Þetta reddast II

Now that I've talked about the dark side of Þetta reddast, let's illustrate the bright side of it.

In my opinion, right now, hardly anyone embodies the spirit of “Þetta reddast” better than Ólafur Eggertsson, the farmer at Þorvaldseyri.

(Picture courtesy of Baendabladid) 

For several reasons I will go into later, he was already well-known in Iceland. But since the eruption in Eyjafjallajökull in 2010, he's probably turned into the most famous (living) farmer in the whole world. Not that I know anything about it, mind you, but considering the number of people/TV and radio channels that have been interviewing him over the last two years, one could only assume so.

Considering I live only 10 km away from the farm, and drive past it several times a week, and having heard of Ólafur's reputation as a pioneer, I have always been quite curious to visit the farm. And considering I'm learning about agriculture in Iceland for the guide school, and generally have an interest in stuff like that anyway, I ended up calling Guðný, Ólafur's wife, to ask if it would be possible to come and visit their installations.

I was received by Ólafur, who despite being rather overbooked at the moment (just this week an article about the farm was published in the Icelandic farmer's paper Bændablaðið (see page 12) and another in the Reykjavik Grapevine) he took over 2 hours of his time to chat with me about the farm and show me where they produce the oil and pack the flour.

I was extremely touched by this warm welcome !

The farm Þorvaldseyri stands right at the foot of the Eyjafjöll mountains, and has been in the family for the last 3 generations. Ólafur's grandfather Þorvaldur bought it off the local sheriff cum famous poet Einar Benediktsson.

Ólafur's father Eggert was the first farmer to grow corn in Iceland in the 1960's, and whilst most of the other farmers abandoned that cereal after a few years, judging the result was not worth the trouble, Eggert decided to keep on growing it, and Þorvaldseyri is now the largest corn producing farm in Iceland.

The management of the farm is a family business. From what I understood, Ólafur and his wife look after the cereal (culture and transformation) whereas their son and daughter-in-law take care of the 60 milking cows of the estate.

In 2008, Ólafur introduced rapeseed on the farm, with the intention of producing rapeseed oil.

The results were conclusive : it is possible to produce good rapeseed oil here in Iceland.

You need 15 tons of rapeseed to produce 5 tons of oil.

The oil is cold-pressed.

Some of the oil goes towards the production of cooking oil, and the rest is used as motor oil on the farming machines.

The leftovers of the pressed seeds are turned into fodder for the animals.

It is all very (and impressively so!) green !

In 2010, Eyjafjallajökull erupted, hitting the farm hard. Tons of ashes covered the arable land, turning the growing cultures to waste.

(picture courtesy of google- hope I'm not breaking any coypright by borrowing it)

But far from being deterred, Ólafur and his family, who seem to always understand the possibilities in the world around them, decided to turn this heavy blow from fate into something good.

Only a year after the eruption, they opened an information centre about the volcano right next to the farm. The  clou  is a 20 minute film about the eruption, the effect it had on their farm and how the family stuck together and went about getting over it. The pictures are beautiful and it is very moving.

At the information centre, you can also find the farm's products : rapeseed oil, wheat flour, barley, and soap made from the rapeseed oil from the farm.

And the other thing Þorvaldseyri produces, which I find prrrrrrrrretty cool, is cereals from barley.

It's actually called Byggi (bygg = barley in Icelandic). 

Personally I find non-flavoured biggy completely tastes like cardboard (I mean : if I ate cardboard I'd probably find a similarity between the two) but it's really healthy, no additives, and if you eat it with yoghurt and/or fresh fruit, it's great. It comes in several types : cardboard flavour (wink wink), cinnamon and sweetened.
I also love the simplicity of the packaging, and above all the fact that I can get cereals produced 10 km from home:-)

Think global, buy local !!!!!

Ólafur and his family (as far as I can tell) have always been pioneers, extremely resourceful in using what was in their surroundings to make the best out of things.

When everything looked dark, instead of sitting on a piece of cold lava with his heads in his hands, Ólafur decided to get up and do something about it. The result speaks for itself.

 And that, my friends, is the true icelandic spirit of Þetta reddast.

Þetta reddast...

