Handspun wool

How to transform this:

The sheep at farm Þorgautsstaðir before cutting the wool.

Into this:

Socks for Ketill´s Dad knitted of handspun wool.

One has to do this:

Me handspinning wool in the evening.

And a few weeks ago I learnt how to do this and am currently busy spinning two huge bags of white and brown and black wool.

Fullmoon winter night magic

Some weeks ago, I have been writing about the fullmoon lightening up the winter's night so much that I could enjoy a little run through this magic without using a flashlight. Now, the moon is full again and the wide landscapes are covered in glittering white snow, and this time I went outside with Gauti's good camera (and a lot of warm clothes) to catch the magic blue moonshine landscapes.
I present the bright Icelandic december night:

Yes, this picture has been taken at night! "Our" farm in the wide bright moonshine landscape.

The horse and the river.

A moonshine ghost!

Giljagaur

The second one was Giljagaur,
with his grey hair.
He strode over the creek
And interposed himself into the cowshed.

He hid himself in the stall
And stole the cream
While the stable woman had
a talk with the stable boy.

 

The story of the Icelandic Yule Lads

Now 12th December has arrived and the day has come to tell you about the 13 Yule Lads, my favourite Icelandic christmas story (a bit rough and wild).

While in many countries Father Christmas, the Christ child or Santa Clause arrive on 24th or 25th December with loads of christmas presents, the story goes a bit different in Iceland. Between 12th and 24th December thirteen half trolls come down the highlands and plague the farms. They try to steal food and goods and cause trouble. Every day one of them arrives until all of them will have come by Christmas Eve. Then, every day one by one they will leave until the last one will be gone on 6th January.
Their mother is the troll woman Grýla living in the mountains being a dread to the Icelandic children which she loves to eat. Her companion animal is the so-called Christmas Cat which will abduct and eat all children which haven't gotten any clothes on Christmas. The Yule Lads' dad is called Leppalúði, and he is basically a lazy guy who doesn't have much to do with the terror regime of Grýla.
It is said that the Yule Lads bring rotten potatoes to misbehaving children which they put into their shoes. These days, they have become a bit more friendly towards humans and bring little presents to the children. Children put their shoes into a window and during the nights when the Yule Lads arrive they will place a little present into them.

Troll woman Grýla chasing children.

Here is the saga of the Yule Lads (freely translated from the little book "Jólin koma"):

I want to tell you the story
of the Yule Lads,
which came down the hills to scare
us on our farms at home.

They were seen up in the mountains
- as many know -
in a long row
on their way down into the country.

Grýla was their mother
and gave them troll milk,
their father was Leppalúði
- they were bad creatures.

They were called the Yule Lads
- on christmas they appeared.
And they came one by one,
but never two at once.

They were thirteen,
Those gentlemen,
Who didn't want to make trouble
All at once.

To the doors they sneaked
And pulled the latches out.
And they were eager to search their way
Into the kitchen and pantry.

Sneaky on their faces
They hid here and there,
To do mischieve
When nobody was close.

And like this, though somebody saw them,
They did not hesitate
to frighten people - and disturb
their home peace.

Today, on 12th December, the first of them, Stekkjarstaur, arrived, and this describes what he is up to:

Stekkjarstaur came first
Rigid like a tree 
He sneaked into the sheepfold
and played with the farmer's sheep.

He wanted to suck the ewe's milk,
This was difficult for him,
Because the poor thing had feet stiff like wood
Stealing the milk didn't go well.

Stekkjastaur up to no good.

Sheep Christmas Tree Balls

Yeah yeah, I created my very first crocheting tutorial! :D
Look what I made, cute little sheep to decorate the christmas tree!
Had some fun today creating the tutorial. Drawing. Writing. Scanning. Pasting everything together in GIMP. (The amount of time this took is incredible.) And now I published it on knitter's/crocheter's platform ravelry. :)
Here you go, little cute sheep christmas tree balls to jazz up your christmas tree!

