{"id":3168,"date":"2014-04-30T14:49:07","date_gmt":"2014-04-30T14:49:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/icelandic\/?p=3168"},"modified":"2014-06-16T11:39:58","modified_gmt":"2014-06-16T11:39:58","slug":"summers-here-run","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/icelandic\/2014\/04\/30\/summers-here-run\/","title":{"rendered":"Summer’s here, run!"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"myvatnmy\"<\/a>

Image by USFWS Mountain-Prairie Refuge and Maks Karochkin on flickr.com.<\/p><\/div>\n

My, we’ve had a wild time in the news section since last week! Summer began as stated in the Old Nordic calendar<\/a> and the weather took a hint: we’ve had amazingly warm, sunny days for a whole week now and pretty much everyone\u00a0and everything\u00a0has caught a severe case of spring fever. In other words everything’s active to the max and sometimes… you wish it wasn’t so.<\/p>\n

The lake M\u00fdvatn<\/em> (= midge lake) is currently seeing a whole new generation of… dun dun duuunnnn… midges<\/em>. To be sure they’re always a problem in that area as the name of the lake might suggest but this time they actually made the news.<\/p>\n

***<\/p>\n

\u00d3tr\u00falegt myndskei\u00f0 fr\u00e1 M\u00fdvatni: \u00de\u00e1 var\u00f0 allt svart<\/strong><\/em> (= Unbelievable video from M\u00fdvatn: Then everything turned black)(source<\/a>)<\/p>\n

\u201e\u00dearna kemur sk\u00fdi\u00f0, s\u00e9r\u00f0u, \u00fea\u00f0 berst til okkar. \u00c9g er svo aldeilis hissa. \u00deetta er \u00f3hugnanlegt,\u201c segir Sverrir Karlsson um bor\u00f0 \u00ed litlum b\u00e1ti \u00ed \u00f3tr\u00falegu myndskei\u00f0i sem var teki\u00f0 upp \u00e1 M\u00fdvatni. \u00dear lentu hj\u00f3nin Sverrir Karlsson og Gu\u00f0n\u00fd J\u00f3nsd\u00f3ttir inni \u00ed mi\u00f0ju risast\u00f3ru m\u00fdflugnask\u00fdi. Sverrir ba\u00f0 konu s\u00edna a\u00f0 hylja h\u00f6fu\u00f0 sitt og setti h\u00fan f\u00f6tu yfir \u00fea\u00f0 til a\u00f0 verjast \u00e1gengum flugunum.<\/em><\/p>\n

“There the cloud’s coming, see, it’s moving our way. I’m just so surprised. That’s creepy,” says Sverrir Karlsson on board of a small boat in this unbelievable video that was taken on the lake M\u00fdvatn. The couple, Sverrir Karlsson and Gu\u00f0n\u00fd J\u00f3nsd\u00f3ttir, ended up in the middle of a gigantic cloud of midges. Sverrir asked his wife to cover her head so she put a bucket over it to avoid the worst fly invasion.”<\/p>\n

Dare to see what they had to face? You can find the video here<\/a> but beware, it truly is disgusting. In fact I’m doing a small ick-dance here as I think of it!<\/p>\n

The dialog is all in Icelandic and alas there’s no text but I’m sure you’ll catch the gist of it. Most of what the couple is saying is “what is that, have you ever seen the like, put something over your head, my eyes are full of…” and so on.<\/p>\n

\"11162834186_2732341259_b\"<\/a>

Image by Francisco Diez on flickr.com.<\/p><\/div>\n

Iceland’s done it before.<\/strong><\/p>\n

On international news! The UK still insists on Iceland’s capability of terrorism but unlike the last time<\/a> they’ve now escalated the threat of Iceland to that of a nuclear attack (source<\/a>). Icelanders, meanwhile, would rather call something like this\u00a0M\u00f3\u00f0uhar\u00f0in\u00f0in<\/em>, Mist Hardships. More about this hopefully one-time-only phenomena can be read here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u00a0***<\/p>\n

