the Icelandic krona through time

in a moment of boredom and almost becoming an exel nerd i made this graph, comparing the icelandic krona VS the Norwegian and the Danish krone.
for many years the icelandic krona was stable between 9 and 12 krone but from the beginning of january 2008 the icelandic krona started to fall and the we got a huge fall with the bank collapse in the beginning of september 2008...
a good strengthening of the icelandic krona the first months of 2009 didn't continue and the krona fell to its lowest value!
from january 2008 the DKK and NOK krone have increased around 100%, causing foreign loans, food, supplies, goods, inflation and debths to sky rocket for the icelandic population...

Today my Anna arrived in oslo, it is -14 degrees and lots of snow;0)

let it snow...

for the last 24 hours it has been snowing a lot here in Oslo, Norway. we got more than 25 cm of snow. therefore my father and I had to go down to our house in sætre and remove loads of snow. after some hours the job was done and we could go back home and eat some christmas food...

Christmas vaccation

tomorrow morning i will fly to Norway to celebrate Christmas with my parents in Oslo.
Anna will join us on the 28th of December and stay until the 10th of January, while I will stay until the 16th of January, due to a Geological conference in Oslo (11th-13th).

it looks like i didn't have the svine flue, just an ordinary flue but anyway the tamiflu beat that down very well so i fell 80% now;0)

i wish you all a merry Christmas

the ankara-attack

most things went according to plan i denmark, well obama didn´t show up and had glögg with us and i got some kind of food poisoning at a restaurant called ankara, hence the anjara-attack. i guess price and qulity goes hand in hand;0)

i got back to reykjavik on sunday and anna picked me up at the airport, ever since i have been in school trying to do something about my master thesis, but it has ups and downs, mostly ups i would say;0)

i passed 6200 words and 19 pages, but probably there has to be thrown something away and added something, but its a fairly well start i would say.

yeasterday i got accepted at a glaciology course in svalbard, but its a bit uncertain if i will go. i mean it would be another great course and adventure, but if i have to finsih master in the end of may, 5 weeks in svalbard might not be the best idea....

yeasterday i got a cold, so i don´t hope its the svine flue, i don´t really have time for that now, it could be difficult to write...
tomorrow i´m getting the svine flue vaccine but it might be to late. i was supposed to get it 3 weeks ago but iceland ran out of vaccines, bad luck i say..

12.12.12

i am going to denmark today to meet obama at hviids vinstue, and i will be back on sunday
this is a sirius meeting at kongen nytorv with old friends from greenland

ice-climbing at Solheimajökull (my glacier)

after having had nice and beautifull weather for several week, i decided to go ice-climbing and doing crevasse rescue with Björgunarsveitinia (rescue team) on Sunday. it was below zero but snowing a lot and quite some wind. it took us quite some whiel to get from reykjavik to Hveragerdi where the weather got a lot better, also one of the cars broke down so we had to swap for a big jeep!
at the glacier the weather was fairly good and we had a good day of climbing and learning a lot. as darkness crept in on us we walked down the glacier and drove back to town. i put some more pictures out there!

it was the first time i went up on my glacier, it was very good to see everything from above. i checked a gps position from this summer when i was doing field work and on the actual place the glacier retreated almost 30 meters.
the glacviers has also been measured in the end of november shoving a retreat of 47 meters, which isn´t a lot compared to the 134 meters last year. mayby the climate is shiting again, from warmer to colder...;0)

progress in school...

this is a new map i made of the my glacier and the forfield. different colours and patterns mean different geological settings and landforms. this is just a clip from the whole map without a legend, just to show you how it will look like.
i have to finish this by christmas, aswell as most of my figures and the 1st chapter of the thesis...

so i guess i will be busy in school;0)

weather has been excellent since i came back from greenland, 3 days of rain and the rest of the time beautifull cool weather. today it¨s minus 3 and snowing...

have a nice week-end

well, our friend was sick so we didn't go on the trip on sunday. instead my uncle called and asked us if we could help my cousine Selma to move to a new appartment. this took some hours...
Sunday we went to IKEA and spent some money on shelves, nighttables, drapes and a shoe-rack and the back home to prepare for a small birthday for anna and her sister! after the guests had left we put all the ikea things together so now the appartment looks more like home and no more books all over the floor.