 

Longing for Akureyri

Summer has been very beautiful in Borgarfjörður with endless possibilities for hikes in low mountain ranges and creeks, journeys up the glacier Langjökull and cosy walks through the birch forest at Húsafell and along river Hvítá. Not to forget a few trips to the nearby highlands Arnarvatnsheiði (the Eagle's waters) and into four(!) lava caves.
Winter, however, in my opinion, gets soon a bit boring here. Mostly because of the constant "snow on off problem" here. Since october, temperatures have been constantly varying between several minus degrees and several plus degrees bringing snow which the next day transforms into rain which the next day transforms into ice and into rain again. The landscape seems constantly switching from brown to white to brown to white and so on. Which annoys me a lot. I am very much a "Snow, yes, as much as possible, and crispy cold, please!" person when it comes to winter. But I think I am quite lonely with this opinion here. So am I with my cross-country ski. The type I have are no "real" cross-country ski since they require trails in the snow. And "real" cross-country ski wouldn't work well here either because there rarely comes enough snow to build up a solid cover. A lot of long brown grass halms are sticking out here and there. Not to forget lots of stones.  I recently did a little cross-country skiing trial and it was okay but not especially fun. It doesn't get so funny when you have to make big steps over little unfrozen water streams and ski through snow drifts.
Iceland is not a big island, however, the climate varies quite a bit in the different areas. In winter, the South, Reykjavík and a great part of the West get lots of rain and occasionally snow while the North and East get snow which stays for a great amount of time. And this is what I these days long so much for. Especially with the long stretches of darkness. Snow does lighten up everything so much  more.
The little town Akureyri in the North, cuddled between mountains. holds the biggest skiing area of Iceland which is open from December to April. And they have cross-country ski trails! In the beginning of November I made a weekend trip to Akureyri which was great! While the landscape along the coastline was mostly brown characterized by dead grass halms, Akureyri and its surrounding mountains were white. I had chosen the bus for this trip (the long distance bus network of many areas of Iceland is not too bad!) and was on a cosy ride for four and a half hours through the brown-white-brown-white-brown-white landscape (read: brown lowlands, white highlands). In Akureyri I had enjoyed a few cosy walks through the little town's centre. Visiting the book shop Eymundsson which holds a good selection of Icelandic and English books which you may browse through while enjoying their good coffee and cakes. I walked along the water side looking at the propeller planes flying in and out of the fjord. I bought a handful of tasty things in the local organic grocery store (I get very happy when I find an organic grocery store in Iceland). I walked the stairs up to Akureyri church and enjoyed the view over the fjord and the lights of the town glowing in the dark. And when I was there I didn't want to leave again. Unfortunately, I had forgotten my camera (I was practicing "travelling lightly" and only took a tiny backpack with me. But travelling without a camera is defintely travelling too light for me.) So I did a thing which I hate: I took some pictures with the phone on the journey over Öxnadalsheiði, the highland valley that has to be crossed to reach Akureyri. At coastline the landscape had been brown. Half an hour and several metres of height later, it was like this (in typical phone picture bad quality):

The weather prophet forecasted roof diarrhea

A language with a grammar so complex that the brain knots itself and an incredible richness of words of which many mean many different things is literally made for making the most weird mistakes.

I seriously dipped into Icelandic while I was in Sweden. I was always able to pick up the Scandinavian languages in shortest time and spoke Danish very well and wasn't bad in Swedish either - but I felt very lost with the Icelandic. It's old and very complex, oh yes, but it's a Nordic language after all, with plenty of similarities to the Danish and Swedish, so why didn't it come to me? Why didn't I understand a single word of it? A language course in Stockholm helped me finally. I realized how much words can change. But they are still the same words.
Words change with case. There are four cases, so in the worst case your term changes in four different ways. And they might change a lot. So when your name is Anna it's worth knowing that people are talking about you when they say "Önnu". And when your name is Egill it's good to know that "Agli" is the dative case of your name and not an attack on your appearance (since "Agli" sounds like the English "ugly").
And it's good to know that a guy saying "svangur" and a girl saying "svöng" talk about the same thing: they are hungry. 

