Reykjavík Grapevine - 16.08.2013, Side 14

Maren is just one of many young foreigners who took up mail carry-
ing for Pósturinn as a summer job. You may recognise them by the
cherry-red sweatshirts, ear-warmers and rain trousers. For many of
these university-age substitutes, carrying mail represents a romantic
return to the days of the envelope in an email age. And although the
job requires little Icelandic language proficiency, it offers carriers the
chance to integrate themselves into Icelandic society.
Guðmundur? Gunnar?
Guðbrandur?
At first Maren had a hard time distinguishing between Icelandic
names, but now she is a regular pro. We discussed the prevalence of
the name Guðmundur in particular. She also quickly learned the Ice-
landic phrases for, “Does this person still live here?,” and “Sorry, I
accidentally put the mail into the wrong slot.”
“It makes me feel a part of society and Reykjavík because you
keep everything going in your own small way,” Maren said. Deliver-
ing the mail on foot also means learning neighbourhoods and becom-
ing attached to them and their inhabitants.
As I walked with Maren on her route in the 105 district, I
discovered she had actually been delivering mail to a flat I’ve
been subletting in the 101 district. Even though it was no longer
her route, she still remembered the exact location, and had even
snapped a picture of a gnome in my yard on her last day as a
memento. Although she was sad to leave her favourite neigh-
bourhood in Reykjavík, she was pleased to finally spot Reykja-
vík Mayor Jón Gnarr, on her last day in 101.
As we walked around her new neighbourhood, I kept for-
getting to go up to the door with her. I am not accustomed to
walking up to strangers’ doors; I was reminded of childhood
games of ding-dong-ditch, but instead of ringing the door bell
and running away, we were pushing mail through slots hoping
territorial dogs wouldn’t bite our fingers off. Luckily we only
ran into one aggressive Pomeranian, who laughably overcom-
pensated for its small stature and ridiculous coif.
The neighbourhood cats on the other hand, couldn’t be friend-
lier. There are also other perks to mail carrying, the exercise and the
chance to listen to your own soundtrack. Maren’s varies depending
on the weather: Nick Drake when it’s sunny and Melodica when it’s
cloudy, but most days she finds herself listening to the German rap-
per, Casper. As a singer/songwriter herself this time to listen to music
is particularly important to Maren.
Unlike America, where no
one gives a flying fuck
At each address we reached, she checked the name on the envelope
against the name on the door, which puzzled me at first. Unlike my
native America, where no one gives a flying fuck whether you get the
correct mail, Iceland will not deliver letters to addresses that aren’t
correctly marked. In fact, nearly every day, Maren has letters and
catalogues she cannot in good conscience deliver. Each morning, she
thus uses Pósturinn’s database to determine whether an address is
incorrect, the recipient has moved, is away or in some unfortunate
cases, has passed away.
In the morning I helped her sort the mail into shelves of mint
green, black and red plastic dividers. Seeing each Icelandic postmark
peeking out from their little cubbies made me feel so orderly and ac-
complished, but the task was far from done. Next we had to bundle
each group of letters according to residence and street and place
them in her mail trolley in the correct order: first houses’ mail on
top, last houses’ mail at the bottom.
“Rubber bands are VERY important,” Maren said as she snapped
two around a thick stack of envelopes. As she delivers each bundle
she removes the rubber bands and pushes them up her wrist—by the
end of the day you can tell how many houses she has visited by the
bands stacked on her arms. And with anywhere between five and
twelve hours of deliveries, Maren could have her own shot at the
world’s largest rubber band ball by the end of the summer.
Junk mail day
As you may already know, Thursday is junk mail day, and therefore
the bane of any Icelandic mail carrier. Last week Maren had 100 kg
of Ikea kitchen catalogues to deliver to nearly every house on her
route. Do everyone a favour and put the red, “no junk mail” sticker
on your mail slot. Also while you’re at it, make sure your name is
above the slot and notify the post office when you move. It’s the right
thing to do.
While Maren curses junk mail she takes delight in postcards,
(especially those written in German—not that she reads them or
anything), handwritten letters (bonus points for drawings on the en-
velopes), children’s books or quirky items like a plank of wood or a
single sheet of loose paper.
Maren marvels at how she is expected to fit things through such
slim mail slots sometimes. And while this may not have been per-
fectly legal, she let me deliver some letters and I have to say it was
quite satisfying.
