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Want to climb a mountain pt 2. Posted by hulda on Jun 11, 2012
When I mentioned in the first part of this post that the water in the little streams that run down the mountain is very clean I was not kidding. I filled my drinking bottle at the fourth stage where the path goes over a river (careful you don’t slip in while crossing it, the water’s…
Want to climb a mountain? Posted by hulda on Jun 8, 2012
The best season for life outdoors (at least in my personal opinion) is finally here! Iceland, as mentioned many times before, is absolutely beautiful and the best way of experiencing this is by going out to see it yourself. Iceland is full of hiking routes that vary in accessibility, length and difficulty level so there’s something…
Beautiful and dangerous. Posted by hulda on Jun 5, 2012
Elves in the Icelandic lore are quite different creatures from what people have come to think of after reading Tolkien. Depending on the tale they can be either a little too interested in humans, kidnapping people or trying to lure them to live in their homes, which are built in rocks and cliffs, or even…
Glíma, the ancient wrestling style. Posted by hulda on May 30, 2012
When it comes to sports in Iceland there probably isn’t any as traditional as glíma, or glima as it’s written outside of Iceland (the only difference is the accent – i / í – that signals correct pronunciation in Icelandic). As a word (að) glíma means (to) wrestle or (to) fight, in some cases also…
Móðir mín í kví, kví. Posted by hulda on May 27, 2012
“Icelandic ghosts are so different from the ones in my homecountry”, a classmate of mine told me once while explaining why she wanted to write her þjóðsögur ritgerð, folk tales essay, about them. Even having a completely different background I had to agree. Icelandic ghosts, draugar, are really a type of their own. They can be…
Greetings from the Grímsvatn volcano. Posted by hulda on May 23, 2012
It began by somewhat of a surprise around seven o’clock in the evening of Monday, 21st May. As I stood at the bus stop waiting for my bus to come and take me downtown for a choir meeting I noticed something odd about the way the air looked like over the city. Although fog is…
Kilroy may have been here. Posted by hulda on May 20, 2012
Once you travel outside of Reykjavík you will sooner or later come across certain stone-built landmarks, cairns, also known in Icelandic as varða/vörður. Their use is varied to say the least. Traditionally they marked borders, routes, shorelines, notable places and areas where an important travelling woman had died. Nowadays they also mark the presence of…