So with a little bit of basic grammar knowledge I threw myself into the cold water and started speaking Icelandic in April when I moved here. Well, some kind of Icelandic. With many mistakes. But actually it goes quite well in most situations.

However, I never encountered a language where it's so easy to make to most weird mistakes and ending up saying the most weird things ever to people.

Here are my favourites which I gathered since April.

The other day an avalanche came down the roof and I talked about "þaksniðurgangur" which translates directly as roof diarrhea. I innocently assumed the word "niðurgangur" (down going) could be used for anything which goes/comes down somewhere.

Also I tell people to "burn the car" instead of "starting the car". (kveikja í/kveikja á, one tiny word makes a whole difference!)

Once I told Gauti's Dad innocently that there soon will be sex instead of "It will become dark soon." ("mök" meaning sex but "mörk" in the Scandinavian languages meaning "dark" and West Germans can't roll the R ....).

One night on our way to Keflavík airport the car broke down and Gauti talked about getting a "leigubíl" which made me very confused because I knew that "leigubíl" means literally "rental car" and I asked "And what shall we do it with while we are abroad, just abandon it somewhere?" which made Gauti very confused. Till we found out that he was talking about a taxi (leigubíl) and I understood rental car (bílaleigubíl).

Then for some reason people started grinning a lot when I talked about the "veðurspákona", the woman saying the weather forecast. And to understand this you have to know that "veðurspá" indeed means weather forecast and "kona" woman but that a "spákona" is a prophet. So they might have assumed that I don't believe in meteorology but in weather prophecy.

A problem of mine is that I acoustically cannot distinguish between christmas (jól) and a bike (hjól), the only difference being one almost mute H which only Icelanders seem being able to pronounce. So it would be difficult to talk about wanting a bike for christmas when people understand you want "christmas on christmas" or "bike around a bike".

Last but not least it´s too easy to confuse greedy (grádugur) with horny (graður) and I might have done that and it's probably good I haven't been told.
......................
I stop now. The weather prophet talked about upcoming roof diarrheas and I don't want to provoke them by biking on christmas.

Häkelschäfchen

The title for today's blog post must be in German. Because I don't know any English expression which fits better. (Häkelschäfchen translates as "little crochet sheep" but it seems there is no single word for a little sheep in English unless sheepling is a registered term. Sheepling. Hm. I like sheepling.)

The world outside has transformed into blurry white and grey layers since a howling wind is blowing an endless amount of snowflakes from West to East. Indeed, it doesn't snow down from the clouds. The snow seems to come from everywhere but from upwards. And through those whitish grey layers the outlines of the landscape first become blurry and then disappear completely. Often this happens within just a few seconds. When we did a little hike to Húsafell's guestbook in a low mountain range the greyness surprised us. While the view was clear and the weather calm on our way up it changed very suddendly on our way down: just within a few seconds the grey wall came from the West and let the landscape under us disappear.
The weather forecast is talking about a wave of biting coldth (-25°C) arriving on Thursday and Friday. And an endless amount of snow on Saturday. (Yes yes yes!)

While snow, howling winds and biting cold take over the land it's cosy to spend time inside and craft. Craft craft craft. I got two skeins of handspun yarn from Rúna, which is an old lady living in a low house hidden behind some cliffs who is spinning and knitting. (A bit like in a children's story. She started teaching me how to spin yarn recently, but more about that in one of my next posts.) I am not sure what to do with the two beautiful skeins of wool yet which come from a white sheep and a brown sheep, so I started playing around with the crochet needle and a bit of the yarn ... and it became a little sheep which I really like! This is the reason for today's title, my Häkelschäfchen, my crochet sheepling. I really like his eyes. It might be a promising starting point for many knit and crochet products. And he is so fast to crochet!

Well, here he is, my Häkelschäfchen prototype:

Sheepling Häkelschäfchen fits well on a granny square.

