"All these kinds of winter traditions are tied very intricately into small communities. You develop between yourselves a folklore about this winter time and this period of darkness."

Said Nordic studies professor Maren Johnson, quoted in "How cozy Yuletide traditions got their start with raging parties and animal sacrifice" (NPR).

For example, in Iceland, instead of Santa Claus, "there's the 'Christmas Men,' also known as the Yule lads. As the stories have told it, the mystic men – with names like 'Window Peeper,' 'Sausage Swiper,' 'Bowl Licker' and 'Meat Hook' — come one by one down from the mountains by your community, play pranks and steal things from homes. (To be fair to them, they'll also leave presents in windows for children.) On top of that, they have an ogress mother, Grýla, who eats misbehaving children 'like sushi for Christmas'...."

"[M]y notes weren’t always as illuminating as I’d expected them to be. 'What does ‘Alt’ mean?' I asked Hugh over dinner one night."

"He looked down at the page. 'It’s not "Alt,"' he said. 'It’s "A.L.T."' Then I remembered. We’d been out early that morning, observing a short parade of ostriches. It was misty, and I pointed to a vague shape on the horizon. 'What’s that?' I asked Dalton. He followed my finger and told me it was likely an A.L.T. 'Animal-looking thing,' he explained."

I'm so glad to see a new David Sedaris essay in The New Yorker, "Notes on a Last-Minute Safari/We saw every animal that was in 'The Lion King' and then some. They were just there, like ants at a picnic, except that they were elephants and giraffes and zebras."

I liked seeing the first syllable of my last name in a new context, but more important was the opportunity to find out David Sedaris's opinion of going on "safari," because I had quite recently asserted, to a complete stranger, that going on safari was really basically the same thing as going to the zoo. These things are packaged. It's not as though you're exploring the authentic natural habitat of elephants, giraffes, and zebras.

"Here we have hot springs with really hot water; we have active volcanoes; we have sneaker waves on beaches..."

"... we have strong winds. We somehow think that we’re invincible when we’re on vacation, but we still have to use our common sense."

Said Eliza Reid, the first lady of Iceland, quoted in "Iceland Is a Magnet for Tourists. Its First Lady Has Some Advice for Them. Eliza Reid, a former U.N. tourism ambassador and the wife of President Gudni Johannesson, welcomes her country’s many visitors, and has a few suggestions on safety, respect and how to meet locals" (NYT).

She's trying, politely, to deal with Iceland's problem of too many tourists. They get 2 million a year, and they only have 388,000 actual residents.

But what's a "sneaker wave"? It made me think of the mystery of the sneakers containing severed feet that were washing up on the coast of the Salish Sea. Remember that news story from 2021? It started happening after 2007 because of a change in sneaker design that made them more buoyant. There have always been corpses in the sea — from misadventures and suicides and so forth — and the sea creatures have been feeding on them all along — with special attention to the tender, delectable ankles — so submerged severed feet inside shoes was nothing new. They just weren't floating up on shore in the pre-buoyancy days.

But that's not what going on in Iceland. "Sneaker waves" have nothing to do with footwear or severed feet. They're just sneaky waves: 

"While reading 'Spring Rain: A Life Lived in Gardens,' by Marc Hamer, I often found myself wondering how old its author was..."

"... in part because the arc of the book follows Hamer getting too old to work as a gardener anymore. However, I hesitated to research his age. In Chapter 10, titled 'Gardener,' Hamer mentions the discovery, in 2006, of the world’s oldest living creature, a clam. The clam, named Ming, was five hundred and seven years old. It had been found off the coast of Iceland, and died when the scientists who discovered it tried to ascertain its age."

Writes Rivka Galchen, in "How Gardens Promise the Renewal of Life—and Its End/In 'Spring Rain: A Life Lived in Gardens,' Marc Hamer wonders what he leaves behind him" (The New Yorker).

Here are 9 TikToks, carefully curated for you. Some people love them.

1. Réttir — sorting out the sheep in Iceland.

2. The woonerf — a type of street.

3. The Finnish way to live through winter — on Michigan's Upper Peninsula.

4. If Arabic were English.

5. Choosing the boring life.

6. Overnight evolution.

7. White friend training.

8. Talking to the salad.

9. Hello, darkness, my old friend....

"We know we can’t say, ‘Stay away.’ We are not locking the place."

Said Hjordis Gudmundsdottir, a spokeswoman for Iceland’s civil protection agency, quoted in "Three Tourists Are Injured Near Volcanic Eruption in Iceland/The injuries were not serious, but they underscored the risks facing tourists who hike to the Fagradalsfjall volcano in southwest Iceland, officials said" (NYT).

The eruption site “is a dangerous area and conditions can change quickly,” the Department of Civil Protection and Emergency Management said in a statement on Thursday. It warned that toxic gas can accumulate when the wind decreases, that new lava fountains can open with little warning and that accumulating lava can flow quickly across the ground.

