Sunday, July 11, 2010

Day 32: Learning about the Icelandic Sagas

Today we spent our day at home. I slept in this morning and then did a little work on my project before lunch time. After lunch Peter, an employee of the University Centre in the Westfjords came to Holt (the place we're staying) to give us a lecture about Gislasaga, one of Iceland's saga.

Basically the story follows most medieval trends such as adultery, revenge, family honor, etc. etc. What's interesting is that the Icelandic language has not changed much at all over time so reading the sagas is popular among Icelanders. There are some English translations of several of the sagas which I might look into reading.

We then had a little while until dinner so I went for a walk along the beach in the fjord with Nina and Shannon. The water was rather calm and it was beautiful outside. Since it's warm in Iceland now all of the seabirds' eggs are hatching so we saw some ducklings and other baby birds.

Arriving back at Holt, we had fish (cod I believe) for dinner which was delicious. After dinner everyone ended up just hanging out in their rooms, and while I was studying I heard a lot of noise from the second-floor kitchen. Thordur and some students were eating pieces of hakarl (rotten shark) and taking shots of brennivin (An Icelandic liquor also called "black death"). I decided to partake and ate a piece of hakarl. It actually didn't taste that bad, but smelled horrible. Eating it isn't as bad as trying to get the rotten shark smell off your hands.


Eating hakarl


Hakarl (the thing to the left is a cookie. The shark meat was cut into pieces like a little scallop)


Brennivin


Later that evening we made a bonfire near a little "forest" not far from our place, roasted marshmallows and played castle. We found a nest of seabird eggs at the foot of a tree that had probably been abandoned.





Tomorrow we're going on a mountain hike. Goda Nott!

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