Stranded knitting

Sitting on the old sofa, stranded knitting, peppermint tea, chocolate cookie, the wind blowing over the wide brown green landscapes, light autumn rain dropping down, light yellow sky in the West.
So cosy.

Stranded knitting with earthy colours.

Clutter house

Treasure house!, I think when I look around in my new home where Gauti and I moved one week ago. Or no, rather clutter house! That's hard to decide for me. I make my way through an endless amount of stuff which is stored in shelves, cupboards and boxes. The house itself is cosy and in good condition. It is 50 m away from Gauti's family's home and is around 10 years old. It is the former home of Gauti's grandparents. His granddad died a few years ago and his grandma went into a retirement home shortly after that. Since then the house has been empty and lots of stuff has been accumulating in it. Most of the furniture is very old, almost ancient. The beds we are currently sleeping in look like they are 100 years old, the slatted frame made of planks which look like someone found them on the beach a very long time ago. (Oh, and some of them break away with a loud bang during the nights.) In the lavatory we found an old gramophone. In a very old cupboard which is only hold together by its own wryness we found several boxes with letters, postcards and presents from all over the world. Gauti's grandma was in a letter writing club and had a couple of pen friends in far-away places like Australia and Nepal. (Oh my, I love to dig through those precuious letters and cards!) A typecase with teaspoons from all over the world. In the living room I found a box with a brown bracelet made of man's hair. I thought it was quite ugly but Gauti's mom got all excited because it turned out to be an ancient family treasure which she wants to bring to a museum for age determination. And then the books! There are several hundred books in the house, the Icelandic sagas in several versions, Icelandic nature books, "Íbúatal" (which is the ancient "Icelandic facebook": books where every single person who lives on this island is listed with information where and when he is born, his family, his work(s), and so on), and more. There was also standing a weird machine in the kitchen which is supposed to kill all bacteria in the air.
Let the pictures tell for themselves:

The living room after I cleaned it today and threw out the clutter. Notice: no Icelandic home without a piece of selv-painted art on the wall! (I don't know who the painter is.)

Kitchen.

Ever wondered how to hunt a seal? Take a look into the book series "Icelandic maritime folkways" where seal hunting, seal dissambling, seabird egg collecting, and many more (brutal) techniques are explained with detailled illustrations. I left the book series in the shelv in case a war cuts us off from the rest of the world and we need to rely again on the old hunting techniques. You never know!

And if you ever need to build an ancient Icelandic rowing boat, here's a manual.

Clothes pegs and September landscapes.

Replacement habits

I have a weakness for inspirational blogs and find new ones almost every day. Among those I check regularly are zen habits and tiny Buddha. The first one is the manifest of Leo Babauta, a U.S.American who changed his life from living unhealthy to living sustainably, healthy and mindfully, and he gained a great deal of wisdom on his way which he shares in his blog. tiny Buddha is a refreshing collective blog of many different amazing people who share their very own life wisdom.

From the zen habits I learnt the concept of replacement habits. Our daily lifes consist to a great part of our habits. Like brushing our teeth in the morning and evening. Like having breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Like going to work every day. Like having coffee in the mornings. And so on and so on. Our habits are the frame work of our days. However, sometimes we want to change our habits. Like quitting smoking or drinking or becoming a vegetarian or doing more sports. Or we just want to try something new because we want to get to know ourselves better. Often this is difficult for us and we fail at changing habits in the long run. However, Leo writes really nicely about two practices which make habit changes much easier. They are "baby steps" (starting small, aiming big) and "replacement habits" (the new habit takes the place of the old habit). I had some good experience with both of these concepts, and I just so strongly support them and like to share them.
So, recently I introduced a replacement habit into my life, and that was when I quit using facebook three weeks ago. I had grown tired of short superficial status reports, of bad-quality instagram pictures of food, and of hash tags which don't work and the present facebook hype (like you are not a whole human without a facebook account). So I deleted my account to escape my urge of checking facebook every day (a habit which was hard to change for me and it annoyed me) and to check how life without facebook feels in a facebook-ruled world.
So how is it? Actually, not bad at all, I got used to the facebook-free life pretty quickly. Not least because of my new replacement habits. Which are:
- writing this blog.
- following blogs of my friends and other inspirational blogs (full blog entries are often much more profound than short facebook status updates).
- being on ravelry (which is the "facebook for knitters" and I like it because it's a huge source of knitting inspiration and of many beautiful free knitting patterns).


