Reykjavík Grapevine - 12.08.2016, Page 6

FOR
They say there are two seasons in Iceland:
winter and summer. Spring and autumn
are so brief, you’ll miss them if you blink.
Winters are long and dark. The summer,
really, is the only ideal time to be in Ice-
land.
How can Icelanders pop off to Majorca
or the Canary Islands in the summer, I
wonder? The right time to stay home is
the summer; head south for the winter
instead, I say. Not that anyone listens to
me. In fact, I would argue there is no rea-
son for anyone to be in this country dur-
ing any other time of the year.
The Icelandic summer is just the right
temperature and, if the skies are with us,
offers more than enough sunlight for ten
summers elsewhere in the world. Iceland
in the winter is, by contrast, dark, windy,
wet and miserable. Why anyone would stick
around to experience it is beyond me.
If we were smart, all of us would go
into exile six months of the year and leave
the entire country vacant. Maybe let some
NATO warships circle the country while
we’re gone. When we return, our glittering
emerald isle will be all ours again.
AGAINST
They say there are two seasons in Iceland:
winter and summer. This is a bald-faced
lie of Nixonian proportions. Rather, we
have winter and winter-lite.
Every May, we go through the same
routine: speculation as to whether or
not this time we’ll get a proper summer,
which we never do. Weather forecasts of
as little as two days in a row of non-rainy
weather are enough to warrant front-
page news. We hope and pray, week after
week, that any day now summer will ar-
rive. It never does.
Nietzsche once said that “hope pro-
longs the torments of man.” Like so many
times before, Nietzsche was right. We
need to let go of the idea that the Icelan-
dic summer even exists, let alone is on
its way. You might cite unequivocal data
on global warming as a counterpoint.
Thanks, but no thanks—I don’t intend
to hang around here until 2050 to experi-
ence real and factual summertime tem-
peratures.
We must stop teaching our children
that there is summer in Iceland. There
may be, in the astronomical sense that,
like the rest of the Northern Hemisphere
during these three months, Iceland is tilt-
ed a little closer to the sun. But nothing
resembling our objective understanding
of summer ever happens in Iceland.
Give up hope, Iceland. Summer is a lie.
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WORD OF
THE ISSUE:
The word of the issue this issue is sko.
This is a tricky one to translate directly.
Some Icelanders use it to punctuate the
end of a sentence, some use it to punctu-
ate a phrase within a sentence. It’s less
a word than a point of emphasis: you
will frequently hear Icelanders pepper
their speech with this word, in much
the same manner that English speakers
might use “like” or “so.”
Used in a sentence:
“Þeir fara sko ekki í þetta. Það er alveg á
hreinu.” (“They are so not getting into this.
That is quite clear.”)
Sko
POEM
boys from america
who like bukowski
you keep asking for
REAL ICELANDIC EXPERIENCE
in the bars or on the roads
or on a bender on Laugavegur
but you never look in the gutter
A Poem By
Dísa Jónsdóttir
The Reykjavík Grapevine
Issue 12 — 2016
6
A POEM BY is curated by Grapevine’s
poetry liaison, Jón Örn Loðmfjörð
The number of passable roads
going over the highlands
The number of Pokéstops and
Pokégyms in the highlands
The Icelandic
Summer
FOR AND
AGAINST
0
50%
The number of campgrounds,
mountain huts, and other
forms of accommodation in
the highlands.
Rough estimate of how much
of the country is comprised of
the highlands
Photo by
ALISA
KALYANOVA
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