These past few days I have been
staying with my Icelandic relative, Svona, who is related to me through the
Hannesdóttir
Icelandic ancestry. Yesterday and today
were mostly filled with the same activity of going to the pool with one of Svona
family members - yesterday I went to a pool with her sister and today I went to
the pool with her niece. Both days were different,
new pools that had great facilities. I
often heard from her family members that they wouldn’t be able to survive in
Iceland without having access to hot swimming pools. I can understand why, since the cold weather
all day makes your muscles tight and it is necessary to have a consistent place
to go relax and be warm.
The pool I went to yesterday had
the smallest wave pool I’ve ever seen.
It was very amusing because it was so shallow and small yet all the kids
loved it and had so fun much playing there.
After going to the pool, Svona’s mother ate dinner with us. We had some great trout and potatoes while
watching the Sweden-Germany football game (Germany won 2-1). Last night we watched an Icelandic comedy all
that had a funny plot but was difficult for me to understand since there were
no subtitles and the actors often spoke too fast.
This morning, I met up with the
other Snorri participant who is still in Reykjavik and went to the cultural
house museum (photos below). It had several
interesting exhibits centered on specific themes and composed of pieces from
different museums around Reykjavik. Then, Svona’s niece Kristin took me
to the pool with her little girl and her ex-partner (the father of the little
girl). Kristin told me about her
international travels while we sat in the kids’ pool with her daughter. She had gone to school in Denmark and then in
Malaysia where she met her ex-partner (who is from Kenya). He has lived in Iceland for about ten years
and was a very interesting person to talk to.
He told me about his experience living in Iceland, which was such a
change from his native land and how much Iceland has changed in the past ten
years. We talked about how much tourism
has grown and the amount of immigrants working in Iceland that aren’t receiving
the support and cultural recognition that they deserve. Since he works as DJ with a main interest in
reggae, he told me about the reggae scene in Iceland which I didn’t know even existed. I believe he said there was around three
bands performing reggae music, all of which he knew the members of. I learned about his international university
background in Japan and Malaysia. During
our conversation he told me some smart advice where he suggested all young
people in their 20s should spend a year in a different culture to open their
mind, understand the different ways people live, become more accepting of
others, and gain consciousness about your own culture. I do think that having young people interact
with another culture would help open their mind to different perspectives but I
also know that not everyone has the financial ability or freedom to live
somewhere else for that long.
Here are some photos from the cultural hosue musuem:
A narwall tusk on the left and an interesting piece of art on the right above.
On the left: an artpiee with decorated with human hair surrounding the photo. On the right: a very chilling description of a decaying dead body.
On a happier note here is a photo of a snack I got from the cafe we went to after the musuem:
A photo from the outisde of the pool I went to yesterday where you can see a fun slide I unfortunately didn't try out.
Finally here are some photos of a church in the neighbor where I'm staying that I thought looked cool:
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