yeasterday i managed to get an appointment for the Swineflue vaccine, Dec.2 hrs 0900. hope i don't catch it before then;0)

my brother, his wife, little baby Ella and four of their friends are coming tomorrow, so there will be a lot of people arpound us for some days. tomorrow we have to pick them up in Keflavik and then go to the Blue Lagoon, which noone here in Iceland can afford anymore, since they increased the prices by several hundreds of percent...

finally week-end

after some long days in school, haning over my school-books and my lap-top i made it to the week-end ;0). i wrote a couple of pages on my master thesis and feel that i have got a good start off. by christmas i have to finish my first chapter for some review and finsih all my maps, figures and sketches. i really hope i will stick to my plan, so i want get stressed up in the end...

if the weather is good tomorrow we will drive towards thorsadalur, a couple of hours away and check out a natural hot pot with some friends and have coffee and cake in a cottage...

 

busy week

this week i had a lot to do in school, working on my thesis and different meetings. i have to make a good plan for finishing my master thesis by the end of May and then stick to it;0)
on friday anna and i went to a 50 year birthday party, which lasted to the early morning. saturday we slept for a long time to catch up with the lack of sleep. the we went to the swimming-pool and then we got picked up by Annas sister and had dinner with her in her hometown Hafnarfjørdur, before going to a 30 year birthday wich also lasted to the early morning. this time we didn't have to take a taxi home, as Annas car was finished at the mechanic:0)
today we did some school work, anna a lot more than me. then we walked to the swimmin-pool at Seltjarnarnes (20 min each way) and swam 40 laps before being half asleep in the hot pots for an hour or so. then we went to an electronic store to buy me an icelandic keyboard for my computer so i can try to write some icelandic;

the weather has been crazy all day with lots of rain and wind. therefore we had some indean food and saw a movie in the cinema...

back in reykjavik

last nigth i came back to Reykjavik, after a 13 hours bus drive from Høfn in Hornafirdi. on the way we stopped to innvestigate many glaciers. this is from a stop at Seljalandsfoss in southern iceland.
we had a good conference with many presentations, long days and bad weather. yeasterday was the only day with good weather. we got some really good food in Høfn (lobster tails etc) had some beer and went to a local party and also a party at the hotel. luckily we didn't get beaten up by the local fishermen....

i put more photos on "my pictures"

first day at the conference...

thank you washburn, dear friends. i really hope i (soon) one day will make a book about my life in greenland, if not for everyone, then for friends like you and my family.

the first day at the conference was lond, we had time for a hot dog and a coke on the gas station on our way from the hotel to the conference center.
the flight to høfn was ok, but we didn't see anything thanks to fog and rain. thank you for good icelandic pilots:0)

the brakes was only after almost 2 hours of sessions with all kinds of presentations, some more interesting than others. but i guesss it's all a part of it.
then we had a icebreaker meating ( read beer and wine) and then we all went to the soem local places in town to have some dinner, we couldn't go to the same place as we where 65 people ( høfn isn't that big)...
now i'm off for some sleep and then i will hang up my poster tomorrow and listen to many hours of presentations...

my poster!

past week

The days have been spent mostly in school since arriving in Iceland last week. meeting teachers and fellow students and getting into te school-mood again. it's a bit different from the school-mood in Greenland;0)

i managed to finish my poster and yeasterday i picked it up at a printing office in town, so now i'm ready for my conference in Høfn in Hornafirdi, eastern Iceland.

we will leave tomorrow on a small plane and then i will be back in Reykjavik on Sunday, after 12 hours in a bus with excursions on the way. this looks like a promising and fun conference, with more than 65 participants from all over the country and the scandinavian countries.

this night i had a very good fish soup at my supervisors home together with some of his phd-students:0)

i'm back in ICELAND

this is my plane at Keflavik airport last night, not every day a plane is flying many thousands of km to pick me up and fly me to Iceland. some might call me "Utrasarvikingur" with "einkathota"...
now it's back to normal day with school and city life...

coming back to Iceland

Today 20th of october I will come back to Iceland, after having spent 7 weeks at Danish Military Outpost Mestersvig.
right now I'm waiting for a Challenger (jet) from the airforce to take me to Reykjavik.
then it's back to regular life in the town;0)

I had a great time in Greenland as always, but it will also be great to see Anna again, my family, shops and fresh groceries and stores:0)

See you

pictures from Hjørdis and Nonnis wedding

just click on my pictures...