One thing I was very surprised to notice, when I came to Iceland the first time, was how extremely similar to Cubans Icelanders seemed to be, at least in my world view.
Example :

 A Cuban

An Icelander

So what ? How  that?

Well for one, I've never seen so many people eating pineapple (on pizzas, mostly) as here in Iceland but that's not the point.

I suppose the first thing that strikes people upon arrival is not commonly a resemblance with the Caribbean.

Fair enough, Iceland is an island, consequently surrounded by sea and fish and stuff, and people here do what people on islands do. 

And we do grow bananas here (at least 5 of them a year, making Iceland, the largest banana producing country in geographical Europe (yes my dear !) but that's pretty much where the resemblance stops : mostly, Icelanders are not usually internationally renowned for swinging their hips to the sound of salsa through tropical nights.
Although I guess we do have the local equivalent of swinging through the night drinking opal or brennivín by the gallon to the sound of eighties hits. And if you want to add a bit of spice, you can say under the northern lights – which incidentally have been very active recently, since it's the Equinox …...

So let me explain.

There is a certain je ne sais quoi, here, a trait of character one could call carelessness, if one decided to see it in an only-negative light.

But if you look at it positively, you see a beautifully dynamic streek that makes everything or anything possible.

It is so much part of life that Icelanders have coined an expression for it : « Þetta reddast » , which roughly translates as « it will work out, somehow or other ».

Understand :

« Whatever I do, it'll be ok in the end, so I'm not actually going to bother putting chances on my side by doing anything particular about it »

or «  I have better things to spend time on, so I'll just fix that in the first way possible and hopefully it'll work out somehow or other »

And the fact is, it usually does !

For a big-scale example, see the eruption in Heimaey in the Vestmann Islands in 1973 : the lava flow that was devastating the island, and threatening to close the harbour – one of the most important fishing harbours in Iceland, and only means of subsistance for the 5000 inhabitants- was stopped by pumping sea water on it, and the inhabitants thus saved part of their town and their means for survival !

In Cuba, the « Þetta reddast » was illustrated to me by more basic examples, such as mending a flat tire with a chewing gum, a screwdriver and a condom; or judging by the state of most windows, using what looks like toothpaste for putty.

Apparently I'm not the only one who noticed these similarities, though : see Alda's description of what she calls the southerners of northern Europe in her delightful, clever, witty, very informative  blog the iceland weather report)

But the reason why I'm writing about it today is because I was served with a perfect example of this yesterday, illustrated by this photo I took.

What's this, you may reasonably enquire ?

This, Mesdames et Messieurs, is a house or rather, a skál, which can mean either “bowl”, “cheers” or mountain hut, depending on what sentence you use the word in, but let's stick to the subject.

In fact, it's the new mountain hut that is to replace Baldvinsskáli, which really was in dire need of replacement.

Just above Skógar, is the volcano Eyjafjalljökull (yep, that one) 

and an extremely popular hike leaves from Skógar going all the way to Landmannalaugar, through the national park of Þorsmörk and across the Fimmvörðuháls pass, where the new craters are. 

 

Anyway.

When you leave from Skógar, after a few hours' walking, you get to Baldvinsskáli  ; a first mountain hut at 920 m where you can sit around and have a rest before carrying on upwards towards the pass at 1100 m.

Recently though, the skál was becoming more and more derelict. Scabby, smelly, the kind of place people were (unfortunately ! Shame on them!) beginning to leave their garbage rather than taking it away with them as one should do .

When I was there last year, already it was so dirty that the weather allowing, we decided to rest outside rather than in.

And a friend who was there a few weeks ago picknicking inside, weather oblige, heard the door open and a tourist saying « there's a body inside! – oh wait, no, it's moving !»

Says it all, really.

So today, the institution in charge, Ferðafélag Íslands if I'm not mistaken, took a further step towards replacing it. 

Bravo.

And so the new mountain hut, was brought on wheels to Skógar , already built, to be taken up on the last leg of its trip, to an altitude of 920 m along a narrow mountain dirt road which considering the rain at this time of year, is very muddy and squishy.

Hence the photo.

Fact is, the blessed souls in the fluorescent gear started at the bottom of the road around 8 am. And by 5.20 pm when I took the picture, they had come no further than about 200 meters.

