The inevitable 1 month post

Gæsir (geese) are flying south. Most of them are gone.

Ravens stay around, defying the wind with their black wide wings or standing on guard on the top of some roof.

The winter is announcing its arrival and soon it will settle for a long season.

For now, the colours of Autumn paint the landscape and the soul of beings and things. Days are visibly getting shorter.

Time flows, as flow the energies of Nature in this land.

Existence gains a whole new shape while living this chapter of my life. Sometimes the feeling is of being part of an imaginary world, one where the states of peace and joy are just under my feet, above my head and within myself.

Reflection finds time and space to come by and expand; Wondering about little and great things in life and the world.

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Ártún = Ár (aur) -  rivers + tún - land

The farm is situated where Blanda and Svartá (Svartau) rivers meet. It stands between three main mountains and it is 70 metres above sea level.

The nearest town is Blönduós, nearly 30 km away (around 20 minutes by car), with 850 inhabitants. It offers the basic necessary services and not much more than that. Even so, I joke around at home that this is my favourite place in Iceland. I was told that many foreigners (mainly from Poland and Scandinavian countries) work there, in the Slaughterhouse, where locals prefer not to work due to the nature of the jobs.

There are no hot springs in the region, therefore, electricity is used in abundance for heating houses. A dam was built in river Blanda, being called Blöndulón, arousing controversy.

Besides the farm and Blönduós, which I visit at least once a week for logistical reasons, I have got to know Reykjavik (the most north capital in the world) and Akureyri, the capital of the north of the country. But above all, I am looking forward to venture through the Nature of this island. Winter will certainly not be  suitable for this, so it takes patience to meet better moments to do it. Meanwhile, I will be hearing advices and making plans.

The work goes smoothly, although everyday there are surprises. Either the cows do something unexpected that takes more cleaning or running around after them (sometimes on the account of Busla, the sheep-dog that most of the times doesn't help, with the best intentions; anyway, I care for her a lot, and she gives proof of the same feelings back), or something breaks, or someone shows up and a coffee break is improvised changing the schedules, therefore making the working time shorter and more intense...

It never gets boring and predictable here, and this seems to be essential for my enjoyment.

Since I've mentioned broken things, there could be at least a hand full of examples, but I will refer specifically to one. The hay cutting machine stopped working...! “Good Lord!”, I would say, if this was the kind of expressions that came out of my mouth in these situations. The fact is that I finally got to know in practical means what I was wondering for quite a while. Sitting next to the rúla (hay bales) that Tryggvi caries inside the barn by tractor, there is an old instrument that he told me it was used to cut the bales manually, before there was any machine. Usually I use it only to cut the plastic around the rúla and then go forward with the machine. Yesterday, there was no machine so I've visited the old days, in a very practical lesson on how machines changed the world. I will not state that I fully enjoyed this task while I was preforming it; in fact when I went back to meet Tryggvi and Johanna that were tiding the garage, the first thing I could say was that I felt I had died a little in that moment. But as soon as I put it out, I started laughing about it. It was hard, but I enjoyed it in some twisted way. I guess that the chance to use that tool was lurking around in my mind and somehow I was glad to experience this unique moment, travelling back in time.

I am officially a tractor driver by now!

There is no way to find the best place for this topic on this post, so I will just write it here. The slaughter.

It was an intense and disturbing experience, but I ask you not to feel sorry for me but for them. Exactly on my birthday, it was the date set on the calendar to send my friends the bulls and six of my friends milking cows to the Slaughterhouse. I knew it for quite a while, but only on that day I've realized it. In the morning a feeling of nostalgia started invading my chest, as I was taking care of these beings that were enjoying their last hours of life. By the end of the afternoon, Tryggvi asked me for help with setting a structure to make it easier to load the animals into the truck, when it would come later. This was when I actually realized the whole thing. And apparently all the animals were aware of it too, for the atmosphere started to get heavier each second. We had time for coffee (who could think of coffee in such a moment?), and then came back to the cow-house, where the truck was ready to start loading the bulls and cows. I was just standing there, astonished, paralysed, feeling like finding a hole where to hide myself. It is not a peaceful scene; two men from the Slaughterhouse, Tryggvi and Johanna with sticks forcing the animals to leave their places and go into the truck. Johanna felt my despair and sent me home; I was doing nothing there besides suffering.