greetings from Greenland

bjarki

SKYR in Norway

http://www.q-meieriene.no/wps/wcm/myconnect/Q/Produkter/Nye+produkter/NO-Q-nyhet-skyr

finally SKYR is being produced in Norway, but why did they have to make so strange flavours??? stick to the original ;0)

leaving iceland

yeasterday i left iceland to go to naval guard mestersvig in greenland for 7 weeks.
i got up at 0600 in hafnarfjørdur at annas house ( my girlfriend) and she drove me to the airport.

i will update my other blog www.bjarki-sirius.blogspot.com from time to time with pictures and text

see uuu

http://www.aftenposten.no/meninger/kronikker/article3195636.ece

http://www.aftenposten.no/meninger/kronikker/article3195636.ece

everybody lets my Iceland down
except Eva Joly. i like her!

Kongsfjorden

what more can one want? marvelous scenery, mountains, glaciers, snow, fresh air and no people...

pictures from the fieldwork

finally i put some pictures from my cruise/field work on the web. we had a very nice trip with way to much food at the boat and then digging and walking all day, trying to figure out the geology of the area. we have been on a large number of places on the west coast of svalbard. the weather was 50/50, with sun, rain, clouds and ok weather. this is svalbard.

no we are writing a huge article from the work we did. it's a group work so that we can benefit from each other and the different experiences we may have achieved during our life time...

back in Longyearbyen after 9 days of field work...

Group 1, me Sasha (russia), Bryan (ireland/holland) and Ewa (sweden)

first days

first day at school started with shooting and swimming in the fjord in survival suit... my kind school...

for the last two days we have been having lectures by the teachers and also we have held our own presentations. wich was a lot of work but good to do and i learned a lot from that.

today it was raining a lot, i hope it will stop before we leave???

tomorrow we will leave on a expediton/field work with the old coast guard ship Kongsøy, which is a rolling boat...sea sickness!

there are some more pictures out there and here is the route;

svalbard...

this is of the svalbard landscape on my way north! I put out more pictures out there...

yeasterday i walked down to school and town, meeting people i havn't seen for a long time everywhere, and fixing all the administrative things, like getting bed linnens, key cards and password for the internet...
after expensive shopping and a huge lunch i went back home, all alone in the barack ( people will show up soon) and did some reading.

back where i belong...

tonight i'm flying back to Svalbard. first i fly to Tromsø in northern norway (1000km up north), then i have to stay there for almost 5 hours and then fly the last bit to Longyearbyen (1000km more).
i'm going to take a field course in quaternary geology together with 12 other students. the course will start on the 23 with shooting and zodiac boat...
then we are off for 8-9 days of sailing in the fjords, going on land every day and digging and describing what we see. it all ends with a huge report...

bæbæ

http://www.dv.is/frettir/2009/7/15/islandi-bjargad-miklir-moguleikar-fyrir-island/

http://www.dv.is/frettir/2009/7/15/islandi-bjargad-miklir-moguleikar-fyrir-island/

camping trip and sail trip...

This is from Annas and my trip to Kirkjubæarklaustur in south iceland. we visited this canyon which has been carved out by glacial melt water thorugh hundreds and thousands of years...

After the exam (which i passed) i flew to Norway to my parents, saw my little nice (Ella) and went sailing with my father one of his friends from sirius and his son. this took a week. in the begining we had very good weather (32 degrees and no wind) but the last 5 days where more or less really bad (a lot of wind, heavy rain and currents).

Now i'm back in oslo reading some more articles for my course on Svalbard and preparing a presentation for the course...

there are a lot of more pictures on my page...

finished my GIS-exam today

today i had to do a GIS-exam, it took around two hours, and now i will have to see if i passed it... hope so;0)

tomorrow morning i'm going home to norway, to see what family and friends are up to. i also have to prepare a presentation for my svalbard course later on in the month...

have a nice summer

sunset over reykjavik

thank you for commenting on my blog, it's always fun to read them:0)

we are off to kirkjubæaklaustur camping this week-end...

finally i found my selves a Skt.Hans bonfire in Iceland..

This is from seltjarnarnes, +11 degrees, calm weather and great ice-cream. these videos are made with time-lapse, meaning a lot of pictures taken over some time...

