Street Vendor Huts

On Austurstræti in Reykjavík there are often a few portable huts where vendors sell knitwear, jewelry and other hand-crafts.

Before they had the huts, vendors would just sit on the street, often in near-freezing weather. The hut pictured below was occupied by a jewelry seller who didn't let the darkness stop him—he had several battery-operated lights illuminating his wares. When I took the shot below (at about 7:00 P.M.) he was just starting to pack up.

In just a few minutes he had finished and he strapped his case onto his bike and was gone.

The Ugly American

Twenty Years Ago on FITK

Watching the Winter Olympics opening ceremony last night gave me a small shiver of hope- at least some of the people of the world can get together and have a go at something other than warfare or explotation. I grant that there is as much politics and behind the scenes manuvering as in any human endeavor, but at least some people are connecting in a small way with others from around the world. The pageantry, especially the choreography, is a little (!) on the hyper side, but that too is ok, this ceremony is really a dress-up party for the world (…loved those Mongolian hats!)

At the end, in honor of the great Italian operatic tradition, the greatest living Italian opera star, Pavarotti, sang Verdi, arguably the father of modern Italy.

Viewers in the United States got to listen to Bob Costas talk over the opening bars of Mr. Pavarotti's performance. This wasn’t an accidental oversight, the show was (like most of the Olympics) taped (NBC evidently thinks US citizens can't handle real-time events- or that it can sell more commercials) and STILL Bob thought we should hear him prattle on instead of this musical giant, a master, singing in his home country, with hundreds of years of tradition behind him. Proving once again that Americans just don't get it. An ugly American: crass, mercenary, and self absorbed to the point of idiocy, real classy, Bob, real classy…

Reykjavík at Night

From my 2025 trip:

Kitsch

Vintage Icelandic convenience store signage, Reykjavik, 2025:

“Butter” “The Milk Company”:

“The Basis of Charm:”

Soft drink logo:

The Angel’s Cat

Twenty Years Ago on FITK

We were living on the fringes of an industrial zone—near downtown Minneapolis in the mid nineteen-seventies.

Rent was cheap but the neighbors weren’t exactly the best: a gang of rowdies with a penchant for settling their internal disputes with handguns.

They had a cat, José. I’ve mentioned him before, one of the more memorable cats of my acquaintance. He was just an ordinary Tom, orange-y fur, a little long and shaggy, not the best groomed feline, just a regular city cat. You'd see him around, crawling under the fences of the junkyards, keeping the vermin from over-running the area.

It so happened that one night José’s ‘owner’ was shot, seriously, but not killed. The gang broke up and left the house. José stayed. A part-time trucker moved in. He didn’t really have any furniture, so he just used the stuff that was left behind. One of the chairs had blood-stains on it. Jose always slept on that chair.

The angel?

One of Hell’s.

Memphis Train

Iceland’s only locomotive ever, nothing to do with Memphis trains.

Another song from The Explodo Boys, this time an Otis Redding cover (live performance 2001), Dan Rowles keyboard and lead vocal, Chris Harwood bass and harmony vocal, Gerry Kruger, guitar, George Kuczek, drums:

Hafmey

Guðmundur Einarsson

Guðmundur Einarsson from Miðdalur in Mosfellssveit (1895-1963) was an Icelandic artist who was a draftsman, graphic artist, painter, sculptor, filmmaker, writer, and mountaineer. He was most often called Guðmundur from Miðdalur and is considered one of the most important artists in Iceland. In 1926 he moved to Iceland from Germany with his first wife Therese Zeitner, a model and artist. Therese was seven years older than Guðmundur. She had one daughter with the chemist Paul Sternberg in Munich in 1911, but they had never gotten married. Three years after the couple arrived in Iceland Therese's daughter Lydia, who had just completed her studies in pottery, moved to Iceland to live with her mother and Guðmundur. Shortly after, Lydia and Guðmundur began a romantic relationship. Guðmundur and Theresa eventually divorced, but she lived more or less with Guðmundur and Lydia until her death. Guðmundur and Lydia later married and had four children; their love affair was controversial but lasted until the end of his life. Guðmundur legacy includes thousands of works: oil paintings, sculptures, glass works, watercolors, graphics, ceramics (in which he was a pioneer), drawings, furniture (that he designed), jewelry, copper and silver objects, gardens, houses, wall decorations, books, photographs and films. He was a pioneer of mountaineering, an explorer, an active conservationist and a forester.

