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Iceland: Week 30

It’s an unusually mild winter in Reykjavík, or so I’m told. This week brought the first snow of the new year that actually stuck around, blanketing Mt. Esja and whipping in the wind. Mostly, that’s meant more inside time, more busing instead of walking, and some February cabin fever. But today was the kind of bright winter day that I like — blue sky, calm breeze, snow but not ice, and temperatures just below freezing.

I took the opportunity to visit the Ásmundarsafn location of the The Reykjavík Art Museum, which has three venues, with this being the one I hadn’t visited yet. It’s dedicated to the sculpture of Ásmundur Sveinsson, who designed and built the building, which served as his home and studio. His sculpture is installed in various spots around town, but it was interesting to see in its full variety, and the space itself is quite unique. More photos on Instagram.

The outside of the Ásmundarsafn museum in Reykjvík.

Since early January, the artist Finnur Arnar Arnarson has been living in a tent inside the museum, while he paints the inside of building’s dome. His tent sits incongruously in an sunlit atrium, on a platform of rough pallets, with the growing detritus of his stay collecting around it. Visitors are able to ascend into the dome where he’s painting, although there’s barely room to move around his scaffolding and supplies. It all comes together as a kind of work-in-progress performance piece. It’s not clear to me if his painting will be permanent, or if the dome acts as a canvas for other artists over time.

The tent where Finnur Arnar Arnarson is staying inside of the Ásmundarsafn museum.

I want to recommend a book I recently finished called Underground Empire: How America Weaponized the World Economy by Henry Farrell  and Abraham Newman. It’s about how America wields power over countries through non-military means, primarily focused on dollar dominance and Internet infrastructure. After Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, four years ago, I was fascinated by some of the unprecedented moves to sanction the country, such as banning them from SWIFT, the international financial transaction processing system. At the time, I wanted to learn more about the history of sanctions and picked up The Economic Weapon: The Rise of Sanctions as a Tool of Modern War, but its historical focus on the interwar period was too far removed for me.

In contrast, Underground Empire is much more up-to-date, and looks at not only sanctions but other less official ways the US has used financial and technological chokepoints to coerce actors to go their way. For example: the successful push to get other countries to stop doing business with the Chinese technology company Huawei. The book brings together multiple interest areas of mine — international relations, financial networks, the Internet — and weaves a cohesive story across all presidential administrations in the post-9/11 era.

Some of the stories and history the authors draw upon were familiar to me, but it’s one of those rare books that succeeds in filling my knowledge gaps. I came away with a better understanding of OFAC, as well as clarity on how the Eurodollar works and why it would be hard for another country to unseat the US dollar as the global reserve currency. I also have a fuller picture of the extent to which US digital infrastructure dominance should scare other countries, and why nations around the world should be moving to establish digital sovereignty.

The book came out in 2023, so the authors didn’t know there would be a second Trump presidency. Even if they had contemplated it, it’s unlikely they would have guessed that by March 2026 he would have so thoroughly damaged the global world order. In many ways, the book is a cautionary tale of how America got addicted to abusing its power of economic and technical coercion. Trump, of course, has no restraint and will maximally leverage these advantages through any means possible. For the last 25 years the world has been on a leash that the US could yank whenever it wanted, but wriggling out of that collar seemed too hard and too costly. Today, with Trump holding it taut to their neck, I think the calculus is shifting.

Noted & Done

  • Nerdy thing 1: old Nokia ring tones were actually morse code for “S-M-S“.
  • Nerdy thing 2: the HTTP status code for a request that can not be completed for legal reasons, such as government censorship, is HTTP 451. Named after Fahrenheit 451.
  • I finally got around to reading Sam Levine and Stephanie Nguyen’s report about the exploitative surveillance practices of loyalty programs. Really smart analysis.
  • If you, like me, refuse to upgrade to Mac OS Tahoe, then you might be interested in this device management profile to turn off upgrade reminders.
  • Also — if you, like me, need to regularly split or combine PDF files and don’t pay for Acrobat, you should know about the free version of PDFsam.

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Iceland: Week 28

I don’t know about you, but I keep a list of remote islands and islets that I find fascinating and would like to visit some day. I’ve written about some of them at Looking North (Sula Sgeir, St. Kilda, Fugloy) and my Google Map is cluttered with “Want To Go” pins on many others: Jan Mayen, Stora Dimun, Tindhólmur, St. Helena, Foula, any of the Aleutian islands. While reading about the Olympics this week I added another to my list — Ailsa Craig, an island off the west coast of Scotland where all the granite for curling stones comes from.

Ailsa Criag — photo by August Schwerdfeger (source)

According to this article in CNN Science, the granite on Ailsa Craig has an unusual chemistry, and is “extremely low in aluminum.” It’s apparently so perfect for curling that the Olympics has never used any other granite source in formal competition since the first winter games in 1924. I love stories like this. The world is freaking out about geopolitical chokepoints for rare earth minerals, but nobody seems concerned about single sourcing for curling stones?

