Lífið er litríkt

Life is colorful

“Colorful” means “litríkur” in Icelandic. Sounds good, right?

I think it's nice when life is colorful, happy and varied - and I also like to bring more color into my everyday life, especially on gray days. So I also like to knit beautifully colorful things!

Somehow it spontaneously happened after New Year's Eve that I knitted a leftover sweater from the Léttlopi wool leftovers that have accumulated in our Iceland house over the last few years. At first I thought I would just knit another hat, but after I started I changed my mind.

My leftover sweater is of course with a round yoke, like typical Icelandic sweaters, but without a pattern and completely ribbed. I think it feels particularly soft and fluffy and is really warm!

As a precaution, I jotted down how I knitted the sweater in bullet points in case I wanted to do something similar again. Maybe next time as a cardigan...? I just hope I'll still know what I meant with my embroidery points here..!

I used up all the Léttlopi wool that I had left somewhere in the house, only some white wool was left...

When the sweater was finished, we did a “photo shoot” in the snow. We were driving around Selfoss anyway and then I stood in front of a big pile of snow on the side of the road with my colorful sweater and my colorful self-knitted bobble hat. My husband took a photo of me.

I thought, against a background like this, the color stands out even more and clearly shows exactly what I'm about - more cheerful, colorful color even for gray days! In the photo here I brightened the colors a bit so you can see better how colorful my sweater actually is.

We definitely had fun taking photos!

My next knitting project will be a classic lopapeysa, a typical Icelandic sweater with a round yoke... My youngest offspring has outgrown his lopapeysa, he clearly needs a new one! We bought the wool in Reykjavík and my youngest picked out the colors himself. So I'm taken care of again and can relax and relax in front of the TV in the evenings and wind down...

[Translated from here.]

Endurlit 2024

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!

Iceland summer

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.

Also, on October 22nd, the second day Grindavík reopened to the public, we were in the city for a short, very impressive and oppressive stay.

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!

End of the year

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:

For Christmas there were bobble hats, first one for child no. 2's girlfriend, then - because the knitting went so surprisingly quickly - another one in pink for child no. 1 and finally one in black for myself.

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!

[Translated from here.]

Dekkið sprakk hjá okkur

Tire burst on the way to the airport

Today we had to get up in the night to go to the airport.

At first we were worried because there was a weather warning for the night with storms, strong gusts and a lot of rain. And since it had been really cold so far and now the thaw has set in, the forecast wasn't really good.

Ultimately the weather was uncomfortable, but not our biggest problem.

Because of the weather, we were "only" traveling at almost 80 km/h on Reykjanesbraut, road 41, when our rear right tire burst near Hafnarfjörður.

Suddenly the car became "restless", it felt like the whole car was rattling strangely at the front, then this subsided again, but then you could clearly hear a loud "clack - clack - clack" at the back on the right. It sounded absolutely wrong. Luckily the car didn't "break" in any way. My husband was able to slow down and stop in the exit with the hazard lights on.

At least I was properly dressed for the situation with my orange winter jacket with reflectors and was clearly visible on the road.

Well, and then at quarter past 5 in the morning we were standing on the street in the wind and rain with the broken tire, the children and all the luggage in the car and actually had to get to the airport in time. And now..?!?

Luckily, friends rescued us, picked us up and drove us to the airport with all our luggage.

We arrived at the airport at 6:15 a.m. and check-in was possible until 6:45 a.m.

I was worried because there were a lot of flights scheduled to take off within 20 or 30 minutes at that time. I was already worried that it might be tight. In fact we were lucky. The other passengers were obviously all already through.

There was practically nothing going on at the counter, baggage check-in or at security and we got through really well. We were even able to buy some provisions and visit the sanitary rooms again.

In the end everything worked out very, very well, fortunately!

Our friend later sent us a photo of our broken tire. This could have turned out differently...

[Translated from here.]

Þíðviðri og hláka

Thaw and snowmelt

In the last two weeks after Christmas we had a relatively consistent period of cold weather.

Mostly good weather, only one heavy snowfall, but otherwise really pretty good and regular Northern Lights at night!

During this time, the temperatures here were often below 5 °F (-15 °C) and remained below freezing almost all the time. (The water connection only froze once when it was -2 °F (-19 °C) for a day... and my husband also managed to thaw the connection overnight!)

We also had quite a bit of snow, if you look at the picture I took of our terrace over the last few days...

