The land of the Midnight Sun

June 21st.

A number of people in Iceland celebrate the summer solstice, the longest day of the year, by walking and hiking. We set to climb the Spákonufell Mountain at 10 in the night reaching the top just in time for the midnight sun. It is quite an eerie feeling to reach a summit at midnight in full daylight.

Striking midnight.

View of the West Fjords across the bay

View over the Skagi peninsula.

Icelandic Rock/Pop Music

Skagaströnd... Even lost in the North of Iceland you can find the most unexpected connections. I am indeed living next door to the house where the grand-mother of Jón Þór Birgisson, singer and guitarist of Sigur Rós used to live. Her name was Sigurrósa and was a well-known eccentric figure in the village. Jónsi Birgisson’s little sister Sigurrósa was named after her, and translated it means “victory rose.”

Apart from this anecdote, I discovered a few really good Icelandic bands.

Rökkurró

The debut album Það kólnar í kvöld... is brilliant. Try the song Ferðalangurinn for a start.

http://www.myspace.com/rokkurro

Múm

Experimental band

http://www.myspace.com/mumtheband

Ólöf Arnalds
Ólöf Arnalds is folk singer/ songwriter who used to be a member of Múm. She plays the guitar and the charango (a sort of small lute). She released her debut album in 2007 called Við Og Við. She sounds like a modern troubadour with a crystal clear voice.

http://www.myspace.com/olofarnalds

FM Belfast

FM Belfast is an electro band from Reykjavík.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uEJMqwVgjME&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DsUHS-yGynA
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XYc0qjAhWoM

Benni Hemm Hemm
http://www.myspace.com/bennihemmhemm

Mínus

http://www.myspace.com/minus
Icelandic alternative rock/hardcore band from Reykjavík

Kira Kira

http://www.myspace.com/trallaladykirakira

Magnús Þór Jónsson known as Megas

Sigur Ross
http://www.heima.co.uk/

Björk

Pagan Poetry video
http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x3asbl_bjork-pagan-poetry_music

Skagaströnd - May and June

From May on you can feel that summer is getting closer even in the North of Iceland. Days become longer and longer and twilight happens around 11 or 12pm! I look forward to the longest day of the year on June 21st. This extra amount of daylight fills you up with extra energy that keeps you going.

Lots of birds start nesting in Skagaströnd in May. You can see flocks of Eider ducks, oyster catchers and artic sterns and tons of others. Already in June enlarged duck families can be observed swimming around. The colours change dramatically too: fields are covered in white, yellow, purple... Thousands of flowers grow out of the earth from one day to the other giving a new touch to the landscape.

Guarding Skagaströng, the Spákonufell Mountain goes through a complete redressing too. After white snowy garments, yellow was the dominant colour during the snow melting. It now stands in June cloaked in Lupine purple and moss green and every day you can see greener patches covering up the mountain always higher.

Icelandic language - Useful lexique

Icelandic is a language that did not evolve very much since the Middle Ages. It is still very similar to the Old Norse spoken by the Vikings originally which became the Norwegian language and modern Danish on the continent. Its pronunciation and spelling have changed over the centuries but not its grammatical structure and Icelanders today can easily read sagas from the 13th and 14th centuries.

The language is highly inflected and the grammar and the pronunciation quite complicated for foreigners. Written Icelandic has four letters not found in the English alphabet. The consonants Ð, ð (pronounced like English th in that), Æ, æ (pronounced like English i in life), Þ, þ (pronounced like English th in that) and Ö, ö (pronounced like English o in work or French eu like in fleur). Other vowels are lengthened or diphthongized by the addition of an acute accent over them.

However, it is quite easy and useful to learn a few words to read a map. Very often the meaning of places is descriptive such as Reykjavik (smoky bay), Husavik (bay of houses), Hveragerdi (warm gardens), Eldgja (fire fault), Eldfell (Fire mountain), Jokulsá (glacial river).