 

Colourful pillow case

Two weeks ago I learnt from a tutorial in the internet how to crochet granny squares. Those things are quite trendy right now and people make colourful blankets and pillow cases and bags with them. I had a pillow which lacked a pillow case and looked boringly white, so I tried my luck with those granny squares and did 32 of them which I sewed together. The result is a colourful pillow case which I really like a lot. And I found out that those granny squares are not difficult at all to crochet. Mine are of slightly different sizes though because I am not used to crocheting and tried out different ways to hold my hands resulting in some tight squares and some loose ones.
Here is the result:

Kill it, dig it, eat it on Christmas

Last night I made some new culinary experiences on my first Icelandic jólahlaðborð (translating as "Christmas loaded table", meaning "table(s) loaded with Christmas foods"). Those Christmas buffets are very common and popular in all the Nordic countries. In Denmark, one of the MUSTs on the Christmas buffet is a big bowl of the traditional risengrød (rice pudding) with one almond hidden in it. In Sweden you're eating through fish and meat pastries, cheese, pepparkakor (gingerbread) and lussebullar (Lucia cakes). Delicious, (more or less) civilized foods. And then you move to Iceland and it becomes different. Well, you still have every Scandinavian Christmas food on the table you can think of (apart from the lussebullar). Lots of them. And you eat A LOT. But then it gets weird when you have a look on the countless meat slices and ask: "Ah, what was this one again?" - "This? Oh, that's the digged lamb." - "The what?!" - "Oh no, THIS one! Sorry, that's the digged horse."
So it turned out that this is the tradition. Kill the lamb, the horse, the shark, the skate and dig them and let them rot in the soil for some time and when Christmas comes closer you dig them out and eat them (apart from the shark which has to wait until February)! Sounds crazy? Maybe it is. Maybe not because this is a Subpolar island and these traditions made people survive in earlier days. Eating rotten skate is a crazy thing, though, in my opinion. Very NOT tasty. However, a horse which has been lying in the soil for some time is tastes - believe it or not - quite good. I will forever think of this when I see an Icelandic horse. Hi horse. Maybe you will soon be lying under the soil and rot for a little while. And become a delicacy.

Hi horses. Now you're standing on the soil, but maybe they will dig you in it for Christmas?

Bright is the winter night

I guess you assumed that the winters in a place just below the Arctic circle are long and dark. That's very right. The long nights of darkness have long arrived, and every day the path of the sun approaches the horizon a bit more. Soon it will completely disappear behind the hills letting it cast its long shadow for more than a month on the farm. Short are the winter days in the Subarctic!
Nevertheless, a few days ago I experienced the brightest winter night I have ever seen in my life. It had been snowing and the skies were clear and the air was crispy. Then the moon rose from behind the hills. A big bright full moon. And it casted a lot of light on the snowy wide landscapes making everything glow in a light blue light. It was crazily beautiful. I immediately put on my warmest clothes and headed outside. The landscapes were so bright that I saw every detail in them. The brown long grass halms projecting from the snow casting long dark blue shadows. Foot prints of the Arctic fox. The white mountains in the distance. I took a moonshine run that evening. There was no need for a light, quite the contrary, it would have destroyed this magical blue atmosphere. I ran through the moonshine bathed landscapes followed by my own dark blue shadow. (You don't see your moonshine shadow too often, I realized. And that this might be only possible in tree-less landscapes.) And I savoured the moment so much that I decided not to disturbish it by trying to take a photo. Enjoy the wide, glowing light blue landscapes with its dark blue long shadows in your imagination.

