“Neyðin kennir naktri konu að spinna”. So the Icelandic saying goes.
With the bustle of Christmas and the explosions in the sky that illuminated the changing of the year now all but disappeared, my thoughts and energies are turned towards discovering how a non-indigenous settler here goes about sustaining momentum through the winter months.
Þorri is upon us: a midwinter month from late January to late February according to the Old Icelandic Calendar, the name of which is believed to be the personification of frost. Days are extremely short, and have felt so since the Winter Solstice. Even though they are supposed to get longer from that point on, it has not felt like it, for here we are nestled deep within a steep sided valley. For a few weeks now that so cherished uplifting kiss of pink has not even graced the mountain top as it used to at just-after-lunch. Until today. And I tell you it made me gasp!
The darker-lighter
We have had regular snowfall and many days of its bright blanket settling in for a while. This makes a huge transformation to the landscape, as any light that exists – day or night – is thrown around for all to share. Sometimes the mountains out across the sea seem to emit the light, and sometimes (and I still cannot fathom this ) as the day gets darker it gets brighter. But sometimes there are just incessant snowstorms and winds and the desire to venture even into the garden vanishes!
A Þorrablót
A feast to break the long winter days – Þorrablót – has begun, with gatherings happening over the next couple of weeks in people’s homes, at village halls and hotels. These gatherings involve eating a selection of Icelandic ‘delicacies’ such as sviðasulta (svið = singed boiled sheep’s head, sulta = jam), hangikjöt (smoked lamb) and súrsaðir hrútspungar (pickled ram’s testicles), and music and dancing. We went to a feast this weekend where the Ásatrúarfélag (‘ the company of Norse pagans’) priestess conducted a ceremony, passing a carved cow horn round in a circle from which each guest drank and hailed Þorri and/or whosoever they wished to hail!
Hangikjöt (literally ‘hung meat’) hanging in a smoke house
Back in December, the Winter Solstice was a special occasion also celebrated with members of the Ásatrúarfélag and participating in a ceremony, or blót. As Christmas is considered a time for winding down and turning in, and receiving guests and visiting others, the ceremony reflected on what being being a good host and a good guest really meant, and together with the priestess we chanted passages from the Hávamál. The purpose of the Ásatrúarfélag, though pagan in its inspiration, is to gather those with a belief to live in harmony with nature and the seasons, so that they can acknowledge and celebrate it together.
The duration of Advent saw all houses, buildings, boats and…tractors (!) bedecked with Christmas lights, turning the town- and village-scapes into Las Vegas abstracts. The dead did not miss out on the fun either…all cemeteries became alight with multi-coloured crosses! Christmas lights are serious business here. When we were trying to find a way to plug in the lights that coiled up our front steps, we realised the previous owner of our house had made a hole in her window frame specifically for this purpose, that was plugged for the rest of the year!
A week before Christmas we made a day trip to a small pine forest a few fjords away to gather Christmas trees for the family. Though it seems strange to chop down some of the very few trees in this country, they were planted intentionally close together to shelter each other and need occasional thinning. And so the deal was struck with the farmer and it has become a yearly tradition. It was almost like a pilgrimage and to travel so far for our tree made the occasion all the more special. It marked the start of the Christmas feeling. For Christmas my parents came from Kenya and my brother from England and squeezed into our little house and sat in hotpots in the snow and ate foods and experienced life a way they had never done before and may never do again! Coming to northern Iceland from Kenya must be akin to interplanetary travel and there’s not many that make it here in winter, let alone equatorial beings.
In the run up to New Year’s Eve, our village hall became a firework supermarket – trolleys and all! The proceeds made from fireworks in Iceland go directly to the mountain rescue service, which is a volunteer-led organisation, and so, in charitable spirit Icelanders stock-pile fireworks and set them off with reckless abandon. Some are named after characters from Icelandic sagas. I remember two years ago, in the midst of ‘the crisis’ I saw some repackaged to be called The Bankers – ideal for those wanting to metaphorically vent their frustration at the collapse of the economy.
The New Year’s celebrations involve all towns and villages first having an impossibly large bonfire stacked high with pallets and other burnable fishing community detritus. Ours was the size of a house, and (a popular trick in these parts) made more exciting by having buckets of petrol thrown on it (!). Then the official fireworks were let off, and in our valley they were as delicious to listen to as to see, as each crackle echoed between the valley walls tenfold.
At midnight the anarchy began. Outside nearly every house and building, people brought their stash of charity-fireworks and lit them simultaneously. They were in front of you, behind you, above you and either side, careering in all directions! It was a far cry from the roped-off affairs I have become used to in Britain. The ships in the harbour sounded their horns and torch bearers climbed the mountainside to light a figure of 2011.
And as it all fizzed and flickered to darkness again we looked up to see a black mountain silhouetted by a bright green sky. The aurora borealis had come to join in. According to folklore, the Northern Lights are elves dancing in the sky and you will never see them on New Year´s Eve because on that day the elves move house and come down to the ground to do so. They had obviously got settled in to their new house quickly this year as they were dancing again by a quarter past midnight. We bundled into the car and drove off to a disused road near our house that has no light pollution, and of course it was far more spectacular than any number of fireworks could be.
Our village with yonder mountains glowing blue
With celebrations over and visitors departed, this is perhaps the hardest time of year. There is not the feeling of Spring being around the corner, rather a knowledge that this freezing and melting cycle that is winter will continue for several more months and all there is to do is hunker down and get on with it. I have been impressed at how my neighbours in this village seem to use the cycle/walking paths in all weathers and sometimes you catch somebody walking backwards, their backs braced against the strong winds. I try to get out into the daylight hours whenever the weather is a little more still, to stretch my creaking limbs.
The gradual transformation of our house continues slowly – not aided much by the fact that the town’s only paint mixing machine has been broken for a week with no signs of recovery just yet! It is a strange season this Icelandic winter, as of course now is the time to be indoors and getting on with creative projects, yet I find the dearth of light cumulatively demotivating. For me, winter has always felt like a time when the year is holding its breath. The first phase is spent nesting and feeding, and sitting on creative ideas to see which feel good. And then begins the waiting. Waiting for a warmer breeze to come and blow the stillness away. Waiting for ideas to push up into the light and germinate. But of course here, you cannot just wait. It cannot be a breath holding exercise. I must learn to ‘be’ differently here for this part of the year that is much longer than the others.
But of course this adaptation cannot, will not, happen overnight. My mind and body seems to have gone into ‘sleep’ mode, where I can function when necessary but I must set myself goals and write them down lest I forget and wake up in a month’s time! My man Orri has gone to sea and so now I find myself the ultimate Icelandic cliché – the fisherman’s woman! To my surprise, for a few days at a time at least, I do not mind his absence, as I am forced to look at who I am here, and what I need to do to become part of this place, and to make it my own. And in this quite extreme environment, it acts like a magnifying glass, and lets me inspect the image so that in it I can find my own rhythm.
And sometimes, I forget about rhythm and I am taken by a moment where I see something I have never seen before because the right ingredients have come together at the right time to make something truly beautiful. Like ice forming suddenly in a bay where the sea meets a river’s flow, in shapes I never could have dreamed existed. And that feeds me for days.
Need teaches a naked woman to spin yarn. I get it now.
Journeys In Between 