Wandering around the neighborhood takes most of the
time.
Right behind the house are some canyons, rivers slip
down along the waterfalls. Forest that was colorful before has dropped all
leaves and stands now in the bottom of the valley as a dark reddish-brown mass.
In background shimmers Eiriksjökull, a glacier with rounded dome.
Trails are not very marked here, mostly one just has
to somehow figure it out. There’s a hand-drawn map that does not match with the
landscape all the time and is not of much help. Landscape on the other hand is
not complicated.
One day I go to town, to Borganes. For changing
tires and letting my hair cut. The hairdresser thinks that I am an Icelander
who has lived long time abroad.
In the hot tube I meet four American ladies. One of
them has been privatization consultant in Eastern Europe in the 1990ies. From
Estonia she remembers bold decisions, beautiful old town and that the mostly young
male local officials tries to persuade her to go to sauna with them. She didn’t
go.
On the last evening we go with Sæmundur to visit a
neighboring farm. There is an old man with long grey beard and some younger
folks. They have come together for the sheep gathering. The sheep walk freely
in the mountains the whole summer and they have to be found in the autumn. The
ones who do not want sheep to visit them have to protect their land with a
fence. The sheep owners does not have to build fences. Earlier people went to
look for the sheep riding horses or on foot. Now this is done with ATVs, radio
transmitters and drones. The sheep are counted. For 320 000 Icelanders
there are 800 000 sheep.
Icelanders often start to talk about someone and
discuss that person’s relatives until they reach some common relative or at
least someone they both know. This is an even more exciting topic than weather.
It feels like Sæmundur just wanted to show a tourist
who speaks Icelandic. I suspected the same of Bæring when he had guests.
Finally I manage to find out what stinks in the
fridge.
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