Next, I went lap swimming at the pool and went in the hot
pool afterwards. While I was there, a
group middle aged people with deck coats or towels ran into the hot pool from a
side entrance at the same time. There
had been an ocean swim competition that had just ended so all the participants
needed to go in the hot pool to warm up.
After the pool, I met up with Þorunn again, her daughter Anna, and Anna’s
daughter Linda to walk around the town square that had been completely
decorated for the festival. We saw theatrical
performances for kids happening in the town square and walked around a street
market with different art and crafts being sold. Then we passed by the carnival area where
there were several blown up slides and other amusement rides. We also walked through an old car show that had
a lot of old American Fords and Chevrolets.
One of the cars had a cute black dog sitting happily in the driver’s
seat! Next we went to a bakery and
picked up a rhubarb crumble and a dessert that was designed in a similar style
to vinarterta except this had strawberry jam in between the layers and a pink
glaze on top. Both desserts were
delicious!
The car show and the car with the dog in it!
Then, we walked to the highland games happening outside the
folk museum! The sun had finally decided
to come out and there were blue skies!
Several men competed in different feats of strength. One looked like shotput, another was throwing
a stick with a metal ball on the end.
The men also had to pick up a big tree log and run with it then try to
flip it – only one of them was successful.
The last event was throwing a 25 kg metal dumbbell over a bar set to be
a certain height in the air. All the
events were amazing to watch and looked very difficult. I saw Sigga taking pictures and helped her
take some pictures for the Irish Days Facebook page while she handled museum
admissions.
After the games ended, I watched of a FIFA world cup game at
Þorunn’s house then walked to Sigga’s for dinner. I met her friends who were in the same major
as her at the University of Iceland. One
of them was Sandra, a previous Snorri west participant, who I met during my
first two weeks of the program because she ate dinner with the Snorris one
night. I was able to see the exciting
end to the Croatia-Russia game that seemed to never end (it went 30 minutes
overtime and then into penalty kicks)!
Then we went to the hill singing where there was tons of people sitting
on blankets. I thought the event would
be call and response style but quickly realized that wasn’t the case and that I
didn’t know any of the words to the songs.
Thankfully, I had two other Snorri participants with me from Borgarnes visiting
for the evening so I could chat with them during the singing. Finally, we went to the dance called
Lopapeysan (woolen sweater) where we saw famous Icelandic musicians like Jói P
og Kroli (some 17 or 18 year old rappers who are very popular in Iceland), Páll Óskar,
and more. It was crowded and difficult
to see the stage or stay together as a group but I had a lot of fun. I don’t know how long the dance went on but
our group left at 4 am after about four hours at the dance.
The hill singing and the beach:
Sigga and me:
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