I allso put some pictures on "my pictures"

http://iceslave.is/

http://iceslave.is/

the amount of money the Icelandic people owe Britain and Holland, due to some stupid privately owed banks in Iceland...

timelapse movie from my appartment...

this movie is made in a timelapse program, it's made by taking 300 pictures of the same place with 10 sec intervals...

the rest is magic;0)

check out my sirius blog

check out my sirious blog to see links to a kite expedition in greenland, by two former members of the patrol. also how they had to be medevaced by a helicopter from svalbard due to apendix...

no more complaining abvout taxes...

this is the best swimmingpool in Reykjavik, it's situated at Seltjarnarnesid, just 3 km from down town. it has the best view, the best hot pots, changing rooms and warm saltwater.
today i'm watching the great view from hafnarfjørdur, in annas parents house, while she is babysitting her sisters son...

even more taxes

and today they decided to raise taxes on sugar-things with 7%, and have already raised it on gasoline and alchohol etc...

more taxes...

yeasterday the new government of Iceland decided to raise taxes by 8%!!!
shame on them:0(

finished field work

today i came back to reykjavik, after finishing field work for this summer. the last couple of days have been long but good.
tomorrow is the national day of iceland and i look forward to enjoy that and life in town...

last week of field work...

little drops of water made the flowers shine like diamonds in the crisp and clear air at my glacier...

the glacier seen from the main road

the shrinking glacier, the grey area around tha glaciers is the size of the glacier in 1996, since then it has melted over 500 meters.
tomorro morning (sunday) i will begin the last week of my field work, we will end the work on tuesday and then i have to start writing the story of my life...

field panoramas of Solheimajøkull...

During my last weeks stay at my field area i managed to have some really good weather and made these pictures. it will be fun to take the same pictures in some years and see how much the glacier has melted in that time.

last year the glacier melted 134 meters!

today i will go to my field area again and stay until friday...

the end of my field campain is close and i hope i will get enough and good data for writing my thesis:0)

excursion and field work...

For the last 10 days i have been attending a field course in quaternary geology (teaching) and doing my own field work at the glacier solheimajøkull in southern iceland.
with me i have 2 field assistents ( they were also on the course), so we basically do alot of digging in sand and gravel, which is not at all easy and then we draw a log ( showing all the different layers and structures of the sediments ( ground).
we haven't had any rain except during the night (when we don't work) which is quite un-normal for southern iceland ( highets precipitation in the country) so i'm quite happy. i hope this continues for the last 3 weeks of field work. the week-ends we spend in Reykjavik, then you don't get to tired of the field work.
we stay in a little summer house i rented at Asolfsskali, 16 min drive from the field area, it's quite spaceous and even has a barbeque and a hot-tub ( great after a day of digging).

today it even snowed and hailed, but everything is better than rain!!!

more pictures at my pictures

field excursion...

this is a map of southern iceland, the red spots are places we are visiting on a excursion from Friday to wednesday. i'm an assisting teacher on the course... the first 2 1/2 days is excursion based where the students see a lot of glaciers and landforms, the last days the students will have station work at Solheimajøkull (also my field area) where they learn to use the different tools and proceses to make a report about the landforms created be glaciations during time.
on wednesday i will stay in field working for my master thesis for the next 4 weeks, though i spend my weekends in Reykjavik and i have rented a small cottage with a barbeque and a hot pot...

My thesis is divided into 3 parts: 1: 1995 - present, 2: Little Ice Age ( 1400-1900), 3: the old stuff ( older than 1400, which could be 5000-10 000 yr)
"glacial history and fluctuations of Solheimajøkull and landforms"

back home again...

today i arrived in iceland, it was raining, blowing and low visibility, but isn't that also charming??
after meeting my uncle Boi at the main street i got a hair cut ( i needed it after my time in svalbard) , went to the store where everything was a lot cheaper than in Svalbard and ended my day with sitting in the hot pot and relaxing.

no i will make myselves a nice meal with icelandic lamb, the best there is;0)

isn't this life??

going back to iceland

after staying in slo for the week-end, anna went to Denmark today for a course in Geography and will come back to iceland on the 18th.

i will leave tomorrow morning for Iceland and will spend the next 5 weeks doing field work, whereafter the year following will be spent writing my master thesis... exciting;0)

More pictures on "My pictures"

Moraine cave

Barentsburg the russian settlement

Isfjorden by night

leaving Svalbard...sad but true ;0)

I can see it's really long time since i have written on my blog! shame on me and all of you that follow me!

