News and Nothings

Þetta reddast (It’ll work out—Iceland’s unofficial national motto)

I graciously decided not to complain about the weather here this past week because Virginia, where practically everybody who would even consider reading this blog lives, has been buried under who knows how much snow. I’ve stopped tallying the inches—though perhaps the people who had to shovel it haven’t.

Instead, a report on a wonderful annual cultural event, and then an explanation for my Icelandic quote of the week (above).


This cultural event is called Safnanótt, or Museum Night, in which the city’s museums stay open late (most of them until midnight) and have free admission, plus many special events scheduled just for the occasion. With my friends, I took advantage of this Safnanótt to see the Settlement Exhibition (built around the excavated remains of the oldest manmade structure in Reykajvík, from about 871 AD), the National Museum, and the Saga Museum at the Perlan (that funky domed building I keep taking pictures of).

I didn’t take any pictures at the Settlement Exhibition because it was too dark, but at the National Museum they had a ballet troop dancing around the exhibits (how’d they get permission for that?!), and then an Icelandic couple sang folk songs in the foyer. What was really lovely about the folk music was that even the obscure ones were familiar to some people in the audience—an older woman behind me hummed the tunes the whole time. And then they had sing-along at the end, and every single Icelander, young and old, new every word to every song. Not only that, but they sang them out, loud, proud, and in tune. (Can you imagine that ever happening in the U.S. unless there was a campfire or heavy drinking involved?) Reykjavík is a bustling, modern city, but some spark of folk life still survives here, and that is charming.

The Saga Museum is the silicon answer to an old wax-works show; it uses characters from the sagas to tell the story of Iceland’s settlement and medieval history. Some people find it kitschy (especially the area by the gift shop where you’re invited to try on the chainmail and not-so-accurately-reproduced helmets and swords. But the artistry is really impressive—the figures all have eyelashes and individual hairs on their arms, and half of them were made from casts of the artist’s relatives. Even the artist himself modeled for the figure of Ingólfr Arnarson, Iceland’s first settler. (I know this because the artist was actually there, and he told us himself while chatting up my friend.) This picture is of Snorri Sturluson, the Icelandic Chaucer I wrote about after our trip to his homestead last semester. Decidedly more stout and Santa-Claus-y than the version in the statue at Reykholt!

Now, to allay the curiosity as to why “þetta reddast” was my lead-in for this week:

I am in a masters’ program here. Masters’ programs entail a thesis project. I wanted to study a particular manuscript for this project. This particular manuscript is in Denmark. (Is it just me, or is that ironic, after I trek to the edge of the Arctic Circle in quest of studying manuscripts in person?) After some negotiation, digital images of this manuscript were requested from the collection in Copenhagen, and then it was up to the archivists there and my advisors here to make sure the photos were taken. This was before Thanksgiving. “Oh, certainly,” they told me, “you’ll have them by Christmas—probably earlier.” Around Christmas: “Oh, yes,” they said, “by New Year’s at the latest.” Mid-January: “Soon, soon, we promise.” The first of February: “By the end of the week, you’ll have them.” Last Wednesday, I finally get an email with the subject line: “At last.”

I now have images of a very homely little manuscript of a law code, in whose margins some industrious doodler has written probably 20 or 30 proverbs and notes. Non-medievalists (actually, probably medievalists too) will wonder how on earth such a thing could be inflated into the subject of a thesis, but I’m very excited to start work on it…as soon as I figure out how to read the handwriting.

Either way, this whole odyssey just goes to prove that Icelanders (and apparently Danes as well) fully believe that “it’ll work out”—and usually they’re right. Now, if the same magic would only work to get me a lease for an apartment in Virginia next year….