Saturdays and Sundays

The Icelandic word for Saturday is laugardagur, which literally translates as "bath day." In the olden days, from whence this day gets its name, the day before Sunday was the day when everyone in the family would take a bath, I assume in preparation for going to church on Sunday. So you got clean physically on Saturdays, and clean spiritually on Sundays.

Now a days of course this is not the case. Icelanders bathe usually daily (though perhaps not as obsessively as Americans), and Saturdays seem to not begin here until after sunset, ie: around 8pm Saturday night (kind of like a Jewish or Muslim day), extending well into Sunday. Sundays are therefore generally speaking pretty shot, everyone laying around recovering from a hangover and trying to prepare for reintegrating into the time reckoning of western society.

I think however Sunday is also the new laugardagur. Not in terms of people bathing, but in terms of the house getting cleaned. After waking up around 3pm, the only way to acquire some sense of a productive Sunday is to rouse oneself enough to throw a load in the laundry and sweep the floor.

That at least is my participant-observer ethnographic note for the day.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Dett í, ofan á, úr, út

I´m not sure if someone had dett í (gotten drunk), or if það bara dett ofan á (it just sort of happened), or if some dett úr (forgot), but at any rate, my household goods dett út (have disappeared). Let's review the chronology here. Early August packers from the shipping company arrive at the apartment in Moraga. They load my 4 large plastic containers and 8 cardboard boxes, plus one baby crib, into their truck. I watch my things depart. In September, I ask the friendly girl (Magie is her name) if she happens to know when I might expect my stuff. Late September she tells me. I am most impressed. Extremely so. Mid October rolls around, and I have not gotten a call. And it occurs to me that I am going to be traveling through November. Hmm. So I call again. Well, yes, she tells me, looks like your shipment should arrive on the 31st of October. Now here I admit that maybe I was a little lacks. I had a lot to do before my trip, and so when they did not call me, I did not follow
Read more

Twitterverse

Although this is a function of the specific feeds I have chosen to follow, I have observed that Icelanders are much funnier on Twitter than Americans are. Americans tweet their opinions on political matters in categorical, condemnatory terms, or they use Twitter to bolster their professional expertise, a la LinkedIn. So kudos to the Icelanders for understanding the potential of the medium and maximizing it.
Read more

The sky weeps

For the last few days, the sky here in the San Francisco Bay has been filled with smoke, blown this way from a fire 100 miles away. At least 40 people died in that fire, a whole town destroyed, and many others missing. One reporter described the sky over the town as raining down ash. On this day, the 100 year anniversary of the end of World War I, the news in the US is filled with stories of the man who calls himself President, unwilling to step out into the rain to lay a wreath. Unwilling to partake in our communal, world wide weep. And I'm thinking about my trip to Iceland on Thursday, of the carbon dioxide the plane will be spewing into the sky. My third round trip from SF to Iceland this year, and I don't have anyway to make up for my carbon footprint. But in all honesty, I'm also wondering how bad the weather will be, if I'll have to be out braving wind and snow for the shot the documentary film maker wants, of me walking around outside. Will the landscape reme
Read more