Iceland
Sarah Lyall: “Many Icelanders claim that winter, which lasts until May and at its height provides only four hours of feeble light a day, is their favorite season. They look forward, they say, to snuggling up by candlelight in front of their geothermally powered radiators. (Few Icelandic homes have fireplaces.)”
The article appeared on the front page of The National Post, syndicated from The New York Times. There's a small photo slideshow of Iceland though I'm usually content to view the photos tagged with 'iceland' at Flickr.
Laura, a Canadian in Iceland: “My experiences as a foreigner here. It’s kind of hard to decide whether people look down on foreigners or not. It’s weird to look the same as people here (ie. fair-skinned and Caucasian) and still feel discriminated against sometimes. It’s not completely unusual to get a fairly friendly greeting which switches to aloofness if they figure out that you don’t speak Icelandic. Having said that, 99% of people are friendly if you get past that momentary reserve, and especially if you ask for help. Icelanders speak fantastic English, for the most part, which is more good than bad- it’s effortless to be a tourist here, but on the other hand, if you’re actually trying hard to learn Icelandic (this is what I hear from students who have come expressly for that purpose), it can be frustrating when they switch to English.”
Finished reading Independent People by Halldór Laxness.
This book took me the longest it has ever taken me to read, almost a year. It is nominally about sheep, though it is about a man's struggle to remain independent of his wives, his children and pretty much the rest of Iceland. The ending is perfect.
Some links to quotes from the book and the author are below:
- Independent and Free, a quote from the book about how Asta Sollilja felt about her father, Bjartur of Summerhouses, the principle character of the book
- The Scandalous Tyranny Of Mankind, about Asta Sollilja talking to herself in the fields
- Her Keen Eyes Reminded Him Both of the Sky and of Its Hawks, a quote about a boy seeing an incredibly beautiful girl
- A Drunken, Despairing, Loafish Lot, which features a quote by Brad Leithauser, who wrote the introduction to Independent People, though the quote is about Laxness and his book, Iceland's Bell.
Joe compares Reykjavík, Iceland, to Portland, Maine: “In both places you find people saying things you don't understand! In Iceland it's because they're speaking Icelandic, stuff like: "Ég er ekki að ýkja en með því að taka geisladiskana úr stofunni þá fundum við pláss fyrir heilt píanó!". In Maine it's because they're speaking Mainish. Like, for example: "When ya go to tha staw remembah tha patatas."”