After sleep­ing way too late (9:30am) we stag­gered out into a cloud and very windy day. It is true what they say, the weather here can change on a dime. I would guess the tem­per­a­ture today to be around 48 degrees but with the wind chill felt cooler. Still, no rain and great walk­ing weather. After a morn­ing cof­fee we stopped and bought me a scarf and some cool black leg­gings that all the women wear here. Then we found our way to the Reg­istry offices where we got our mar­riage cer­tifi­cate trans­lated into Eng­lish.

Greg and I now have vis­ited quite a few of the civic/civil/government offices here in Reyk­javik. Every­one is so nice here and again, all speak flaw­less Eng­lish with an incred­i­bly cool accent. (note, Ice­an­ders speak using their tongue on the roof of the fronts of their mouths mak­ing sounds and accents I couldn’t even begin to form). Any­how get­ting the papers trans­lated into Eng­lish took a few min­utes, but was no big deal. Our orig­i­nal in Ice­landic is one of the cooler doc­u­ments I’ve ever seen, one we will frame. The offices were near the Reyk­javik har­bor where we saw plenty of white­caps. Windy windy day. We walked all around the area after­wards and after buy­ing 48 hour tourist cards which get you in free to most of the muse­ums, the 7 Reyk­javik area hot pools, the zoo and free trans­porta­tion, decided to go to one of the many art muse­ums here, the Lis­tasafn Reyk­javikur Art Museum located inside one of the more con­tem­po­rary and archi­tec­turally inter­est­ing build­ings I’ve seen. It houses rotat­ing exhibits of con­tem­po­rary Ice­landic design and the gardens/museum build­ing are rea­son alone to visit. The title of the exhibit we saw was Magma which refers to con­tem­po­rary design in Ice­land as a liv­ing and pow­er­ful magma that does not view bound­aries or ori­gins as obsta­cles, but rather the start­ing point of move­ment and oppor­tu­nity. This siz­zling magma is resource and an under­cur­rent that reflects the sta­tus of design in Ice­land today and the force within it. The exhi­bi­tion dis­played works of Ice­landic design­ers and because of its inter­ac­tive nature, gives the view­ers an under­stand­ing of what design it, where it comes from and what the ideas are behind the works. The cura­tor, Gudrun Lilja Gunnlaugs­dot­tir, a designer had some of her fash­ion designs on dis­play along side of other design­ers’ works. Things we saw ranged from the lat­est tech­nol­ogy in pros­thetic design (sil­i­cone, car­bon fibers, etc), hand­bags and cell phone cov­ers made of sea-leather (fish skin), to funky lights with inno­v­a­tive light switches (Greg was par­tic­u­larly impressed so I’m sure will write more about this) to a table made entirely of wax serv­ing as a giant can­dle. We were with only a hand­ful of peo­ple so had the place to our­selves. We almost bought a book on Reykjavik’s diverse street graf­fiti, but after fig­ur­ing out the exchange rate, real­ized it would be cheaper to take an Ice­landic Horse home with us. All in all a great visit.

Walk­ing in the wind with a few rain drops, the next spot we hit was the Cul­ture House closer in to town, the National Cen­tre for Cul­tural Her­itage. Here Ice­landic his­tory and cul­ture is dis­played with an empha­sis on inde­pen­dence and gov­er­nance as well as the orig­i­nal man­u­scripts of the Ice­landic Sagas and Eddas. The first exhibit we saw, “Surt­sey, Gen­e­sis”, was put on by the Ice­landic Insti­tute of Nat­ural His­tory. This was a fas­ci­nat­ing exhibit about the island of Surt­sey which holds a unique place in the his­tory of sci­ence. The island was formed dur­ing a 4 year vol­canic erup­tion (1963–1967), the longest last­ing erup­tion in Iceland’s his­tory (long by any stan­dard I think). New land rose from the sea and caught the atten­tion of both schol­ars and the gen­eral pub­lic all over the world. The exhibit traced the his­tory of Surtsey’s for­ma­tion and devel­op­ment up until present day, but also pre­dicts bio­log­i­cal suc­ces­sion on the island and its gen­eral future over the next 120 years. It also explained the grounds for the Ice­landic government’s deci­sion to nom­i­nate Surt­sey for the UNESCO World Her­itage List. We loved the exhibit. It truly is amaz­ing to see an island form from noth­ing and how in a few short years there were crea­tures and plants liv­ing there.

Next in Cul­ture House was an exhibit titled “The Road to Zion” which shed light on the reli­gious foun­da­tions of the Mor­mons and traced the jour­ney of Por­dur Didriks­son (1828–1894) over sea and land, and gives insight into the com­mu­nity that the Ice­landers joined and lived in abroad. The exhibit traced the first Utah set­tlers from Ice­land and traced their long trip to the new land. Hav­ing recently watched a spe­cial on Front­line (PBS) on the his­tory of Mor­monism, I found this to be fas­ci­nat­ing. Didriks­son was born and raised in Ice­land and first sailed to Copen­hagen and from there to Eng­land where in 1856 he found a berth to New York. Finally he trav­eled over­land to Utah. His jour­ney like so many at that time was long and hard. Even 5 and 6 year old chil­dren were expected to walk miles each day pulling their pos­ses­sions behind them in carts. Try­ing to leave my opin­ions of Mor­monism aside, I fully appre­ci­ated the dif­fi­cul­ties these peo­ple faced in mov­ing West in the US to join a “cult” in the promised land of Utah.

Lastly we saw the Medieval Man­u­scripts of the Eddas and Sagas through the ages. The exhi­bi­tion focused on the cul­tural and polit­i­cal role played by the Ice­landic medieval man­u­scripts from their ear­li­est days to the present. The poetry and prose works pre­served in the man­u­scripts are the rich­est evi­dence on the cul­ture and men­tal­i­ties of North­ern Euro­peans in Pagen times — tra­di­tions and lore which in their oral form served as the source of knowl­edge and enter­tain­ment both at royal courts and among the com­mon­ers. I’ll let Greg write more about the man­u­scripts, some of the orig­i­nals we viewed in a very dark room, but suf­fice to say, it was incred­i­ble see­ing these old doc­u­ments pre­served as well as they were. I’d like to find some of the Viking sagas in Eng­lish as they stood as the lore for so many for a long time.

We had a nice windy walk back to the hotel. Greg had a tra­di­tional Ice­landic snack of a chili cheese dog in the square near our hotel. Yuck! Although had he offered me a bite, I would have accepted. Oh yeah, one final detail.… We stopped at a liquor store and bought some Ice­landic vodka and my favorite, Bailey’s Irish Cream. The sun is now com­ing out (it’s 6pm and it’s as high in the sky as at noon in Seat­tle) so I’m try­ing to get a sec­ond wind for our evening out.