An artist is an author is a knitter is an artist on volcano island

I spend a great amount of my time crafting (mostly knitting), and most of the time I do this alone and by myself. Yes, I like a lot to create alone, I like the calmness and the possibility to let my thoughts run free and being myself. However, sometimes it gets boring and I feel like I am missing out on inspiration. After all, I am on ARTIST ISLAND (it is, just ask the internet about the density of Icelandic book writers and bands and painters) and it is an island of knitters. So a few days ago I decided to reach out and start connecting with other crafters here in Iceland. There is a little yarn shop in the little town Borgarnes which organizes a knitting café once a week and I decided to be un-shy and drop by. I arrived half an hour late, so when I opened the door of the yarn shop I was looking into a round of women who immediately interrupted their conversations turning their heads looking who was at the door. (And there my "un-shyness" ended.) They welcomed me immediately into their circle and served me coffee and liquorice candies. Shyness is a term unfamiliar to Icelanders. (I like this though I sometimes have a hard time learning this.) It was interesting listening to what they had to see. They spend about half an hour gossiping about Keflavík, the international airport's town, telling each other how over-fancy it was and how people were competing about all the time who has the coolest stuff and how people had become weird there. (Actually this might be true, Keflavík is a pretty special place after all. It's built on the tip of a big flat lava field and there is nothing there - apart from endless flat lava, the sea and well, a fancy international airport, so how to NOT become a bit weird living there?). And when you see it from an "international" point of view, it's a bit hilarious listening to people from an off-road Subarctic volcano island talking about how weird people on this volcano island are. ;)
However, my favourite moment was when somebody pulled a book out of her bag and started reading it aloud to us. "Like in the old times", I thought, "when women have been sitting together knitting and listening to the sagas." The book was written by an artist called Ásta (there you have it: an artist is an author is an artist in Iceland) and once she was working as a driver on night shifts driving on the ring road. To keep herself awake she spun a story in her mind and when the time was right, she wrote it down and released three books recently. (Well, as far as I understood.) The chapter we were listening to was about a guy who was working at the road traffic department in some middle of Nowhere in North Iceland and one night, when a snow storm was blustering and he felt depressed, somebody came with a jeep from the highlands and lost control of the car and slipped into an ice cold river. The guy run out of his little hut, jumped into the ice cold water and managed the grap the injured jeep driver. "What to do?!", he thought desperately, holding the injured man being trapped in the painfully ice water. At this point, the woman who was reading the book decided this was enough for the day and closed the book leaving me with a big unspoken "HOW CAN YOU STOP NOW?!" question in my mind.
Anyway, maybe I have a chance listening to the continuation next time. I discovered how much I enjoyed it to craft in a circle of other crafters and being read a story. And this is how many of the evenings went in older times here on volcano island. You told stories. Stories, stories, stories.
Sometimes I think there is so much to discover for me on story volcano island and I even haven't been starting digging into it. And there is a big treasure to find in the Icelandic arts and crafts. 
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By the way, here is what I made in knitting café:

My first crocheted granny squares.

These crocheted little "granny squares" are quite trendy at the moment among crocheters/knitters, and you can sew them together to a blanket or a pillow case. (I just taught myself how to make them. Thanks to the great amount of resources on the internet.)

Halloween kids

"Halloween accident kids."
This is how I call them, the three puppies that were born on 31st October in Gauti's family's house. They are accident kids indeed. Their mom, a lovely Border Collie/Icelandic dog lady, became unexpectedly and very fast pregnant in the beginning of September. Halloween's Day then brought a snow storm and three tiny cute puppies. A boy and two girls being a mixture of Border Collie, Icelandic dog, Irish Setter and Labrador. They are drinking milk all day long at their mom's teats, sleep, clumsily move around their mom and make cute guinea pig sounds when they miss a teat. I took some photos of the cuties yesterday.

The beautiful mom Tása with her three puppies, four days old.

I'm tired! The little girl felt asleep half a minute after we took her.

The little boy sleeping in Gauti's hands.

Very sleepy puppies: the other girl napping in the air.

I am cute and I know it!

The yarn dyeing lady of Iceland

So I have this obsession with yarn and knitting which leads to endless hours of knitting, wool balls all over the house and constant searching of wool shops and other knit-obsessed people wherever I am.
A few months ago, such a search led me to one of the "pearls" of wool handicraft here in Iceland. And it is just 30 km away.

Guðrún Bjarnadóttir, the "yarn dyeing lady of Iceland".