The NYTimes has a great piece on Ailsa Criag and curling stones, but it’s in their Athletic section, which my subscription doesn’t include because I’m generally uninterested in sports stories. Fortunately, a mirror is available on archive.today so check it out there. The embedded video showing stones being made doesn’t work in that archive version, but it’s available on Facebook.

The big news in Iceland this week was the dramatic changes at Reynisfjara black sand beach on the south coast near Vík. It’s a popular tourist site, which I especially love for it’s massive basalt columns. The site has been in the news recently due to numerous deaths caused by its massive sneaker waves, but now the beach has mostly disappeared. Persistent easterly winds and high waves all winter have washed the sand away, filling the previously accessible basalt cave with water.

Photo by Syn/Visir.is Screenshot (source)

I was there in early December with my brother, and while I’m surprised to hear how quickly this erosion occurred I can believe it, given the conditions we experienced there. The waves were incredibly powerful, and the wind was so strong it knocked me to my knees twice. From what I’ve read it may become more accessible again if the winds reverse direction, but nobody knows how long that will take. In Iceland, the landscape is always changing.

Reynisfjara in December, 2025.

I met up this week with a small group of other Americans in Iceland to begin planning some kind of event here for the upcoming No Kings day on March 28. It’s hard to know what the right kind of event is in a remote foreign outpost, but it feels important to have some kind of representation. Go sign up to learn about what is happening near you and hold that Saturday on your calendar.

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Iceland: Week 27

We’re one week into February, the only month that can fluctuate in length, but even with that quirk it’s always the shortest. I would believe it if you told me that’s why it was chosen for Black History Month, although the real purpose was to include the birthdays of Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass, both happening this week. Meanwhile, Trump is using the occasion to post racist memes that he refuses to apologize for.

Lately I’m finding some psychological reprieve in the total and complete acceptance of who he is. When you already know the depths of his depravity and immorality, when you know that he will never change, when you know that the cruelty and corruption is the point, then you can, at the very least, stop the spike of adrenaline that is caused by each of his chaotic and hateful actions. There is no tipping point he hasn’t already crossed, no further transgression that will finally warrant accountability, no revealing document that whisks him out of our lives. This acceptance is not a form of endorsement, but a tactic to avoid having our emotions hijacked, so we can think more clearly.

We don’t need to find another smoking gun; they’ve been fired over and over again. What matters now is the breadth of the American populous that is fed up, the number of people who care more about rejecting fascism than party affiliation, the scale of citizens who are ready to use both their voting and economic power to stand up for humanity and democracy.

I don’t know. I really don’t. I’m here in the middle of the North Atlantic, trying to make sense of my own life while the world keeps spiraling off-axis. All I have for this week is the firmer realization that the tipping point will never be something he does, it’s something we do. The question I keep asking myself this week — how can we shift from hope to cope?

hope (verb): want something to happen or be the case
cope (verb): deal effectively with something difficult

I went to a talk this week at the Nordic House by Katti Frederiksen, a linguist and writer from Greenland. It drew a large crowd, which I think was influenced by the increased attention and interest that Greenland has attracted geopolitically.

Some interesting things I learned from her talk:

  • In recent years, Inuit in Greenland have built stronger relationships with Inuit communities in Canada and Alaska. The youth in particular are more interested in strengthening bonds with indigenous communities worldwide, including Hawaii and Australia, than in connecting with Danish or even West Nordic countries (i.e. Iceland, Faroe Islands).
  • Connecting in-person with trans-Arctic Inuit is difficult because there are no direct flights. For example, to visit an Inuit community in Alaska she had to make four hops: Nuuk to Reykjavík to Seattle to Anchorage to the final destination in northern Alaska.
  • She also talked about the importance of Inuit influencers, and how Canadian Inuit have influenced Greenlanders through social media. There are some popular Greenlandic influencers, like Q’s Greenland.
  • In Greenland, the traditional Inuit language has been well preserved but many aspects of their culture (dress, music, food) have been eroded. She said that in Canada the opposite has happened, where the language is often lost but other cultural traditions remain strong. In this way, Greenlanders are re-learning about traditional practices from Inuit in Canada.
  • In terms of language, all education, government, and private sector work tends to be conducted in Danish. English is pervasive because of the Internet.
  • Greenlandic has distinct dialects by region: western, eastern, and northern. Traditionally, these communities did not mix much because it’s so difficult to travel. However, a big divergence with east Greenlandic is not just because of distance, but because Christian missionaries did not arrive there until much later. In the shamanic religious traditions, which remained prevalent for longer in the east, certain words were not allowed to be spoken in reference to the dead. This required communities there to invent many new words, which caused the eastern dialectic to diverge.

