Christmas night is when the last of the 13 Icelandic Santas that arrive on the days preceeding Christmas day get to Iceland. I wish I could explain more but I don´t fully get it either - I do know that you have to be good or risk being devoured by an enormous, evil black cat who searches for bad children, which is owned and encouraged to eat children by the wicked mother of all the Santas, some extremely unpleasant and enormous (again) ugly old hag.
So, in some fear of being eaten myself, I spent Christmas Eve (24th) with my bosses and their family. The meat is ptarmigan or Icelandic Rjúpa - apparently birds are imported all the way from Scotland because birds here have been over-harvested by hungry (greedy?) Icelandic hunters at Christmas-time. The bag is one bird per person these days, and the hunting season much restricted. (Can anyone tell me whether Scottish birds are over-harvested??.... I think maybe so....). Anyhow, unfortunately Rjúpa tastes quite delicious....
And the tree has REAL candles burning on it! I was impressed. But maybe there´s danger of losing your presents before you´ve even had a chance to open them...?
On Christmas Day we had respite from rain and wind: it had snowed! I went out on the local Berserkjharaun lavafield (there´s a saga about the Swedish Berserks that were maltreated then murdered out there - cheery tale for Christmas, sorry about that).
Boxing Day (26th) was grim, dark and wet again! This was the view on my hike this time. ha ha.
... but I did manage to find this in a lavafield.... (er, the thermal pool, that is - the feet are (unsurprisingly) my own)
4 comments:
A real tree with real candles? How quaint. And dangerous. I must try it next year.
yep. it was great. and then Róbert and Menja showed me the big ole bucket/tank of water stacked nearby - I guess they value their presents.
You could always just give buckets of water as presents, therefore, danger averted.
I see a lot of interest in buckets of water and candles. Maybe I shall try to theme this into next posting, next month or whenever else I get around to it...
And - have to add - did you see ever the McNaught comet? here there was too much snow and mountains. too bad. ah well, it´ll be back in 200 years.
Hmmm. I think comments are supposed to be short and sweet, right? But can I just say thanks you two for bothering to comment and making my website look more popular. (no, I mean it....)
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