Glethileg Jol or Merry Christmas from Iceland

Wishing you a very healthy, happy and hearty Christmas to all our friends all over the world! Also wishing you SNOW of course and many beautiful snowflakes to brighten your life.

Even though it is Jesus' birthday and we do our humble bit to show Him our love especially at this time of year, I find that He seems to have great fun bestowing gifts upon us also at Christmas! Especially in the last few years, He seems to be very attentive to our thoughts and surprises us with a little gift which we were not necessarily expecting. Now the presents from Him come in unexpected ways and are not from our friends and loved ones either.....as for me He seems to monitor my thoughts! One year, I noticed a pink fluffy bathrobe with matching pajamas and wistfully thought to myself how nice and cosy that would be, but of course I couldn't really afford it and I just never seem to be able to bring myself to buy clothes for myself anyway. So imagine my surprise when friends arrive with a box of clothes and there in my size? Pink fluffy pajamas of course!

So every year there are those little surprises that come from Him and we know in our heart of hearts this is ture. So I would like to ask you a question. Do you have a special gift bestowed upon you in secret that you know is from our best husband and friend? If so I would love for you to send it to me and who knows, maybe I will compile these one day and publish them for all to enjoy!

Such a special time of year! Merry Christmas!

Kross

The view north-east from our front door.

Nice rainbow, huh? This is one of the views from our front door...the little church with it own graveyard. The house on the right also belongs to the church. Now the thing is, people don´t ever attend church in Iceland anymore, especially not this type of Lutheran church. But sometimes tourist buses pull up for a look and then there is the occasional baptism performed here, but that is about all they ever use the church for. Nevertheless, everyone born in Iceland is a member of the church when they get baptised. After the earthquake one of the local priests called up all the members of her parish. She called one of my friends to see how she was doing after the earthquake, you know, to find out if she was ok. Well, my friend was fine, but proceeded to tell this priest some real major problems she was having ( a supposed friend had embezzeled 10 million Icelandic kroner from her ) but the priest didn´t want to get involved with hearing her problems!

Enter.........us! We take up where the local priest leaves off!

Here is a recent testimony: We have been doing Bible studies with Guthny from Buland, you remember, the organic dairy farm where we first lived. Guthny, recently went on a weeklong riding tour into the mountains taking some of their horses. One of the riders suddenly became very fearful of her horse and couldn´t go onwards. They were in the a very desolate area so this was a rather serious setback as horseback was the only means of transportation. There was a psychologist on the tour who talked to the woman to see if he could help her but to no avail. Others tried to reason with her but her fears were overcoming her and she refused to go onwards. Finally Guthny asked her if she could pray for her. The woman said yes, she asked Jesus into her heart and then Guthny prayed for the demons of fear to leave her. Well, that did the trick, the woman felt better right away and the riding tour continued. The psychologist is now interested in learning about the power of prayer!

Domi and Thea have a part time job!!!

Believe it or not Thea and Domi just started working (with Eman) at "N1" on weekends! This is the place where Eman worked over the winter. In summer it becomes more like a "travel centre" and I think half of Reykjavik was there with another few thousand touristsin their tourist buses this past weekend. It is the last outpost of civilization as there is virtually nothing between us and the next major town of Vik 100kms away! So everybody stops here to eat, fillup their tanks, etc. before going onwards. If I am here, even I help out but that is strictly just to be nice as sometimes the personnel are soooooo overloaded they can't even keep up! They work 12hour shifts, most of them! They told me they were very impressed with Domi & Thea, how well they worked etc, so that was nice to hear.

Hvolsvöllur is just a village with about 800 people living here. Life is very safe as there is no crime, I doubt people even lock their houses and everybody knows each other. The doctor in town recognised Eman after 35 years; he used to play with Eman´s brother when they were about 10 years old! So the "N1" as it is called, is pretty much the busiest place in town, expecially now in the summer. So it is a very good experience for the girls getting a taste of real life, work ethics and learning Icelandic at the same time.

Between this weekend job and the tree planing during the week, they keep themselves pretty busy!

Photos:
#1 Some of the sweet kids who work at N1 and Eman at the far end.
#2 Eman taking care of customers
#3 Domi wiping down tables on Sunday night as the dinner rush ended.
#4 Thea stocking shelves

Random Photos ( scroll to bottom for captions)

#1 "The Shed" sits next to the milk can platform, ( see photos #5 & 6) On warm days the milk cans would go in this turf shed which helped to keep the milk cool. It was also used as a shelter from storms by people waiting for long distance buses and for farm children waiting to be picked up by the local school bus.

