Margo's Snorri Adventure: Day 22

This morning I met Eydís Valgarðsdóttir, my sixth cousin who has lived in Akureyri her entire life. I showed her how we were related in my Islendingabók genealogy packet and she told me that she has met my great aunt Gail in the past! She drove me to a beautiful view point over Akureyri where you could see the snowy mountaintops behind the city. Then we went to one of her favorite parks from her childhood and walked around it for a bit. The park had nice walking paths with a variety of flowers and plants lining them as well as a creek that flowed through the middle of the park. On our way driving from the park to downtown Akureyri, we stopped by some horses grazing in a pasture on the side of the road. All the horses walked up to us thinking we had food but since we didn’t have any we feed them some grass. Next, we walked around downtown and through the Hof cultural center then stopped in a café. There we had drinks and a snack while sharing photos of our families and homes with each other. I learned that her husband is from Winnipeg - where my mother was born! He coaches hockey teams in Akureyri now. Eydís also told me about her eight year old son and her two daughters, one of which is my age. After a wonderful conversation, she showed me where she works as a physical therapist then drove me back to the apartment where I’m staying.

I ate a quick lunch at the apartment then Þorunn drove me back downtown where I met up with the six Snorri participants whose homestays are in or close by Akureyri. We had a lot to talk about and shared stories of our work placements and host families. It was so great to see them all again - I couldn’t believe it had only been eight days since I had last seen them when we all split up and met our host families. We walked up long set of stairs to the church then went to the Botanical garden which was marvelous. It had so many different types of flowers in bloom and great walking paths. I didn’t look at the flowers very much while we walked around the paths since I was too distracted by our conversations catching up on what each of us had been doing. During our conversations I learned that two of the Snorri participants had the chance to visit Grimsey, an island in the Arctic circle, for two days as an all-expense paid trip by their volunteer organization. They were conducting interviews and taking pictures to help encourage Grimsey tourism for their volunteering job.

We stopped to eat at a café in the center of the Botanical Garden that had delicious looking cakes. Then we walked back downtown were we wandered around into a bookstore, took pictures with two troll statues (who represented the parents of the 13 yule lads which are part of the Icelandic Christmas tradition), and a beach by the Hof center. Later, we went to the huge pool in Akureyri! It had two normal 25 meter swimming pools, several hot pools of varying temperatures (one with a TV set up in front of it so you could watch the world cup), a cold pool, and three slides! The slides were awesome even for someone as old as myself. I was able to get good speed on the slides that went around and around in circles all the way down then exited into a pool.

Something interesting I’ve noticed while walking around Akureyri is that all the red lights on each stoplight are in the shape of a heart, a tradition that was started during a local festival I’ve heard. Also, the downtown is much smaller than I would expect for a town of 18,000 people. Thankfully, today was beautiful sunny weather in the sixties and with no wind it felt even warmer from the sun shining down. Actually, today was the best weather I’ve had so far in Iceland. Good thing I wore sunscreen! I don’t want to get another embarrassing sunburn on my face in Iceland.

Since I’m already half way through the Snorri program I thought it might be a good idea to write about some of the interesting things I’ve noticed in Icelandic culture that are different than American culture. First, it seems less common to get married in Iceland. Many of the couples I’ve met wait to get married several years after having kids – even if they’ve lived together for many years. Second, I noticed a trend of young people often having a kid with someone then splitting up and having a kid with someone else, resulting in families where each kid could have a different set of parents. To me, this seemed like it would be detrimental to the child’s development if the child grew up with only one parent around. However, many families explained that they think this brings them closer together because the parents who the child mostly lives with will often share their parenting responsibilities with their parents (the child’s grandparents) or the child might have several step parents that could all work together to raise him. Seems like this pattern could create some very big, complicated family structures. Holidays must be crazy for Icelanders with several half families. Third, when running in Reykjavik I’ve noticed that all people I see running around are always wearing long pants and long sleeve coats even when the weather is warm (in the fifties). I think it might just be a cultural norm to wear excess clothing when exercising. Fourth, it seems like Icelanders really like to eat coleslaw (at least the ones I've run into so far do). My host family eats it with every dinner as their vegetables. The popularity of coleslaw here was quite surprising to me since I assumed no one ate it outside the United States.

I’m very excited for our car tour around Eyjafjörður tomorrow where we will go to the south where Þorunn and my ancestors used to live before they emigrated. Then we will head around the north part of the fjord to Dalvik (where another Snorri participant is staying) and Siglufjörður.

Photos from my visit with Eydís at the scenic view point, the park, with the horses, of the long staircase to the church downtown, and a picture of us together.