My interest in this fascinating artist was kindled when I saw, on the grounds of Vesturbæjarlaug, a statue of a woman embracing a fish (shown below). It isn’t featured on most maps of public sculpture in Reykjavík, perhaps the erotic nature of the piece (along with Guðmundur’s notorious reputation) has led to its current exile in the residential district of Melar. His smaller ceramic pieces are popular with collectors, he and Lydia were instrumental in promoting ceramic arts in Iceland, Listvinahúsið is descended from a gallery established there in the 1930s.

Biography source
Portrait by Willem van de Poll, 1934

700 Year Old Disclaimer

20 Years Ago on FITK

I've struggled a bit at times with the meaning and importance of this humble venue.

I think most of us who write regularly wonder at times if any of it is worthwhile. Comments help justify it, and those threads we can spin between disparate people (many of whom otherwise have little in common) is always encouraging.

Still, there is always that nagging little demon that pipes up (usually at 4 a.m.!) and says: “Who do you think you are? Writing such fluff?”

I found this quote from the fourteenth century that puts it all in perspective:

Since this tale nor anything else can be made to please everyone, nobody need believe any more of it than he wants to believe. All the same the best and most profitable thing is to listen while a story is being told, to enjoy it and not be gloomy; for the fact is that as long as people are enjoying the entertainment they won't be thinking evil thoughts. Nor is it a good thing when people find fault with a story just because it happens to be uninformative or clumsily told. Nothing so unimportant is ever done perfectly.
-the narrator of Göngu-Hrolf's Saga

I would have never thought that I’d find such solace from so far away and long ago… that nameless scribe concludes with:

I'd like to thank those that have listened and enjoyed the story, and since those that don’t like it won’t ever be satisfied, let them enjoy their own misery. AMEN

Walking After Midnight

Almost everyone wakes up in the night, sometimes for a minute, other times for much longer.

I’ve found that if I can imagine myself walking I can usually drift off again without trouble.

“Lucid Dreaming” is what this process has sometimes been called. I’ve used mental images of

my daily walks to Verturbæjarlaug (a neighborhood swimming pool in Reykjavík.) I find that I can often not get even half-way to the pool before falling back into slumber.

Make sure you are physically comfortable before starting this, get up to pee first if needs be.

Go into step-by-step detail, i.e., donning shoes, putting on your jacket, opening the door, etc. If you find your thoughts wandering don't worry, that’s a good sign, just go back to the walk.

A few times I have made it all the way to the pool so I continue the “dream” there: getting undressed, showering, even taking some laps. Repetitive behaviors are good for this trick.

Although I ‘discovered’ this on my own, there are others who espouse similar ideas.

Click on images to embiggen

The Quiet Mother

A Detective Konrad Novel
By Arnaldur Indriðason
Translated by Philip Roughton

I got my start in reading Icelandic Mysteries at just about the same time I started this blog. Jar City was the first, and the first title in English by Arnaldur as well. 12 million copies later, this book came out. A pre-Covid novel, it was first published in Icelandic in 2019 and only released in English in 2025.

Dectective Konrad is retired from the Reykjavík police force yet still receives request for assistance, in this case from Valborg, a woman who is looking for a chld she gave up for adoption nearly 50 years prior. When the woman is murdered, Konrad’s sense of duty brings him onto the case, augmenting and sometimes crossing Marta, the official investigator. Konrad has mysteries of his own from the past, notably a charlatan con-man father who ran fake seances with a partner as a way of fleecing wealthy widows. His father had been murdered too, and the thread of connection between the two stories is in these ‘supernatural' elements, whether real or contrived.

This is one of Arnaldur’s better plots—it’s not just a rehash of earlier books. His writing, always concise, is honed to a razor edge here and is very readable, new characters are introduced naturally, and even the Icelandic names are (relatively) easy to follow. The story has some deep human currents going on under the surface which Arnaldur handles with tact and grace. The city of Reykjavík becomes another main character, those familiar with it will enjoy an extra dimension in his descriptions. Special note must be made of the integration to the plot of legendary nightclub Glaumbær, which burned in 1971. It was located where the National Gallery now sits, on the other side of the wall of the apartment where I usually stay when I’m in the city. Philip Roughton’s translation is unfussy and elegant. One niggle: The stock cover photograph of the church at Buðir has nothing to do with the story. It would have been nice if they could have had a vintage picture of Glaumbær or some other city landmark featured in the story.

Highly recommended.

More on Arnaldur here…