#2 The farmer's wife, Ester, drives the tractor at Kross. View to the west from the deck of the summer house we are staying in on a very sunny day!

#3 A pretty good photo of the nearby falls, Seljalandfoss, which I found on the internet. Although the grass is very green now, this photo has obviously been colored and that is why is only rates "pretty good". This is maybe the only falls in Iceland that you can walk behind. I go very often as it is only a 15 minute drive.

#4 Me at Skogafoss. Photo taken by a friend last winter- note lack of water in the falls, usually there is much more in the summer months. This is a 30 minute drive from the house. Will try to get a more spectacular photo of these falls.

#5 Lambafell- the house we were sitting in having coffee when the earthquake occured.
Also for sale- only $10 million. If you Google "Lambafell, Iceland" you can see photos of the inside.

#6&7 When Asgeir was young he had to carry the milk cans out to the road. The milkcans were placed on a platform such as the one shown here and would be picked up by a truck. Now they have refrigerated trucks which drive directly to the farms.


#8 The hot tub at Lambafell is fed by this natural hot spring which gushes just a few metres away from the house.

#9 Another view of Lambafell

#10 At the tree planting location with Halldor (5) from Buland at the tree planting location.

Icelandic Summer Nights

Before we get too far away from the Summer Solstice that occurred on the 24th of June this year, I need to tell you about the long light nights! Well for starters actually we are quite a bit south now and it makes a big difference! Sunset has only been at 11:40 PM while in Reykjavik it has been past midnight and in Akureyri in the north the sun sets around 1 AM! After the sun sets it just gets darkish not exactly night! Last night I stayed up doing a few things, waiting for Eman to get back from Reykjavik where he amongst other things went to a Björk concert! It was one of those last minute things and it was free. Anyway, he got back around 1am and it was still light of course and so we stayed up and talked for awhile. We were lying in bed and suddenly it started getting brighter! The sun was already starting to rise! ( one of the most amazing things is that it rises in the north!) So it was like- we better get to sleep before the sun rises! Sometimes if the weather is not overcast, we have to put something over our little window in the top of the loft where we sleep, because otherwise you have sun streaming on your face at 5 in the morning!

But for all of you suffering from a hot muggy summer this is the place to be! If you want to get into some free airconditioning all summer long, consider Iceland! I am hoping that July might prove to actually be warm, but so far we are having daily temps between 6 and 10 C! July should bring warmer temps and then, alas, it will immediately start to cool down in August. When the weather is anywhere over 0 C the people are all ' Oh the weather is so nice and they are all in shirtsleeves'.

Top photo_ One of the farms next to Buland
Bottom photo_ View from our summer house back door at sunset at Kross

Summer Tree Planting Season has begun

Photo top: Underneith Eyafjallajökull
Photo bottom: Marie & Raf getting started with baby Aspen trees

Doing our good deed for the nation of Iceland.....tree planting! First it was Aspens and then Christmas trees...ok, Spruce. All the credit goes to Eman, Raf and Dom who are our tree planters par excellence and have done a total of 20,000 trees so far. Hurray for the tree planters! They work really quickly and Dominique is in the lead with some days getting as many as 1500 in the ground. This takes only 4 to 5 hours for one person to plant this many, so it goes quite fast. Now they are taking a few days off to see if it will continue to rain, because everything depends on the moisture in the soil.

It is, I must say, very beautiful out here and would be a great spot for a little summer house. Any takers? the land´s for sale!

In the distance you can see this very small glacier called Eyafjallajökull which is a mouthful I know. If you check out the map of Iceland you can compare this with the biggest and baddest of glaciers Vatnajökull to the west which is a hundred times bigger.

We are all fine!!!

For those who perhaps scrutinize the news, you may or may not have run across a tiny article entitled "Iceland hit by earthquake" and this is to confirm that yes, for once they got the news totally accurate! Maybe journalists should stick to just the things that are TRUE and observable such as weather events from now on. It will be interesting to see in heaven, (where your whole life and more! is stored on video) how many lives were ruined by false reporting, twisting of the truth and lives shattered by deliberate lies parading as the truth......but that is an idea for another blog.........

