Rotting shark meat...yumyum

Here is what Wikipedia has to say about an Icelandic "specialty" dish:

Hákarl (Icelandic for "fermented shark") is a food from Iceland. It is a Greenland or basking shark which has been cured with a particular fermentation process and hung to dry for four to five months. Hákarl is an acquired taste and has a very particular ammonia-rich smell and fishy taste, similar to very strong cheese slathered in ammonia. The shark itself is poisonous when fresh due to a high content of uric acid and trimethylamine oxide, but may be consumed after being processed. Those new to it will usually gag involuntarily on the first attempt to eat it due to the high ammonia content.

Hákarl is traditionally prepared by gutting and beheading a Greenland or basking shark and placing it in a shallow hole dug in gravelly-sand, with the now-cleaned cavity resting on a slight hill. The shark is then covered with sand and gravel, and stones are then placed on top of the sand in order to press the shark. The fluids from the shark are in this way pressed out of the body. The shark ferments for 6–12 weeks depending on the season in this fashion.

Airwaves 2010

Derek and I lucked into an unexpected invitation (thanks Patrick!) to volunteer for the Airwaves music festival in Reykjavik.  We only had to sell some t-shirts and posters for two afternoons and in return we got free music passes for the entire show (which were worth about $150 each and had sold out already).  We discovered that Reykjavik has a collection diverse and talented bands for such a small city.  Every night we saw bands that we have never heard of, and many of them were from outside of Iceland.  But I must say that the best performances were from Icelandic bands.  Some shows on the weekend didn’t even start until 2:30 a.m., so needless to say that we were exhausted by the end of the festival.  One of the great perks of volunteering for this festival was that not only did we get a free pass, but we also got to skip the lines outside (which sometimes had waiting times over an hour).  On top of that, all the passes came with discounts at some of the restaurants in town.  Someone should have warned us (or just Derek) that if you order sushi in Iceland you will most likely be getting some raw whale meat as part of your sampler.

Here are some links to a few bands that Derek and I particularly enjoyed:

FM Belfast:   http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XYc0qjAhWoM

Hurts:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=15uFb2wjxjg

Seabearer:   http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SYiYDgpjAF0

Lay Low:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DshHs8VqkUk&feature=related

Basia Bulat:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tNmXekrpu6I

Four movies per day = advanced states of atrophy.

My second work camp was volunteering for the Reykjavik international Film Festival (RIFF), which started the day after I returned from my first camp.  I quickly threw my filthy cement-crusted clothes and work boots in a pile and replaced them with heels and dresses (and what I could try and pass off as nice clothes).  I must say the two work camps could not have been more different.  For RIFF we had over 20 volunteers (still no Americans!) and were housed in downtown Reykjavik.  I started off the first day by volunteering for RIFF's opening gala where we helped set up for the event, and I attempted to pour champagne for famous people (without spilling it all over them), all while keeping an eye out for Bjork (who was a no-show…go figure).

In this work camp, I finally had a chance to experience the night life first hand, which usually involves going out around midnight and staying out until six in the morning.  Needless to say I saw lots of organic graffiti (aka vomit)and shirtless men.  It’s interesting to note that at 2am on Saturday you see more people out in the city than you do at any other time during the week.   

The food was also especially different for this work camp.  We spent most of the time eating gouda cheese, cucumbers, skyr, nutella, and digestive cookies (probably the worst name you could give a cookie), and sometimes bread from a large bin with old pastries mixed in.  

My job at the festival was mainly as a driver, which was basically a disaster waiting to happen.  I had to pick up directors/judges/etc. at the airport and drive them around Reykjavik to different shows and parties.  In reality, I ended up driving a huge 9-person van the wrong way down one-way streets, doing illegal u-turns and getting stuck with horns blaring, shutting a car door on a director, and looking back to see one woman holding onto the "o-shit" handles for her life.  I would inevitably get lost and try to convince them that they would just be fashionably late, then I would have to call someone and tell them that I am on Skólavörðustígur street?!  How do you pronounce that?!  I would also help out in the theatres, which consisted of me watching a movie and then sweeping up the popcorn afterwards.  I discovered that my limit for movies in one day is four, after that reality starts to feel like a blur.  I really enjoyed the festival as it gave me the opportunity to see lots of great films, that I would have mostly never heard of otherwise, and a chance to meet the people who made the films and to personally ask them questions.  Also I enjoyed meeting so many great volunteers that I had the opportunity to work with,  and whose couches I may be also crashing on sometime in the future.

(Side note: I never thought about doing a work camp in a foreign country as opposed to general travel. Typically when I travel to a place I try to cram in as many sights as humanly possible, but I think there is something to be said for signing up for a volunteer program and really getting to know a group of people.  It gives you an opportunity to see a country in a different way, as opposed to the ultra-tourist method.)