Here's another picture of the icicles that hung from the eaves of our roof under a clear blue sky.

It's been getting warmer since yesterday. Since yesterday afternoon it has been constantly above freezing level, it is thawing and dripping and the icicles that were hanging from the roof have become much smaller within a few hours. I took this picture here about 2 hours ago - and the icicles have now completely melted away.

Fortunately, the change in the weather has not yet led to traffic chaos here. Yesterday in the afternoon we drove across the Hellisheiði to Reykjavík with 36 °F (2 °C) and snowfall, which went smoothly despite the thaw. Wind and rain are supposed to come tonight, I hope it stays as harmless as possible...

[Translated from here.]

Art on the wall

The laundry in Vitastígur

When we were walking through Reykjavík recently, I noticed a mural on the wall of a house that I had consciously never seen before and that seemed unfamiliar to me.

So my husband took another photo at my request - my cell phone was on fire again, I'm afraid I'll need a new one... but I definitely wanted a picture of the mural!

And a few days later, by pure chance, I noticed an online article in Morgunblaðið - with exactly this mural!?!

Source: mbl.is

In the meantime I have done a bit of research into the story behind this picture on the wall of the laundry:

The house on Vitastígur is home to the Úðafoss dry cleaners, probably the oldest dry cleaners still in operation in Iceland, founded in 1933.

The picture on the house wall is by the Icelandic artist Stefán Óli Baldursson, also known as Stebbi Motta. After he started spraying graffiti on walls with a spray can in the late 1990s as a child (and got in trouble from his mother for it), he later worked as a street artist and, with increasing success, has also painted many indoor and outdoor walls in and around Reykjavík, but also in other places on Iceland and Greenland, painted with his works.

Stefán Óli is, among other things, fascinated by old Icelandic photos that he finds in Reykjavík's Ljósmyndasafn (Museum of Photography) and other archives. That's how he came across a black and white picture by the Icelandic photographer Sigurhans Vignir (1894 - 1975), which is in the possession of the Árbæjarsafn. The photo shows the inside of the stone laundry room in Laugardalur and the washerwomen are at work.

Þvottalaugarnar

The "laundry basins" are basins with hot water that were used by housewives and maids in Reykjavík for washing until the 20th century. They were in Laugardalur, in Laugamýri, on the site of the old Laugarnes farm.

For a long time, women had to walk with their laundry on their backs without a road from downtown Reykjavík to what is now the Laugardalur district, often in the dark in the freezing cold and the scorching steam of the boiling hot water.

The first shelter for the washerwomen at the hot pools was built in 1833 on behalf of the then governor Regner Christoffer Ulstrup (1798 - 1836), who was horrified by the working conditions of the washerwomen. However, the shelter was destroyed again in a storm in 1857.

It was only around 30 years later that the working conditions for women improved sustainably, when construction of the road from Reykjavík to Laugardalur, the Laugavegur, began in 1886, which made the journey with laundry much easier, and also the non-profit Thorvaldsens Society, the oldest Icelandic women's association in Reykjavík (founded in 1875) had a laundry room built here at the pool in 1887, which the association later donated to the community.

The use of hot tubs for washing clothes declined after 1909, when homes in Reykjavík were provided with running water. During the First World War, however, there was such a shortage of fuel that the women returned to Laugardalur to wash. Between the wars, the use of the laundry basins fell sharply again, especially after the city was supplied with hot water from 1930 onwards.

After the occupation of Iceland in May 1940 by the British and then the American armed forces, laundering for the military resumed on a large scale. At the end of 1940, around 200 women are said to have worked for a local laundry or washed clothes for the army or soldiers, and the women's hourly wage was sometimes less than 2 ISK.

The first stone house for the washerwomen was built in 1942. The house initially offered space for 32 workers and led to a massive improvement in the women's working conditions. The work now became significantly safer as you no longer had to stand directly on the slippery floor at the basins with boiling hot water, but could let the water flow through a pipe into washing tubs and then wash in these tubs.

Until the 1960s, this washing facility was actively used by women from the area whose apartments were not yet connected to the hot water supply. The washhouse was not finally closed until 1976. Today the pools are dry, and all that can be seen of the former wash house or pools are the remains of the foundation walls.

Photo as inspiration for the mural

This photo by the Icelandic photographer Sigurhans Vignir shows the washerwomen at work on the laundry tubs in the washhouse built in 1942.

