Day 17

Today was my first day volunteering at the Akranes folk museum!  Essentially my job is to keep everything at the museum clean and work the front desk selling tickets.  I am lucky to be working with a girl my age, Sigga, who speaks good English and showed me around the museum.  I am looking forward to working with her every day since she has the same job as me!  She was so nice in answering all my questions about Akranes and gave me several tips for working on my Icelandic language skills.

The folk museum features a lot of old fishing equipment since fishing has been one of Akranes’ main industries for a long time.  Unfortunately, the museum is quite outdated so it is undergoing a lot of repairs and the curator is designing a new exhibit to make the museum more modern and attract more tourists and Icelanders.  The folk museum is composed of one central building with old houses contain different exhibits surrounding the central building.  One of these historic houses, which was donated to the museum by its owner after he died in 2006, is supposedly haunted by his ghost according to Sigga and the repairmen painting the outside of the museum.  There have been inexplicable events that have occurred in this house which are attributed to the presence of the old owner’s ghost.  I have yet to experience anything supernatural in the house but I will keep you posted.

After work, I went over to Þorunn’s house where we ate a little post work snack with bread, cheese, butter, and green onions.  Then Þorunn drove me to the local library to sign me up for a library card.  I’ve realized that she loves driving me places (she seems to keep coming up with places that she needs to show me around Akranes) and wants to share her passion for reading with me, hoping it will help me learn more Icelandic.  Next we ate a nice simple dinner with oven cooked chicken, French fries, cucumbers and tomatoes at her house while her husband and son watched the Iceland-Croatia football game.  Þorunn and I were quite busy discussing our common ancestors and where they lived in Iceland before emigrating.  She is very passionate about keeping track of her family tree so she has lots of information on our ancestors.  She even showed me some books that were records of people who emigrated from Iceland between 1870 and 1914 and had bookmarked the pages that had the names of my ancestors.

Sadly, Iceland ended up losing the football game against Croatia (1-2) and although I wasn’t able to see the majority of the game I did see Iceland’s goal.  Everyone seems pretty bummed about Iceland not making it further in the world cup because they were so eager to support their country’s first time making it the FIFA world cup.  After the game, I went to check out the local pool and swim some laps.  The hot pools were very nice but I missed having my Snorri friends to chat with at the pool.  Also, the pool was very empty due to the football game.  Nevertheless, I had a good time by myself at the pool enjoying the geothermally heated water.  Once I finished at the pool, I stopped by a small grocery store on my way back to the house where I am sleeping to pick up food items for packing myself lunch.  This week should be fun having Sigga around to keep me company at work and give me the chance to practice my Icelandic with her.  

I have noticed that the wind is definitely stronger here in Akranes than in Reykjavik since Akranes is less protected from coastal winds and has fewer buildings.  The strong wind makes biking around everywhere a cold and semi-difficult task but at least I will be in better biking shape by the end of these three weeks!  I probably won’t post for a couple days since my schedule is the same each day (working at the museum from 10-5 then eating dinner with Þorunn’s family).  I am very excited for the long weekend trip where Þorunn has planned for us to visit Akureyri and some other towns around there in Northern Iceland this Saturday through Tuesday!  Hopefully I’ll be able to meet up with some Snorris in Akureyri since there are at least seven of them doing their homestays there!

Some pictures from the folk museum:

A 400-500 year old walrus cranium with its long teeth still intact!