Speaking of Greenland, one of my photographs from the protest at the Greenlandic embassy from a couple of weeks ago was published in the print edition of the Reykjavík Grapevine this week (the one on the left).

This week was the Winter Lights Festival in Reykjavík, which involves projected light shows throughout the downtown area as well as concerts and other events. On Friday was Museum Night, where 36 museums were free and open from 6-11pm. I took advantage to visit some museums I hadn’t been to yet, including Whales of Iceland and the Reykjavík Maritime Museum. The latter is particularly well done and highly recommended.

Along with lighting up Hallgrímskirkja, there were a series of concerts inside dubbed HyperOrgel in which musicians utilized the MIDI interface on the church’s massive organ to create computer-controlled organ performances. This means that they could create their own interfaces for interacting with the organ, including shadow play in front of a projection and waving a wand. It also allowed for using other instruments to control the organ, or example a recorder and a theremin. I kept thinking that it was the musical equivalent of miraculin, the taste modifier in miracle fruit that subverts your expectations by causing sour foods to taste sweet.

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Iceland: Week 26

Yesterday I went on a long walk through Reykjavík, from one side of the peninsula to the other, through the wooded area of Öskjuhlíð and along the thin walking path between the ocean and the airport. I needed sunshine, air, and movement. It was the last day, of the first month, of a new year that has been marked by turbulence and uncertainty. Full moon tonight, so at least the celestial bodies are still reliable and trustworthy. At rock bottom, we can count on that.

I went to two separate talks about Greenland this week, one of them hosted by the Institute of International Affairs and the other by the Political Science Association. The latter included Karsten Peter Jensen, Head of Representation for Greenland in Reykjavík, whom I saw speak last week at the protest. I learned that his title can not be “ambassador” since Denmark retains control of foreign policy for Greenland.

Each of the talks was interesting, highlighting the absurdity of Tump’s threats, the lack of Chinese presence or investment in Greenland, and the interests and desires of the Greenlandic people. But they also both lacked any additional information about the true intentions of the American administration or the elements that might be part of a “framework of a deal” that supposedly emerged at Davos. We are still at a stage of speculation.

The first talk did engage in motivational theories, drawing a connection between Trump’s aggression and the long-standing interest by Elon Musk of having a SpaceX presence in Greenland. I don’t know. I hate Elon more than most, and have been tracking the massive corruption throughout Trump’s second term closely, but I’m not convinced that Trump’s actions towards Greenland can be explained so rationally. Increasingly, I think we have to move beyond logic in analyzing him — fewer foreign policy experts, more psychologists and therapists trained in narcissistic and abusive relationships. There are things he does for corruption, and there are things he does purely for ego, power, and punishment.

While reading an incredible detailed blog post about techniques for improving an image-to-ASCII renderer I stumbled upon an equally in-depth project by the same author about Icelandic declension, where noun forms change to communicate a syntactic function. The author of both, Alex Harri Jónsson, created a software package that would make it easier to properly represent the four different grammatical cases of Icelandic nouns. I had never considered the complexity of this before, but when an Icelandic person lists their personal details in a website or database, they provide only the normative version of their name. So if a website or app inserts their name into a sentence, it’s often the wrong variant, since the sentence structure determines the proper variant.

His post is a fascinating explainer for how this works grammatically, but also how he built an incredibly efficient JavaScript library to help programmers properly handle Icelandic names. This was partially possible because of Iceland’s Personal Names Register, which I’ve mentioned here before, that includes a record of all approved Icelandic names. One of the criteria that factors into approval is whether or not it can accommodate this grammatical declension.

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Iceland: Week 25

I’m struggling with being in Iceland, while watching the state terror that is happening in Minneapolis and across the USA. It doesn’t make me feel safe to be so far away, it makes me feel helpless. Yesterday’s murder of Alex Pretti followed the same playbook as that of Renee Good: immediate lies from Kristi Noem and other administration officials demanding that we not believe our own eyes.

This lying is vile, but it is also weak. When your power is based only upon coercion, when you believe that you can force people (or countries) into submission, you project your fragility for all to see. Your power relies on compliance, fear, and isolation; on a calculation that the other party lacks resources or alternatives. You are betting it all, and thus stand to lose it all.

On Tuesday, Mark Carney, Prime Minister of Canada, gave a moment-defining speech at the World Economic Forum in Davos in which he called on other nations to reject the aggressive logic of great power rivalry (full transcript). It’s strange for me, having spent the Fall diving deep into theories of international relations, to see so many quotations of Thucydides: “the strong can do what they can, and the weak must suffer what they must.”

