50/50

Oskar needed the flight hours and I needed a good view of Skagafjordur

I have never been on a private plane in the United States, but once, 5 years ago, I went up in a small private plane around Skagafjörður as part of the archaeological project I was participating in that summer. Today I am going up in another private plane, again to fly over archaeological sites in Skagafjörður. That landscape surprised me the first time I encountered it, and has held my attention ever since. I look forward to getting to see it again. And I am all ready, maps printed out, camera loaded, and nerves calmed.

I came into the city today, and although I certainly enjoyed the drive in in this lovely weather, I was even happier to discover that the library was open. With the big holiday weekend coming up, I really was not sure.

My Verslunamannahelgi weekend plans call for researching and writing, because you know I need to finish my "great contribution" to Old Norse scholarship.  I do believe something similar happened to me when I worked at the Smithsonian. I spent Labor Day weekend 1999 working on the exhibition catalogue , which really was (and is) a sizeable contribution to Viking scholarship.* * And now available at Vikingaheimar! 

A few months ago, Laurie left Iceland and moved back home to the States. We all miss her, especially her best friend here in Iceland, Verity. I was just noticing on Laurie's facebook page that she has a picture of her and Verity in Iceland as her profile picture. I thought that was so sweet. I know a lot of Americans who have a sizeable collection of Icelandic friends, and one of the reasons they come back year after year is to get that great feeling of being surrounded by nice friends and quality people. There is not much more we could want from life, really, than that. Thanks Verity, and thanks Laurie, for posting such nice pics. An American-British friendship made in Iceland!

The political advisor to the Cultural Minister sent an unfortunate email yesterday out to an American journalist. The email was in Icelandic, so it seems the journalist forwarded it on to the Grapevine, which is an English language newspaper here in Iceland. I suppose they just wanted a translation. Grapevine however recognized that this was no ordinary press-release cleaned-up email. No, this was an email meant for an Icelandic colleague, someone in his own political party presumably, not the foreign press. Grapevine published it with delight, since it included both a funny vulgarity and a bit of political spin in action. Anyhow, the guy who wrote it then revealed that he had been working at home and that he thinks his son must have started playing on his computer, which is how that email got sent to the wrong recipient. When I first started dating my ex-husband, who was and is in the Coast Guard, I was really surprised how easy it was for him to leave his office for a few hours to ...

I am watching the long shadows and pink hews of sunset creep across the landscape of Reykjanes from my office window after a good day with some Icelandic sagas.

Over the last few days, several bloggers here in Iceland have been involved in a debate about whether or not atheism is a religion. Now of course that sounds preposterous in a way, since atheists do not believe in a god. But if one looks closely at the details, it is apparent that there is an "atheist movement" in Iceland led by a group of people who: meet regularly in private to discuss their ideas; actively lobby the government to change its spending practices; and hold public events wherein they try to gather more supporters. It was on this basis, the tendency to proselytize, that at least some of the argument turned. One blogger in fact found this tendency especially annoying, and compared it to the religious person who did not make a big deal out of going to church, who was fine with the idea of the Bible being written by man but inspired by God, and believed in evolution with the caveat that God started it, etc. I woke up this morning thinking about this, about this...

The female first cousins had lunch together today, which was really nice, we have not done that in a long time. Though the conversation lightly touched on issues of fashion and a bit of family gossip, we stuck more to amusing anecdotes out of our recent trips, etc. One slightly disturbing story however involved two of my cousins having to keep on driving past another friends house, when they saw the "criminals" standing outside having a beer and cigarette. Fanney dropped the word in there very casually, so I had to stop the conversation and ask "glæpamenn, ha?".  She said it was a man who had kidnapped a man in Sandgerði, put him in the trunk of his car, and then forced him to withdraw large sums of money from his ATM. This same guy then later beat up an elderly couple whose grandson owed them money, harming I think also their greatgrandson in the process. I said "Wow, why hasn't the guy been arrested?" My cousin then informed me he had been arrested...

I was just reading an article by Torfi Tulinius from 1992 using an archaeology/literature metaphor, which made me happy. I would rather like to believe I am not so much out on an intellectual limb as I feel like I am. Archaeology metaphors really a great, not only in terms of digging deep, but also very carefully. Looking at each detail, discerning variations in the soil, documenting it all. But right now I feel more like the metaphor of Lucy walking through the closet*, pushing aside the fur coats to get to the snow covered trees of Narnia. To find my way past the insignificant stuff to the significant stuff. *of course the metaphor there was reaching deep within yourself to find kindness, responsibility, bravery, and honesty. It has in that sense perhaps not much at all to do with scholarship. 

It was very un-Icelandic of me to decide at midnight last night to drive home from Reykjavík. Indeed as I was walking to my car, downtown was filling up fast. The weather was good, there was no wind, and everyone was dressed up and ready to hit the town. Except me. I was ready to go home and get a good night's sleep. One reason for this is that I had spent Saturday working on my PhD, and it was the first really productive day I had had in a while. I think today will be the same, because I feel myself focused and interested and motivated. It is, actually, impossible to write otherwise. Plus I have started to get excited by the idea that this is "my" PhD. So many other accomplishments in life are collaborative, say for instance having a child, but I feel very much on my own in regard to my PhD. And if I can get it done quickly, then that will be even better.