This works so fine. I recommend replacement habits to everyone who wants to change a habit. It does not only make it easier, it is also an interesting way of getting to know yourself better.

Sheep. And sheep. And sheep. And sheep. Gathered together.

In Iceland, there are several times as many sheep as humans. And most of these sheep spend the summer in the remote highlands grazing on the fresh mountain herbs. It has been a tradition for many centuries (a viking tradition) to bring the sheep to the highlands in June and gather them from the highlands in September. And inbetween they are free to go wherever they want to go. There is nobody taking care of them.
The "free as an Icelandic sheep" life ends in September when the huge sheep gathering takes place. The sheep gatherers travel with their horses to the highlands and stay there for several days riding around, trying to find all the sheep (which are spread over a huge area!), gathering them and bringing them home. This is not easy, especially because the weather is very unstable in September. There is literally a whole line of low pressure areas above the North Atlantic Ocean waiting to hit the island and they bring cold wind gusts and pouring rain and snow storms and dense fog and often all of this mixed together into one "big weather".
Last weekend, there has been such a "big weather" (a snow storm with wind gusts up to 40 m/s, in one place 71 m/s) running over North and East Iceland. And in this big weather, the sheep gatherings took place and all the sheep were brought down from the remote highlands. (Honestly, I have no idea how the sheep gatherers survived this crazy weather but they just did!) They are gathered into a so-called réttir (sheep pen) and sorted into different compartments which belong to the different farms in a certain area. Many of the Icelandic "réttir" are quite special because they look like a bunch of vikings built them long time ago: their low walls are completely made of lava stones which are piled onto each other only hold together by their own weight!
Gauti and I were taking a look at how the sheep came down from the highlands last weekend and were gathered into the oldest "réttir" of the country: Fljótstunguréttir. Let the pictures speak for themselves:

See the tiny dots at the margin of the big lava field?

Yes, they are thousands of sheep coming down the highland.

A sheep gatherer riding infront of the huge sheep flock

Run, sheep, run!

This horse has been busy gathering the sheep for several days on the cold windy rainy highlands and now it waits exhaustedly that all the sheep run into the sheep pen.

Needless to say: more sheep. Finding their way over the uneven lava field.

All gathered into the sheep pen Fljótstunguréttir, build of lava stones.

Í berjamó

Að vera í berjamó - being berrypicking - is what many Icelanders do from the end of August till the beginning of September. No surprise, great parts of the island seem simply to consist of blueberries and crow berries! There are actually two kinds of blueberries in Iceland, the European Blueberry (Vaccinium myrtillis) and the so-called Northern Bilberry (Vaccinium uligonosum). The second one is more common (it is literally everywhere) and it was the one Gauti and I were after today.

 I had been sick for two days and it was the first time I went outside after lying in bed and on the sofa for two days. It was beautiful. It had been cold those two days and the leaves of the birch and willows are turning yellow fastly and the mountain slopes become red and brown from red blueberry and dwarf birch leaves.

Litte red birch

Vivid red leaves of a dwarf birch tree (a tree which gets only about 30 cm long)

Birch trees becoming yellow

The sun was shining and White Wagtails, Wrens, and Redwings were jumping around. But then the Raven came and took one of the White Wagtails, so now it is one less.

We went "í berjamó" close to a little pine and spruce forest and picked within short time enough blueberries to fill a little lunch box (and to eat some handfulls).

Icelandic bluberries in the box and around the box.

The litte forest was also a tiny fungi paradise and I took a picture of a little Cystoderma family:

Little, a bit damaged Cystoderma family.

So autumn has arrived and this day is actually just one calm sunny day between two snowstorms ... (The weather website is posting storm warnings like every second day.) Crazy.

Drink milk. Learn Icelandic.

Icelandic is an old language and it derived from the Old Norse which the vikings were speaking in Scandinavia many centuries ago. It is a complex language with a complex grammar (four cases, plenty of inflections and noun declensions, rune letters, different words to address males and females, and so on) and remarkably, hardly any foreign word makes it into the language. Most Icelanders are eager to keep their language "clean" of foreign "slang words" and whenever a new modern term comes up (like computer or mobile phone or app), they get creative coming up with an appropriate Icelandic term.
So a computer is called "tölva" consisting of "völva" (prophetess) and "tala" (number). A phone is called sími which originally meant cord, and electricity is called "rafmagn" and translates as "amber power". There are also some pretty weird terms, like a German is a "Þjóðverji" (a nation defender) and a pregnant woman is "ólétt" (not light).