In his speech, Carney rejects that Realist logic by noting that “there is a strong tendency for countries to go along to get along. To accommodate. To avoid trouble. To hope that compliance will buy safety. It won’t.” The first couple minutes of Carney’s speech were in French, and the final line of that portion translates to: “The power of the less powerful begins with honesty.“

I think his speech was incredibly impactful because it speaks not just to international relations or global trade agreements. His advice to the leaders of middle-power countries is equally valid for citizens of the United States facing the dissolution of our constitutional rights through force and lies. Compliance won’t buy safety. Power begins with honesty.

If you voted for Trump, there are hundreds of other lines crossed that could have prompted a deep reflection, but this should be the last. Look into your heart and ask yourself if these acts of violence align with your values. It’s okay to admit you were wrong, that you were lied to. But this week was a breaking point that forces a decision — whether as the leader of another country or a citizen of the USA. You can stand with your neighbors against tyranny, exposing the weakness of a bully when measured against a unified opposition, or you can take the side of dishonesty, corruption, and state violence. Silence in this moment is support for tyranny. Compliance won’t buy safety.

On Tuesday I participated in a candlelight vigil for victims of ICE, which was held in downtown Reykjavík by Indivisible Iceland. The event included a reading of victim’s names who have been directly murdered by ICE or died in detention. It was a small group of mostly Americans, but the vigil was covered by RÚV, the national broadcaster, as well as Vísir. Those links are in Icelandic, but include some video of the event, including me sharing a reflection. If nothing else it was good to meet other Americans in Iceland who are struggling with what ICE is doing and looking to express solidarity however they can.

On Saturday I attended a “Stand with Greenland!” rally outside of the Greenlandic embassy in Reykjavík, which was convened to disavow American bullying tactics and aggression towards the country. Although Trump has backed down from his threats to use military force to “take” Greenland there are still no clear details on his “framework of a deal” with NATO allies and he continues to disrespect Greenlander’s sovereignty in his rhetoric. I have more photos of the event in an Instagram set.

It was bizarre to watch Trump’s speech in Davos this week as he continued to belligerently say that American deserves to “own” Greenland, and yet multiple times mistakenly refer to it as Iceland. Of course, in line with the administration’s broader inability to ever admit a mistake, they denied that he said Iceland — even though we can all watch the video. There’s a reason this George Orwell quote from 1984 is making the rounds this week: “The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command.”

Iceland has a very centralized government information system at island.is where after you log in with your kennitala (like a social security number) you can view and manage everything from your home address, marriage status, vehicle registration, health insurance, petitions, and much more. As a temporary resident I don’t have a ton of reasons to use it, but this week I logged in to verify that I’ve reached my 6-month threshold and now have Icelandic Health Insurance.

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Iceland: Week 24

I guess it’s only been a week since I returned to Iceland after my trip to the US for the holidays, but so far, every day of 2026 feels like at least a week on its own. I started my new semester at the University of Iceland on Monday, so I’ve been wrapping my head around five new classes alongside keeping up with the chaos of ICE raids in Minnesota and Trump getting aggressive about his nonsensical desire to “take” Greenland. It’s been a lot.

When I first started exploring the possibility of studying in Iceland, I was interested in the Arctic Studies micro-credential, a one-semester (30 ECTS) program. But when I went to apply I learned that micro-credentials are no longer offered to international students. My alternative was to apply for the one-year International Affairs Master’s level certificate (60 ECTS), which allowed me to structure the first semester to match exactly the Arctic Studies program. It also allowed me to stay in Iceland longer, so it seemed like a good option.

Now that I’ve completed the Arctic Studies portion of the degree, my classes this semester are less specialized. I’m optimistic that I’ll still find them interesting, but to be honest, my motivation is nowhere near as high as last semester. This overall experience has always been driven by a mix of interest in the academic program a desire to live in Iceland—the weight is now shifting to the latter. My courses this semester are: Negotiations, The Role and Policymaking of International Institutions, Governance of the Internet, Practical Statistics, and Introduction to Security Studies.

During the holiday break I found time to publish the Arctic-related papers I wrote last semester on my Looking North blog, where I’ve been writing since 2019 about landscapes and cultures of northern places. I hadn’t published anything there in a couple of years, and these latest essays are much more in-depth than what came before. I’m not sure if I’ll pick up the pace of publishing on Looking North or not, but between this blog and there it seemed like the more appropriate venue. The two essays are:

  1. Arctic Fiber Frontiers — How are subsea cable networks reshaping sovereignty and geopolitical power in the Arctic?
  2. America’s Arctic Imaginaries — What does the controversy over drilling in Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge reveal about competing American visions of the Arctic?

Both are topics I was excited to dig into and learn more about, and I’m happy with the outcome. While written in an academic context I think they’re very accessible, so if you’re interested at all I hope you’ll check them out.

During Christmastime, Icelandic graveyards are full of candles. This is the post-holiday candleholder discard pile.
From a wrapper on some scaffolding downtown Reykjavík that highlights the history of what used to exist at that location. This is the first evidence I’ve ever seen that Iceland had a pneumatic postal service.
This was the strongest aurora I’ve seen yet, and the way it swirled around Mt. Esja was otherworldly.