after the Excursion to Reindalen we went on a two day field work trip with scooters to Kapp Linne and Isfjord radio. the weather was great and so was the trip, even though we had to do quite some work. Field work is great so it doesn't do that much!
when i came back from kapp Linne anna went with our friend Lilja and one of here friends to a cottage at Skansebukta in Billefjorden, stayed one night, saw a polar bear and went to the abbandonned settlement of Pyramiden (russian) and back. in the mean time i was running the Svalbard ski marathon (42 km), it was quite hard but a nice trip...

then the fun with excursions was over and more lectures in school while anna was doing here research interviews all over town!

we had to make a major report over all our field work and present it on monday. this left us with one day for reading to the exam which we had on wednesday, but i think it went ok.

today i sat in a meeting with the logistics people at UNIS and after saying bye to some friends at Kroa over pizza and beer, Anna and me are no ready to jump on the 0440 plane to Oslo and spend the weekend there.

the weather and snow and ice conditions have never been so good ever in my past years here, so it has all been great.

just need to show Anna more of Svalbard.

by the way this was my UNIS course number 10...

Field work and excursion to Reindalen...

On Wednesday we drove out to Adventdalen and Innerhytte Pingo with two tracked vehichles and did some field work. we used a geo-radar to optain a seismic line of the ice within the pingo and some measurements with a termistor. it was sunny and clear weather with -20 and 10-15 m/sek of wind, so it was quite cold.

Friday we went on a scooter excursion to Reindalen to look at the pingos. there are app. 10 of them and in different stages (ages). so it was very good to see it and learn some more. we spent most of the day on the scooter and wasn't back in town untill 1800 hrs. the weather was sunny, -22 and almost no wind. one scooter broke down after 15 min of drive, then one sledge broke down in the inner most part of Reindalen, but we managed to get it back home. a great day in the arctic.

afterwards we had some beer at the friday gathering with the calss and the teachers, afterwards we went to the pub where he had some pizza and some more beer...

easter has ended...

The easter hollidays are over and we had a good Easter. from friday to sunday we spent the time in the student cabin in Bjørndalen. it's app. 14 km to walk there on skis. the backpacks were full of food and things to drink so it took some time to get there...
friday and sunday was great and cold weather while saturday was above freezing with snow and wind.

now it's back to school with lectures and excursions. i love excursions!!!

late afternoon trip to Sarkofagen

at 1730 Anna, Zoe and her newly arrived sister and friend from Italy and Lucas from Poland went up to the mountain Sarkofagen at 490 meters. it was good to have Lucas with us since all of the girls where speaking italian all the time...
we arrived at the top after 1 h 30 min, had a rest and drank some tea and had some tom and jerry biscuits while enjoying the scenery over Longyearbyen and the surrounding mountains.
the trip down took 45 min.
after a warming shower the italian girls made bruchetta and spagetti with pesto and then we had some waffles which Gemma from Holland had made. mmm perfect evening!

new pictures out there...

week 2 and 3...

On the 31st of march anna arrived here in Longyearbyen. she has adapted well to the Arctic cold, though it has been quite cold during her stay. we had temperatures ranging from -10 to -28, so it's cold enough for her and the rest of us!

while i have started with school, anna has been going around interviewing some people here in town, for her master thesis.
on saturday the easter hollidays started. the weather was good until monday when it changed to snow and windy conditions.
monday we rented some snow scooters and went to Tempelfjorden to look at the glacier and the frozen ship in the ice (used as a hotel) and looked for some polar bears, but we only saw the tracks... it was a very cold day, -28 so some of the members of the trip ( 11 of us) were a bit cold, but the weather was so nice and clear!

shopping in svalbard is for the rich people. it's so expensive in the shops that you always pay 500-900 kr and don't come home with anything... 1 litre of milk is 25,9 kr!

no i'm baking a bread and then i'm off to the store before it closes. the walk to town is 3 km and takes app. 30 min.

happy easter

ps put some pictures on the blog

svalbard week 1...

since i came here i have been working on some courses i have in iceland and also enjoying the weather and scenery. monday and tuesday the weather was very nice and very cold, between -22 and -31,8.
then the bad weather started and it was snowing and blowing most of the time. the road down to school is 30 min walk , each way, so at least you wake uop on your way to school ;0)

yeasterday my barack started to fill up with students in my course and the weather turned out perfect. we found a rifle and 4 girls and me put our skis on and walked uop to the top of the Longyearbreen glacier. that took 2 h 10 min and then we had a good down hill back home. i was the only one without skins on my skis and was also on normal skis, not mountain/telemark skis. do you think i will do that again...No. hehe there was a layer of 30-40 cm of powder snow every where and around a 1000 snowscooters passing us on the way.

