Monday Ice : Gleðileg jól

Wow Christmas is nearly upon us and I seem to be running out of time to get everything done before family arrive.  We are into our shortest days at the moment, sunrise is at 11.45 and sunset at 14.45 so the daylight is only 3hrs...however in only a week or so the days start to get longer and we move towards the eventual 24hr daylight of summer.  I find these constant changes in the light so fascinating. 

I still walk around this town twice a day...morning and night...even though the sun is not up the town is lit up like a Christmas tree so it doesn't feel all that dark to me.

These pics are not so good as Perla was pulling on the lead when I was trying to take the shots...something about snow makes her frisky but I am sure you will get the idea. Nearly every house and flats have lights up in the windows and these are just a few of the ones I pass on our walks.

 

Christmas is hard to miss in Iceland and each day there is some sort of celebration/event going on whether it be a choir singing carols in the supermarket or children dancing and singing around the Christmas  tree.

I will be taking a 2 week hiatus from the blog to spend time with family who all arrive from Australia this week...Jesse my youngest and his girlfriend arrive tomorrow...I am so excited, Eva and her partner John and Dom will be here on Friday. 

I leave you with a Christmas wish from some of the 13 Yule Lads (Icelandic Santas) and until we meet again in 2012 have a very Merry Merry Christmas.

13 ICELANDIC YULE LADS from Inspired By Iceland on Vimeo.

If you can't beat em join em!

Sunrise at 11am

There is no way to avoid the Christmas spirit here and last Friday morning I awoke to the sound of Christmas carols.  The school children were all in a procession on the path to the graveyard for the lighting of the cross...a candle is passed from child to child until it reaches the cross which is then lit up and stays alight 24/7 until the christmas period is over.  Here is a little video I took so you can hear what I heard.  It was around 8.30am and still very dark.

It has been a hectic week, last Thurs Olga, Henry and I went to Akureyri to buy some Christmas lights and do a bit of a Christmas food shop.  I have never put up Christmas lights before, apart from on the tree and it has been quite a few years since I have gone all out for Christmas. I made a big effort when my children were young but once I was separated and the children spent every Christmas with their father...there seemed no real point and I was also quite over the commercial hype of it all. But this year after 14 years I do get to have Christmas lunch with all my children and am getting into the spirit of it all.  I refuse to spend good money on decorations (except fairy lights) and have always preferred to make my own...I still have a few things that I can pop around the rooms and pulled out a bunch of Christmas jointed teddies and stars that I made one year...even I am quite amazed that I made these!

  

Just about everyone puts up lights in and outside their homes here...so when we went looking for lights Olga and I were bedazzled by the huge selection available.  This shop is a large hardware, a bit like Bunnings but there was a huge section dedicated to lights plus heaps of other Christmas stuff scattered around the store.

I only wanted fairy lights for the windows which I thought would be an easy decision but oh my goodness there are dozens and dozens of variations to choose from.

 I ended up with some that could be joined together to hang down from the top of the very long window I have in the stairwell.

Plus some for the four windows in the lounge and dining room. The stars and arch are courtesy of the Old Post House. Just with fairy lights it looks more Christmassy than anything I have ever had before, I certainly won't need much else.

We have had a bit of a blizzard a few days ago and there is plenty of snow around with temperatures reaching -16°. It is the strangest of feelings when you wake up and the windows are completely covered in snow and you cannot see outside at all...it makes me appreciate all the more the fabulous views I have.

 

The door to my balcony will not open and the snow nearly reaches to the top of the railing in parts

Since then the last couple of days have been magnificent with temperatures around - 6° or -7° with no wind just crisp coolness...I hope it is like this when my children arrive.

 School children snow boarding down the slopes

Snow heart

I slipped over on the ice last Sat morning and twisted my ankle and knee.  It would have been ok if I had stayed off it but instead I chose to do a spot of geocaching with Patricia, Bjarki and Annabell (that will be another post) and by the end of it the knee had swollen and become quite painful and I was having a lot of trouble walking.  I became quite incapacitated for a couple of days and just had to keep off it but all is fine now and it gave me the chance to put a bit of a dent in my Christmas knitting projects. 

However because we went geocaching we missed the lighting of the Christmas tree in my front yard so I have no pics of this years festivities...just one of the end result which is this!

 

I suppose this means Christmas is nearly here!

The town is definitely preparing itself for Christmas, as I walk with Perla in the evenings more and more houses have Christmas lights up. 

 The 2011 sign is once again alight, letting us know that 2012 is not far away, 

the street light decorations are all up in readiness to be turned on,

the cross is also up and ready to light up the graveyard

and on Tuesday my Christmas tree arrived

and was erected in my front yard.

 

The tree will have its official lighting at the beginning of advent...which is possibly this weekend.
So I think all this means Christmas is not too far away....however to me it seems like we just had Christmas...the years are so short these days. 

Every house in town puts up lights and they stay on 24/7...so during the dark winter days the town takes on a golden glow. 

