The Icelandic Adventure: Part II

It's amazing to note how much longer the days have become since the solstice. We still haven't had any direct sunlight (the sun hides behind the mountains), but it seems to rise sooner than before. The weekend before Christmas we visited the nearest neighbour who was nice enough to let us photograph his sheep. He even pointed out a ram of his who descended from Gunnar Gunnarsson's ram. Of course, a ram with such prized lineage was too proud to have his photo taken. On the 23rd, we made our weekly trip to town. Traditionally, this was the day of the big Christmas fish market, and we were quite looking forward to finding the entire town smelling like fermented shark (which tastes and smells like ammonia). To our dismay, there was no fish to be found! The fish in the fish section of the supermarket was just as frozen as it normally is, and neither of the two restaurants in town were serving fish. Hmph! Our Christmas feast consisted of baked lamb and potatoes, salad, pickled herring, and Icelandic mozzarella. Little did we know the lamb had been cured before we bought it (note: mysterious cooked colour!). It was too salty to eat for Christmas, but the next day Sami used it to make a great stew with potatoes and vegetables. We won't even mention the Icelandic mozzarella... After lunch, we went to mass with the rest of the village. The minister greeted us when we arrived, and gave us programs for the service. Even though we had no idea what she was saying (aside from repeated words like "Guð", "Jesú Krist", "Amen" and "Betlehem", we could follow the sounds in the program pretty well, and enjoyed singing along to "Good King Wenceslas" and "Silent Night" (in Icelandic, of course). A couple of days ago we took a walk to the church and back, stopping here and there to look at frozen waterfalls, take pictures of ice formations in the ground, and throw rocks into streams, only to watch them bounce back. We even met a few ponies who were nonplussed by our empty pockets. We'll have to carry sugarcubes next time.