Source: vatnsidnadur.net

Inspired by this photo, the artist Stefán Óli Baldursson then approached the owners of the laundry or the owners of the house and asked if he could paint the house wall with this motif.

The owners agreed and so this large-format mural was created, in style and colors visibly based on the zeitgeist of the 1940s, i.e. the time in which the photo of the washerwomen in the washhouse in Laugardalur was taken.

I find it exciting how this mural on the house of a laundry is reminiscent of the entire long history of the washerwomen in Laugardalur!

[Translated from here.]

Þrettándagleði

Farewell to Christmas

In Iceland, “Þrettándagleði” is the name given to the festival that marks the end of the Christmas season on the 13th day of Christmas.

On the 13th day after Christmas ("Þrettándi" = "Thirteenth"), i.e. on Epiphany, January 6th, the Christmas season officially ends here in Iceland. People pack up their Christmas decorations and Christmas decorations - and the last of the 13 Icelandic Santa Clauses (jólasveinar) goes back to her troll parents Grýla and Leppalúði in the mountains.

Blysför á Selfossi

Here in Selfoss there is a big torchlight procession ("blysför") through the town every year (weather permitting).

Shortly before 8 p.m. the procession gathers at the parking lot at the Krónan supermarket, next to the Trygnaskáli at the bridgehead. The 13 Santa Clauses light their large torches at a large fire. And then a police car blocks the main street and the torchlight procession starts moving.

In the front, the tractor drives with the wagon in which several large trolls sit and perhaps one or two elf who doesn't want to mix with the crowd.

Behind them march the 13 Santa Clauses, with their shaggy long white hair and beards, wrapped up nice and warm with thick woolen gloves, cuffs and thick shoes. And every Santa Claus has his big torch in his hand.

As soon as the train passes them, the people on the side of the road join the procession and move along from the bridgehead...

.... first along the main road for a bit, then left into Reynivellir Street and finally along Engjavegur to the entrance to the campsite. During the parade there are heaven and people and, above all, lots of children.

Jólin verða kvödd í Gesthúsum á Selfoss með glæsilegri þrettándagleði

Christmas ends with a magnificent celebration on the 13th day of Christmas, as is the slogan on the community's homepage. Behind the reception at the campsite in Selfoss there is a large pile of wood with old pallets on the lawn. When the torchlight procession arrives here, the brenna, the bonfire, is ceremoniously lit in the presence of Santa Claus.

Of course, the Santa Clauses live up to their nature as trolls, they are a bit wild, loud and unexpected and like to play practical jokes. Unfortunately, I don't know why this Santa Claus tried to roast his ass while singing wildly. But he probably doesn't know it himself. It must have been really hot!

After the fire has been lit, the large fireworks display is set off in collaboration with the local rescue teams (Björgunarfélag Árborgar).

A special rack has been set up for the torches of the 13 Santa Clauses, in which the Santa Clauses place their torches so that they can finish burning here. I still think it smells like burning kebab skewers - but it doesn't smell like that.

And after the fireworks, on the way back to our house, the northern lights danced across the sky again behind the Ingólfsfjall and accompanied us all the way home. Yes, I know, the photo here is terribly blurry, I only had my cell phone with me and nothing to rest it on, but it just captures the mood a bit... We then had to unpack our shopping and... then the northern lights disappeared. They came back around midnight... but by then I was already lying warm in my bed.

How could the farewell to Christmas end more beautifully than with the Northern Lights!

Christmas is over

And after January 6th, the Christmas lights are taken down again, the Christmas decorations are put back in the boxes and the last Santa Claus collects his washed laundry from the line and heads off into the mountains.

The illuminationin the cemeteries will also be switched off again. The electric crosses will be dismantled again or at least the electricity will be switched off - after all, Christmas is now over. Even in the cemeteries.

Only the Christmas fairy lights ("jólaseríur") usually remain switched on for a bit; light in the dark is often important and comforting here in wintry, dark Iceland.

Even if you can clearly see that the days are getting longer again... From the latest sunrise at 11:16 a.m. we are now at sunrise at 11:02 a.m. and the day is already 41 minutes longer today than at the winter solstice on December 21st. So it's getting brighter...!

Here's a photo of the dawn of January 7th, taken at 10:40 a.m.

So then - let's start a new year!

[Translated from here.]