Back to the chaos of Trump’s threats to the international rules-based order—I would say that people in Iceland are starting to wake up. Iceland and the US have had a co-dependent and beneficial relationship since WWII, but these belligerent statements about taking over Greenland have people worried that the same logic could be applied to Iceland. It doesn’t help that Billy Long, Trump’s nominee to be the US ambassador to Iceland, joked this week that Iceland will be the 52nd state and he’ll be governor. This led to a petition, which I signed, for the Prime Minister of Iceland to reject his ambassadorship. Long has since apologized, but only in the classic non-apologetic move of saying he was sorry, “if anyone took offense.”

Meanwhile, the stories and videos of ICE acting as an unaccountable, hateful, dehumanizing paramilitary force continue to stream out of the Twin Cities. Just as we saw in Chicago and Portland, I’m proud of the Minnesota resistance I see from afar, of people standing up for their neighbors, documenting these illegal actions, and even bringing whimsey and joy in the face of terror. Yesterday, a January 6th insurrectionist Nazi tried to inflame tensions in Minneapolis with a hateful rally downtown and protestors ran him out of the city. I find it hopeful to see that people are not backing down in the face of fascism, but I’m incredibly worried about how Trump will continue to escalate. He wants chaos; he wants to invoke the Insurrection Act. The latest I’m reading today is that they’re planning to deploy 1,500 paratroopers to Minneapolis. This is insane.

Here in Reykjavík, a group that I joined late last year called Indivisible Iceland is planning a vigil for Renee Good and all victims of ICE on Tuesday, January 20th.

Noted & Done

  • I finally had an Icelandic celebrity sighting at the pool. Ingvar Sigurdsson was leaving just as I was arriving.
  • The post-solstice daylight situation is improving rapidly. Today the sun sets at 4:29PM, only 19 minutes earlier than Chicago. I’m tired of the dark, but I’ve also been really appreciating the sunsets lately, knowing that at some point I won’t see them anymore.
  • This article in the Guardian about losing our connection the future due to the ongoing polycrisis is something I’ll be thinking about for a while. In particular, the idea that we “don’t really think about our future — we remember it…when we daydream or envision ourselves at a later point, we essentially create a memory. We then use these memories to construct our ideas about the future.”
  • Marcin Wichary compiled a fantastic list of his favorite tech museums around the world. I’ve only been to one of these (The Connections Museum in Seattle) so I’ll be referencing this list on future trips.
  • I used an eSIM from Airalo when I was in the US and it was a great experience. iPhones can support multiple active eSIMs, so it got me thinking about other use cases. For example, even if you already have an active plan, you could get an eSIM that operates on a different carrier network to act as a backup in areas of spotty coverage. I think I’ll do this the next time I’m on a long US-based roadtrip through areas with poor coverage.
  • If you use Gmail, you should know that Google has by default given its Gemini AI access to your inbox to enable “smart” features. Here are the instructions for how to turn it off.
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This is America

I welcomed the new year in the USA, where I spent three weeks celebrating the holidays and visiting friends and family. But alongside those moments of reconnection I also got to see Trump’s America up close again, having spent nearly half of his second administration at a safe distance, on a remote island in the North Atlantic. I follow the news closely, of course, but the maddening, saddening, reality hits harder with a front row seat.

After months of listening to the fight over ACA subsidies, I had my own quirky run-in with the broken healthcare system. I don’t have a health insurance policy right now, so I tried to buy one for this trip. There are policies intended for expats living permanently abroad, who are traveling back to the US, but not for temporary residents like me. I called numerous companies, but when I described my situation they all told me I wasn’t eligible, so I crossed my fingers and went without. When I got to Michigan I asked at Walgreens how much it would cost to get a flu and COVID vaccine — $240 — which seemed exorbitant to me. Unfortunately, my parents were dealing with norovirus as I arrived, and then later in the week we all got COVID. The vaccine might have been too late anyway, but in hindsight the cost would have been worth seeing friends instead of spending a week in my parents basement. While I was recovering, RFK’s CDC changed their guidance to say children shouldn’t get COVID vaccines.

My parent’s bird feeder, in Sturgis, MI

On January 3rd, I woke up to the news that the US had invaded Venezuela. Like Chekhov’s gun, all those naval vessels off the country’s coast had to play their role at some point. It was shocking to see the U.S. disregard a nation’s sovereignty in such a cavalier manner. Within hours the flimsy pretense about drugs was abandoned and Trump was stating clearly that this was done for oil money. In the days that followed the rhetoric about taking Greenland ramped up. My semester spent on Arctic Studies is uncomfortably relevant to this geopolitical moment, while my class that starts tomorrow on “The Role and Policymaking of International Institutions” is uncomfortably irrelevant, given that Trump just pulled the U.S. out of 66 international organizations.

