Looking back at my Iceland year 2024
Now January is already half over and I'm just now getting to my annual review of last year! Somehow there's too much going on again...
Beginning of 2024
Our year 2024 began in Iceland, in our little house here, cozy with husband and child.
Shortly after New Year's Day, child no. 3 and his girlfriend came to visit for an "Iceland in Winter" impression. Unfortunately, child no. 3 had already been sick in Germany before New Year's Eve, with fever and a cold. He was feeling much better again, so they flew to Iceland to visit us as planned at the beginning of January. Unfortunately, he felt really dirty after the flight. He spent the next day in bed but got progressively worse and after he coughed up more and more blood we took him to the emergency room at the hospital in Selfoss. Diagnosis: pneumonia. Well, that's how we met an Icelandic bráðamóttaka (= emergency room)...
When we returned in February there was another volcanic eruption on Reykjanes, and this time the lava hit the infrastructure. The hot water pipe was destroyed. So no heating in the houses - and that in the middle of winter. All public facilities were closed. People were asked to save electricity by only having one electric oven per household so that the network was not overloaded. There was then a defect in the cold water pipe, and due to the pressure drop there was sometimes no cold water.
Because we flew with Play, departing at 6 a.m., we had booked a room in a guesthouse in Keflavík the night before the flight. Luckily, that worked, even though there was no hot water and the electric ovens couldn't be used for hours in the evening, because otherwise - if everyone was cooking more or less at the same time - there would have been another power outage. But everything went well and what I remember most is how we snuggled up comfortably in our beds in the evening...
During the Easter holidays we visited our grandchild in Iceland for the first time - we particularly enjoyed that!
Our summer in Iceland was again full of very different experiences - both culturally (from the church concert in Sólheimar with Páll Óskar to the mud tractor event in Flúðir to a visit to the house of Nobel Prize winner Halldór Laxness and the Pride Parade in Reykjavík)...
... as well as culinary. The very special highlights for me were the food tour with Sabrina from Bitesized Iceland at the Old Port of Reykjavík and of course the invitation to eat with Fröken Selfoss for an Icelandic menu that really contains almost everything that one associates with Icelandic cuisine. It was just an absolutely amazing culinary experience!
Northern lights in autumn
Autumn surprised us with wonderful northern lights, the likes of which we had never seen before.
We were also able to experience the increased geothermal activity in the high-temperature area of Haukadalur, around the geyser, and a very atmospheric Halloween evening with lots of happy, singing children roaming the streets in Reykjavík.
In November, Linava's Minnisspil about Ísland was published, a language learning memo game about Iceland, with 36 typically Icelandic terms and the Icelandic vocabulary. It was originally released in 2022 as a Sweden memo game and now in November 2024 Anne von Linava has released further versions (after Swedish now Danish, Finnish, Icelandic, Norwegian and Scandinavian with all 5 languages). I was able to be the inspiration for the Island version, which was a lot of fun and I just love the game so much!
The year 2024 ended for us where it began - in winter in our Iceland house. Here we are in the hot pot, wonderfully relaxing in the hot water, there was snow everywhere and the sun was setting, bathing everything in a very special, golden light... A nice end to the year with my loved ones!
And another annual review of some of my knitting projects from last year:
In the spring I knitted the gray cat slá ("axlarslá") as a shoulder warmer as a birthday present for a friend. For Easter I knitted the yellow Slá with the purple bunnies.
In the summer, even more slár as a shoulder warmer on cool Icelandic summer evenings - here I have photos of the dachshund Slá for a very special colleague of mine, of two petrol-colored shoulder warmers with plant motifs on the edge and of my sheep Slá from the thin Plötulopi -Wool.
In the fall I started knitting a few Christmas presents - the thick red and white Lopapeysa as Álafosslopi, i.e. the thick Icelandic wool, in the colors of his football club for child no. 2, a Christmas Slá in Christmas colors with green and red for my sister and Lopapeysa in petrol green with a light green and pink pattern for a friend who has lived here in Iceland for years, but still had no lopapeysa! There was also a bobble hat with pink bobbles in the same colors...
With this in mind - I'm looking forward to many new knitting projects in the new year! I've already finished the first sweater of the new year and I bought the wool for the next Lopapeysa in Reykjavík this week... after child no. 4 has successfully grown out his Lopapeysa, I think he needs a new one!
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