The Old Post House has yet again come to the party and provided me with a bag of decorations and lights, so they will go up this weekend. 

My gift giving this year will be a homemade Christmas...so I am very busy in the knitting and making department.  Having my children here and us being all together is the best gift we could give each other...it is a bit hard to out do that.

Christmas has arrived in Iceland!

 

Saturday the 27th November was a busy day for Icelanders, for a start there was the constitutional election happening, plus the day also signified the beginning of Advent which meant that there were plenty of Christmas festivities to attend.

The constitution of Iceland is really a hand me down from Denmark, the current constitution is from 1944, whilst there have been some changes over the years it has not really been overhauled...so the government decided to be completely democratic and invite citizens to nominate themselves for candidacy and then up to 31 elected citizens would rewrite the constitution.  This idea proved to be so popular that over 500 nominated,  which meant that the public had to select 25 candidates from this 500 whom they thought would be best for the role.  However I think for many this was a monumental task and the responsibility of choosing overwhelming and as voting isn't compulsory in Iceland there were lower than usual turnouts at the polling stations, only about 36% cast a vote compared to the usual 80% who normally turn out for the general elections.

Saturday was also the start of Advent and this meant Christmas lights and decorations could legally come out in full force. The days are getting shorter, dawn is now around 9.30am, dusk is at 4.30pm, with the sun not fully up until nearly 11am and then setting at around 3.20pm.  Icelanders counteract this darkness by lighting up their towns, soon just about every house will have some sort of Christmas lighting and decorations happening, especially at Sigga's.  So on Saturday in the old part of town, where I am, there were markets and stalls/shops open, full of Chrissy decor stuff plus you could grab some homemade soup and hot chocolate to keep you warm as you wandered around outside in the -7 weather.  The hot chocolate was the best, it is made with real chocolate and cream...not any of your run of the mill powdered stuff here...absolutely delicious.

 

 This photo was taken at 4.30pm

 So at around 3.30pm as it started to get dark, the town Christmas tree lights were turned on as they were in many places across Iceland, crowds of people turned up for this event, there were children singing and Santa's popping in for a visit... did you know that there are no fewer than 13 Santas or Yuletide Lads in Iceland and they are all rather mischievious.

 They arrive one at a time from the 12 Dec and leave one by one up to the 6th Jan which signifies the end of the traditional Christmas Season.

 

This video is of the Sauðárkrókur celebrations.

I am in a Christmas Card!

Well we arrived in Reykjavik Iceland around 2 in the afternoon on Dec 22nd after several trains and delayed flight from London to absolutely no snow at all...I was so disappointed, however it was all waiting for me in Saudarkrokur! It has snowed everyday since I have been here. At times when out walking I sink down to my knees in the snow.

There are lots of Christmas traditions here in Iceland I have had to resurrect my Christmassy spirit which has been well buried for sometime. It is quite dark here but the town is ablaze with Christmas lights...every house is decorated with lights in the windows, all over the house and in the garden....quite amazing to see a whole town lit up. Sunrise is around 11.30 am and sunset is around 3pm, the days are getting longer by around 50 seconds each day. The days are not pitch black but twilighty most of the time.

Wednesday afternoon we made little decorated Christmas trees from Pine tree branches to tie to the crosses up at the cemetery (another tradition)....It was -10 down in the town but up on the hill in the wind it must have been at least -15 with a chill factor of -20 I have never felt so cold...but it is all oh soooo beautiful. The graveyard is alight with luminous crosses and candles.

This photo of Ross and me is around 3ish in the afternoon, it's just starting to get darker, if you look closely you can see the lights of the town.

Wednesday night after dinner we walked to some relatives of Olga's where they were cooking this stinky fish (another tradition)....you eat it when it has gone rotten! Sigga encouraged me to try some...I did taste a little bit....it tasted better than it smelled but not that great! Then Sigga proceeds to tell me that she has never tried it as she cannot get passed the smell. One mouthful was enough though as I watched people eat great slabs of it....it has a very strong ammonia smell which does clear out the sinuses. Hard to try and describe a smell but maybe Ross's face will do it!

Another tradition is everybody drives around the town delivering Christmas cards. Olga and Sigga did this while Ross and I took a long walk up a hill around the top of the town to the graveyard no wind today so not that cold....it was so picturesque it was as if we were walking in a Christmas card. The snow is soft and fluffy just like I had imagined and here are pictures of snow, snow and more snow.

Fluffy Snow!

Views of snow covered Saudarkrokur from the graveyard.

The heavy snow covered graveyard!

Snow covered Fjord

Fjord later in the day, the snow covered mountains almost look like huge icebergs!

It has snowed so much here that Ross and Olga were able to build a couple of snowmen, apparently there was not enough snow last Christmas.


"Snowman"

Olga, Ross and Snowmen stand ins for Joe and Andy!!!

Amazing things appear on the beach in Saudarkrokur, last year a Polar Bear this year coconuts!