Elves, Polar Bears, Jól, and a Little Bit of Skúli Skúlason

Welcome back for round two of The Hairy American. I’m sure you haven’t been able to contain your excitement in anticipation of this post. Hopefully the third installment will come a little quicker than this one did.
Happy Holidays! This simple winter greeting has led to loads of confusion in conversations I’ve had in the past month. After years of political correctness training from the public schools system and the media, I have been programmed to use “Happy Holidays” instead of the incendiary “Merry Christmas.” Iceland has a national religion (Lutheran), so everyone says “Gleðileg Jól” (Merry Christmas).
As you probably know, when Europeans use the word holiday, it is in reference to vacation. When I have asked people what they are doing for the holidays, they have told me where they intend to go over the summer. A Ukrainian replied “You mean this weekend?” and then questioned why I was getting in his business (I decided not to break out my “the Ukraine is weak” Seinfeld joke on him after that).
Christmas is a big deal here. The celebration takes place on the 24th, and the entire nation celebrates at exactly the same time. At 5:30 pm on Christmas Eve, the radio stations all go off the air and observe half an hour of silence. Right at 6:00, all of the church bells in the country ring and the radios come back on. Families eat dinner at this time and open gifts afterward.
The Christmas tradition here is really interesting and absolutely terrifying for children. I am going to do my best to explain the tradition as I understand it. They have 13 Santas here known as the Yule Lads or the Yuletide Lads. The Yule Lads are the children of Grýla and Leppalúði. The family also has a pet called the Christmas Cat. The Yule Lads are all named after the things that they do at or steal from your home if you are a child who has misbehaved (if you are interested in reading about each one, here are a couple websites with more information http://notendur.centrum.is/sjbokband/joh.html/yulelads00.html, http://simnet.is/gardarj/yule5.htm).
Everyone puts a shoe out for the Yule Lads to put a gift in. If they have been good, they get something nice. If they have been bad, they get something bad. A potato is the traditional bad gift, but I fail to see anything negative about free produce. If children have been especially bad, Grýla cooks them and eats them. Apparently Grýla is dead now because children have behaved so well and she needed to eat them to survive, but if they ever start misbehaving again, it is possible that she could return.
All kids are given new clothes for Christmas, so they are expected to wear something nice and new. If they don´t wear their new clothes at Christmas, the Christmas Cat (which is apparently the size of a house) will eat them. It is pretty easy to see how the threat of being eaten might keep kids in line a little better than a lump of coal in the stocking.
Life is pretty dark here right now. I go to work in the dark. I go home in the dark, and it’s dark most of the time when I look out my office window. The winter solstice (21 December) is quickly approaching, so at least after that, days will start getting longer again. Here is a picture from my balcony taken at 3:00 pm this past weekend. The sun is almost down at this point:


You tend to spend a lot less time outside when it gets dark, but here are some pictures from a while back. We took a hike to a waterfall. Soizic was our guide because she had been there before. After we got to a part of the stream that we couldn’t cross, we had to backtrack to the beginning and walk up above the little canyon. Three hours of walking led to zero waterfalls. When we drove out, we went about half a kilometer and passed the stream that leads to the waterfall. That’s the last time I use a French guide.
These are from while we were down in the canyon:








These are from up top:






I got too hot because I was wearing my sweet new hat that Cat knitted for me:


We found a dead sheep. I like to think that an arctic fox got it, but it was probably just old:


Mark, Cat, and I did a bit of geocaching (http://www.geocaching.com/) to keep ourselves entertained. Here we are with our treasure:




Skúli Skúlason, the rector of the school, had his 50th birthday party last month. Yes, I am aware that it is funny that the head of the school has the word school in his name twice. When people here throw a party, they don’t mess around. Skúli is friends with about two-thirds of the population of Iceland, so his party was huge, and it was by far the most extravagant birthday party I’ve ever been to. This was the setup of the stage:


They had free beer and wine, which apparently happens once a lifetime in Iceland. There were songs, slideshows, and skits for this party…. all in Icelandic. I have been learning the language, but I definitely wasn’t far enough along to know what the hell was happening at this thing. This is Bjarni K. Kristjánsson (my secondary adviser) and me:


I’m not entirely sure if he is waving at the camera or giving me some weird Icelandic version of rabbit ears. This is my friend Anup (Nepal) who is a rafting guide here:


Bjarni and Stefán Óli Steingrímsson (one of my professors):


We recently had the Hólar Christmas (not holiday) Party. I decided that my hair was getting a bit out of control and needed to be dealt with. It was definitely not as bad as when I decided, about a year and a half ago, to grow my hair out to donate to Locks of Love. I think we all remember how badly that little experiment turned out:


GROSS! Anyway, something had to be done about my hair and there was no way that I was going to spend 3300 kronur on a haircut, so I borrowed some clippers from Bjarni and decided it was time to show off the widow’s peak for the first time in about 12 years:


This is what I ended up looking like for the Christmas Party:


SICK! Here is my buddy Mark’s look for the Christmas Party (apparently the wispy neck-beard and the side-part are acceptable looks in New Zealand):


Me, Soizic, Bjarni, and Rán Sturlaugsdóttir


I went to Reykjavik to meet with my primary adviser, Jón S. Ólafsson, a week ago, and I missed the most exciting thing to happen in the harbor outside of our office since I’ve been here. They unloaded a couple of Greenland sharks, which are used to make the hákarl, from one of the fishing boats. Fortunately, Mark was generous enough to share these pictures with me:




As you’ve probably noticed, all of the Icelandic names end with son or dóttir. They have a patriarchal naming system here. Everyone’s last name is that of his or her father with son added on the end for males and dóttir added on the end for females.
One thing that is really interesting here is the belief in little people. Most of the people in Iceland believe in elves. There have been a lot of cases where they have taken the homes of the elves under consideration when building roads (http://www.ismennt.is/vefir/ari/alfar/alandslag/aelvesmod.htm). There is actually a spot on my drive to work where they had to change a road they were building because of elves. I haven’t seen one yet, but I suppose anything is possible.
You might have heard about the polar bears that showed up here last year. Both of them arrived in Skagafjörður (where I live), and one of them was about five minutes from my office (http://www.news.com.au/story/0,23599,23879662-23109,00.html). As you may have gathered with the elf stories, people tend to be fairly superstitious in this country. There was a local farmer here who had a dream that there was going to be a third polar bear. The farmer’s dream became national news and there was a sighting of the third bear (http://www.icelandreview.com/icelandreview/search/news/Default.asp?ew_0_a_id=308034) which turned out to be a sheep. People like to point out the lady who claimed to see third bear when she’s out around town.
I have to apologize for the lack of pictures in this post. Cat has been stranded in the US for a while because of some snags in immigration. Fortunately, she’ll be returning this Thursday, so the number and quality of photographs will be much improved for the next time. I’m sure she’s thrilled that she gets to come back to this:


Thanks for stopping by. I’ll have something better for you next time,

--Dan (The Hairy American)

PS - I saw that Iowa got a New Year's Day bowl. Go Hawks!

The Hairy American Moves to Iceland: Work, Horses, and Weather

This is my first installment of The Hairy American (all credit to Jeff Duda for the idea and the title). Most people know that I am anti-blog: no one is so important that others should go to a website to read his/her thoughts. Having said that, welcome to my blog.

I will probably update it infrequently, so I will send an email when new material has been posted. There is no need to check the page if you haven’t received an email notifying you of an update.

We have been in Iceland for about two months now, so I figured it was time to provide a comprehensive update.

We live in a town—Holar—of about 200 people. It is the oldest bishopric in Iceland, so it is a place of historical significance, and we get a fair amount of tourist activity. Holar celebrated its 900^th year in 2006 (1106-2008, pretty crazy). The town is in a valley between two long rows of mountains. This is the end of the valley from our balcony:

*You can click on pictures to expand them*

We live in the municipality of Skagafjordur (northwest Iceland). A municipality is sort of equivalent to a county. The largest town in Skagafjordur is Saudarkrokur (about a 25 minute drive from Holar). I work in Saudarkrokur, and it is where we get all of our groceries.

I’ll give you the boring work/school stuff really quickly. I, unfortunately, missed the field season for this year, so all of my work right now consists of lab and office work. I am writing my research proposal right now, so life isn’t too exciting. In a month or so, I will be going to Reykjavik to learn how to identify the local invertebrate fauna. I went to Reykjavik (southwest Iceland) a month and a half ago to look at some potential field sites, but I think that most of my field sites are going to be down along the south coast where most of the volcanic activity is. The trip to Reykjavik was nice because I got to see the types of places I will be working. I pretty much walk around on top of giant volcanoes and go to places where water is flowing out of the rocks.

My two advisers:

I am standing between the two springs shown in this picture. Even though they are right next to each other, they are about 20 degrees (centigrade) different in temperature:

Yep, this is where I work:

Cat just got a job working in the lab here, so she will be processing samples for the next few months. The job is basically just to get her immigration status up to code, and then she can look around for other positions. It seems that there are more opportunities here than we originally thought, but it is too hard to find out about them from the US. Now that we’re here, finding a good job should be a lot easier.