And for many days I wondered (relevant fact: the cows are named after volcanoes, rivers, islands and such): how can we stop a volcano? how can we tear an island apart? how can we interrupt a river?... what right do we have over the life of another being, being it not suffering?

With time, I accepted to respect farming values. During this process, I have never judged Tryggvi or Johanna, or any other farmer, but I wondered about Humanity and the ways "we" found to manage in this world. I have accepted to respect this, because I did not want to make this people, who spent all their lives trying to find ways to deal with these matters (also suffering in their own way, as  they have clearly exposed to me), I did not want to make them question it over and over again, being a mirror of what they have seen for so long.

 

Death, birth, rebirth...

Iceland has an island that was born in 1963. Surtsey was formed after an eruption, south to the main island.

I went up Skeggstaðafjall, the mountain south-East to Ártún, to round sheep. All the way up was Tryggvi and along came the neighbours mounted in their horses, which was of great help.

A couple of days later we went to Húnaver, which is a round wooden structure belonging to the community, where the sheep that where in the wrong lands go. A group of people is assigned to spend the whole day (it was set to be Monday 1st October) identifying sheep and giving them to their owners. These "committee" does it for at least 4 years and then a new group takes over. At Húnaver there was Jón, a 88 year old farmer that lives by himself and owns horses, dozens of them, and takes care of them and the farm, alone in a mountain. His presence is special.

 Gastronomy in Iceland is quite interesting and I get along pretty well with it. This, of course, because here at the farm they give me free choice when I don't feel like having something; for instance, I'm not always eating meat when it's on the table, although it is not as often as it is in a traditional Portuguese home.

Besides the milk diaries mentioned in a previous post (Skyr  - Icelandic cultured dairy product, similar to strained yogurt. Technically, it is a fresh acid-set cheese. It has been a part of Icelandic cuisine for over a thousand years. It is traditionally served cold with a topping of sugar and cream. [sourse: wikipedia] is really becoming essential for my taste), there are three things I would like to refer for now: on Saturdays we always have milk-rice (a sort of arroz doce without cinnamon and egg) as meal for lunch, as it is a tradition; fiskibollur (fishballs) can be made with codfish or another sort - Portuguese out there reading this: pastéis de bacalhau também os há na Islândia! They are extremely similar to a Portuguese speciality. Last but not least, "slátur", home-made by Johanna (made in two versions: "Blóðmör", a sheep's stomach stuffed with a mixture of sheep's blood, rolled oats and cut up bits of sheep's fat, and "lifrarpylsa", which consists of sheep stomach stuffed with a mixture of ground lamb's liver, rolled oats and cut-up bits of mutton); today I have tried  Blóðmör with sugar on top, which I found intriguing when I saw it on their plates and finally I found it delicious when I tasted it on my mouth.

Last week I took four days off from work and travelled south to Reykjavik.

There is a lot to write about it, but using other symbols, in other pages that not this.

I have cut my hair by my own, which was asking for a refreshment. And I enjoyed a wonderful afternoon at Laugardalslaug Geothermal Pool, the largest pool in Iceland. There I swam in 29º volcanic heated waters, in an outdoor swimming pool, while the air temperature was 8º. From swimming, I switched to relaxing from nearly 4 weeks of work in a row, immersing myself in a heitir pott (hot pot), a Jacuzzi-like pool kept at 40º (maybe next time I will  take the risk of going into the 42º).

The Norðurljós - In the evening of the 5th of October I have experienced for the first time the Northern Lights... indescribable... memorable. I have not yet found the words to tell about this episode... In a simplified attempt: it's a dance of lights and magic shapes that transform the sky into a dream. Magnifying, hypnotizing, wonderful...