In the NOT Midwinter…

WINTER CLOTHES

by Karla Kushkin

Under my hood I have a hat
And under that
My hair is flat.
     Under my coat
My sweater’s blue,
My sweater’s red.
I’m wearing two.
     My muffler muffles to my chin
And round my neck
And then tucks in.
     My gloves were knitted
By my aunts.
I’ve mittens too
And pants
And pants
And boots
And shoes
With socks inside.
     The boots are rubber, red and wide.
And when I walk
I must not fall
Because I can’t get up at all.

And every word of this poem is true. Except the part about the aunts. Neither of us have knitting aunts.

Glasgow is still bound up in a misery of ice and rain. We have new spikes for our boots, since D. managed to actually stomp the ones on his heels flat, which tells us a few things about the way he walks(!). While we wait for the plumber people to take apart the bathroom (and listen to the truly horrific waterfall running in our neighbor’s house – the firemen only turned off ONE valve; the flat is ruined), we are running the heat and doing laundry in hopes that things will actually DRY at some point – the rugs so far have not.

It’s hard to believe that already we’re deep into it messy winter, and officially, it only started on Solstice, which was a little over a week ago! But, no matter. We still have nice memories from our time away to think on, which will keep us going.

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Unlike in the U.S., where Christmas Eve affords many a half-day off, and workers are often back to the office the day following, in Iceland, that’s not the case. Every year, Iceland has jólabókaflóðið, or “the Christmas book flood,” which is the frantic flooding of the market with book releases just before the holiday. Books are the Numero Uno gift to give and receive on Christmas, as Iceland sells the greatest number of books per capita of any nation in the world. (Yeah. T. was struck speechless by the awesomeness of that for several long seconds.) Books are talked about on the news, and the awards buzz — and the “this book is going to flop” buzz — is huge. Thus, while Christmas Eve is the time to open those books, Christmas Day and the day following? Are for reading those books, preferably in bed, while eating filled chocolates. At all the parties in the days following, books are the primary topic of conversation – what everyone got, if they’re any good, etc. etc. etc.

This is no guidebook exaggeration. Many people mentioned to us what they’d be doing on Christmas. Aside from attending a church service, most of the weekend was for reading. (Awesome, huh?)

So, the city was empty and quiet, with a light rain misting down. We had a lovely time window-shopping, walking from the old city to the downtown area, and winding through the streets. Reykjavik is a strangely artsy city, so there was a lot to look at.

On Christmas Day we attended a church service at Hallgrímskirkja, which was amusing – since it was an Anglican service given in a Lutheran Church in English by an Icelandic reverend. Contradictions abounded! As did tourists – it never ceases to amaze us how people visiting churches feel they can simply stride into a church mid-service, stand in a pew, take pictures of themselves and their surroundings, and walk out again. We were worried that the people were Americans. Fortunately, they were German, and we could hold our fellow countrymen innocent of that particular obnoxiousness, at least.

It’s easy to dissect the name – it’s Hallgrím’s kirkja — Hallgrím’s church. It’s named after Hallgrímur Pétursson, who is apparently a really famous Icelandic poet. He wrote a series of fifty Easter poems, one of which is read aloud per day on Icelandic public radio, beginning ten days before Lent. They’re very well-loved, our tour guide told us, but it’s a rare person outside of Iceland who has ever heard of him. (Rejoice: you have now ascended the ranks of rare persons!)

We were two of about eighteen people at church on Christmas. While we felt a little silly at such a sparsely attended service (the person who led the carols beamed and nodded at us after the service – apparently we were the only ones singing, and she could hear us allll the way in the front. Yikes.), we were glad to finally make a visit to Hallgrímskirkja – the inside of the church is just gorgeous. We’d heard from various tour guides about the state architect of the last thirty-some years, Guðjón Samúelsson, and how it took them about thirty-eight years to actually finish the structure (1945-1986). He did an amazing job of making the church interior look like … an ice cave. No, really, that’s what it’s supposed to look like.

What was more intriguing to us was the organ. It looked innocuous enough, just sitting on the floor in the back of the sanctuary, but it has a whopping 5,275 pipes. (And 72 stops, but we don’t know if that’s particularly impressive, since we don’t play.) It has a massive, blow-out-the-ceiling sound, but they don’t play it all the time, because it can be heard from outside the church, across the road, and inside of hotel rooms. Yes. We heard it play all Christmas Eve, just lightly on the air, through a single opened window, but it was audible. Thus, they play an electric organ for carols, so they don’t drown out the singers.

We prefer to be drowned out.

After Christmas, T. was delighted to find evidence of the Yule Lads! Still no Yule Cat — apparently people are afraid of photographing the beast — but we did find all the elderly looking “lads” at their nasty little tasks in a shop window. The funniest was the ogress Grýla – with a bag of children on her back. Did we mention that in 1746 it became against Icelandic law to terrify children with these tales? Apparently Icelanders started being concerned with their children’s sanity long before it became fashionable to even think they were anything other than small adults.

The Yule lad/ogress mythology discussion brings us to the whole elf thing — or the huldufólk, as the Icelanders call their “hidden folk.” It’s astounding that so many people, when they think of Iceland — even when the talk in the news was about their bank going bankrupt — they must talk about elves. In Vanity Fair there was a huge piece about it, all serious and newsworthy and discussing the economy and mistakes and the downturn of the whole nation, and then, Hahaa, those Icelanders! 80% of them, when polled, said they believed in elves! Hahahaha!

Yeah, well. Whatever. People believe all kinds of things, and probably one of the better American strengths (at least on the West Coast) is that while we might believe all kinds of things, most people are left alone with their beliefs. Everyone we met was perfectly nice and friendly and we were happy not to ask them a thing about elves. Beliefs are personal, no matter how weird they might seem to others.

It was a good trip to a clean, well-organized city with lights everywhere to combat the late-rising (11 a.m.!) sun, and the most wonderful lava springs, hot tubs, steam baths, and swimming pools. That’s reason enough to go right there. Better reasons include nice people and interesting artwork and lots of places to walk and think and explore — read.