Our apartment is pretty neat. We don't have a hot water heater because all of our hot water comes from a nearby hot spring. It's nice because you can never run out of hot water. Unfortunately, it does have a bit of a sulfur smell to it. It only takes about a week to get used to the smell. The cold water is clean, odor free, and delicious.

Our place has radiators that heat it. The radiators are controlled by a knob, which is actually just a faucet. Water from the hot spring is circulated through the radiator, and it heats our place (which means that we have no utility bill).

Since we don’t have money or a car, we mostly keep ourselves entertained by hiking around the Holar trails. There is one to a river in the neighboring valley:

It's hard to go hiking without seeing some sheep:

*I know what you're thinking, and no, I haven't.*

Another trail goes up the mountain behind our apartment to an area called Gvendarskal. We have been up there a few times now. This is what it looks like up on Gvendarskal:

We have gone to a local "hot pot" a couple of times. This is just an area with thermal springs. It's pretty nice because it is right by the ocean. Since it is naturally heated and not chemically-treated, there are algae growing on the rocks, so it takes a little getting used to.

Me at the hot pot:

My lab-mate Mark (New Zealand):

My lab-mate Soizic (France) and me:

Cat and a bunch of Swedish girls who just showed up:

This really put a damper on things. One minute you're having a nice day at the hot pot and enjoying the scenery. The next minute, five Swedish girls show up and strip down to bikinis. It was awful.

Our first real cultural experience came a month ago when we went to the horse roundup. The roundup took place about 5 minutes (driving) from our place. Many of the local farmers’ horses have lived up in the mountains for about four months prior to the roundup. On the Saturday of the roundup all of the horses (about 3500) are driven out of the mountain and brought down to a large paddock:

There is a large corral with a central arena where they let in about 80 horses at a time. Once the group of 80 horses has been sorted, they let in another group.

Empty arena:

Arena with horses:

Horses when they are in the arena:

Each farm that is there has its own corral off of the main arena with a door that separates the two. When a farmer sees his/her horses, he/she goes into the arena and tries to drive the horses to the corral.

Empty corral:

The farmers on the far side of the arena have three horses corralled, but only two of them are theirs. They maneuver to release the one that isn’t theirs while keeping the two that are:

Sometimes a horse gets into the wrong corral, so the farmers have to get it out while not letting any of their horses escape:

We were able to get these pictures and videos because we knew someone who knew someone who knew the farmer. It doesn’t take much more than that to be granted access. The only way to get kicked out of the corral is if you try to help. Lots of times people want to help, but they don’t understand how the process works, so they end up getting in the way or doing something wrong. It is pretty neat to get a chance to get up close and personal with the horses. Sometimes they even try to eat you:

You may be wondering how people get the courage to jump into the arena with 80 confused horses running full speed. That can be explained with one simple picture:

After a farm has gotten all of its horses, there is usually some sort of celebration:

After the roundup gets over in the afternoon, everyone drinks all day before the big dance/party. The party was in Saudarkrokur, so we took a bus from Holar to the party. The bus didn't leave for Saudarkrokur until 11:00 pm, and it didn't head back to Holar until about 5:30 am. Fortunately, we didn't start partying at 10:00 am like most of the Icelanders. Unfortunately, they were still able to outparty us.

The horse roundup was, by far, the most interesting cultural experience so far. The hakarl (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hakarl) may have been a close second.

The weather was pretty cold and rainy for the first five weeks. Having lived my entire life up until now in the Midwest, I figured I had a good handle on the unpredictable nature of weather; this place takes the cake though. Aside from hiking, watching the weather from our window has been another great source of entertainment. Our second night here, some fog rolled into our valley. It took about 15 minutes for the valley to fill with fog, and the fog stayed for about 36 hours. After 36 hours, it took about 15 minutes to leave once it started going. Here is a shot of it rolling in:

It has been snowing a lot for the past couple weeks. This is what it looks like from my balcony now (not quite the same angle as above, but you probably get the idea):


I have seen several sea birds and one raptor. I have seen one seal, but they won't be out in great numbers for a month or two. I have not seen any whales yet, but supposedly it's pretty common to see whales. I have yet to see a puffin, but they should be around soon too. I don't expect to see an arctic fox, but I haven't abandoned hope yet. I have eaten a few fish (some cooked, some dried, some rotten) and some horse. Horse is a lot better than you would expect, so you don't have to be quite as hungry as the old adage would have you believe.

I have chosen not to address the economic crisis (Iceland's nor the United States') at this time.

Thanks for reading this, and I will let you know when I have an update available,

--Dan (The Hairy American)