"Today, I want to talk about a revolutionary approach to how to connect our world — without being super-weird."

"Hello coneheads🌋!"

Just one comment at the live feed "Volcanic eruption in Iceland!" 

Icelandicness.

The most Icelandic video you will see today 🇮🇸pic.twitter.com/YBAaDoJ3il

— Scott Duncan (@ScottDuncanWX) March 28, 2021

In Iceland, a glacier calves, tourists run.

It's amusing and scenic and normal and no one is hurt (or even gets wet):

Not the penis museum....

First world problem in Iceland. pic.twitter.com/LYLON77nuU

— Ásta Helgadóttir (@asta_fish) March 12, 2018

In case you're skeptical, there really is a "penis museum" — The Icelandic Phallological Museum. I blogged about it in 2016, in "I came to see if it was true, that there really was a penis museum in Reykjavik...."

"I asked if he is a feminist. 'Of course,' he said. 'The opposite of feminism is ignorance.'"

From "A Man Among Female Leaders: ‘The Risk of Mansplaining Is Very High,'" by Katrin Bennhold (in the NYT), about Xavier Prats Monné, a Spaniard, who spoke about maternal health at a meeting of female political leaders. I love the quote, because he had to say yes, but he made the extra effort and generated an aphorism.

Who knows if he believes the aphorism or even if it's true? Truth is rarely the point of an aphorism.* And truth can't be why Mr. Prats Monné generated this particular aphorism. He's performing in the theater of feminism, where men must continually make an effort to understand what is happening.** Prats Monné speaks of ignorance, and he demonstrates his non-ignorance not by making a truthful assertion — surely there are some non-ignorant ways to stand apart from feminism — but by making the extra effort, taking the trouble to construct an aphorism.

The meeting took place in Iceland, which is, we're told, a "tiny gender utopia where selling pornography has been banned since 1869*** and the world’s first openly lesbian prime minister was elected in 2009."

The ground floor was packed with women and a sprinkling of men, most of them security guards and journalists. Mr. Prats Monné, a regular at conferences, said the room not only looked different, but sounded different, too: “It’s so quiet,” he said.

Next to us, two women — a center-left lawmaker from Europe and a conservative one from the Middle East — met for the first time. They hugged and kissed. Mr. Prats Monné mostly shook hands.

“It is a cohesive group that has its own signs and body language,” he said, his inner anthropologist emerging. “They acknowledge each other as being from the same tribe. I’m not from their tribe — although I do feel very welcome.”

Kissing. You can't go up to women and just kiss them. Even to say that's what you do can get you in trouble. I'm thinking of Trump's much-reviled remark: "I just start kissing them. It's like a magnet. Just kiss. I don't even wait."

Who gets to do the social kiss? Only people who feel no sexual attraction to each other? But how do you know the person you're kissing isn't attracted to you? You could make sure you're not attractive.

Anyway, Trump didn't say he likes to kiss everyone hello. He specified beautiful women and feeling "automatically attracted." Unless you spread your kisses around, you can't palm them off — lip them off — as social kissing. You need to be part of a "tribe," a "cohesive group that has its own signs and body language."

If you read far enough into the linked article, you'll see some contradiction to the "gender utopia" characterization of Iceland:

Iceland is living its own #MeToo moment, after the country’s youngest female lawmaker, Aslaug Sigurbjörnsdottir, 27, went on television last week to share her experience: of rumors that she had slept her way up, of a rival candidate putting his hand on her thigh every time he addressed her in front of a room full of students.

An hour after the program aired, Ragnar Önundarson, a banker, had reposted one of her Facebook pictures. “I want you to think about the kind of image you project,” he had written.

A day later you could buy T-shirts featuring a troll with the caption “Don’t be like Ragnar,” and by now 500 people have signed a petition supporting Ms. Sigurbjörnsdottir.

And there's this illustration. Note the caption (click to enlarge):

_____________________

* You disagree? You're disagreeing with an aphorism. Checkmate!

** We're seeing some ludicrous performances in this making of an effort, like the one we were laughing at yesterday:

I just want to say I am going to take time to reflect on this, to educate myself daily, and to strive towards a more enlightened path. I want to ensure that all voices around me are heard, and that everyone is treated respectfully and empathetically. More than anything, I want to create an environment that is a better, safer and fairer place.

*** They have a ban on pornography because — like us — they banned it long ago. Unlike us, they failed to get around to recognizing free speech rights, so the ban survived. I'd be more impressed at the strength of the feminism in Iceland if they'd first embraced strong free-speech rights and got rid of the old censorship based on fear and prudishness and then banned it, despite the recognized value of free speech, specifically because they'd determined that suppression of pornography was necessary to the even higher value of the equality of women.

"I came to see if it was true, that there really was a penis museum in Reykjavik...."