Back to the earthquake! I had planned on going into Selfoss to do our main food shopping, but Eman wanted to take a drive towards Vik, to hunt down a specific guesthouse which he had heard was for sale. There is a beautiful house about 20 kms away which used to be owned by a doctor who wanted to open a health spa at the foot of a mountain called Lambafell. Evidently all the plans came to a halt due to problems. Now the house is being used as a guesthouse and we were sitting with the caretaker/manager having coffee when all of the sudden the whole house started shaking! Now this house is huge by Icelandic standards, and built of gigantic logs from Canada so the thought that this could actually start shaking was rather incredible. We ran outside for safety, and in the distance we could hear and see in the neighboring mountain the loud rumble of a rock slide coming down the near vertical slope. Soon a herd of Icelandic horses came thundering by to add just a touch more drama. Then all was quiet except the birds nesting in the cliffs directly behind the house who were in a bit of a frenzy I suppose worried that their eggs might have gotten shaken loose from their nests!

The kids were home, as it was the first day of NO MORE SCHOOL! Hurray! So they were just chilling...... Dom phones me all excited. But Buland being 50 kms from the epicenter near Selfoss, we experienced only the house shaking and nothing more. In Selfoss the shops had some big messes to clean up after the contents of their shelves ended up on the floor, but there were no casualties as Icelandic houses are very well built. I heard that the earthquake in Turkey where there was massive destruction was 6.7 in magnitude and this one was 6.2, so obviously a lot depends on how well cities are built to withstand an earthquake.

I am going today into Selfoss to do the shopping that I couldn't do yesterday and I will report back to you with any more outstanding updates on the situation! Stay well everyone and don't forget to write! (i.e. Leave a comment!) Love to hear from you!

On how I mistook the Island of Vestmannæyjar for a chicken farm.....

The windiest place in Iceland on Vestmannaeyjar


Cod drying on racks

Smelly!

Old water tank partly demolished by lava from the 1973 eruption


View from lava mounds of 1973 towards mainland and 2 more islands. Note small white speck on island on the right which is a sheep farm.


Another harbour shot


Harbour shot with me and a teacher from the kids' school


Me at old Norwegian Church replica on Vestmannaeyjar


Inside the plane...first trip

The farm Buland is out in the middle of nowhere in South Iceland, so of course there are not many lights out here except from a few farms in the area. There was one very bright row of orangey lights in the distance not too far away. They seemed to be on all night long and and had a definite shape. Being new I guessed that this had to be a chicken farm, you know where the lights are on all the time. So in surveying the landscape, I had pretty much concluded that this was indeed a chicken factory and had even imagined how it looked!

One day I asked the farmer if we could go and visit this chicken farm. He looked at me with a very puzzled expression and said, "Chicken farm? There's no chicken farm over there, those are the lights from the town on Vestmannæyjar!"

Monday the weather was all sunny and blue so I decided I'd go for a visit. If you want to be spontaneous this is the right place to be! The tiny airport is only a 10 minute drive from the farm. Check in time was for 1pm and the plane took off on schedule at 1:15. I was the only passenger! The pilot did inform me however that I might not make it back later in the day as they were expecting high winds and fog over the island, so I needed to be prepared. Fine with me!

Touch down in the little 6 seater plane was perfect and I also had the whole airport to myself. The lone employee called a taxi as there was no other way to get into town; I was heavy laden with inspirational books and calendars, so decided walking the 2 kms to town might not be the wisest choice.

I spent the day visiting many shop keepers and getting to know the locals. Quite a friendly bunch they are. Then in the evening I stayed at this very nice inexpensive guest house in the center of town because as predicted, there were no more flights to the mainland. The next day the weather was worse so I decided it was time to leave and the only way was to take the car ferry to þorlakshöfn and have my husband come and fetch me if I couldn't find anybody going back towards Hvolsvöllur.

Unfortunately my camera was nowhere to be found as I was leaving home, so the photos here are thanks to the kids' Danish teacher who took these photos from our first expedition. Thanks Ann-Sofie!

Summer has arrived!

April 24 is the official 1st day of summer in Iceland. The kids get off school, all major businesses are closed and everyone wishes each other Gleðileg Sumar (Happy Summer)....yeah it´s a big deal. They do a lot of wishful thinking on the subject but who can blame them? Meantime the temps are getting up into the mid 50°s and low 60°s, crocuses are blooming and daffodils were part of the Easter scene a few weeks back.

One of the most notable events is that the countryside is teaming with birdlife these days, and there are flocks and flocks of geese, swans and many other birds which you might not recognize. This is quite a change from Winter, when it is Totally quiet and for months on end you see absolutely no wildlife at all and especially no birds except for a few crows who hang out on the farms looking for a free handout.