today we had safety course, learning how to shot, put up a tent and so on, but it's all been tried before...

tomorrow i have my last day at the safety course, driving scooter. brum brum. 2 people on the course doesn't have a drivers license so the have to be back-seaters... to bad for them.
Anna is also arriving so it will be fun to show her everything and see how she copes with the cold;0)

haven't been here since december 2004...

it's good to be back in the Arctic. yeasterday i arrived in Longyearbyen, Svalbard, after being away since december 2004. a lot of things have happende here, new buildings and stores everywhere, the university has been expanded a lot, but the people are the same.

lots of people i knew from last time are still here enjoying the life of the Arctic.

i'm attending a course in permafrost at the university and look forward to that.

yesterday it was calm weather, no clouds and -22 degrees.

this morning it was -30, so it wasn't that warm to walk the 3 km down to school and then back again this afternoon. but i really enjoy life in the Arctic.

while walking on the road i figured out that i haven't spent one single winter outside the high Arctic since 2001!!!

enjoy spring back at your place

busy busy

i have been quite busy this week, went to school both saturday and sunday afternoon to try to finish some work.

on friday i will go to norway to visit my family and friends and pack the arctic gear...

because on monday i will be going to svalbard to attend a course in permafrost for 6 weeks.

 this will be great...

SH7 in Danmarksfjord March 2007

iceland grows despite economic problems...

http://www.icenews.is/index.php/2009/02/28/iceland-grew-in-2008/

guess where...

dreaming about Greenland

well well, sitting in my office dreaming about the old days in Greenland, made me build this 3D model of Mestersvig. it gives a good view of the mountains in the vicinity...
with some more time i'm probably able to make a better model...

this is life...

This is life... a nice warm heitapottur in the middle of nowwhere...
this is from my trip with good friends to Goddalur in northwestern iceland. we stayed in a very nice cabine belonging to Palli and his family. it's in a deserted valley and the only way to get there is by super-jeep, at least in the winter time. we were 7 people, my uncle Silli, my girlfriend Anna, Palli our good friend of the family and 3 of his friends from Denmark.
the whole valley i geothermal, meaning there is a lot of natural hot water. this is connected to the house so there is around 30 degrees all year round. the water circulates the heating system and the continues out the pipes into the sink. i think they have the only toilet in iceland with warm water, keeping your behind warm. i would have liked to have that in Greenland!
they have their own heitapottur and the water from the springs is around +50.
the problem in the valley is cold water! we had to wait for the water to cool down or throw snow in the pool to get the right temperature...
anyway i had a great time with lovely food and great friends.

i put out pictures on my pictures.

progress in school...

today i finally managed to make a good model of my glacier in southern iceland. it's great finaly being able to to what to try to make!

the week-end was great. sitting in a hotpot in the middle of nowhere, watching the stars and the flickering northern light and driving super jeep in the snow...

what I'm actually doing in school and during my spare time...

During this week I have been quite active. Monday I went swimming and sitting in the heitapottur. tuesday, wednesday and today i went to the gym and to spinning class, it was very tired after the session but it was so nice to relax in the heitapottur afterwards... wednesday we had an exercise with the rescue team looking for some old people who got lost along the coast line of Reykjavik, thereby getting several more hours of fresh air...

later on today we are going to play bandy and possibly another round in the heitapottur ( or just a movie at the cinema) ;0)

at school i have been busy teaching myselves to make 2 dimensional and 3 dimensional models. i really got hooked to hit and i'm getting better every day:0)

First aid course nr.2

last week-end anna and i went with bjørgunarsveitina (the rescue team) to Borgarfirdi and attended first aid course nr.2. this is somthing everyone in the rescue team has to go through if they want to keep on staying in the team. it's a good way to get more skilled at what you are doing and is something usefull that could come in handy some day...
we had a lot of theory and some practical exercises, e.g. taking blood-pressure, how to strap a person to a stretcher and then carry him ( always the biggest guy ;0) ) around in the area, a big exercise and lots and lots of more things to learn. we even had a written exam, and i passed. hard to think since my icelandic isn't that good ;0)

i will put out some pictures later on from the course...

cold in Iceland

On the farm Svartarkot it was -29 degrees yeasterday. so all of you that think iceland is only rain and warm weather should see for your selves...