The museum started in 1980, with 13 specimens, nine from land mammals and four from whales.

Within a decade, that number had grown to 34.

But it was years before the museum got its hands on a human specimen, sent in by a 96-year-old Icelandic donor who was worried his manhood would shrink as he got older, Sigurdsson says.

I think that means the donor died first.

Iceland... shrinkage... there's a joke wanting to happen.

"In Iceland, there’s this idea that we don’t really belong in the world, this country in the middle of the ocean and so far from other countries."

"What I love about Iceland is that the only people we admire are poets. There are no great conquerors or heroes, no great industrial tycoons or politicians, and no respect for businesspeople or material wealth. Many of our sagas are about outlaws—there is even a statue of the Outlaw in Reykjavík, next to the National Museum—and the idea of the outlaw here is similar to the idea of the artist. I think making art comes from being a little allergic to society, not wanting to belong."

Said Ragnar Kjartansson, quoted in "Play It Again/How Ragnar Kjartansson turns repetition into art" in The New Yorker.

ADDED: After the Panama Papers, in Iceland, they threw eggs and bananas at Parliament:

One down.

"Panama Papers Scandal Brings Down Iceland’s Prime Minister."

"When Noel Santillan typed the word Laugarvegur instead of Laugavegur into his rental car’s GPS..."

"... the New Jersey resident couldn’t have imagined that the extra 'r' would make him something of a celebrity in Iceland."

Laugavegur is a significant street in Reykjavik, 45 minutes from the airport. Laugarvegur happens to be the name of a road  in a fishing village called Siglufjordur, and Santillan drove 6 hours and got there.

“I was very tired after the flight and wanted to get to the hotel as soon as possible,” Mr. Santillan was quoted as saying by Visir. “That’s why I kept driving. I did enjoy the scenery on the way. I’ve never seen anything quite like it. And the horses!”

Informed of his mistake, he spent the night at the Hotel Siglo in Siglufjordur. In the morning, the hotel receptionist told him "he was famous in Iceland now."

Iceland abolishes the crime of blasphemy.

The reform was proposed by the Pirate Party:

The bill said it was "essential in a free society that the public can express themselves without fear of punishment".

As three members of the Pirate Party stood before parliament on Thursday, each said: "Je Suis Charlie", an expression used globally to express solidarity with the Charlie Hebdo victims.

The Church of Iceland supported the reform, but it was opposed by the Pentecostal Church, the Church of Iceland's eastern province, and the Catholic Church of Iceland, which said:

"Should freedom of expression go so far as to mean that the identity of a person of faith can be freely insulted, then personal freedom - as individuals or groups - is undermined."

Get that? Somebody should go to prison so that somebody else should not suffer the loss of freedom that consists of have one's "identity" insulted. That's the thinking there. The Icelandic Ethical Humanist Association offered the assurance that hate speech is still a crime. It's only blasphemy that's been legalized.

I was interested to see the list of the religions of Iceland. 80% are Lutheran, 5% are other Christian denominations, and 5% are Asatru.

Asatru? Here's an article from last February: "Iceland's Asatru pagans reach new height with first temple."

"In a country comfortable with a firm state role, most people don't question the Personal Names Register, a list of 1,712 male names and 1,853 female names..."

"... that fit Icelandic grammar and pronunciation rules and that officials maintain will protect children from embarrassment. Parents can take from the list or apply to a special committee that has the power to say yea or nay."

In Blaer's case, her mother said she learned the name wasn't on the register only after the priest who baptized the child later informed her he had mistakenly allowed it.

"I had no idea that the name wasn't on the list, the famous list of names that you can choose from," said Bjork Eidsdottir, adding she knew a Blaer whose name was accepted in 1973. This time, the panel turned it down on the grounds that the word Blaer [which means "light breeze" in Icelandic] takes a masculine article, despite the fact that it was used for a female character in a novel by Iceland's revered Nobel Prize-winning author Halldor Laxness.

Parents express themselves through their naming of children. There are many things parents do to children that are expressive. To some extent, we intercede on behalf of the children. Where would you draw the line? In this case, the child is now 15, and she says she loves her name.

"The Most Feminist Place in the World."

You know it's got to be Iceland.

[A]ctivists from Stigamot, the rape crisis center in Reykjavik, gave Knut Storberget, Norwegian justice minister, black boxer-briefs with the words I Am Responsible written down the crotch....

Feminism, or at least the notion of gender equality, has so infused politics that, a couple of years ago, women members of Parliament performed The Vagina Monologues....

There are also new feminine spaces in the economy. As the economy went into overdrive, Kristín Pétursdóttir and Halla Tomasdóttir, who had been warning of disaster from her position at the Chamber of Commerce, founded Auður Capital, a “financial service company emphasizing feminine values and social responsibility.”...

Puffin...

... stuff.