Sunsets are getting later and later, and right now the sun sets somewhere around 9:15 pm which is wonderful and because of this you really do feel like summer has arrived inspite of the cooler temps.

Took the 6 minute flight to Vestmaneyar last week and so will get you those amazing photos in the near future. Sorry for the delays between posts as our adapter cord broke and a new one is not exactly easy to come by on this island!

A picture is worth a thousand words.....

Photo#1 What you can see of the town of Vik from the beach. Just beyond the mountains is the glacier Myrdalsjökull


#2 Icelandic Horses on the road to Vik


#3 The cows are all running over to check me out...



#4 Just 1km from Vik (pop.300)...nature unspoiled by advertising of any kind.

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#5 Reynisdrangar Rock stacks or needles are a bit obscured by the sea mist and by my not too great camera. Legend has it that three trolls were trying to drag a three masted ship into shore and when daylight broke they all turned into stone!



#6 "Voyage"
A work of art uniting Britain and Iceland with a sister sculpture in Kingston upon Hull symbolizing the bond created by more than a thousand years of sea trading between Iceland and Hull. They are a tribute and a memorial to fishermen and seafarers who have braved the perils of the sea. Both figures face out to sea to emphasize that the waters dividing the 2 islands are also the trade routes that unite.



#7 The beach sand, formed from the volcanoes in the nearby glacier are black and soft, almost luxurious. The local volcano Katla last erupted in 1918.



#8 & 9 Mountain waters and the sea coming together.




#10 A rider & horse and the view to the east of Vik

I hope you have enjoyed this last post. The photos do not really do the subject justice at all, and I suggest doing a Google search for photos of the area taken by professional photographers. Key words: Dyrholaey, Vik, Reynisdrangar, and Myrdal for even more spectacular shots!
South Iceland is a living postcard and I do urge everyone to make a trip out here while we are still here and you can get free accomodation with us!

Closing in on Vik

 

Unfortunatly Blogger does not let me add more than one photo at a time at the moment, which means if you want to see more I have to create a new post for each photo. So........... I guess that is all I can do for now. Sorry about that but Blogger has it's own mind on things every now and again.

So this is the road just as you arrive into Vik. I stopped and got out of the car in order to take this....but as I drove onwards down the hill, there was a car behind me and it would have been a bit dangerous to stop again to take that photo. We are going again this weekend and I will try to get this spectacular shot for you on the next trip.

The Sunday Post

I am rushing out the door to go exploring, my favorite thing to do while waiting for Winter to slowly turn into Spring. Today I shall attempt to make the drive to Vik which is about 1 hours' drive so this will be short and sweet! If I get there I will blog again tomorrow. In the meantime have a nice day to all!.

Christmas details and more weather stories

 



Just a small detail from Christmas...in which Dom and I made cookies for all the relatives and this is one presentation which went with us to Reykjavik. People raved about the snowflake cookies which we did our best on. Actually there is a set of even more detailed cookie cutters which one can buy in the States....soooooooo nice! It's just one of those things you can do here in the winter and get good at since there is like TIME galore out here in December to do stuff like that.....not to mention January, which is a good time to do other in house type of fun stuff like scraping down 70 years worth of paint on the doors.

I am trying to figure out how to put our photos onto the blog using Flickr and so do keep an eye on out for that and you can see all our photos since we arrived here.

We are in the process of making decisions about what to do over the summer...there are so many tempting options such as:

Go on a SWIFT which means Summer Witnessing Initiative for Teens ( right?) and spend the summer going camping around Iceland and doing some major outreach. Well actually that is the most tempting option so no use posting any others as that is one of the best! Anything so that the kids don't die of boredom! Right? They have always wanted to go camping, but alas, my husband is not the outdoors type so it is really hard to get him to go along with the idea. Ok , so maybe not the whole summer, what about 3 weeks? We shall see.....

The weather has been warming up and 42F feels so nice! No more icy roads and we are like the cows in the barn who have been let out in the spring! Rejoice! We are not having to totally concentrate on the roads when we drive and we can relax and enjoy the view....at least I can.( Eman doesn't seem to see any of it for some reason, but that seems to be fairly typical of Icelandic people) Of course this doesn't mean that Spring has arrived by any means, and I'm sure this is not the last of the snow either, but we are just enjoying this reprieve after the storms of last week.
Boo was not able to participate in her school's production due to the weather, which turned out fine, but everyone was just so nervous that that they canceled it at the last minute. Boo!