The list below should help to decipher places' names when travelling.

alda = hilly ridge (plural: öldur)
á = river (like (Laxá, Hvitá, Jokulsá, Krossá, Thjorsá ...)
ás = small ridge, hill
bær = farm, township (Glaumbaer, Kirkjubaejarklaustur ...)
bakki =river bank
bjarg = cliff, rock
borg = city, crag
botn = bottom, head of the valley or fjord
brekka = slope
brú = brige
bunga = rounded peak
dalur = valley (Thjorsardalur, Húsadalur, Vatnsdalur ...)
djúp = long inlet; deep
drag = watercourse (plural: drög)
drangur = isolated column of rock
dyngja = dome
eiði = isthmus
ey = island (plural: eyjar)
eyri = sandspit, delta
fell = mountain; hill
fjall = mountain (plural: fjöll)
fjörður = fjord, broad inlet, valley (plural: firðir) - (Skagafjordur, Breidafjordur ...)
fljót = large river (Markarfljót, Skjalfandafljót ...)
foss = waterfall (Gullfoss, Dettifoss, Hengifoss, Godafoss, Skogafoss ...)

gata = avenue
gígur = crater
gil = gorge, ravine
gjá = chasm, fissure (Eldgjá, Almannagjá, Grjótagjá ...)
grunn = shoal, shallow
háls = ridge, isthmus
hamar = crag
heiði = heath, moor
hlíð = mountain side
hnjúkur/ hnúkur = peak
höfði = promontory
höfn = harbour
hóll = rounded hill (plural hólar)
hólmur = islet
holt = stony hill
hraun = lava field/lava (Namshraun, Laugahraun, Odadahraun ...)
hryggur = ridge
hver = hot spring (Hverfjall, Hverarond, Hveragerdi ...)
hvoll = hill
jökull = glacier (Vatnajokull, Breidamerkurjökull, Langjökull ...)
jökulsá = glacial river
kirkja = church (Hallgrimskirkja, Kirkjubaejarklaustur, Kirkjugolf ...)
klettur = rock, cliff
kot = small farm
kvísl =river; branch of river
lækur = brook
laug = warm spring (Laugarvegur, Landmannalaugar ...)
lón =lagoon (Jokulsarlon, Breidarlon, Fjallsarlon ...)
melur = gravel; barren plain
múli = headland, spur
mynni = mouth
myri = swamp
nes = headland, ness
núpur = spur, peak
oddi = point, tongue of land
öræfi = desert
ós = estuary
reykur = smoke, steam
rif = reef
sandur = sand(s) (Sprengisandur, Skeidararsandur ...)
skagi = peninsula
skali = refuge (Sigurdarskali ...)
skarð = mountain pass
sker = skerry
skógur = wood, shrubland
slétta = plain
staður = place; parsonage (plural staðir)
stapi = bluff, crag
stadur or stadir = inhabited places (Nupsstadur, Egilsstadir, Skutustadir ...)
súlur = (mountain) peaks

straeti = street
tangi = narrow peninsula
tindur = summit
tjörn = small lake; pond
tunga = tongue (of land)
vað = ford (plural vöð)
varða = cairn (plural vörður)
vatn = lake; water (plural vötn) - like Thingvallavatn, Myvatn, Veidivötn, Grimsvötn ...
vegur = road; track (Laugarvegur ...)
ver = grassy spot
vik = inlet, small bay (Reykjavik, Husavik, Grindavik ...)
vogur = inlet; creek
völlur = plain, field (plural vellir) - (Hvolsvöllur...)

Sources:

The Visitor's key to Iceland, Steindor Steindorsson

France Demarbaix, www.photovoyage.org/islande/langue-islandais.php

West Fjords - Snæfellsnes peninsula

Below are a few pictures of a trip taken in the West Fjords and Snæfellsness.

The West Fjords reverberate with a spectacular beauty. Heavy soaring mountains alternate with unfathomably deep and silent fjords. Very bumpy roads only dotted here and there by tiny fishing villages plunges the visitor in a special atmosphere devoid of the human presence until you get to Isafjordur.

I highlighted below two legends recounted at the Witchcraft and Sorcery museum at Holmavik. The stories, which aim at becoming richer or stealing your neighbour's milk are so far-fetched that it denotes how difficult times must have been in Iceland a few decades ago and what a fertile imagination people had (see below).

A place with a surreal atmosphere I particularly enjoyed was Reykjanes. The hotel Reykjanes used to be a district school founded in 1934. You can still wander around the hotel and see some rooms equipped with teaching equipment. The kitchen is in a classroom with tables, chairs and a blackboard. The birdlife was incredible and with hot water running into the surrounding lake in an utter silence I felt like being at the end of the world.