 Guðrún Bjarnadóttir is dyeing sheep yarn with natural colours from mostly Icelandic plants and lichens. Actually she started this as part of her studies of the Icelandic heritage in the field of botany. (She is writing her Master thesis about how the wikings used local plants and lichens for textile dyeing.) So she started to reinvent some of those techniques, got a handfull of big pots, wool from the neighbouring sheep farms and went out to pick plants and lichens. When visiting her in her little wool garage Hespuhús there are always wool balls slowly boiling or steeping in dark tinctures in the big pots. On the right hand side, there is big shelf filled with vibrantly colourful balls of wools while the plants and lichens rest in big bags, cans and bottling jars on the left side. The little Hespuhús was just built recently and Guðrún is doing well selling her colourful wool balls to all kinds of knitting ladies nationally and internationally.
I have visited the Hespuhús two times and have to watch out not to just empty my wallet in the presence of all those wooly treasures. On my first visit I bought two balls of alasca lupine dyed yarn which quickly were knitted into this scarf:

Scarf knitted of yarn dyed by Alasca lupine. I borrowed it to my friend Hraunkarl (lava guy) the other day. :)

 The last time I visited her was on the day of Icelandic nature in September. (I was a bit shocked, though, because Gauti and I had been the only visitors on that special day ...) That day, Guðrún was experimenting with the "dyeing lichen" Litunarskóf, Parmelia. They grow in many cliffs and rocks around the coastline and give a yellowish brownish colour.

The "dyeing lichen" Parmelia sp.

Slowly boiling with some wool balls.

Voilà: the result is a different range of brownish colours.

 It's very inspiring to chat with "the yarn dyeing lady of Iceland" and we have been talking about trying out to use some local fungi for yarn dyeing. (Scandinavians have been busy since many years trying this out and publishing books about it. And yes, Iceland has forests with fungi. Truely.) However, I had to promise not to come again with this fungi idea until she would have finished her Master thesis. She said, this idea is way too interesting and would just lead to procrastinating the thesis. (Why not, it's only a thesis and theses are overestimated., was my only thought, but I didn't say it aloud. ;) )

The quiet forest of Fulufjället

In March, Gauti and I went to Western Dalarna. Dalarna is the province which sometimes is called "the heart of Sweden". The midsommar tradition originated in Dalarna and the little wooden horse figures became one of the national symbols of the country. I love Western Dalarna because it has mountains, a crazy amount of snow and it is incredibly cosy. So March had arrived, but the ground was hidden under half a metre of crispy white snow and the temperatures regularly dropped under -10°C. I simply love this kind of weather and was practicing on my cross-country ski on the wide net of trails which is characteristic for many of the mountain landscapes of Sweden and Norway. Cross-country skiing became my new hobby during that winter. I was skiing on the slope of a mountain, over a mountain pass, around the mountain, through forests and through the bleak white landscape close to the top of the mountain. One day we went to the national park Fulufjället which hosts brown bears, the highest waterfall of Sweden and the oldest tree of the world. We were skiing through the quite forest but when the trail became steeper and more difficult we unbuckled the ski and walked the last kilometre to the waterfall. It was a wall of ice. No drop was moving. And I remember this little walk through the quiet snowy forest so well, carrying the ski on my shoulder which otherwise carry me so reliably. So I drew a picture of it.

Walking through the quiet snowy forest of Fulufjället national park in the Swedish province Dalarna ...

 

... carrying the cross-country ski on my shoulders.

Finished: the Icelandic pullover Sátt

Finally I'm finished with the lopapeysa (Icelandic pullover) for my Dad which I started knitting two months ago! (I think I am a slow knitter ... But knitting a bulky yarn pullover with a lighter yarn doesn't speed up a project either ...)
I really like this pullover and hope it will fit him (it is supposed to be a christmas present). Furthermore, I found the perfect picture-taking background for it: on the barb wire fence close-by a row of differently coloured wool pieces has been snagged (from the sheep going in and out under it).
I might have a good photographing day today. Here you go:

Sátt lopapeysa on the fence accompanied by small balls of white and brown sheep wool.

