Reykjavík Grapevine - 28.09.2013, Blaðsíða 8

8The Reykjavík Grapevine Issue 15 — 2013
A dinner or lunch at the elevated fourth floor of Harpa concert hall is a destination
in itself. Relax and enjoy fine Italian cuisine complemented with a spectacular
panoramic view of Reykjavík and the surrounding horizon.
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info@kolabrautin.is
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!
As another idiom says, if you don't
like the weather, wait five minutes.
But if you do like the weather,
wait five minutes more. The
harshness of Icelandic nature was
experienced in full by a number
of tourists recently, with many
rental cars suffering damage.
Most dramatically a French cou-
ple had to f lee their rental car af-
ter f lying pebbles broke their side
windows, leaving them exposed
to the full force of windassholery.
In pictures, their car looks like it
has been sanded down. When you
put a desert in an asshole of wind
you end up with a sandstorm in
the face.
Damn tourists, always getting
themselves into dangerous situa-
tions.
While that does sometimes hap-
pen, in this case the tourist
couple seems not to have been
at fault. Ármann Gu!mundsson,
who is part of the search and
rescue squad Kári, which shares
a name with the north wind,
criticised the lack of signs with
information about the weather
conditions: "It just said 'ófært' on
the signs, which I doubt tourists
understand.'
Yeah, that's not so understandable
for the 99.99995% of the human
race who don't speak your crazy
language.
Tales of the rescue of the stranded
couple are pretty dramatic. After
the windows broke, they stopped
the car, got out and lay prone by
the side of the road, holding onto
fence posts, because they were
afraid that the car would roll over
in the wind. According to Ár-
mann the couple did not notice
they were being saved until one
of the rescuers touched them on
the shoulder. In an interview that
Fréttabla!i! newspaper did with
the couple, Marie Storm said...
Hold everything! Marie Storm?! A
search and rescue squad named
after the north wind?! You're just
making all this stuff up, aren't you?
No, all these people are real. Ma-
rie Storm said: "We thought we
were going to die." After getting
caught in the sandstorm, they
stopped the car because there was
no visibility. Then a f lying pebble
broke their side window and their
ordeal began: "The window ex-
ploded over us." They called the
emergency hotline and crawled to
the side of the road. They got cuts
on their hands and their eyes were
still sore days later. But they were
saved when the search and rescue
team came in their armoured car
with bulletproof windows.
Armoured car with bulletproof
windows? Isn't that a bit much for
search and rescue?
Not when the weather forecast
includes f lying rocks. That is
not even the worst that Icelandic
search and rescue has had to deal
with. This is an island stuffed
full of volcanoes, after all. In fact,
given Icelandic nature's hostility
to all living things, it would not be
entirely surprising if search and
rescue teams had to deal with an
unexpected Godzilla attack. An
armoured car is the bare mini-
mum required.
So what is Icelandic nature's deal?
Why is it such an asshole?
To be fair to Icelandic nature, it
was just chilling by itself, letting
it all hang loose, when humans
arrived eleven centuries ago and
messed everything up. Historical
records and ecological research
tell us that the island was largely
covered in forest up until humans
arrived with axes and seedling-
eating livestock. Trees, even
shrubs, are tall enough to survive
when sand gets blown in from the
highlands. They can even survive
volcanic ash-fall. Smaller plants
suffocate.
That's all well and good, but a
shrub isn't going to live through
the kind of sandstorm which re-
quires travelling in armoured cars.
That is true, but before humans
arrived with their apocalypse of
sheep, the highland was not the
desert it is today. Grazing sheep
were too much for the ecosystem
and wind blowing loose sand
around did the rest. And humans
chopped down trees to burn,
which did not help the ecosystem
one bit.
Okay, I would be an asshole too if
people threw sheep and axes at me
for eleven centuries, but no need to
take it out on tourists, they didn't
do anything.
They are just collateral damage,
unfortunately. But tourism of-
ficials will be happy to note that
not-made-up person Marie Storm
told Fréttabla!i!: "The vacation
has been good, except for this."
This, of course, being the whole
huddling by the side of the road
fearing for your life. She could be
the spokesperson for the a new
Icelandic tourism slogan: Visit
Iceland, it's pretty good except for
the sandstorm in the face.
People tend to forget that Iceland is about 25%
desert, or more, depending on what you con-
sider the line to be between desert and semi-
desert. However, what no one who has spent
more than three seconds in Iceland will ever
forget is that Iceland is 8000% windy. As the
Icelandic idiom has it, Iceland is a "rokrass-
gat," an asshole of wind.
Words: Kári Tulinius | Illustration: Inga María Brynjarsdóttir
So What Are These Sandstorms
I Keep Hearing About?
Iceland | For Dummies
Continues over
The world is a crazy place. Turbu-
lence in the Middle East has led
Iceland to offer asylum to about
a dozen refugees from Iran and
Afghanistan. Live on CNBC, Prime
Minister Sigmundur Daví! blamed
the 2008 economic crash on
"European regulations." And Árni
Björn Gu!jónsson is selling paint-
ings of former Prime Minister
and current Morgunbla!i! editor
Daví! Oddsson.
MEANWHILE, all the media seems to
care about is sex, drugs, and rock ‘n’
roll. Well, can you blame us? Earlier
this month, police were called to
rescue a distressed man who re-
ported that somebody had been ring-
ing his doorbell repeatedly for about
half an hour, and was too scared to
investigate himself. The police arrived
to greet a couple making love in the
worried man's entryway, right up
against the wall. Come on, they were
asking for the attention.
Besides, sex can get political too.
For instance, former Prime Minister
Jóhanna Sigur!ardóttir's partner,
Jónína Leósdóttir, is finally com-
ing out... with a book! The book is
titled ‘With Jóhanna,’ and chronicles
her relationship with the former
Prime Minister. Sure, maybe that's
more about sexuality than sex, but
apparently the slim discrepancy is
enough to disturb Icelandic musician
Gylfi Ægisson.
NEWS IN BRIEF
SEPTEMBER
by Parker Yamasaki