All the magic this world has to offer
When I met Maren for the first time, I knew I had to jump on the
chance to see what delivering the mail was like. And not surpris-
ingly I am not the only one who has had this excited reaction. One
of Maren’s friends from Germany, Matthias, served as her first mail
carrying “intern.”
Like me, he has fostered a life-long obsession with mail carrying
as a profession. As children of the net generation, we grew up with
email. And we are not the only ones who react positively to Maren’s
summer job. She often finds people are unexpectedly excited by her
work. She admits, “There is a certain excitement with me being the
official person putting mail in the slot.”
And while letters delivered instantly as code through electric
cables at the speed of light might have dazzled some, I was always
convinced it was the physical letter carried by the omnipresent postal
worker that contained all the magic this world had to offer. This may
have something to do with the fact that Harry Potter did not receive
his letter from Hogwarts via Hotmail.
As magical as being a mail carrier may seem to me, it is certainly
not as flexible or friendly everywhere as it is in Iceland. Maren said
she would not be interested in working for the German postal author-
ity. “I would only want to do it here. I think it’s something special to
say I have been a mail carrier in Reykjavík, Iceland.”
Going Postal In Reykjavík
A day in the life of a summer mail carrier
by Adrienne Blaine
Each summer, Reykjavík goes on holiday; residents vacate their residences and the post
marks their mail with a pink return sticker with the “gone away” box ticked. Even the postal
workers who normally sort this mail take time off. So who delivers the mail from May to
September? This is where 29-year-old Maren Winkler from Germany comes in.
I think it’s something special
to say I have been a mail car-
rier in Reykjavík, Iceland.
“„
Axel Sigurðarson
In a warm and quaint little flat in 107
Reykjavík, Friðrik Jónsson and Sólrún
Gunnarsdóttir’s faces are illuminated
by the blue Facebook hue from their
laptops’ screens. Unlike other young
married couples, Friðrik and Sólrún
are not passing time online because
they’ve grown bored with each other.
They are working on a group they
created called Kattavaktin (“The Cat
Watch”), which helps cat owners find
their lost pets.
Reykjavík is teeming with an esti-
mated 12,000 felines. They lie lazily
on walls and roofs, climb trees, chase
each other, and wait for passers-by
to shower them with affection. When
they go missing, their owners are
thrown into a state of panic. Now, in
addition to police, vets and animal
shelters, they can turn to Kattavaktin.
Users of the online community
post pictures of cats that have gone
missing or have been found. Through
word of mouth and organised search
parties a la neighbourhood watches,
owners can be a part of the solution
instead of waiting passively for some-
thing to happen.
The cat watch assembles
Friðrik and Sólrún believe that cat lov-
ers are very aware of the cats in their
neighbourhood, spotting new faces
easily. “If you see a cat that looks out
of place or lost,” Friðrik says, “you
want to help, but you can’t just take
the cat; then you’d be stealing it.”
Friðrik and Sólrún harness this sym-
pathy and awareness into a far-reach-
ing information network, focused on
keeping eyes open for lost cats.
At present, there are almost 1,200
members in the group, many of whom
are active in the community. “Cats
are kind of big on the internet,” Sól-
rún says, explaining the group’s quick
growth. And the scores of memes,
Youtube videos and blogs dedicated
to cats suggest she is right.
Friðrik says they have a lot of suc-
cess with the group. The first cat
returned involved a match made in
heaven where two people shared a
photo of the same cat—one advertis-
ing their lost pet and the other look-
ing for its owner. And more recently,
Friðrik was out knocking on doors
with a search party when a woman
produced a kitten that had wandered
into her home, believing it to be the
one they were looking for. It was not,
but Friðrik fortunately recognised the
kitten as somebody else’s lost pet and
returned it to its owners.
As Kattavaktin has grown, they’ve
implemented certain protocols for
moderating the site, spending their
evenings in front of Facebook, delet-
ing funny memes and cute pictures.
The last thing they want is for posts
of lost cats to get buried under tan-
gential information and at end of the
day, the work is worth it thanks to the
army of sympathetic people offering
help and support.
A New
Neighbourhood
Watch In Force
Reporting all lost looking
cats to Kattavaktin
by Tómas Gabríel Benjamin
“Cats are kind of
big on the internet.”
Sigrún Karlsdóttir
14The Reykjavík Grapevine Issue 12 — 2013