So who wants to come for a visit this summer?

Weather permitting!

Top photo: The sign that points home
Bottom photo: Looking out from Eman's work place "N1"

So this is really the end of civilization here where Eman is working. For travellers going onwards it is the last stop until the next village, 80 kms away, Vik. You do NOT want to run out of gas between Hvolsvöllur and Vik. It is gorgeous scenery but no, you might not want to get stuck. Otherwise you would have to walk to the nearest farmhouse. Mind you, Icelandic people are very kind and there would not be the slightest problem if you did find yourself stranded. Some kind farmer would put you up for the night and give you a good hearty meal and a strong cup of coffee. If you are a tea drinker you will have a problem as here it is only black coffee and you have to ask for sugar and milk.

Recently there was a crowd of French tourists who were going onwards to the glacier Vatnajökoll where they drive over the glacier in these huge 4x4s. Evidently these French tourists paid no attention to instructions, trashed one of the vehicles and drove way too fast on the glacier....maybe they just need a French speaking tour guide? I will offer my services...... Finally the Icelandic guide had to confiscate all their car keys and wouldn´t let them go onwards until they obeyed!

Yesterday was unbelievable weather wise....a violent storm raged from 3pm until nearly midnight. Eman was still working and we considered that he might have to spend the night in Hvolsvöllur as the winds were at 40 miles per hour with gusts of up to 72 miles per hour and your car can blow off the road! There was even thunder and lightning, which is VERY rare in Iceland! It is just one notch below hurricane levels! It's not really that scary as the houses are well built and can take it, but I was over at our host's house, about 100 ft from ours and I got stuck there for a few hours. Finally when they got back in from milking, Guðmunder DROVE me back over to our house as it was too dangerous to walk! Also very icy as of course there is still plenty of ice and snow on the ground.

Today, weather permitting, we will attempt the drive to town, a mere 10 kms away, so that Boo may participate in her school´s show....there are skits and music and comedy acts. Boo plays the guitar in the "orchestra pit". Go Boo!

Who needs a lawyer when you've got.....a Mottos Calendar???

Our laptop's back-lighting went out recently so we took it in to have it diagnosed to the nearest computer repair shop.....only 50 miles away! The owner, Kolbeinn, very kindly agreed to have a look at it and since it was just a very simple connection that had come loose, he donated the repair to us. As a thank you I gave him one of our "Mottos for Success" Calendars (see previous post). He was very happy to receive this gift and told me that he had bought one for himself and one for his shop last year, but as his shop had moved to a new location, the calendar had gotten lost in the move, and he really missed having the calendar there on the counter. He later said, "I especially like to have the calendar there for people to read because occasionally I do get an aggressive, irate client. The words on that calendar have power! They calm people down and that is why I was so happy to get another one from you today!"

Saved by an inspirational calendar in Iceland

So here it is: one of our modest "mottos calendars" - one of those page a day eternal calendars that you can use every year. Now normally this is not my cup of tea. It's you know what we call "milky" and I do prefer something much longer and deeper, something I can sink my teeth into. But I do realize that there are people who like them such as the whole country of India who just goes wild over our calendars. But would you believe that Icelanders also love them? I suppose at least 3/4 of the population has one by now. I met a lady in a shop in Selfoss, who said, "oh yes, someone came by here selling those about 5 years ago and we still have it on the desk in the office. Please if you ever do a 2nd version let me know so I can order it." (Mottos 2 is due out any day now)

But here is the amazing account of how one woman's life changed because of the Mottos Calendar. Eman met this woman while he was out selling our materials door to door one day a few months ago. She said she and her husband was not the slightest bit interested in anything that had to do with God or Jesus....she just believed vaguely in the universe....but she would take one to help our work.
Eman talked to her for awhile and led her in a little prayer to receive Jesus into her heart which she did probably more just to please Eman than for any other reason. After one month she phoned us raving about the calendar and ordered 4 more to give as gifts to friends.
She told us that as she read the pages she found the wisdom they contained started to change her day, her outlook and her mood. She would wake up a bit sad or depressed and then read the calendar and her day would actually change for the better! She said this was also happening like this for her 15 year old daughter as well and she changed her mind about about God...she said, "Now I believe in God and Jesus because there was so much truth in that calendar that I couldn't deny it."

Wow! Beautiful!