The first in the world! In… er…<\/strong><\/p>\n

Iceland has recently made it to #1 for the tenth year running, but the reason is perhaps nothing worth celebrating for – apparently Iceland is the leading nation in confirmed cases of chlamydia. (source<\/a>)<\/p>\n

The statistics are damning but may of course also be… statistics. While they’re most likely\u00a0generally true, without a few important definitions they don’t actually tell you the whole truth behind the matter. Most definitely there is a problem but it bears remembering\u00a0that the numbers are of found and confirmed cases. Iceland, having free healthcare easily available for everyone, likely just catches a larger percentage than many other countries. The positive message hidden in these otherwise negative statistics is that the sooner the patients get diagnosed the better, especially in case of female patients who, if left untreated, would likely have trouble conceiving later on.<\/p>\n

\"2934932355_6777ea1798_o\"<\/a>

Image by Helgi Halld\u00f3rsson on flickr.com.<\/p><\/div>\n

A warning to travelers.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Here<\/a>‘s a piece of definitely bad news though. The workers at\u00a0Icelandair\u00a0are going on strike, starting\u00a0on the 9th of May. If you’re planning to fly to Iceland I suggest keeping an eye on how the negotiations go so that your trip doesn’t accidentally stretch into a whole month’s vacation.<\/p>\n

\u00a0***<\/p>\n

Gutti came home.<\/strong><\/p>\n

To end this post in a positive note, here’s something that\u00a0had Iceland or at least the P\u00e1ll \u00d3skar fandom on its toes for a couple of days: the disappearance of P\u00e1ll’s\u00a0friend and flatmate Gutti. Notices of his disappearance went around social media like wildfire but the story had a happy ending: he was found in a shed in good condition, ate heartily and went to have a shower (which P\u00e1ll confirmed really did happen, according to him Gutti loves to do\u00a0it). You can see a photo of them embracing each other here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Photos used to illustrate this entry: Scream<\/a> by Maks Karochkin, Swarm of midges…<\/a> by Tom Koerner\/USFWS, Laki Volcano<\/a> by Francisco Diez and Fly safely…<\/a> by Helgi Halld\u00f3rsson.<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"hulda078\"<\/a>Hulda recommends music<\/strong><\/p>\n

In early celebration of the oncoming Eurovision song contest I’d like to take you back in time with me to\u00a0some interesting\u00a0Icelandic entries to the song contest from along the years.<\/p>\n

Never Forget: Gr\u00e9ta Sal\u00f3me and J\u00f3nsi, 2012<\/strong> (here<\/a>). Beautiful!
\nTell Me: \u00c1gust & Telma, 2000<\/strong> (here<\/a>). There’s a song type we call “Eurovision-pop” and this is an excellent example of that – in good and in bad.
\nEitt lag enn: Stj\u00f3rnin, 1990<\/strong> (here<\/a>). I have no idea why this one didn’t win to be honest – what’s not to like? \ud83d\ude00<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\"\"

My, we’ve had a wild time in the news section since last week! Summer began as stated in the Old Nordic calendar and the weather took a hint: we’ve had amazingly warm, sunny days for a whole week now and pretty much everyone\u00a0and everything\u00a0has caught a severe case of spring fever. In other words everything’s…<\/p>\n

Continue Reading<\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"author":91,"featured_media":3176,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"content-type":""},"categories":[90791,91379],"tags":[3,2297,2332,27676,91392,91387,91396,91402],"class_list":["post-3168","post","type-post","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-icelandic-culture","category-icelandic-customs","tag-culture","tag-media","tag-nature","tag-outdoors","tag-post-full-of-links","tag-sample-of-icelandic","tag-so-icelandic","tag-volcanoes"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/icelandic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3168","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/icelandic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/icelandic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/icelandic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/91"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/icelandic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3168"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/icelandic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3168\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3338,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/icelandic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3168\/revisions\/3338"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/icelandic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3176"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/icelandic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3168"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/icelandic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3168"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/icelandic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3168"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}