On January 6th, I was in Chicago, walking around a city I love, eating great food and visiting friends. But this was also the five-year anniversary of the insurrectionist attack on the U.S. Capitol, the first since Trump pardoned nearly 1,600 people convicted or awaiting trial for their seditious and violent actions that day. I couldn’t help but think about how those criminals must be holding parties to celebrate that injustice, as I walked along the Chicago River in the shadow of the massive, ugly tower that bears Trump’s name in 20-foot letters. The “big lie” of the 2020 election has become a series of ongoing lies that try to rewrite much of the country’s history.

An orange line “El” train, rounding the a corner in the loop
Marina City, shot from an angle that avoids having Trump Tower in the frame.

The next day, on January 7th, I flew to Minneapolis to visit Emoji. I saw someone on social media say that these days “all dogs are therapy dogs” and there is nothing more true. He’s helped me get through a lot and I miss him terribly. To anyone in Minneapolis that is surprised to hear I was there, I’m sorry I didn’t get in touch. This trip needed to be 100% Emoji time.

Me and Emoji 💙

As my flight was taking off, I learned the news the Renee Good was murdered by ICE. Later that day I saw the videos that we’ve all seen, and the next day the lies from the administration began about what we could all verify with our own eyes: ICE is a rampaging paramilitary force that is allowed to act with impunity. They are staffed exclusively by bullies — the kind of people that most of us know and avoid — with hair-trigger tempers, superiority complexes, and deep-seated emotional problems. They’ve given them guns and told them they have immunity. I am crushed by this killing, but even more disturbed by the immediate attempts to demonize the victim. Minneapolis Public Schools were closed for the rest of my time in the city: the children are not safe from their government.

I went to Renee’s memorial, which was surreal to see after watching the videos so many times. It was part vigil, part protest, chaotic with the presence of police on a street that should have just been closed. It was emotional to be there, from the weight of this senseless act and for what it says about America today. But the community was standing together; an artist was painting a large portrait of Renee, a woman was handing out Somali sambusas.

The memorial to Renee Good.
An artist paints a portrait of Renee Good, near the scene where she was murdered by ICE.
Look at the size of those billy clubs.

I got back to Iceland yesterday and my body still isn’t sure what time it is, but it’s good to be somewhere quieter, and beautiful. Being back in the U.S. for a few weeks made me miss my people there, miss my dog, and feel the weight of this moment more deeply than I had been. I have not given up hope, but the refrain in the many discussions I had seemed to always be that it’s going to get worse before it gets better. I hope we can build solidarity and strength fast enough to counter the forces that are seeking to destroy everything. I still believe we can, and I still believe that these displays of violence and wanton power are actually signs of weakness. But this is not an easy moment, and the path forward is still beyond the horizon.

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Iceland: Weeks 21 + 22

This is my first Iceland post that needed to span multiple weeks. In the previous fortnight I wrapped up everything for my first semester at the University of Iceland and my brother visited for five days. It was really fun to have him here, his first time in Iceland, and despite the very minimal amount of sunlight (~3.5 hours per day) we had a great time exploring the Reykjanes Peninsula and south coast.

When I met Isaiah at the airport, at a little past 7am, we still had at least 3 hours before the sun would start peeking above the horizon, so we caught up in a cafe before heading out. Iceland immediately showed off its weather diversity as we drove from drizzly Keflavík through the snow-covered lava fields of Reykjanes. The first stop was more of a conceptual one, but established the mind-blowing geological newness that is Iceland: a bridge between continents that connects the Eurasian and North American tectonic plates. The country is basically split in two by these plates, the source of volcanic activity that led to the creation of Iceland 20 million years ago and all the continued eruptions today.

Bridge between the Eurasian and North American tectonic plates

Near there is Gunnuhver, a geothermal area, where the mixture of snow, steam, and sunrise seemed like a fitting introduction to Iceland.

Gunnuhver geothermal area
Isaiah at the Gunnuhver geothermal area
A graveyard along the Reykjanes southern coast. During Christmas cemeteries in Iceland are lit up like this.

This time of year the sun never really stops rising or setting, but by the time we arrived in Grindavík it was light enough to see the impact of the nine dramatic eruptions that caused the town’s 3,700 residents to flee in 2023. The town is surrounded by newly constructed lava barriers, and in the city center there’s a fissure that cracked and shifted the street by a meter or more. New roads have been cut through the lava, and there are signs of rebuilding, but most residents haven’t yet moved back.

A new road cut through the lava field, seen from the top of a lava barrier.
Isaiah on a lava field from the 2023 eruptions.

Our next stop was Hveragerði, where we hiked into the mountains to the Reykjadalur thermal river. The sun had already started to set when we started around 2:30pm, so we packed headlamps for the walk back. That was smart, but it would have been even smarter for us to not leave our crampons in the car. The ~5 mile round-trip hike was icier than we anticipated, but beautiful, and soaking in the hot springs surrounded by snow covered mountains felt amazing.