toady most of Iceland is in rainy weather. after 2-3 weeks of nice and cold weather i had to come to an end...

how the rest of the world see Iceland???

mayby this is how everyone see iceland, as a black rock sinking the world economy...

what is wrong with the people in charge???

in todays newspapers one could read about jon asgeir who drove his company "Baugur" to the ground, the new board in the icelandic state bank and the new politicians then awarded him by paying him more than the president and the prime minister, TOGETHER, plus free car and helicopter, all payed by the icelandic tax-payers.

there must be something rotten in the state of iceland...

it doesn´t really matter if it´s jon asgeir or someone else. The fact is that a former CEO of a bancrupt company is not likely to be the best one suited for the job to get the business going again!!!

we are not in a mafia country or a third world country... 

skiing in reykjavik

today we decided to go cross-country skiing in Reykjavik. the weather was just perfect for that and the snow was good. i guess  i have been spoiled with snow and cold during my years in greenland, svalbard and norway. so for icelandic conditions and my first time on skis in iceland i was very good ;0)

there are more pictures out there

thorrablot og jeppaferd at snæfellsjøkull

SULLI with Vignir and Heymir the oldest and coolest car at the jeep trip

last weekend i was invited to thorrablot and jeep trip to the glacier Snæfellsjøkull. it´s almost 3 hours drive from reykjavik. we stayed at the old fishing village of Arnarstapi. we were 31 and 11 cars, 4 snow scooters and and 2 ATVs´. it was great fun and a whole new experience to me to drive car at places with almost 1 metre of snow.  JUST FUN.

the food is old traditional viking food, some things are soure, somethings are rotten like the rotten shark, sheep testicles, lamb head, salt meat etc. it´s quite interesting to see and try what is actually possible to eat from an animal...

i put out some more pictures on my picture page

 

a magnificent poem abut Greenland

En hyldest til Grønland, Digt af Niels Underbjerg
Har du aldrig set en Grønlandsk sommerdag forbløde i et farveorgie af gult og rødt
bag kanten af en isbelagt storcirkel, der var din tavse verdens yderste grænse. 
Har du aldrig fanget af disse vældige drivismasser hørt som en hviskende forbandelse,
når flagerne sukkede og peb, mens de drevet af en usynlig magt pressede din skude. 
Har du aldrig prøvet at svælge dig mæt i duften af det fattige lands livsaligheder, 
når dets blide åndepust fik kæruldens lyslokkede hoveder til at nikke. 
Har du aldrig hørt den rene og stille luft blive fyldt med kåd latter og lyden af åreplasken,
når den fyldte konebåd i skumringen roede forbi. 
Har du aldrig set en fjeldsø fyldes til randen af blinkende stjerner,
mens fjerne hundehyl og ekkoet af et råb fortalte, at du ikke var alene på jordens arrede ryg. 
Har du aldrig prøvet at brøle dig hæs og føle dig lille og bange, 
når iskantens blåhvide stålkæber i uvejret kom dig nær med skum og fråde i mundkrogene. 
Har du aldrig i en frostnat siddet tænderklaprende på en hundeslæde over tyndisen,
med dit dyrebare liv i den ene hånd,
og med den anden gennem foret i din bukselomme knuget din forfrosne tissemand. 
Har du aldrig jublet af glæde og lettelse, når en fare var overstået, og nymånens gyldne båd
sejlede natten i havn med nordlysenes flimrende bråd om boven. 
Har du aldrig følt trang til stille at hviske: ”Kære Vorherre! Stands sol og måne og lad tiden 
stå stille en stund, så jeg kan fastholde dette øjeblik; skulle forsinkelsen forstyrre for meget,
så træk blot fra i den sidste ende tiden, der tabtes på det livsløb, der blev mit” 
Hvis du ikke har prøvet noget af den slags, så har du aldrig oplevet Grønland,
som jeg har det, mens gode og lykkelige år fløj afsted som vinden.

iceland at its best ;0)

this is how iceland has looked like, more or less for the last 2 weeks. BEAUTIFUL

winter night at Seltjarnarnes

last night after going to the movies, anna and i went out to take pictures of Grotta and Seltjarnarnes. i put the pictures on my picture page. this one is the view towards town and mount Esja.
it was cold ad crisp weather but only little northern ligth, due to the moon.
today it was actually - 12 here... no wonder i was a bit cold...