Now, really I don't want to sound bitchy, was that really the simplest solution (one could come up with) ?

- Considering that we are at sea level, that the road which leads up to Baldvinsskáli is a dirt road, that shoots upwards to 920 m on a very short distance, and is therefore steap, and currently extremely rocky, muddy, wet and soft.

- Considering the weight of such a house, and its width, and the fact that just at the beginning of the road, there are two gates NOT large enough to let a truck carrying a house through,

…. could there not have been a better way to go about it ?

Was it really that necessary to bring the house pre-built ?

Sure, it had to be constructed at some point anyway, but would it not have been just as simple, say, to take the pieces up to the pass and build the house there ?

Maybe the people from FI didn't want to spend to much time on the pass; the weather is unpredictable, and not so brilliant at this time of year.

When I took the picture at 5.20 p.m, a.i 9 hours after they'd started, the second “unpassable » gate still lay ahead. When I looked again at 11 pm and they'd gotten through at last.

15 hours to get through a whole 200 meters !

Without any irony now, I have to salute their tenacity. Surely they got the best foretaste ever of what Sisyphus is spending the eternity doing and I will think about them in awe (well, maybe I'll laugh a bit too....) each time I have a sandwich in the new clean skal.

The weather was extremely wet today, and despite everything, the guys gave their best to make things work out somehow. But I can't stop myself from thinking it might have made their life easier if someone had taken 5 minutes to sit down and think it all out.

But hey, it all worked out in the end and the result is all that counts.

Þetta reddast

Summer's almost gone...

Summer's almost gone...

 

 Beginning of September, tourists are getting fewer and fewer...

Even the birds have left their headquarters...

... to start migrating... (mostly flying, but some of them walking, apparently!)

It's nice to have a bit of quiet after the chaos of the Summer months:-)

Autumn is nestling in gently, with the colours changing and the clear air turning crispy in the mornings.

The mountain-ash trees are crumbling under the weight of berries : this year the Summer has been so exceptionnally good that there was an unexpected quantity of berries just waiting to be picked ! Yummy !

In fact Þórður, the 91 year-old curator of the museum has been saying repeatedly that he has never known a better Summe...

Last night, we had the first frosty night of the year in Skógar, and it was ever so quiet, this morning when I woke up. 

I couldn't resist going out to take the pulse of the day... 

Apparently there is a massive storm forecast for tomorrow, starting tonight...

It's so peaceful right now, you'd never believe it...

 

It's the time of year when farmers start gathering there sheep from the mountains. 

You can see them flocking together, like little balls of cotton rolling down the bright green slopes.

 Autumn is a time of changes for everyone, and I for my part, have decided to go back to school again.

My challenge for this year is to get a certification as a guide, so that I can legally be allowed to walk around Iceland guiding groups of frenchies and yaring important cultural stuff about the country at them all the way :-)

The slight "challengy thing" lies in the fact that most of the courses (and therefore exams) are in Icelandic. 

E.g, what I don't know in Icelandic right now, I'd better know pronto!

Since March 2008, I've spent roughly 2 and ¾ years in Iceland now, and over this time, I've become fairly acquainted with the language.

People often ask whether icelandic is a difficult language to learn... 

The answer is no, it's not. 

But hell, speaking it well really is!!! :-)
 (Though saying that, I have to think about my cousin Dan who succeeded in learning Japanese from scratch in a few years...respect!)

However,  I have to say, there is a step between casually talking about the weather in shitty grammar and disclosing really amazing facts about medieval litterature :-)

Jæja....

It's all very exciting....

Have a nice Autumn!! :-)

Sud

Sometimes pictures speak louder or better than words.Here are a few I took these last few days in South and North CatalunyaFirst on the spanish side
Cap de CreusPort de la Selva
Yum! First time I ate cuttlefish aka sepia aka seiche.

Then back to the North on the french side

Amélie les Bains Still charmingly "vieille France"...

And Palalda...

Makes me think of a scene out of "Kill Bill"...


Oranges in February!
A walk up in the mountains this morning.El Canigo, the highest peak on the french side. Well, at least on this side of the french side... :-)
Looking rather neat!

Sant Marti peaks, as seen from Santa Engracia

Leaving tomorrow.
It's always too short.