Rod Summers Iceland 2010

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Rod Summers Iceland 2010

In 2 days I am heading north again and will be in Reykjavik for a few days before flying up to the Langaness peninsula in the far north east of Iceland. Internet connections permitting I hope to be doing a daily blog, join me if you will.

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Comment by Rod Summers on June 18, 2010 at 8:25pm
I slept badly last night, I woke suddenly with my mind overflowing with those small problems I have with work, in particular an installation I should make in an underground car park in September and once awake it was difficult to get back to sleep. When I did eventually drop off into a shallow sleep my dreams were plagued with what I can only described as surreal musical sex. I was glad when it was time to get up and that first mug of tea was a blessed relief.
Today for the first time since I arrived here I will make a foraging run into the village of Thorshöfn to buy the necessities to make a chicken curry for 8 tonight and 100 sheep-shit cakes for the performance on the 21st. I will take a few photos of the village.

It is another perfect day, barely a cloud in the sky and were it not for the biting wind it would be quite warm. A good day to be spending in the kitchen? Why not?
Within the last year Mirjam has extended the hostel by installing two new accommodation blocks, one block is the perfect accommodation for nn people with a large meeting/board/dining room for any business that wants to get away from all distractions and concentrate. The other block is made up of 8 completely self contained apartments, each apartment can accommodate 4 people and comes complete with cooker, micro wave, cooking utensils, cutlery and dishes there is even a television connected to a satellite dish.

Later:
Back from the village and the curry is bubbling on the cooker. It is the first time I have made this dish without ghee and curry paste and with frozen chicken as fresh was not available and if I tried to take one of Sverrir’s egg-laying chickens from the barn he’d probably set the dogs on me. But it smells about right and I’ll have a taste in half an hour or so.
This year six young members of the ‘International Seeds’ organisation are here helping Sverrir plant his forest and doing other work on the farm, one of the a Portuguese named Paulo came with us to the shop to buy supplies for everyone. He is a very persuasive young man as I suddenly found myself agreeing to take the party on a bird watching trip over the weekend.

The hostel is just about full and the official opening of the new section is not until Monday. Apparently the knowledge that the VEC Vikings are doing a performance here has hit the news... though which news is yet to be ascertained! I’m only making sheep-shit cakes for 100, hope that will be enough!
Just had the first tasting of the curry, I am definitely on a winner, it is super delicious!
I saw my first Black-tail Godwit today.
And finally I couldn't leave you without a landscape, this on on the way back from the village today.