So how to make all these newly created Icelandic terms public? You would need a place where everybody sees the words and has enough time to study it. Like ... on milk cartons. Yes. That's true. New Icelandic words are made public on the milk. Everybody buys milk and don't you read the back of your milk carton while having your cereals in the morning? You get the concept.

So this is how the back of an Icelandic milk carton looks like:

Or like this:

Displaying a little story with a picture and an explanation of the new term shall put them into the minds of people. And everybody can suggest changes or post comments on the milk company's web page www.ms.is. A weird system? A funny system? An extreme system? Go ahead and have your own opinion on Icelandic language purism and the milk cartons. In the meantime I translate the two little stories for you. :)

Drusius' favourite
The Roman imperator Tiberius had a son named Drusius. He grow so fond of broccoli that he excluded any other kind of food for a whole month. When his hair got a vivid green colour he finally came to his senses and started with a more diverse diet again.

Spergilkál is a new term for broccoli and it is called like that because it resembles asparagus. Broccoli is a fairly new vegetable on Iceland and is also known as "sprotakál" (sprouting cabbage). Which term do you prefer, spergilkál or sprotakál? Go to www.ms.is and tell us your opinion!

A sentimental freezer (a very weird Icelandic expressiong translating as"lack of emotions" ...) 
Þormóður dumped Þorgerður after they had spend a summer together in Strandir in the North, and he had also convinced himself that she just didn't show enough emotions. When the winter came he started to miss her a lot. Þormóður was very lonely. But it was too late to try again because Þorgerður had gotten married to Breki in october.
The term "dömpa" derives directly from the English term "to dump" and made its way into the Icelandic language. Often the word is used when lovers break up with each other. Do you like this new word or do you want to propose another term?

A new lopapeysa in progress

A what? A lopapeysa? What the h*** is that?

When traveling to Iceland one of the most remarkable fashion items you encounter is the lopapeysa (translates as wool pullover). Simply everyone wears a lopapeysa: children, grown-ups, city dwellers in Reykjavik, farmers in remote corners of the island, those who are after the latest fashion and those who see clothes just as some practical thing. Everyone.

Lopapeysa mania: everyone in Iceland wears one! (Picture: www.istex.is)

The lopapeysa comes in many different patterns and colours and is hand-knitted with Icelandic sheep wool. When you like knitting and travel to Iceland you end up wanting to knit a lopapeysa by yourself. It is like there is no escape from it. I have gone into the "Knit a lopapeysa!" mania several times and knitted one for myself and one for my boyfriend and one for my grandma and since one and half weeks a new peysa is on my knitting needles, a present for my dad.

Lopapeysa in progress.

I won't reveal the pattern yet but the pullover will be in three colours. I am knitting one of the models from the Icelandic knitting magazine LOPI but use a slightly thinner wool than they suggested, so I had to recalculate the size a bit. (For you knitting nerds: I use Léttlopi instead of two-stranded Plötulopi.) The main colour is one of my favourite wool colours, called "mýri" (marsh colour) in Icelandic. It is a mossy dark green with a few tiny patches of light green and white in it. When knitting with Icelandic wool, one encounters now and then small grass and heather pieces in the yarn. I love to knit those into the pullover, they remind me of the sheep grazing in the highlands getting those beautiful plants stuck into their wool and I would never remove them from my knitted crafts. Here is a close-up picture of the yarn, showing a little piece of heather stuck in the wool.

Close-up of Icelandic Léttlopi in "mýri" (marsh colour).

There are some long fibers sticking out which make the lopapeysas to some extent water-repellent while the shorter soft fibers make them keeping the body heat, so they are really nice to wear in cold and wet weather. The wool might look scratchy, and it is in the beginning, but it softens a lot when washing it carefully with a mild conditioner (I use one without perfume).

I am looking forward myself to see the finished lopapeysa.

Oh, and by the way, the term lopapeysa derived from both Icelandic and French! Lopi means wool and peysa means pullover or sweater, but the word peysa originates from the French term "paysan" (farmer). When French fishermen came to Iceland long time ago they were eager to buy the traditional warm pullovers the farms wore. Pointing at the farmers saying "Paysan!" the farmers assumed they meant the pullovers and happily adopted the term into the Icelandic language.

