The Holiday Season Is Over

On Sunday night the last of the Yule Lads departed for the mountains and turbulent fireworks kept us awake for a long time. It was the Twelfth Night of Christmas. This holiday marked the coming of the Epiphany, concluded the Twelve Days of Christmas and announced the end of the Christmas festivities. Long ago it was celebrated as a time of merry making when the rich were supposed to share what they had with the poor. Twelfth Night is also believed to be the night when all Christmas decorations should be removed so as not to bring bad luck upon the home. If decorations are not removed on Twelfth Night, they should stay up all year. Oh, well, we are doomed. In Iceland, Twelfth Night turned into Thirteenth Night, "þrettándinn", since they celebrate Christmas a day earlier. After stripping your Christmas tree from all its glory, you suppose to toss it down from a balcony, if you have one, or simply drag it out on the street.

So, the holiday season is officially over. The streets of Hafnarfjöður appeared to be in various states of undress and distress: half of lamp posts lost their holiday lights, the sidewalks are littered with remains of fireworks, and Christmas trees are laying on every corner, waiting to be collected and brought to their final destination. Most likely it will be the wood mills which will mulch them into pieces. I envisioned them turning into smooth, white paper, instead they will be turned into the wooden chips to place as a layer over landscaping. Not especially poetic but practical way to recycle and give back to earth.

*My bad, as I learnt today from Icelandic Review, the Christmas trees will be used for making compost. “Then we give the compost to people who are interested in using it,” Ingthór Gudmundsson, stationmaster of waste management company Gámathjónustan told Morgumbladid. Even more prosaic, but way more down to earth.

On Christmas and Typewriters

The wind has returned and with it my sleepless nights. I would not mind it, except those are not really productive hours – it is an odd stage of being awake but not fully functional, no intellectual alertness whatsoever.
Christmas granted us some beautiful days when the snow fell on the ground and surprise, surprise, stayed there long enough to enjoy a rare opportunity of making a snowman and playing snowball fights.
But alas, a winter wonderland is over and in addition to the wind, it is raining now.

The Christmas itself was very nice – everybody was happy with Santa’s gifts. The funny thing happened the day after Christmas. We went to the Natural Museum of Iceland, which miraculously was opened while most of the businesses were closed for the holiday. There in a special little room designed for children’s enjoyment the kids found an old-fashioned typewriter. They pecked on the keys, watching with utter fascination how the letters appeared on the paper, were highly delighted to discover a “carriage return” lever, and didn’t tire of removing the paper with a grand gesture of professional writers and tucking in the new lists. We could not convince them to go to a different hall for quite some time. Perhaps, the ability to see something directly on the previously blank page, as oppose to the computer screen, tapped into their creative spirit. I understand why some writers didn’t surrender these machines even with arrival of computers – there is certain rhythm into it: clickety-clack of typing, swift sound of a carriage returns, typing again; it can be a trigger for inspiration. Also, there is such a legacy behind it – a long line of famous writers, starting with Mark Twain who famously was the first prominent author to turn a typed manuscript to his publisher; Hemingway, writing his stories standing in front of his typewriter; the poems of E.E. Cummings, which, as mentioned so often, could have been composed on nothing but a typewriter. And then there are images of reporters in movies furiously typing away their stories - think of ever so elegant Gregory Peck in “Roman Holiday”.
It is a pity the Christmas is over – the typewriter could have been a wonderful present.

Updates on the Yule Lads

Update on Yule lads, their parents and Christmas cat.

We went to the Christmas bazaar in Hafnarfjörður. Images of Yule lads and other Christmas related crowd were everywhere, so I decided to add some of them here.

Christmas characters on the carton are (from top to bottom):
Askasleikir – Bowl licker, he is the 6th one of the Yule Lads to appear in town on the 17th of December, and he can't resist licking any bowl he can find clean;
Gluggagægir – Window Peeper, the 10th of the group to come down from the mountains. He peeks through the windows and steals things that catch his fancy.
Gryla and Leppalúði – mean, mean parents of Yule lads;
Jólakötturinn – a wicked Christmas cat. Icelandic poet Jóhannes úr Kötlum wrote a poem about this Yule Cat, which has such words:

His whiskers, sharp as bristles,
His back arched up high.
And the claws of his hairy paws
Were a terrible site.

You can also take a look at slightly different translation of this poem along with Icelandic original.