Lights! Action! Silly camera.

Tónleikar undir norðurljósum (A concert under the Northern Lights)

After three months’ worth of preparing our twenty-minute contribution to Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, Háskólakórinn (the University Choir) finally gave its performance, this past Saturday and then again on Monday! We were really just window-dressing, since the majority of the symphony is…well, symphonic. The orchestra played for almost an hour before we even came onstage! But the Ninth Symphony is so energetic and thunderous, we didn’t feel like we missed out being only in the climax. Here’s a youtube link of part of the final number! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gipJ3JSUde8

The church where we performed (Langholtskirkja) is one of the most popular concert venues in the area—and you can tell how small a population Reykjavík has from the fact that it only seats 500 people. It’s also one of the more “normal” looking Icelandic churches (in contrast with the Sydney-Opera-House one in Kopavogur and the freaky stingray one northeast of town). However, it’s way out in the suburbs, a bus-ride of several miles, and I had some rather comic adventures trying to get there the first time.

First, I got on the right bus but going the wrong direction. Oops. The driver let me off downtown with the instructions to get on a different bus and to get off again at a place called Vogar. (Keep in mind that this is five o’clock and dark as midnight, by the way.) I get on this new bus and discover that the driver is probably the only person in Reykjavík who doesn’t speak more than a few words of English. Half in English, half in Icelandic, I ask him to tell me when we reach Vogar so I can get off. He doesn’t go to Vogar, he tells me. I think you do, I tell him politely. He tries to get me to change buses at the terminal, and I finally pull out my bus map and show him the stop—which, by the way, is in fact on his route. Fine, fine. We drive away and eventually he stops and calls over his shoulder, “Vogar!”

So I get off. There’s nothing but suburban neighborhoods all around. Where is this church? After hemming and hawing for awhile, I head for some neon lights, find myself at a movie theater, and beg directions. After several attempts, I find a local who tells me I am not, in fact, at Vogar, but a good mile away from it. (I won’t say that the bus driver was being vindictive: it’s nicer to think that he just didn’t know his route in the dark.) She inks out a path on my map through the housing areas for me, and I set off.

I wander the suburbs in the dark for half an hour, never entirely lost but always half-disoriented, and finally I stumble on the church. Thank goodness! But the doors are locked! Deciding I am entirely star-crossed for the day, I circle the church and at last find a side door that is unlocked. I go inside, and for all my adventures, I’m still early for rehearsal!

Fortunately, I seem to have exhausted my bad luck that evening, and I had no problems getting to Langholtskirkja and back after that. In fact, I think the stars must have felt they owed me one, because on our second attempt to glimpse those elusive Northern Lights on Sunday night, we succeeded! It wasn’t one of those electrically stunning “curtain” displays, but we saw them nonetheless: a green, glowing band snaking across the sky over Akranes, on the other side of the bay. I’m very glad to have seen it, because it’s one of those things you’re just supposed to do when you go to these crazy subarctic countries.

A group of us sat on the rocks in the freezing cold, in the biting wind (biting but not throw-you-on-your-back forceful this time), with the sea at our feet and the stars overhead and the aurora borealis on the horizon. The stars themselves were stunningly clear; the North Star is directly overhead—talk about disorienting! For almost an hour, the lights shifted and moved as slowly a green sunrise—hence the name!—and it was still flirting with us when we finally left for fear of never feeling our fingers again.

My camera, though great in other respects, doesn’t have the capability of taking an exposure longer than a second or two, and you need much longer exposures for something like the Northern Lights, but I discovered when I adjusted the level on the shots I did take, that even though there’s no color to the image, you actually can see the streak in the sky that is the lights. Just imagine it in eerie, unnatural, beautiful green, with the stars peaking through where it’s thinnest. (The bright light on the right is the town of Akranes. Too bad we couldn’t arrange a blackout for the event.)

This is the last week of classes for us, and although Icelanders don’t have a Thanksgiving (I imagine it would be called something like Þakkadagur if they did), I’m still thankful for all the wonderful things I’m getting to experience here, and for the fact that I’ll soon be coming home for Christmas as well!

Happy Thanksgiving!