Early autumn signs

When I came home from work today the sun was shining, it was warm and there was no wind (quite a difference to the snow storm and the pouring rain and wind gusts a few days ago). And I felt like hiking and running and photographing and writing and posting a letter which has been lying around for a couple of days. Quite a lot of things! So I thought a bit about this and then decided to go on a trip which combines all of the above. I packed a little backpack with my camera and the letter, laced my running shoes and headed for Snorri's little shop at the Hraunfossar waterfalls, 6 km from Húsafell. There is a paved road between Húsafell and Hraunfossar and there is also a horse path. I ran the first four kilometres on the paved road. Now, since september has come, there is not much traffic anymore, which makes it possible to run on the road without worrying too much about cars. Climbing over two fences leads to a gravel path leading through little downy birch forests directly to the Hraunfossar waterfalls. I ran-hiked the path and took some photos on the way. Autumn has arrived and is changing the landscape slowly and I tried to catch the early autumn signs with the camera. Here is a little slide show:

View on the lava field Hallmundarhraun, the Húsafell forest and the mountains Tunga, Strútur and Eiríksjökull glacier.

View on Oköxl, a part of the glacier Ok, the smallest glacier of Iceland.

Seed heads of white dryas (Dryas octopetala).

Icelandic downy birch forest still in summer colours.

The first leaves have become yellow and orange.

Black crowberries (Empetrum nigrum). They are edible and mellow now.

Birch bolete (Leccinium scabrum), a wide-spread edible mushroom in Iceland, forming mycorrhiza with the birch trees.

Last but not least a sheep portrait. Did you know that there are several times as many sheep and lambs on Iceland (more than a million) than humans (320.000)?

 

A full wet hike on half of a mountain

The local mountain of Reykjavik is called Esja. It is a long mountain range stretching from the East to the West with its highest point being 914 m above sea level. (Actually, its highest point is also called Esja.) Due to its closeness to Reykjavik it is the most hiked mountain of Iceland with around 80 trails leading up. And there is even a yearly competition called Mt. Esja Ultra where people run up and down the mountain and the one who can do it most of the times wins (Iceland actually holds a couple of crazy extreme terrain long distance runs ...).

Mt. Esja seen from Hafnarfjörður (I took the picture in April).

So when Gauti and I were invited to a family reunion in Reykjavik on sunday we decided to use the journey to hike up Esja. We packed ourselves into a layer of warm clothes under a layer of good rain clothes and started the journey. The wind was blowing strong that day along the South West coastline and strong wind in Iceland means wind gusts gaining power by rushing down the mountain slopes. When you are walking or driving between such a mountain slope and the coast you really feel how the wind suddenly hits you from the side trying to push you off the road and the best is to hold the steering wheel with both hands then. In addition, it started raining and grey clouds were disguising the mountain slopes. But we decided to be tough hikers and challenge Esja anyway. The main path up the mountain is well-marked and starts leading through some little forests and lupin fields, quite beautiful (though the lupins are faded by now).

The first part of the path leads trough little forests.

 Quite a lot of people were on the path and some of them were runners (training for Esja Ultra?!). And then there was a young tourist couple walking up, both in chucks, tight jeans and thin jackets wearing trash bags over them against the rain, the girl with a huge fabric backpack without any suspender belt. Really, I do understand why the rescue teams are so often busy picking up tourists which are half frozen to death from some mountains!
But unfortunately, we didn't make it ourselves to the top. It was windy and it started raining, raining a lot. After only half an hour the rain had make its way through the good layer of rain clothes and we were wet, the wind pressing the wet cold clothes against our skin. The view on Reykjavik was ... non existing. The whole landscape beneath us was veiled by thick grey clouds and with no "great view award" ahead of us we decided to turn around and go back.
So we did not challenge the mountain but instead the weather challenged us. (And never never challenge back the weather in Iceland!) Here are some pictures anyway. To be continued on a clear day, I hope. 

Gauti trying to look at Reykjavik which was veiled in grey thick clouds.

A beautiful creek higher up the mountain.

Gauti waiting for turning back (but I was busy challenging the lense of my camera to take a picture in the pouring rain ...).