Sundry Museum Images

I want to get these pictures up, but don't have the energy to write much about them for now. There were just so many beautiful things in the museum that I hate to skip over anything!

 

 Unfortunately these lovely chess figures are out of focus, but you can see the tradition is long and honored.

This display on metal working had an amazing video on how the traditional silver jewelry is made. It is gorgeous -the result of a long, painstaking process.

 

 

After covering the first 1000 years pretty carefully, the 20 th centruy was portrayed on a kind of carousel of kitsch.

 

The museum highlighted the age of the single photobooth as the transition into modern times and away from family, group and tradition.

The museum also suggested that Iceland had had a dearth of 20th century artists and highlighted this plastic (transparent) dress as the beginning in that direction.

And that brings me to the textiles!

A Lovely Afternoon

I suppose at this point I should mention my accommodations in the Hotel Floki.

 

 I am quite taken with it.  Iceland is famous for being expensive and I felt very fortunate to find this hotel that has both dormitory style and single double and triple rooms (across as many as five different buildings.)  The history of the place is wanting to offer a room that the rest of us could afford and I heartily support that mission (especially as it has allowed me to come and visit a country that might be prohibitively expensive otherwise.)  It is not as close to town as many of the other hotels, but it is still an easy walk and in fact is also close tot he BSI bus station, so one could save money on the airport ticket if one wanted by walking from the station.  They put me in a building a little bit farther North from the main building, a very unassuming place, but also very clean and pleasant.



The rooms as you saw in my earlier post are tiny. I expected this and am actually very satisfied with mine. I believe it must be about 7' x 10' as the bed takes up an entire side of the room, but it comes complete with a nice desk, a very comfortable bed and a refrigerator (and after all the point is to be somewhere else and not sitting in the room all day.) It also has free wifi!

Our concierge is a very helpful gentleman from Belo Russia, who has put up with all my questions with patience and a great sense of humor.
For example, he recommended an eating place where the locals go - the BSI bus station.  So I had my Icelandic dinner today at the bus station - a lamb steak with brown sauce 9also known as gravy.)

The cafeteria was decked out like a bus-scape and included mileage markers and windows painted onto the big windows that looked like a motorcoaches'.



Those mountains in the background are painted on the windows. The little windows at the bottom are the actual exterior landscape.  There were regular people there including a man and his son each wearing a mask on his forehead.  The little boy was fascinated with the chess set there and chess sets seem to be found in many public locations. I also saw one in a sitting area at the National Museum (and in a coffee shop as I passed by.

There were many local specialties including sheep's head.  Everything came with potatoes and various carbs, but so far I have been vigilant. I had my lamb steak and also some yoghurt and lunch meat that I bought at the grocery store .

 

After lunch it was off hurriedly to the National Museum. I didn't really have much of an idea of where I was going, but it turned out to be farther down the same road and past a lovely park.

 

These guys were all over the place.

 

 

And these guys had a crest on their heads (but I didn't catch it on film.

You can find bronze statues all over the place and this park was no exception.

 

 Finally I made it to the museum. (I was worried I would get there at closing time and so I rushed myself a bit. ) I have to say, though that reading about Icelandic history and culture was quite inspiring.

I suppose I am guilty of being a bit blithe about Iceland and considering it just another rigid and severe Nordic culture. This however does not seem to be the case.  (At least this has not been my experience.) The people have been lovely and I do not find the buildings as star and social realist as I did the ones in Stockholm and Copenhagen.  I love the cleanness and the bright colors. Of course looking at the exterior of the museum doesn't take away from my earlier stereotype:

 

...but look how modern and exciting the front of the museum is.

 I found the artifacts beautiful and interesting. Iceland was settled relatively late for a European country (Karl der Grosse (Chralemagne) was already established in Germany at this time).

 

Christianization occurred through the Danes and tried to take away many of the stories of the old gods, but luckily it also helped get many of these stries written down.

 

What follows are some sundry images from various parts of the museum.

 

I wish I had gotten a clearer shot of this gorgeous Gothic piece. It is so beautifully carved and has similarities with the work of Lucas Cranach.

 

Here is an earlier Romanesque madonna from around 1200.
 

 

And still more picturesque artifacts.

The most exciting thing however was there was a special textile exhibit that had just opened that very day!!!!!!! That will be the subject of the next part of my blog.

Back Tracking

Okay, so now that I am officially jet-lagged and not sure what to be doing, I thought I'd go back and fill in some gaps in my narrative.

From the plane ride: Even though I had reminded myself several times, I still forgot to bring one of my dozens of sets of ear phones. This was actually a good thing, because I wasn't even tempted to look and find out what was available on our individual screens and was forced to think about sleeping. But, as we approached Iceland, I knew it was time to wake up so I explored the children's menu and they had this drawing program that allowed you to color in their images or draw your own. Here's what I did!

 

Sorry it is so out of focus. The white dots are actually snowflakes, but you can't really tell.

Here is a shot of some of the clouds we passed over.  You can see that the sun is rising in the distance. I htink this must have been about 5:30 AM (CST).  We'd achieved full sunrise by 6:08.

 

On my morning walk, I pretty much zombied around and took random pictures.  This is another one that didn't turn out well, but I found it interesting because it was some kind of comedy theater with two guys in overalls - obviously farmers.  As far as I could tell they were Minnesota farmers - so you can see the Scandanavian influence is far reaching (obviously they are Islandic farmers - but I'm sure I've seen these guys hanging out in the Old Country Buffet.  (wink!))

 

After passing the theater, I passed this lovely wall.  Some of you may be familiar wit my endless quest to make an outdoor mosaic in our climate challenged Minnesota yard.  I thought this showed that it could be done.

 

My hotel host, Eugene, from Belo-Russia tells me it doesn't get all that cold here (at least not compared to where he comes from (only to minus 10). That wouldn't be as cold as MInnesota, so maybe I still don't have the answer to my quest.

 

This clean, but colorful street scene really captures my first impression of Reykjavik.

 

I've encountered a couple of dogs and cats already on this trip.  This cat was very affectionate. I always take a picture of the first cat I see on a trip for my partner. I don't know why. It seems like a tradition that I dare not break.

I wound my way through the shopping district (everything was closed because it was like 8:00 AM on a Saturday morning)!  So I headed to the shoreline through what seemed like the scuzzy part of town. There was a store called (of all things) Romantik.  There were dozens of huge posters of women dressed in sexy costumes, nurse, temptress, etc. (Of course it turned out to be the same 2 or 3 women in a lot of different costumes. (I wonder if they are models and have nothing to do with the women at the establishment.) Anyway, you can check out the website if you want to know more. I headed towards the water. There is this really cool looking sculpture in the harbor.

Ya' gotta love all the orange! it really makes the image pop!
I guess no one is immune to the "charms" of urbanization.

Here are a few additional pictures from my visit to Hallgrimskirk. To me one of the most prettiest parts was the entry, where you could see a series of fresh green Rothko-ish abstract paintings before entering the actual church.
 

 

Here is the obligatory interior shot.

It had a gorgeous organ (that I actually got to hear playing when I returned back later this afternoon hoping for a less rainy picture from the bell-tower.

I also loved this huge bronze door.  I went home after going up to the top of the tower. Pictures from that part of the walk next time around. Of course I was completely lost by then after all my meandering, but I remembered if you followed the street that goes out the back of the church in a straight line you would eventually (after only a ten minute walk) reach the hotel.  That worked just fine
AND of course on the way back I just happened to see a souvenir shop that had decided to open - so guess who has already made her first yarn purchase of the trip!  (I doubt it will stop there!)