Guarding Grundarfjörður is the superb mountain called Kirkjufell (463m) which means Church Mountain. It derives its name from its special shape that resembles that of a Church. Danish sailors who often came to the area in earlier times called it"the Sugar Top".

Snæfellsjökull (1446m) is an ancient cone vulcano. In Jules Verne's novel, A Journey to the Centre of the Earth, the entrance to the underground way was through the crater of Snæfellsjökull. There have been many eruptions under and around the glacier, though none since settlement time. Around the turn of last century the glacier was twice the size it is today, then it grew rapidly smaller until about 1960 since when it has remained stable.

Two unordinary tales recounted at the Witchcraft and Sorcery museum at Holmavik

The Tilberi is a strange creature from Icelandic folklore.

If a woman wants to create a tilberi she has to dig up a human rib in a graveyard early on Whitsunday, wrap it in grey wool and preserve it between her breasts. The next three Sundays at communion she has to spit the holy wine on the bundle which will then come alive. Then the woman has to carve a nipple inside her thigh on which the tilberi will hang on and nourish itself. When it is fully grown the woman can send it into the neighbouring pastures to steal milk from cows and sheep.

When the woman becomes old the tilberi becomes a burden and the only way she can get rid of it, is to order it to gather all the sheep-dropping in three high-land pastures. Eager to get back on the nipple the tilberi will overexert itself and explode, leaving only a human rib beside the heap of droppings.

The milk-stealing tilberi is the only magic in Icelandic folklore that can only be performed by women. A fully grown tilberi could lie across a sheep´s back and suck two tits at the same time and when it would roll back to its farm it would spew the milk into its mother churn. The butter made from the milk would fall into little pieces if the magical sign smjörhnútur (butterknot) was drawn on it.

Nábuxur (also known as nábrók, finnabrækur or corpsepants ) or how to make sure to never run out of money as recounted by the Grapevine magazine (April 2009).

To make your pair of corpsepants, you must make an arrangement with a friend or acquaintance that entitles you to make use of his flesh after he’s dead. Make sure that your friend is of the male variety, as the corpsepants’ magical powers reside in the nutsack, which is exclusive to dudes. After your friend passes away, you must venture at night to the graveyard (or wherever he’s buried), exhume the corpse and flay it from the waist down, being extra-careful not to puncture the skin anywhere. There must be no holes, save for the ones you put your legs through. This should leave you with some leg-skin, which you must hoist over your own bare legs as soon as possible.

Once you put them on, the fleshy pants will immediately graft onto your skin. To activate corpsepants power, you must then steal a coin from a poor widow during Christmas, Easter or Pentecost (and you must steal it between the time your minister reads his sermon and the Gospel). Place that coin firmly in the aforementioned nutsack of your cool new pants and voila – you will never be short on spare change again!

Myvatn - Krafla

Below are a few pictures taken during a two-day trip in the Myvatn area.

Myvatn means Midge Lake and is among the largest lakes in Iceland. Many islands, islets, pseudocraters, plant and bird life are found in and around the lake. And of course midges in the summer, hence the name.

The surrounding area is superb with interesting lavafields, geothermal heat in caves and canyons and steep mountains in the background. Among interesting features are Hverfjall, a roundish crater of 1,300m diameter and said to be one of the largest such craters in the world and Dimmuborgir (means Dark crags). It is a magnificent lava landscape with strange formations, columns, caves and arches.

A bit further can be found the Krafla mountain. Considerable geothermal heat comes from the west side of Krafla with fumaroles and hot springs. Also beautiful is the explosion crater called Viti ("Hell"), 300m in diameter and with turquoise water at the bottom.

Drangey island

Few places I have visited in Iceland have impressed me as much as the island of Drangey. Drangey is situated in Skagafjörður in northern Iceland. This rugged island is the remnant of an old volcano. It rises 100-200 meters above sea level, and is a bird paradise. More than a million birds nest there every year - including puffins and black guillemots. Birds and eggs used to be taken from the island in the spring and many ladders in the most dizziest places around the island can still be seen.

Drangey rises almost perpendicular out of the sea and the sheer cliffs make it very hard to ascend it. There is only one place on the entire island where the visitor can climb and it is difficult, specially since a boulder during a recent storm destroyed the jetty and the main steps and ladder. 

 Below you will find the three main stories attached to the island and a few photographs taken during a trip in May.