Close-up of the pattern. You also may call this photo: Pullover as integrated part of the landscape. (Arty, arty!)

I hope it will fit my Dad.

Little raw bounty cakes

One thing I love when going grocery shopping in Iceland is looking out for Solla food. Solveig Eíriksdóttir (called "Solla Eíriks") simply is Icelands master of healthy and incredibly tasty food. She has her own organic food label, runs two restaurants in Reykjavík and was awarded as the best raw food maker in the world in 2011 and 2012. Furthermore, she regularly publishes recipies on one of the big news sites of Iceland. Her food label Himneskt contains lots of unusual foods which this island has never seen before (and much of Europe neither, I guess): chia seeds, chlorella, lucuma, ashawaganda, or wheat grass, just to name some of them.
Quite wow, this woman! I simply love to dig through her sortiment and try out everything.

Solla Eíriks, the "best raw food maker in the world" and simply Icelands leading healthy and tasty food master.

Last weekend and today I have been trying out one cake and a muffin recipy inspired by her. And they are just so simply to make and yummy! So I want to share one of them here:

Little raw bounty cakes
Ingredients:
3/4 cup dates (dried)
1/2 cup water
2-3 tablespoons coconut oil
3 cups coconut flour
1/2 cup cocoa
2 tea spoons vanilla
2 table spoons honey or agave syrup
Some chopped fresh fruit to put on top of them, I used apricots but bananas fit as well.

Chop the dates and boil them for about five minutes with the water until they have softened enough to blend them well in a blender. Mix together all ingredients (apart from the fresh fruit), place them in muffin forms and put them into the freezer for about one to two hours. Take them out, place the fresh fruit on top and serve, voilà!

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Edit (20 Oct.): I wasn't content with the photos I posted yesterday, so I took some new ones right now. The landscape outside is frozen and crispy and this literally called for a new photography genre: raw frozen cakes in raw frozen landscape! I just might have found a new passion ...

Lazy Town, lazy nation?

I say the healthiest place to be in Iceland is being in a kindergarten. It's taken great care of the kids eating healthy, being often outside and moving a lot. Every day the kids and I get spoiled with lots of fruit, vegetables, whole grain foods, and freshly baked bread. We eat a lot of white fish and very little meat. And we are often outside, also in windy and rainy weather. Hence, the little Icelanders are healthy, happy and full of energy. They love to move. Sadly, quite a contrast to the grown-ups! Did you know that Iceland is the fattest nation of Europe? Did you know that Iceland has one of the highest vehicles-per-person ratio of Europe? Did you know that it is often said that the national food is the hot dog? Did you know that my two Italian friends got a shock when they went to an Icelandic hot pot for the first time because of the sight of fat people in tight swim suits? ;)
However, it is done a lot to keep the smallest of the nation healthy and agile. A few days ago, the kindergarten kids and we were invited to attend the "Lazy Town Sport's Day" in the little town Borgarnes. "Lazy Town" is a famous Icelandic TV series in which the sporty hero Sportacus comes to a little town in which everybody is lazy (hence the name "Lazy Town") and gets them to move. Honestly, I don't know much about the TV series but the kids know everything about it and run around in little "Lazy Town" T-Shirts and Sportacus costumes.

Sportacus, the athletic hero of the Icelandic TV series "Lazy Town".

In Borgarnes, Sportacus himself (personated by a nice looking, athletic actor though not the main actor himself) entertained the kids by standing on his hands and doing all kinds of morning workouts and little movement games. I felt entertained too and in the end he told the kids to give two extra applauses for all the kindergarten teachers that have been so diligent in taking part in all the exercises. (I'm so proud, yes, I am! :) ) It followed a sprint, ball-throwing, long jump, goal shooting practice and a jumping/crawling/balancing course. A guy with a cart was running around between the kindergarten groups handing out "sport candy" which consisted of cucumber chops and tomato quarters. At the end of the sport's day, the kids were proud like crazy. (Me too.) So the next day we did a little training with them in the kindergarten and I handed out gold medals to all of them (which I had crafted a few weeks ago).