The view over the geothermal valley
Reykjadalur hike
Reykjadalur hot springs area. This is the main site for soaking, with a boardwalk and minimal changing zones.

We stayed in Reykjavík that first night, and the next morning made headway down the south coast before sunrise so we could maximize the minimal daylight. The weather was cooperative throughout the trip, with very little rain or snow. The temperature was moderate, mostly just above freezing, but the wind got up to 40 mph. At times, it felt like pushing on a heavy door just to walk forward and twice it literally knocked me to my knees.

The south coast did not disappoint, and it’s truly the biggest payoff for a limited amount of time in Iceland. It’s amazing how many things are just off the ring road, and while these accessible sites are busy with tourists, even in winter, it wasn’t overwhelming. We went to Seljalandsfoss, Skógafoss, Sólheimajökull, and Reynisfjara before running out of daylight in Vík, and continuing the drive to our hotel in Hof.

For this first day, I have photosets on Instagram of horses, Sólheimajökull, and Reynisfjara.

A herd of Icelandic horses congregated along the road and were happy to see us. I love how they are so genetically specific and yet each one has such a distinctive look.
The Eyjafjallajökull icecap, underneath is the volcano that erupted in 2010 and caused 20 countries to close their airspace.
Obligatory waterfall selfie. Unfortunately, this time of year they don’t let you go behind Seljalandsfoss due to icy conditions.
Sólheimajökull glacier, which I went ice climbing on just a month previous. It was fun to come back so soon and see the changes in the icebergs and lagoon.
I brought my other camera lens (50–200mm) along for this trip to Sólheimajökull, which let me capture slightly different views of the glacier than when I was there previously with only my 23mm.
This ice arch is an example of something that I didn’t see last month, and it probably won’t be there a month from now.
Very rough seas and intense wind at Reynisfjara, the black sand beach.
Basalt pillars on the Hálsanefshellir cave.
Black sand beach with Dyrhólaey in the distance.

At sunrise the next morning we went to the Jökulsárlón glacier lagoon and Diamond Beach, where icebergs calve off the glacier and float out to the sea, washing up on the black sand. It’s a stunning place, with bright blue ice that feels surreal amid the immensity of the Vatnajökull ice gap. I have a photoset on Instagram with more images.

An iceberg just off shore that hadn’t been washed onto the beach yet. I saw a photo someone took two days after this that looked like it had broken in two, with a large piece on the sand.
Ice chunk on Diamond Beach in pre-dawn light.
Jökulsárlón glacier lagoon
Jökulsárlón glacier lagoon

Perhaps the most unexpected experience was going to the Fjallsárlón glacier lagoon and realizing it was frozen solid. The Jökulsárlón lagoon doesn’t freeze in winter, because it mixes with salt water from the ocean, so after cresting the hill that reveals Fjallsárlón it was almost hard to process what we were seeing: massive icebergs, frozen in place, with people walking amongst them.

It’s pretty amazing that in a short two-day trip we were able to visit three different outlet glaciers. Whether it’s winter or not, my top tip for the south coast of Iceland is to not miss Fjallsárlón, if you are going all the way to Jökulsárlón. It’s only 15 minutes west and an equally wonderful experience. I also have a separate photoset of Fjallsárlón on Instagram.

A frozen glacier lagoon at Fjallsárlón
The Fjallsárlón glacier
A blue-ice arch in and iceberg at the Fjallsárlón glacier lagoon

The final stop on our south coast tour was Fjaðrárgljúfur canyon, where a winding river has cut a scenic path. I somewhat sheepishly realized that I first learned about this place because it’s the splash screen on my banking app, which feels like finding out about national parks from MacOS wallpaper. But it’s a beautiful spot, and definitely worth the hour or so if you have the time (and daylight) to spare.

Fjaðrárgljúfur canyon

I have lots more photos, but this post is already very long. Overall, it was great to have Isaiah visit and nice to see spots on the south coast that I hadn’t yet visited during this time in Iceland. I went as far east as I’ve ever been, but no further. This Spring I’m hoping to break that barrier and make it all the way to the Eastfjords.

Outside of our roadtrip we walked around Reykjavík, which made me realize just how small it is. By day two of exploring the city we had gone to 80% of the areas I frequent, ate well, and avoided spending too much time in my tiny studio apartment. It’s always interesting to wander around a city with Isaiah because as an architect he sees things in the built environment that I don’t. We have similar but different designer afflictions: I spot the bad kerning on signs, he notices when courtyards don’t align. But he also looks up who designed the buildings, so now I realize that every day I walk by three or four buildings by Guðjón Samúelsson.

