Semester Two, Week One

Glæsilegt! (Splendid!—but for the Firefly fans out there, etymologically it’s really more like “Shiny”!)

Having been back for a week and finally gotten over the jetlag (so much harder the second time!), I feel the time is ripe for a few more anecdotes about life in Reykjavík. Mostly because it’s been dark and rainy and I haven’t done anything actually exciting.

First, a story from before I left, right before Christmas: I was walking down Laugavegur (the main shopping street) when what to my wandering eye did appear but a sign outside a restaurant that proclaimed: “Christmas special: Reindeer soup!” I seem to have been the only one who thought that was terribly ironic. Which of Santa’s sleigh-pullers got the short straw, I wonder?



Next, a comment on what it’s like at the moment: New Year’s Eve in Reykjavík is famed to be an amazing party. Besides the plenteous alcohol (which even on an average weekend evening flows in staggering volume), the city shoots off fireworks with reckless abandon. I’ve seen pictures, and seriously, it looks like the city is exploding from the inside. Usually, the streets are vacuumed (literally—with a giant ride-on vacuum) every Saturday and Sunday morning, because there are no laws here against carrying alcohol in public, so the streets are littered with copious amounts of beer cans and broken glasses after each night’s parties. However, as the New Year’s celebrations seem to go on for several weeks (I still occasionally hear fireworks being set off), the city seems to have abandoned the whole vacuuming idea until the festivities taper off to their normal levels. Hence, the streets are littered with fireworks remnants like these. Not very tidy, but a testimony to one awesome party.

Now a note on cuisine: I’ve commented already on the traditional foods here, so we’ll let that rest until I actually get the courage to try some. But the Icelanders know their desserts, I’ll give them that. One of their particular concoctions is the combination of chocolate and black licorice. I thought this would be nasty, even though I like both chocolate and licorice (I also like ketchup and ice cream—doesn’t mean I want to put them together!), but it turns out to be quite a nice combination. I recommend it to anyone traveling in a Nordic country, where my Finnish friend tells me the idea is widespread. They also have salt-licorice flavored Extra chewing gum, which doesn't come quite as highly recommended, but like currant-flavored Starbursts in Ireland, it's just one of those local quirks you've got to try once.



Finally, two little anecdotes about the birds on Tjörnin, the city’s pond. There are still a fair number of geese and a couple of ducks, but the main winter inhabitants are the swans. They’re beautiful birds, and one day I was walking past the pond on the way to school and I saw some dozen pairs of them standing on the ice with their heads under their wings, sleeping. “How lovely,” I thought. “Too bad I don’t have my camera.” It was dark anyway, so it wouldn’t have mattered. Two hours later, when it was lighter, I was walking back to my apartment to get my wallet, which I’d forgotten that morning—and the swans were still there. “Well,” I thought, “I’ll grab my camera while I’m at home and see if they’re still here when I get back.” Lo and behold, when I returned 45 minutes later, they were! “How lucky,” I thought, and reached in my bag to take out the camera. At that very moment—and I swear I’m not the one who scared them—they started honking in alarm and took off en masse, leaving me with just one blurred picture for my pains.

But I got a cute picture of the ducks, so I suppose it wasn’t an entire waste.

A few days later, I was walking back past the pond and saw a raven going at the body of a dead starling in the rushes. As I watched, he pulled the thing’s head off and flew to the field with it, where he proceeded to announce his conquest with a loud caw before he set about tearing it to pieces. Welcome to life in the wild. I was reminded of a song we sang in choir here about a raven inviting his friend to share with him a dead sheep he was very excited to have found….

Oh, and I did manage to get out of my Monday class—so I have classes only Tuesday through Thursday this semester. Those of you with real jobs, try not to hate me; try to live vicariously through my long weekends. That, and remember that I’ll be frantically trying to finish the work for the whole week over the weekend because I don’t have time Tuesday through Thursday!