same stop. During the few minutes we stood together, we ECShttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03980638224399713624noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11802256.post-12311807846055790102011-11-21T12:10:00.001+01:002011-12-01T03:42:44.788+01:00open curtain policyon Saturday after a successful holiday shopping trip followed by coffee with a friend near downtown, I walked the long way home via Bræðraborgarstígur. The weather was starting to grow chill after a mild day, and a light drizzle had fallen during my coffee hours, so the dark pavement gleamed under the streetlights. This neighborhood is the postcode of so many parts of my life here, particularly ECShttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03980638224399713624noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11802256.post-55766695530553336062011-11-18T02:08:00.001+01:002011-11-18T02:34:16.611+01:00Christmas crowdI'm lying awake in the eerie silence of a still Icelandic night, wondering why when the wind howls I can't sleep, yet when it's still, I miss its busy lullaby. Why is it that when I most need it, sleep eludes? It's that time of year when everything is crowding together, trying to jumble in the decreasing gap between now and Christmas.
There are those handcrafted gifts to finish, packages to postECShttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03980638224399713624noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11802256.post-13959323403462507022011-11-14T17:25:00.002+01:002011-11-14T20:08:50.389+01:00moment of silenceOne of the recent news items has had me thinking a lot about this country, the people who live here and the people who visit. Late Wednesday, a young man called the emergency number to say he'd lost his way out on one of the glaciers in the south, and needed help. Teams from the volunteer rescue squads were immediately on the job, despite the call going out in the middle of the night. Over the ECShttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03980638224399713624noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11802256.post-58129312775742668792011-11-12T12:41:00.002+01:002011-11-12T12:51:30.052+01:00saturday morningeating my yogurt with bananas and toasted pecans, looking at the promise of today from three windows. To the south, the red berries still cling to the trees in the yard, although the chatter of starlings makes me wonder how long that will last. In the north, the rain-striped skylight looks to lowering clouds huddled over Esja. It's that time of year when Iceland spends more time shrouded in rain ECShttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03980638224399713624noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11802256.post-80596772931300094152011-09-04T03:25:00.002+02:002011-09-04T03:43:33.823+02:00daily poetryWalking home from a cozy evening with an international group of women, Danish jazz from a colleague in my ears, I just looked northwards and caught the first glimpse of the northern lights this year. The air was still balmy and full of the smell of green, and the breeze stirred it gently across my face as I walked.
It got me to thinking about the strings of moments over the past months where I ECShttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03980638224399713624noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11802256.post-14849104731623158452011-04-15T13:54:00.002+02:002011-04-15T13:58:47.777+02:00spring, but nottoday's the day that officially we are all supposed to have removed our winter nail-tires. It's appropriately ironic that today I woke up to a white world, and since then it's been snowing on and off. The view outside my office is one of those classic Icelandic days, the sky aswirl with clouds and pierced by gentle shafts of sunlight. A crowd of seabirds has just taken off and are reeling againstECShttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03980638224399713624noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11802256.post-31195530348440691442011-03-18T17:16:00.000+01:002013-10-20T14:39:48.007+02:00So, you want to work in Iceland?Ever since about a year into this blog, I've been getting emails from people asking me about ways to move here. They stopped abruptly at the beginning of October 2008 but always reappear in a spike during the first few months of the new year. I can't quite figure why, given how idle this blog is, but since it doesn't seem to be disappearing, this post is for all of you frustrated would-be ECShttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03980638224399713624noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11802256.post-17908516742143515432011-02-03T00:50:00.000+01:002015-05-13T23:40:39.978+02:00lay low in the snowThe snow is just warm enough to slide down the window in lazy ribbons, accumulating in fractals along the lower sill, and my trustily unreliable streetlamp winks and flickers as always. The air is unusually still, so the snow billows beneath the illumination in ways remembered from childhood. Across the street one tiny tree on a doorstep still twinkles with ice-blue fairy lights, left from ECShttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03980638224399713624noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11802256.post-52721775233380031862010-09-06T12:19:00.001+02:002010-09-06T13:36:06.357+02:00localized memory lossLast Thursday night the first real autumnal weather arrived, a howling wind that spattered rain on the bedroom windows and tore leaves from the trees. It roared all day Friday, bringing with it a strange high mist that blurred the edges of the landscape. Along with rain, this wind blew in the memory of Iceland when it's not summer.Every year as soon as the darkness disappears in late spring, theECShttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03980638224399713624noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11802256.post-8703302528996243422010-09-01T14:15:00.001+02:002010-09-01T14:15:50.959+02:00straight from the landFor Saturday's lunch I had an omelet covered with mushrooms I'd just picked. Iceland's got all kinds of interesting mushrooms sprouting up this time of year and I figured some of them must be edible but wasn't daring enough to figure it out on my own. So, I recruited a friend and longtime reader S for some help. She's trained in the forests of Germany, a country that seems to have made a ECShttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03980638224399713624noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11802256.post-82970593492617234312010-08-27T12:44:00.002+02:002010-08-27T13:17:03.890+02:00downtown loveI'm in my third month of being a downtown girl again, and after this last weekend, I think I'm a fan. My brother was in town for the weekend, one of the best in the whole Reykjavík activity calendar. First on the program, the Reykjavík marathon, a great race that offers distances for all types of runners- 3k for the kids and purely recreational folks, 10k and half marathon for the more ambitiousECShttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03980638224399713624noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11802256.post-62320876018775614762010-07-29T14:17:00.002+02:002010-07-29T14:39:23.214+02:00nose-walkthis post inspired by Maya's comment about the smells of IcelandA few days ago we had unusual weather for Iceland- a light, low drizzle with absolutely no wind, the kind of day that I think is perfect for walking. I threw on my trusty Iceland-made raincoat and headed out towards Öskuhlíð's tiny forest. The path there is close with pine trees and moss, all sharply scented in the mist.From there I ECShttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03980638224399713624noreply@blogger.com4