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The origin of Drangey

It all started with a pair of trolls living in Skagafjörður. As in many other Icelandic stories, they were night trolls, who turn to stone when exposed to sunlight, and therefore they only venture out at night. They had a huge cow which provided them with milk. The cow came into season, and since the nearest bull was on the other side of the fjord, they had a long way to take the cow. At sunset they started wading across the fjord, the old man pulling the stubborn cow behind him, and his wife pushing after it. The going was slower than they had expected, and at dawn they still had some way to go. When the sun's rays struck them, all three were turned to stone and became the island of Drangey, and two pillars of rock at either end of the island, after which it was named. Drangey derives from the 'drangur' which means rock pillar. The pillars were given the names Kerlingin (the old woman) and Karlinn (the old man). Karlinn collapsed into the sea in the 18th century, but Kerlingin is still standing.

"Even the evil need a place to live"

A legend goes that Drangey was once the abode of evil beings. Men who sought to pick eggs and hunt birds in the bountiful cliffs of the island, fell to their deaths, their climbing ropes mysteriously cut. Finally, people almost stopped going to the island to hunt birds. Then Guðmundur became bishop of Hólar, which was at that time the bishop's seat for the northern part of Iceland. Guðmundur, or Gvendur, as he was sometime called, was a good, kind man, and very holy, thus earning the nick-name "the good". The poor flocked to Hólar, because Guðmundur was know for feeding beggars. It sometimes became hard for him to find food for all those people, especially at the end of a long winter. So Guðmundur decided to send his men to Drangey to hunt birds and pick eggs. Several of the men were killed when they attempted to pick eggs in the cliffs. When the bishop heard this, he decided to do something about it. He went to the island with several priests and a barrel of holy water, and began blessing the island, descending down the cliffs by a rope, singing hymns and splashing holy water as he and his priests wended their way around the island. He had almost gone all the way around the island when a hand came out of the cliff face, holding a big, sharp knife, and began cutting the rope. The rope was three-ply, and the creature was able to cut through two of them, but the third held, because it had been soaked in holy water and blessed before the rope was made, and it could therefore not be destroyed by evil forces.

When the creature saw that it couldn't kill the bishop, it said "Stop your blessing, bishop Gvendur, even the evil need a place to live". Guðmundur stopped the blessing and asked to be pulled up. He then declared that this part of the cliffs should be a refuge for the evil creatures to live, and people should not try to descend that cliff. Ever since, there have been fewer accidents in the island, and bird hunters and egg gatherers have been left alone. The place Guðmundur left unblessed came to be called Heiðnaberg, or "Heathen Cliff", and it is said that nowhere on the island are there as many nesting birds, because no-one dares to try to pick eggs or hunt there.

Grettir the strong.

Grettir is the most famous outlaw of the Icelandic Sagas. As a young man he made a name for himself by his great strength, and got the nick-name "the strong". As the story goes, he fought and killed a powerful ghost named Glámur, who put a curse on him before it died, saying that everything he would do thereafter would turn out bad, that he would have no luck and that he would become a killer and an outlaw. The curse came true, and Grettir was outlawed, following a series of killings and mishaps. After sixteen years of roaming around Iceland and hiding in various places, he finally found refuge in Drangey, where he lived with his brother, Illugi, and a slave, Glaumur. They lived on the pickings of the island, including birds, fish and sheep that had been put there for the summer, occasionally going ashore for food. To get water, they had to climb down to a ledge where there was a hole that usually contained some water. It is called "the Well", and is the only place on the island where you can get water.

Grettir lived in the island for three years, and during that time there were numerous attempts made to climb the island. Finally, Grettir's enemies were able to ascend the island when Glaumur the slave, who was supposed to be guarding the rope ladder, fell asleep due to a magic curse. Grettir was ill, perhaps dying, and unable to defend himself, so it fell to his brother to fight the intruders. Finally, Grettir was killed, and his brother and slave were executed.

One of the most memorable things Grettir did, was when the slave let the fire in the island go out. They had no boat, and Grettir swam to shore to get fire from a farm up on the shore. He rested and bathed in Grettir's pool on the shore after his swim. The remains of the shelter Grettir and his companions used is still visible on the island. Since he lived in the 11th century, it is likely that others must have used it since then, thus keeping the ruins visible.