Last night me and some friends from the Away from Home Living in Iceland facebook group met for dinner, etc. Many of us had not seen each other in a long time, some had never met, but all of us had one or two people we knew well at the table. I was very glad to meet Ösp, a textile expert, so we of course spent some part of the evening talking about Viking Age sewing techniques. But it is always that way, in a group that big (there were 10 of us) that there are multiple conversations going on at once, and small parts of it here or there were even in Icelandic.

And I am on my way home.

Last night Dave was telling me a story about a "discussion" he had with his neighbors. Seems Palmer was riding a scooter, and ran into their two and a half year old son. The neighbors claimed Palmer did it on purpose, and had done it several times this week. Dave did not take kindly to this suggestion. Dave lives in an apartment complex with a central courtyard, built in the 70s when I think architects were trying to create spaces of community within their plans. Like the town I grew up in, Mission Viejo, which was a Master Planned Community meant to encourage walking and socializing and neighborhood. Unfortunately, despite the best efforts of the architects and urban planners, California and the United States are too populous, too dictated by capitalistic ideas of "choice", too accustomed to the nuclear family, and too organized around their workplace culture to really put all that much effort into getting along with or getting to know their neighbors. It is no...

I remember so well my 5th grade teacher talking about body language. She used the example of when she had parent/teacher meetings--which she admitted could sometimes be really stressful--what a difference the positioning of her arms made in terms of how well the conversation went. If she crossed her arms and sat across from the parents at her desk, things went badly. But if she left her arm to lie across the table, her hands open, or if she scooter her chair around, things went entirely differently. She could say the exact same thing, and get a very different response just by changing her body language. Anthropologists say that body language is not universal, and of course I believe them that there are some tribes in the Amazon that express joy by punching things. But I have been rather relieved to find that,  unlike the Icelandic spoken language, getting fluent in Icelandic body language was pretty darn easy. In fact I think I have not even noticed much of a difference in body l...

When I was in Florida, I was freezing inside all of the buildings, which were chilled to 70 degrees, and dying outside, which was a very steamy 90 degrees.  With just one step, there was a huge and sudden change in temperature and humidity, bam! I was not sure which change I liked less, honestly, going from the heat to the cold or cold to the heat. But usually I found myself more anxious to get out of the air-conditioning than out of the heat. Iceland does not have air-conditioning. Of course there might be some computer room somewhere with some sort of cooling system, but no homes, no public buildings, not even the grocery stores (outside of the refrigerated rooms) have air-conditioning. So today I went up to the airport to fill out some paperwork (and try to get Icelandair to update my frequent flyer account), and was, for the first time in my life here probably, rather appalled at the conditions in the arrival hall. It was jam packed with people, there was no air circulating...

I may have to delete this post shortly after putting it up, because I probably should not say anything at all. But I just think it is so hilarious, that I have landed right in the middle of some big complicated political power struggle over everything from world peace to natural resources just by helping get a museum started in Reykjanesbær. I thought my biggest problem was going to be the kind of white power nationalistic rhetoric that swirls around the Vikings. But little did I know that sleepy old Keflavík is also a hotbed of controversy on an international scale. Which is good, really good. Makes life a lot more interesting not to just be doing academic navel gazing. And someday I might even have enough appropriate experience to handle it well.

I owe a friend of mine dinner, since he helped me out a few weeks ago with the Viking class we had at the museum . I suggested that if he was willing to come back here to Keflavík, we could go to the great Thai food place on Hafnagata. This was completely out of the question as far as he was concerned, based on the simple assumption that Thai food in Keflavík could not be good (even though I assured him I had eaten there many times and found it to be one of the best Thai places I have ever eaten at)l Instead he suggested we go to an Indian place in Reykjavík.  I have lived in a lot of big cities in the U.S., and all of them have had minority ethnic groups whose restaurants round out the culinary scene. Usually there is a critical mass of one group or another, such that one can completely trust that Chinese food in San Francisco and Ethopian food in Washington D.C. will be really good. So I have to say, in all honesty, that "Indian food in Reykjavík" sounds just as silly to ...

Today I am enjoying the left over Mexican rice and spiced refried beans I made Saturday night for dinner, wrapped up in a whole wheat flour tortilla. It occurred to me that some Icelanders may not be as used to making burritos as I am, so I hereby pass on a very useful trick I learned in Southern California. Place a tortilla directly, ie: without any sort of pan, on top of a hot stovetop range, either gas (low flame) or electric (high heat), for a few seconds. The tortilla will puff up, at which point it should be turned over and remain for a few additional seconds. Remove quickly. What some people fail to realize is that the tortillas sold in the stores are only partially baked, and the last bit of browning is supposed to be done at home. An electric range will need to be immediately wiped down, otherwise the gluten in the flour hardens onto the surface. Also, on occasion, especially on a gas range, I have ended up burning the edges, but even a burnt tortilla tas...

I am not a big drinker, but I made the decision, in honor of the fact that my coworker Óskar is heading off to school in Florida in the fall, to prepare a few Borderstate specialities for his farewell dinner last night, among which would of course be margaritas. (I also happen to have a set of real margarita glasses that usually just sit up on my top shelf). But there is no way to make margaritas without tequila. So yesterday I drove over to the state liquor store, in search of tequila. I really was not sure if it was even available here in Iceland, and had a heck of a time finding it in the store, but finally down on the bottom self in one corner, I spotted the silver and gold types of one brand, Jose Cuervo (which has a sombrero-shaped lid). I would have of course saved some money had I purchased tequila either in Florida or in the duty free store at the airport, but I did not think the price was too bad. And so I tromped home triumphantly. None of my guests had ever had a margar...