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Posted: Sun 5:34, 25 Aug 2013 Post subject: A walk through Reykjavic-spun3 |
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A walk through Reykjavic
The island nation had become an obsession, his spiritual home within the far north a land of pure light, ancient stories,[link widoczny dla zalogowanych], glacial rivers and mountains of volcanic scree and high,[link widoczny dla zalogowanych], searching bluffs.
It is that kind of place: hard to leave behind once you like it. Iceland is a harsh, demanding country, plus some might include that a foreigner could only live there if they fell in love.
My English mother was one. She fell for an Icelander at the same time as she fell deeply in love with the country and, like Auden, she never really left, not in her own heart.
For my part, because we found Australia after i was young,[link widoczny dla zalogowanych], I still see Reykjavik a minimum of simply through the eyes of a child.
I worked like a paper boy,[link widoczny dla zalogowanych], selling newspapers in the uneven downtown streets,[link widoczny dla zalogowanych], as well as on return journeys I find myself retracing the steps I took then.
A little way from the oldest a part of town,[link widoczny dla zalogowanych], covered with 19-century homes clad with corrugated iron, is Vesturbjarlaug, one of the many, perhaps unexpected, outdoor swimming pools. Reykjavik the bay of steam takes its name from its geothermal springs, and today the steam rises mainly from these pools. They ought to always be one's first break in a day of walking.
Change room officials in white coats, who would spray our toes with cold water to get us out of the showers, remain, but mercifully they leave grown men to determine for themselves when you should dash in to the open pool area, over the frosted cement, and in to the hot pots. It's here, in small tubs of varying temperature and punishment, that Iceland properly unfolds in terse greetings that tentatively open out to gossip (in a country of 300,[link widoczny dla zalogowanych],000, the most important currency).
Although, the past couple of years the talk within the hot pots has mainly been the kronur, banks and also the economic crisis that hit in 2008. Everyone has a take on who's at fault. However in Iceland there will always be topics more serious than money. We must fare better in the Eurovision Song Contest. The first from the summer salmon has been caught. Helga says she's rediscovering the reassurance of Jon. Should you leave the pot not understanding everything there is to know, you may too have been doing laps the whole time.
As boys, we would run back inside for towel-flicking competitions. Years on, exactly the same rampage goes unabated, and it can be a relief to escape the chaos from the change rooms to become listed on the becalmed groups outside.
They are having hot dogs,[link widoczny dla zalogowanych], a post-swim ritual bequeathed by the Americans, who after World War II established a military base on the island.
And the real sign that the Icelandic economy was basically sunk was the closing from the country's only McDonald's.
Devotees swore they'd result in the flight to Copenhagen, suddenly the closest Big Mac to Reykjavik.
I'm not one particular devotee, however i view the impulse. There is no way of saying this nicely. Traditional Icelandic meals are perfectly suitable for the hundreds of years of starvation the nation once endured. Except on festival days, Icelanders assiduously avoid all of the so-called "delicacies" that they offer their foreign guests: ram's testicles, fermented shark, whale, blood pudding,[link widoczny dla zalogowanych], and, for the worst situation, skate, the give an impression of which is so violent that it's kept in buckets away from door. In the old days,[link widoczny dla zalogowanych], Icelanders survived instead on coffee, pancakes and doughnuts.
They remain midmorning institutions: after a swim, I follow the main street Laugavegur as much as Kaffitar,[link widoczny dla zalogowanych], a cafe that often hosts debates too heated for even the pools.
The local joke goes that there are only three weather conditions in Iceland: Wind, rain and cold. If one of these is missing, you have your beautiful day. And also at that point, too, there's really no option but to join the locals to find a sheltered spot in the sun "a thin girl in yellow shoes" as the second poet, Steinn Steinarr, once called the Icelandic sunshine.
She will almost certainly be sitting at among the bars in Austurvadiollur, the city square, reflected in a local beer, Thule or Vaaciking.
Or perhaps something stronger: Reyka (Steam) vodka and Black Death schnapps are, despite their names, quite safe and quite lovely.
It is simply the dreaded Opal, a liquor made to taste just like a popular children's confectionery of the same name, that is strictly for all those raised in what is a licorice-infested country.
In summer,[link widoczny dla zalogowanych], after completing at their part-time jobs, the kids with their packets of Opal play outside pretty much all night, simply because there isn't any night.
The parks and pathways are theirs until about midnight when their parents finally insist they are available in.
Walking by the seafront at night, when the wind sometimes drops,[link widoczny dla zalogowanych], would be to become a slalom pole within their cycling and roller-blading adventures. Once they do go to sleep, the adult population streams out again,[link widoczny dla zalogowanych], and so begins the near-death experience that constitutes a night out in Reykjavik. These days I'm reasonably skilled in it. The most important rule: once inside a bar, stay there. Icelanders do not queue, however they do gather in large groups outside doorways, and it takes many years of practice to obtain through one of these scrums unharmed.
A peace-loving nation perhaps,[link widoczny dla zalogowanych], but by 2am the streets of my paper run are populated by groups that sway as wildly as tall grass in the wind.
On my small last trip to Iceland, the swimming pools were advertising 24-hour opening. You could leave the clubs and head straight for that hot pot, sidestepping Facebook for that evening's gossip.
Instead,[link widoczny dla zalogowanych], it bubbles up unvirtual and live from half-sunken faces in the water.
The oldest swimmers, who arrive as the final drunks leave for bed,[link widoczny dla zalogowanych], complain they are able to still smell the alcohol in the previous night.
There is always something to grumble about. That's important.
However comes this news the kronur has improved overnight, that it appears like Iceland is going to do better in Eurovision this season,[link widoczny dla zalogowanych], which Helga,[link widoczny dla zalogowanych], thank heavens,[link widoczny dla zalogowanych], leaves Jon.
The Commitment of Iceland, by Kari Gislason (UQP) can be obtained now. $24.95.
Kari Gislason has taught English literature and writing in the University of Iceland, the University of Queensland and Bond University, and currently lectures in creative writing and literary studies at Queensland University of Technology.
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