Comment by Katerina Nikoltsou (MomKat) on June 18, 2010 at 9:34am
Hello Rod, up thar with temps of 18 C(heat wave?)
Yep, 40 C here could melt money (if we had any!)
But it keeps the Aegean Sea just perfect for swimming...sooooooooo
while you battle the head winds, me thinks i'll go for a dive.
'Love the photos of the abandoned farm...what a get-away place
that could be! Will be sending something in the mail to Yta....
there were the sun never sets! How grand!
Comment by Zois on June 18, 2010 at 1:13am
Yes I read daily and send friends here, so! you are improving appreciation of Icelandic people and land around the world. Delighted to send MA out tomorrow AM, from spousie also.
Also, those are fine photographs. The colors among the grey objects are superb.
Comment by Rod Summers on June 17, 2010 at 10:50pm
The Dead Sheep And The Broken Barrel.
Icelanders have a term for today’s conditions of bright and sunny with a bitterly cold easterly wind gusting merrily, they call it ‘Window weather’ because it is best experienced from behind glass.
Thanks for the feedback fellow IUOMAers, for a while there I thought I was suffering all this just for my own pleasure:¬Þ Yes that was snow on the volcano flanks, at that point we were well over a thousand metres above sea level. There is no tree line because there are no trees in the highland heaths.
The last two days here have been exceptionally warm 15 to 18 degrees but today the mercury is back to the average of about 9 degrees C with a wind chill factor reducing that by about another 3 degrees. I think that when I was made some of my DNA through haste was put in back to front or upside down as I can’t stand the heat and love the cold, maybe I’m just an oxygen junkie as cold air carries more of that gas than warm air and it seems to me that the air here on Ytra Lón is 90% oxygen, 1% volcano ash with the other 9% being composed of equal measures of nitrogen, sheep farts and the smell of lamb soup.
40 degrees Kate! That’s hot enough to melt money!
Elizabeth I am over a thousand kilometres from the volcano the only ash here is from the local volcano which had been dormant for a couple of thousand years. When I visited the farm that is right under the erupting volcano last week there was very little trace of the ash left, rain and wind has dispersed it.
Maybe you would like to send a mail art postcard to the farm thanking them for letting me blog via their VERY expensive internet connection. Farmers with kids who live so remotely should get free internet access, I’d vote for that. Here is the address: Farm Hostel Ytra Lón, 681 Thorshöfn, Iceland.
This morning I took the camera around the farm and although I took plenty of photos they are not excitingly visual as Sverrir, like me, is a Virgo and keeps his tools workshop, barn and barnyard tidy without being obsessive about it. So after lunch of lamb soup with the family which filled the whole area with the delicious smell of... lamb soup, I walked, well stumbled onto the tundra that lies to the south to visit the two abandoned farms one of which was being renovated by the family that owns it until the money ran out and the renovation stopped. Had I the money I would consider taking it off their hands and finishing the job... well I can dream can’t I?
As I walked I came upon two Arctic Skuas in conversation with a Golden Plover, I couldn’t get close enough to hear what they were talking about. The Skuas flew off shouting insults at me, the Plover bobbed a curtsy and walked off behind a tussock.
With a tail wind I reached the really dilapidated farm and took some super pictures a couple of which are here.
The return journey was naturally into a head wind but my pressing need for tea drove me resolutely on until here I am again writing these notes for your entertainment.
Tomorrow I am making a chicken curry for a family that eats lamb meat 5 days a week and trout from the river on the other two days, I think I might be on a winner with the curry.




