Changes

I have switched to a new place in town. New address: Austurgata 9, 340-Stykkishólmur, which is literally down the road from my last location (as are most places in this small town...!). I had to move as the flat was likely to be mobbed by a bunch of Uni student transients during the summer: I was forewarned there would be a lot of comings and goings with new folk passing through for short fieldwork sejourns. It was best to up sticks and move. This is a super, old house. It is a very different place to the last: from IKEA to original furniture! (Nice).

And - although spring can´t be said to have completely sprung in town - I was also recently off up to the (more) Frozen North for an Ísfestival near Akureyi with the Icelandic Alpine Club - this was a long weekend of ice-climbing and socialising (not eating ice-cream, as one friend suggested might be happening....).

Here are links to more/better photos
http://grettisgata.eitthvad.is/isklifurfestival2007
http://www.pbase.com/agustthor/festival2007

... and here´s a few of my own (although I must credit the 2nd photo here to someone else, a guy called Gummi who takes rather good photos of ice with a massive camera he insists on lugging up routes with him).

I have also been catching up with friend Yvonne Sell (from Calgary ´03 Days) who was up visiting from London last weekend. It was really great to see a familiar face over here. We managed to do a fair few touristy things, mostly on the famous Golden Circle tour from Reykjavík, where you can experience volcanoes, spouting geysirs, waterfalls and colliding continental plates!

Brrrr. Ice cold conditions within the crater of Kerið.

This is Strokker the geysir in action, which spouts boiling water every few minutes and is located a mere few metres from Iceland´s famous - and originally named - 'Geysir' geysir (Geysir seems to be inactive these days, and Strokker now the main attraction).

Exploring Þingvellir, which is the former seat of Iceland´s parliment, positioned right on the rift between two tectonic plates: North America to the left and Europe to the right. Very fitting for a the two of us we felt, with our tourist mix of Canadian/British heritage.

Gullfoss is a very spectacular twin waterfall - the second chute is 70m deep/high. It was noisy, wet and cold there and a breathtakingly dramatic sight in an otherwise quite remarkably flat area of countryside.

Plus.... Yvonne and I snuck in a bit of an ice-climb (or two) over her visit, and made this beautiful snow-woman as the weather turned to custard (you can see we were very proud of her - but I do question myself: why am I still wearing my climbing lid?). By the way, the Chelsea hat on Yvonne was purely for practical purposes only.... (Funny what you can buy in the Stykkishólmur 'Olís' gas-station when on a mission for 'something warm that fits under a climbing helmet'...).

Minktastic

So, how does the saying go? ........"a mink in the hand is worth two in the den", or something similar. Well, this was Tx45, post-surgery (she is still under anaesthetic, to re-assure my travel insurance company who stipulated I wear protective gloves if/when handling conscious wild mink [... with those big, pointy teeth who would be foolish enough not to, I ask?]). She is now out in the wilds again, munching her way through native Icelandic fauna once more. Her progress will continue to be monitored, to see if hunters manage to locate her and kill her as part of a regional study on the effectiveness of mink control in the Snæfellsnes area. However, the project of 'round-the-clock' monitoring of her every move to establish her home range and determine her activity patterns, is now complete.

Ice is Nice

Hopefully this link won´t expire: some photos of Iceland´s ice a few weeks back. I wasn´t on this trip, but out with the Icelandic Alpine Club on the same day in an area close-by Reykjavik (Esja). It was a perfect bluesky day where I was too. These photos give you an impression of ice quality over here when conditions are in nick.

http://picasaweb.google.com/roberthalldorsson/UndirEyjafjLlum

(Too bad I didn´t take any snaps of my own on the trip I was on...[not wanting to 'act the tourist' too much... ha ha]. I will try to find someone who did and add my own photos to this posting, rather than poach someone elses!). Mind you, don´t expect my photos to show such steep, impressive stuff! We had fun top-roping and that was good enough for me. For me, it was simply just great to be out.

Sadly, the snow has all but gone now after a thaw these past few days - in just 24h the snowy streets in town were all clear... (sigh... that Gulf Stream....).

There Came A Day

There came a day that caught the summer

Wrung its neck

Plucked it

And ate it.

Now what shall I do with the trees?

The day said, the day said.

Strip them bare, strip them bare.

Let´s see what is really there.

And what shall I do with the sun?

The day said, the day said.

Roll him away till he´s cold and small.

He´ll come back rested if he comes back at all.

And what shall I do with the birds?

The day said, the day said.

The birds I´ve frightened, let them flit,

I´ll hang out pork for the brave tomtit.

And what shall I do with the seed?

The day said, the day said.

Bury it deep, see what it´s worth.

See if it can stand the earth.

What shall I do with the people?

The day said, the day said.

Stuff them with apple and blackberry pie –

They´ll love me then till the day they die.

Then came this day and he was autumn.

His mouth was wide

And red as a sunset.

His tail was an icicle.

Ted Hughes (debated hotly, this ‘not very nice man to Sylvia Plath’ was also a very fine poet). Seems the blog-trolls can´t space it properly though - hey ho! sorry ´bout that.......

Hope y'all don´t mind a bit of poetry. This one feels like Iceland about 2 months back: in mid-November it seemed the sun just suddenly went from town one day. (Thanks Mum, for sending me the poem book a wee while back...).


Of course, the days are getting longer now, and it really is noticeably lighter on successive clear days. This past week the sun has been peeking up over the mountains to our South. Here in Stykkishólmur the days have been bright enough generally, but light doesn´t stick around too long: in the darkest spell it was dark until around 11.30am then darkening again by 3pm. On clear days you saw glorious dusks reflected in the clouds and on the snowy mountains, but no actual UV on your face... sigh...

How much light you get depends on S/N orientation (not surprisingly) and your location with respect to the hills. Although this town is 10k away from the mountains - stuck out on a skinny, flat peninsula - we are on the North side of the Snæfellsnes peninsula, which is great for frozen waterfalls, and not bad for light, but we certainly get less actual sunlight than on the South side. In Kolgrafafjörður (see 'Mink Days'), nestled amongst the hills, it was considerably cooler and dimmer than us still..... And in Grundarfjörður, the town closest to Kolgraf., (~30k from us) they get the least daylight of all the Snæfellsnes communities I´ve been told. (I don´t know how much they get: haven´t been too drawn to visiting in recent months....).

To get your sun 'fix' you have to drive over the pass bisecting the mountains to the sunny south side on a fine day... ahh. And with luck it´ll be over there.

Mink Days

My minking days are over.... almost. I´ve still got to trap the animals who are still alive so we can replace their transmitters with ones that will last longer ('change their batteries', so to speak). I am also immersed in data entry if that counts as minking - but I am no longer out in the snow at night: and you know what, I kinda miss it already....(shhh don´t tell my boss!).

So, here are some memories of the past 5 months of mink tracking. I would post photos on my 'flickr' but seems I´m having some teething problems with this technology (no surprise to those who know me!).... so yes, it took ages to upload...

White Christmas in Niceland

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)