Nevertheless, I wonder a lot why so much of this nation has become a "lazy town". (Okay, to be corrective, there are actually two stereotypes of Icelanders: the immobile ones. And the super sporty ones who do marathons up and down the mountain slopes and bike around the island.) Well, there is indeed one factor that restricts moving in this place: the climate. There come roaring winds, there comes dense fog, there come intense snow storms. There come dark days in the wintertime. And it is not recommended to hike, run, bike or ski much when the weather behaves like a fly flap and you are the fly! Anyway, there are plenty of calm days. And you don't need to go to the wildest wilderness to move. There are plenty of ways and pathes calling "Run me!". There are plenty of mountains calling "Hike me!" There are plenty of hot pools calling "Swim me!" There are even plenty of gyms calling "Pay me!" if you prefer that. ;) And in addition, there are plenty of fresh vegetables growing all year round in geothermally heated greenhouses calling "Eat me!" Open your mind and listen!

Same same but different: An autumn journey to Sweden

Travelling is great!, my body tells me. It is like coming outside of a room with fuggy air and inhaling the oxygen deeply into the lungs. It can be like removing dusty glasses from your eyes and seeing clearly. But it can also be like putting on some glasses and seeing the world in a different colour.

Gauti, his mom, little sister and I flew out to Sweden yesterday morning. Altogether, I have spend two years in Sweden and think it's a wonderful and very beautiful country. So it was great coming back. Our trip didn't start especially well, though. Most flights from Iceland to Europe have early morning departures, hence we had to leave the farm at half past three at night. We all climbed into the old Nissan which I got just a few days ago and started driving. Both Gauti and I were with a "this car won't make it to the airport" feeling. One of the rims has dents and hence, the air was released slowly but constantly from the tire. The night was dark and the streets were lonely. The mountains were disguised in the darkness but the yellow lights of Reykjavik were sparkling on the South End of Faxaflói bay. "Maybe we will make it though", I thought when we entered Reykjavik. A clattering sound in the car told me something else. A quiet hissing from the right back tire, too. The car was literally slowly slumping under our butts and we made it into Hafnarfjörður, 35 km from the airport. Then the journey ended. And it was quiet and dark.
Icelanders are never panicking though. They course a bit which basically means putting all Icelandic course words into one sentence and uttering it fastly, period. Then they continue with practical stuff, locking the car, ordering a taxi, throwing the bags in and sleeping on the backseats. Not too bad actually.

Central Sweden welcomed us with bright sunshine, blue skies and bright autumn colours. A great contrast to the dark night in which we had left. And the travelling makes me seeing Uppsala so differently than when I had left it half a year ago. Mild. Like a new place but the same time like a home. A mixture hard to describe. I often feel this when I return to places twice or several times. They change. I change. It was like this when I went from Sweden to Iceland. It was like this when I went from Iceland to Sweden.

We rent this cozy house in the countryside and I felt so welcome when I entered it again. My books were welcoming me like friends. My wool socks knitted by my grandma were smiling at me in their bright colours (I don't know what I were thinking when I decided I wouldn't need them in Iceland ...). Our landlords treated us with spaghetti Bolognese and salad (and I had a hard time trying to speak Swedish again). All in all, we enjoy our days in Sweden a lot (it is good to have guests and showing them around).
The pictures are showing our love for autumn colours.

Uppsala's Domkyrka rising from behind the colourful autumn trees.

Horse chestnuts. I one heard that it's good to carry one of them in your pocket. It is supposed to protect you from colds.

Uppsala maple leaves, Iceland lopapeysa and Estonia hat: a happy mixture. (I call it "Estonia hat" because I bought on a ship journey from Estonia to Sweden.)

An "insect hotel" in the Botaniska Trädgården (botanical garden) in Uppsala.