I’ll be traveling to the U.S. for the holidays, my first time leaving Iceland since I arrived in mid-July. I realized this week that my time here matches my longest living out of the country; I was in India during 2011 for the exact same time period. I’ll be in the States for three weeks, returning just before the next semester starts on January 12th. I’m probably going to take a break from writing here during that time. Happy new year to everyone that’s been reading this blog. I appreciate hearing from you, thank you for following along.

Noted & Done

  • Iceland will not take part in next year’s Eurovision, in protest of Israel’s participation.
  • UNESCO has added Icelandic swimming pool culture to its list of intangible cultural heritage of humanity.
  • Icelandic sculptor Steinunn Thórarinsdóttir did a talk at Scandinavia House in NYC last month and the video is now online.
  • Finished Shetland season 10, which was very much like every other season but that’s fine with me. I watch it as much for the landscapes as I do for the plot.
  • Finished my two research papers and will heartily recommend Zotero for managing sources, notes, and most of all footnotes. I honestly don’t know how I would have managed my footnotes and bibliography formatting without this tool. One of those pieces of software that you immediately can not imagine living without.

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Iceland: Week 20

My exams are done and my papers are getting very close. The last few weeks have been a big push to wrap up the semester but it looks like I’m on track to finish before my brother comes to Iceland this week. I’m excited to have him visit!

I finished watching a four-part mini-series about the life of Vigdís Finnbogadóttir, the former Icelandic president, which is streaming on RÚV with English subtitles. The show, which shares production and acting credits with the excellent Blackport, was really well done — and I’m getting good about recognizing filming locations in Reykjavík. Elected in 1980, Vigdís was the world’s first female head of state and in Iceland she was the first single woman allowed to adopt a child. I enjoyed getting more of her backstory since I see references to her all over town. For example, my oral exam for my class in Iceland’s Foreign Policy was held in a building on campus called Veröld – House of Vigdís.

Last night I saw Júlía Mogensen perform at Mengi and got to see a halldorophone being played for the first time. It’s a unique electroacoustic instrument that looks like a cello but incorporates positive feedback into the process of playing. It’s the brainchild of Halldór Úlfarsson, who takes an iterative approach to design, incorporating feedback from musicians and evolving it over time. I’ve been really enjoying the album Electroacoustic Works For Halldorophone by Martina Bertoni lately, so it was great to see it being played and get a better sense for how it works.

Júlía Mogensen playing a halldorophone at Mengi.

Noted & Done

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Iceland: Week 19

This was the main study week for my Theories of International Relations exam. I did a deep dive on four theories and packed my days by re-reading and quizzing myself to try and keep all the nuances straight. I’m covering Realism, Liberalism, Marxism, and Normative IR — including all the sub-theories and critiques within each one. The overlapping terminology can be tricky, with maybe a dozen different meanings of the word “liberal,” a half dozen variations on “hegemony.” It’s maddening that the mix of authors I’m trying to keep straight include Walt, Waltz, Walzer, and Wallerstein.

Photos from Ragnar Axelsson’s current show at Qerndu gallery

I did get out to an opening at Qerndu gallery for Ragnar Axelsson’s latest photography exhibition: Human. The ten photos in the show were previously selected for the 2023 Prix Pictet photography award for global sustainability, and feature people from Greenland, Siberia, and Iceland. Ragnar’s work is primarily focused on documenting the changing Arctic, from melting glaciers to people’s lives and culture. His book Faces of the North, one of my favorites, combines candid photographs and portraits with short stories about each person. I wrote about it on my Looking North blog back in 2020. He’s one of my favorite photographers, so I was pretty excited for the chance to meet him and see his work at full scale.

Christmas Cat in downtown Reykjavík

With Christmas season approaching, the city of Reykjavík has put up some sculptures in the center of town depicting Icelandic Christmas folklore such as the Christmas Cat and Yule Lads. I’m familiar with the less-than-happy endings of most Icelandic novels and movies, so I shouldn’t be surprised — but these stories are dark! Christmas Cat lurks around the countryside and eats people who have not received new clothes to wear for Christmas Eve. Yule Lads are a gang of 13 mischievous pranksters who steal from or harass people in different ways. Their mother’s favorite food is a stew made of naughty children.

That said, the Yule Lads also seem pretty funny. They have names that translate to things like Door Slammer, Sausage Swiper, and Doorway Sniffer. My favorite — the one I would choose to play in some kind of Icelandic Christmas pagent —  is Skyr Gobbler. He just really likes Icelandic yogurt.

Finally, here are a couple of photos I took recently where the sharp angle of the sunset created interesting illusions. In the first, a focused beam of warm light hits only a sliver of Mount Esja, making it look like the lights from a town are illuminating the base of the mountain.

The second is from the University of Iceland campus, where steam from the hot river is illuminated by sunset light compressed between an opening in the buildings. Combined with the almost black-and-white, frost-covered ground it looks like an explosion.