Iceland

The origins and history of the Yule Lads with bonus Christmas Cat... Even I did not know that peak Yule Lads was 82! Criminy!
Grímfrost in Sweden give their take on the Meaning of the Season - the Goat of Þór is serious business though...
Today is the 12th of december, and there are 13 days until christmas. This means, of course, that the first of the yule elves came to town this morning. As you know, Bob, there are thirteen of the Yule Lads, or jólasveinar, as we call them. And they are not really elves, since their mother is a troll. The childstealing, cannibal Grýla, of legend. Stekkjastaur They come to town, one each day until christmas eve, and then leave in order, starting christmas day and finishing on the 6th of January. They leave small treats or presents in the shoes of good children, if the kids know to leave…
In case anyone hasn't noticed, Iceland is playing England in the Euro 2016 Cup today, round of 16. This is the first time Iceland has been in a major football tournament, the first time, obviously, they have progressed to the second stage, and as I write this they are unbeaten in tournament play. Iceland has a population of just over 330,000. It is about half the size of Wyoming, both in area and population. For perspective, the mens' football team is drawn approximately from the 21-37 year old demographic, which has about 65,000 people in it. Or about 33,000 males. The football squad has…
Skrekkur is an annual talent show for Icelandic schools, roughly 9-10th grade, and it has grown to become quite a big deal. The winning act is usually stunning and original and very well executed, and I don't just say that 'cause my little cousins keep winning... This year the winning performance, from Hagaskóli, was extraordinary, and not, as far as I know, featuring any of my cousins: youtube video from Lára Hanna. "I was ten years old when I was first called "whore" I didn't understand why, now I understand I was in the way, I was bossy, I crossed the line, I tried to break out from my…
good thing about Icelandic, it is phonetic, almost all the words are pronounced the way they are spelled, including Bárðarbunga the extra few letters are just what they look like. Fortunately Biggi Lögga is there to set you straight.
Bárðarbunga is arguably the scariest of the 30 or so active volcanoes in Iceland. Extreme volcanoes don't always have extreme eruptions, but they are scary because they have the capability for extreme events, uniquely so. Bárðarbunga - under the ice cap at the top left - from Google maps It is not the most active, it is not the tallest, it may possibly be the biggest in some sense, but it is the volcano which gave us the largest eruption on Earth since modern humans started trying to get organized: the Þjórsárhraun eruption about 8,500 years ago. [caption id="attachment_3871" align="…
Sweden doesn't have much of a written record for the Viking Period. We have most of the rune stones but hardly any of the sagas. And thus among Swedish Viking scholars it is not uncommon to be rather poorly read, like I am, in the eddas, the sagas and the other written sources of the period. The Viking Period is pretty much prehistoric archaeology to us. Still, even in Sweden you can't study the period without picking up a few fragments of the written lore. And in my reading, one of the best passages I've come across is this description of Viga-Glum's reaction to trespassing neighbours from…
Why you might sometimes care about the sex lives of strangers. A snarky comment over on an evanescent social media site lead me to shoot back from the hip, but on reflection, unusually enough, I decided I liked the retort enough to preserve it in more permanent intertoobz form. The discussion was on oligarchy and extremes of wealth, and the comment was essentially that this was a private matter, and that the income, or wealth, of an individual was not a matter of public interest - that it was a prurient obsession of no more relevance than the identity of their sexual partners or preferences…
Tonight it begins: Stekkjastaur is headed for town. Be good. Believe!
This is awesome! I am reliably informed that this was one of the all time great concerts. Skálmöld and the Icelandic Symphony in concert at Harpa.
This is priceless. There's a line of scented candles and other spa treatment paraphernalia called Voluspa. Volu-spa, get it? Now, the firm shows no awareness of what their chosen name means. Völuspá is a long Old Norse poem in the Poetic Edda, dealing with the creation and eventual destruction (and re-creation) of the world. It's title means "Prophecy of the Seeress", and it's known as one of the most majestic pieces of writing in its language. With this name, the candlemakers are either just oblivious, or they're judging that their target market doesn't know much about the Viking Period. I…
Inspired by Tim Hamilton's facebook post I played a bit with my old bit of silfurberg this weekend In particular, I was curious to test whether there was some plausibility to birefringent calcite being the "sunstone" of the Saga's. This evening, about an hour before sunset, we had nice thick rain clouds moving from Ohio, so, as I had promised the Astronomers fb group, I popped out to check what I could see. After a short time playing with rotation, looking with peripheral vision and doing some slow scans, I gave the biggest piece to my daughter (who I am reasonably sure has not read this…
When I was about 9 years old, my grandmother gave me a piece of Iceland Spar, it had belonged to my grandfather and she felt I ought to have it. Iceland Spar This is the piece, my kids have it now, somewhere along the way it broke into three pieces while in storage. She showed me the birefringence, I remember playing with it for hours. I also remember having had it impressed upon me that it was important, not just a curio, though I am also acutely aware of the possibility that I have reinterpreted my partial memories based on what I learned later. Birefringence in Iceland Spar. The…
113 Vælubíllinn The all time classic modern Icelandic punk anthem, for kids. Instant punk dance lesson just to complete the experience. Try it. It works.
Hopefully I´ll be getting the live view right about now...
From vedur.is Map of earthquakes over the last 48 hours in Iceland.
stuff I need to contemplate and therefore you probably should do: "So Forget Jesus, Stars Died So You Could Live" - Miley Cyrus, aka Hannah Montana gets death threats for quoting Lawrence Krauss on twitter... Philocosmology - Our Blog - Templeton foundation sponsors a Cosmology/Philosophy blog at Rutgers. Looks like a good crew - now put up some content folks! Walker reviews the origins of radial velocity searches for exoplanets Xcode and fortran fix for OSX 10.7 Lion - yup, they broke it, again. Iceland Goes Loonie - eh? It is, actually, an interesting idea, thinking about it. NASA Senior…
And, so, as this feast of Saint Thorlacius comes to an end, we await the arrival of the last of the yule lads the sneaky candle swiper hisself Kertasníkir The lads are bathed, a major achievement in and of itself, and ready for the grand finale tomorrow night they leave town, but first their mother comes for a quick naughty-or-nice inspection Grýla and Leppalúði of course they do not stop at some token onion, potato or coal in the stocking,nah Jólakötturinn will hunt down the little miscreants and eat them. Well, some of them, the rest are delivered to Grýla's sack and she gets to boil…
The penultimate half-troll trundles into town today, ready to pounce on the shoppers rushing home with their treasures Ketrókur he carries a big stick and he is not afraid to use it, upon it is a hook with which he'll snag the who-beast shanks straight from the pot and scarf it up while it is hot