Officially, the winner of the film fest was “The Four Times”(Le Quattro Volte (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0zxYGvRBpg8).  Honestly, I really tried to watch this movie, and perhaps someone should have warned me beforehand, but it was it was an entirely silent film and for some reason I just couldn’t do it.  Here is the official description:   

"An old shepherd lives his last days in a quiet medieval village perched high on the hills of Calabria, at the southernmost tip of Italy. He herds goats under skies that most villagers have deserted long ago. He is sick, and believes to find his medicine in the dust he collects on the church floor, which he drinks in his water every day. A new goat kid is born. We follow its first few tentative steps, its first games, until it gains strength and goes to pasture. Nearby, a majestic fir tree stirs in the mountain breeze and slowly changes through the seasons. Le quattro volte is a poetic vision of the revolving cycles of life and nature and the unbroken traditions of a timeless place. The story of one soul that moves through four successive lives."  

 It actually sounds like a really great movie, so maybe someday I will work up the courage to try and tackle this beast again.  Here are some of my recommendations from RIFF:

Little rock (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KoHUcdeMDCE)

Nuumioq (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JGuu9iOa8NU)

Womb (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N8Oujip3nJQ) ... be warned this one is VERY strange and I am only recommending it because I don’t want to be the only one who was disturbed by it (I’m taking you down with me!).

Also: Toxic Playground and Venice

To finish off the work camp, Derek and I rented a couple cars with some of my co-volunteers and did the golden circle tour, which is a three-stop day trip outside of the city.  The first stop was at Þingvellir, a national park where the tectonic plates are separating -- on one side you are on the European continent and on the other you are on the North American one.  The other interesting aspect of this site is that the Icelandic parliament or AlÞingi was established here in 930, and would host annual meetings to discuss laws for the country all the way until 1789.  The second stop was at Geysir, which was basically a bunch of tourists standing around a hole in the earth with cameras positioned up while waiting, and waiting, for the sulfurous pit to blow in the cold.  The English word "geyser" actually derives from the Icelandic name for this particular geyser.  The final stop on the tour was Gullfoss, which was a very large and beautiful two-part waterfall.

How I arrived a girl... and left a Fisherman!!

I shouldn’t have packed those snow pants, or the five pounds of granola, or the motion sickness pills for that  ‘15 hour drive’ to the work camp.  But when one hears the word ‘workcamp’ all sorts of scenarios come to mind, like forced manual labor/starvation/brutal cold/no running water.  I should have looked at the map, I wasn’t going to North Korea!  It took about 4 hours to get there on nicely paved roads, and we were greeted by being shown to our hotel style housing (with running water!) and a delicious three-course meal (where I was introduced to the bread that I would become obsessed with for the following two weeks).  I was one of ten people coming to volunteer in Heydalur (http://www.heydalur.is/), a developing guest house in the West Fjords, where they offer sea kayaking, horseback riding, and natural hot springs to guests and pool cleaning, rock moving, washing dishes, painting, cement making, and wall building to volunteers (with the fun stuff mixed in).  The people in the volunteer work group were from Sweden, Belgium, Germany, Hungary, France, and South Korea. My roommate was a Swedish girl named Emma who within the first few days was bitten by a very mildly domesticated Arctic fox (I even use that term loosely).  I told her that if she started foaming at the mouth I would have to kill her… as far as I know the verdict is still out.  

 We spent most days working around the farm helping with whatever was needed and eating delicious food cooked for us by Stella, the retired school teacher who at ~70ish spent all day in the kitchen cooking us amazing meals (although perhaps a little heavy on the cauliflower).  In order to combat the fatness that was approaching from our daily cake break at 4pm, we spent a lot of time hiking after work and walking down to the waters along the fjords every morning.  On our days off we were able to do some horseback riding, sea kayaking (with seals), and hiking to the ‘top’ of the fjords, which we never seemed to truly reach.

After two weeks we were all ready to leave; I know this because we all began imitating the talking parrot Cope, it wasn’t pretty...Overall it was an amazing experience and I saw and did things that I never expected going into this work camp, such as: learning how to use a hammer!  I also caught a fish, gutted it and removed all of its bones and sliced it up (I left the cooking part to Stella, no one wants a microwaved salmon).  Another unexpected highlight was seeing the northern lights while sitting in a hot pot.

We all became close over the two weeks we spent in Heydalur, and it was strange to be back in the BIG, HUGE city of Rekjavik and saying goodbye.  But I told them not to be too sad, you never know when Derek and I may be crashing on your couch!

As we were leaving we passed on the legend of the Japanese man in the cage to our replacements, compliments of Cecile, the Danish girl working there for about 4 months (that’s a long time without outside communication…).  We told our replacements that in Iceland since there is such a low population it isn’t worth building a prison, so in the West Fjords each valley gets one prisoner and they are to leave him in his cage, but feed him leftover scraps for which the government compensates them .  We went on to explain that the system is all well and good except that sometimes the local prisoner gets loose and tries to bite people; we even showed them a bite that Anna (a German volunteer) had gotten from a horse.  We told them to watch out when they are hiking, never go alone, and to always be alert, because he is stealthy and hungry since all he gets to eat is leftover fish heads.  We thought that it would be obvious that this was just a joke but they really believed us muhahaha…so the legend lives on….