Comment by Zois on June 17, 2010 at 3:49pm
How are the people and you doing with ash you breathe? Is it very much less at a distance from the eruption? On the ground, for the farmers, Is it hard to crack through or is it very thin?
To follow your trip is grand. Except for pictures and wanting to go, I know next to nothing about Iceland so thank you for letting us join you.
Comment by Katerina Nikoltsou (MomKat) on June 17, 2010 at 7:07am
Are those patches of SNOW as you went through the dormant volcanoes, Rod? COOL! Wish I was there as we swelter with 40 C degrees :-) How warm is "warm" in Iceland? Looks lovely....
Comment by Reid Wood on June 17, 2010 at 4:19am
Enjoying the photos, Rod.
Comment by Carla Cryptic on June 17, 2010 at 1:17am
I am so enjoying your trip Rod! ;)
Comment by Rod Summers on June 16, 2010 at 11:00pm
The Magical Silence Of Wind Still shattered by a pest of Arctic Terns... or is it me that’s the pest?
As I made the first tea of the day I noticed that not a blade of grass was moving in the meadow outside the kitchen window. Wind still, an unusual event this far north. I wrapped myself around two teas and a cheese sandwich and grabbed my recording gear and headed for the bird watching hut a walk of about 30 minutes the last 15 of which are through a perilous area where Terns, Redshank, Ringed Plovers and Snipe have their nests. The walker, rambler, stumbler is under constant threat of aerial attack or as we used to say in the Royal Air Force ‘being shit on from a great height.’
Me:
“If you shit on my head I’m going to whup your arse!”
A Tern:
“Oh yeah! Come on then fly, I’d like to see you try, homo pedestrianus. Anyway, if that’s your attitude I’m off to the ocean to look for sand eels.”
Goddamn right it’s a beautiful day.
Yesterday Janneke held an Eider egg to my ear and I could hear the chick inside chirping, it didn’t sound stressed so I guess that un-hatched Eider chicks don’t suffer from claustrophobia.
The bird watcher´s observatory... it’s too grand to call it a hut, is made of the driftwood which lies in abundance here on the northern coast, it is beautifully designed and built with portals on all sides and looks out over a rocky outcrop where Oystercatchers and Eider Ducks gather. I made a sound recording of the waves lapping the shore and then did a text reading for Jamie Crofts’ new opera.
Whilst sitting there staring out over the ocean watching a Pintail I noticed a strange, not particularly pleasant smell and then realized it was me, I need to take a shower! I’ll have to do that later as, in a few minutes I’m off for a drive... somewhere, with Sverrir. I think we may be going to collect and burn rubbish that has washed up on the coast, one of my favourite activities here... men and fire, and environmentally responsible to boot! Just a few moments ago Sverrir walked passed my window as he was rounding up the sheep dogs, “The postman is coming “ he told me. It’s good to know that even out here dogs know their duty of biting the bill bringer.
When I get back I’m taking the camera over to the barn and sheep shed.
For Ruud and the Dutch Embassy: ik blog, ik heb geblogged, ik ga bloggerer!
For Ever Arts: Today I saw 4 Grey Phalaropes (Óðinshani) on the same curve in the Lónsa river but the Black-tailed Godwit continues to elude me. And yes the Snipe drums here 24 hours a day.
Well what we did was somewhat different than I had expected! We drove up into the highland heath and through long dormant volcanoes right across to the other side of the peninsula to collect 4000 trees as Sverrir is determined to create his own forest here. At the tree nursery we had drinks and cakes and Sverrir exchanged all the news with the nursery man and his mother. We loaded the trees into a special trailer and brought them back through the highlands to here a round trip of about four hours through some often spectacular landscapes and over some roads that had sheer drops on both sides. Photos of the farm will have to wait until tomorrow.



Comment by Rod Summers on June 15, 2010 at 10:03pm
Rjúpa On The Roof
The silence here is so overwhelming I slept the clock round and didn’t wake until well after 11. The weather has been perfect all day and even the easterly breeze was warm, these are unusual conditions this far north.
A bird list for Ever Arts because I know he is watching. I haven’t had the time to do any serious bird watching yet but here is a short list of the birds I have seen around the farm in the last 24 hours.
Ptarmigan (Rjúpa), White Wagtail, Whooper Swan, Greylag Goose, Red-throated Diver, Ringed Plover, Arctic Tern, Eider, Golden Plover, Black Headed Gull, Whimbrel, Redshank, Redwing, Snipe, Dunlin, Oystercatcher, Grey Phalarope (photo), Common Gull, Lesser Black-backed Gull, Herring Gull, Kittiwake, Snow Bunting, Raven, Arctic Skua.
This afternoon Karlotte and Janneke took me in a tiny rubber dinghy (photo) to a small island in a local lake there to collect this year’s harvest of Eider down (photo x 3), a major source of income for the farm. I took over 100 photos and 3 short videos which I will post on Youtube when I am back in Maastricht. In the morning they had collected down from 105 nests and in the afternoon when I was with them they collected from 85 nests all on a tiny island 50 metres long and 30 wide.
Tomorrow I will take you round the farm which is so remote that the farmer, Sverrir has to be a most resourceful, self-sufficient man.
This has been a truly splendid day, I’m a lucky man.
Yes of course the mail is delivered every day... did you think that civilisation hadn't reached here! If you want to post a letter you just leave it in the farms post box and the postman takes it with him.

Milk and bread? Ummmm.... this is a farm, they bake their own bread and the milk comes from the supermarket naturally!

OK some photos from today:


OK Johan, that should keep you happy for a day or two.

Yes Reid, the warm weather would make the Icarus event a tad dangerous, better float in a rubber dinghy than plummet from the skies!

Greets from paradise
 

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