Reykjavík Grapevine - apr. 2021, Side 6

In what may be a
bizarre surprise
to many of you,
Iceland now has
rhinos!
This completely
blew us away at
Grapevine HQ! We
were ready to go
on safari. Our pho-
tographer was fid-
dling around with
his lenses trying
to figure out which
would be best for
capturing mega-
fauna, Valur was
desperately trying
to contain Polly’s
excitement at mak-
ing a new interspe-
cies friendship, and
I was damn ready
to go see myself
a rhino! But we
stopped, paused
and thought for
a moment before
hopping in the
GrapevineMobile
and realised our
old friend Google
Translate had
pulled a fast one
on us. Our disap-
pointment was
immeasurable and
frankly, our day was
ruined.
The article is in
fact not based on
our horny friends
but actually refers
to killer whales—
orcas—that do
o%en swim the
seas around
Iceland, snacking
on any unfortunate
mammal or fish
they happen upon.
In short, there’s
this old persistent
substance called
polychlorinated
biphenyl (PCB)
which was banned
years ago due to
the harmful e$ects
against humans.
Now they’re harm-
ing our underwater
buddies.
But why would
Google Translate
mistake a highly
deadly swimming
killing beast with a
highly deadly run-
ning-in-a-straight-
line beast? Well,
it’s not as simple
as we thought. The
word for a killer
whale is ‘háhyrnin-
gur’ whereas the
word for a rhino
is ‘nashyrningur’;
the similarities
between the words
clearly being the
‘hyrningur’ part. So
yeah, no rhinos in
Iceland… for now!
OT
At around noon on April 5th, those
watching the Geldingadalur eruption
livestream noticed that a new player
has taken the stage: a fissure, some-
where between 50 and 100 metres long,
opened up about 500 metres north of
the original eruption site.

The area was immediately evacuated,
which went relatively smoothly, but
observers were quick to note that the
fissure opened with very little warning,
and at an area where volcano watchers
would often congregate, thus making
it nothing short of miraculous that no
one was injured.
Some days later, yet another fissure
opened, so it looks like we're in for the
long haul here.
Are we in danger?
The lava from this fissure is flowing
into nearby Meradalur and while it is,
like Geldingadalsgos, far from popu-
lated areas and infrastructure, the lava
is reportedly flowing fairly quickly.
Like the Geldingadalur eruption,
this is also a fissure eruption—there
is little to no ash, but there is fountain-
ing lava and the gas emissions that
come from such eruptions, such as
toxic sulphur dioxide. But you need to
be very close to such an eruption for
it to be harmful, and for now the area
is closed to all but scientists and Civic
Protection staff.
What next?
Volcanoes are always unpredictable,
and this latest fissure is no exception.
“We can never know ahead of time
how this volcano will behave,” volcan-
ologist Magnús Tumi Gu!mundsson
told RÚV. “There is a certain amount of
pressure, and there doesn’t seem to be
a lot of material coming to the surface,
but it could lead to an increased erup-
tion. But we see no signs that it’s
decreasing. This event is not at all
over.”
The area will likely remain closed
until scientists have a better under-
standing of what is going on in the
region. If the area does open again,
however, it is very likely that the visit-
ing area will be considerably differ-
ent from what volcano-watchers have
come to expect.
If you celebrate a weekly holiday
that’s set to begin at sundown and
end at nightfall, how do you do so
when there is none? We sat down with
Rabbi Avraham Feldman to ask how
one celebrates Shabbat in Iceland.
Shabbat is a weekly celebration of the
creation of the world. It’s a day of rest,
a day for family, introspection and a
time to focus on what’s important. It’s
unplugging from the regular world
and being present for a day. Shabbat
begins at sunset on Friday and finishes
at nightfall on Saturday. The highlight
is the Friday night dinner, which starts
with a blessing on a cup of wine—the
Kiddish—and then a candlelit meal.
So that brings us to Iceland. In win-
ter, sunset can be as early as 15:30
and, in summer, as late as just a%er
midnight. There’s a certain window
of time you can start Shabbat early
and in Iceland, that’s two hours. But
that still means you’re sitting down
for dinner at 22:00, which is very late,
but it turns it into a really epic Shabbat
experience. You watch the midnight
sun while you’re having Kiddish.
Shabbat ends on Saturday at night-
fall, but that doesn’t happen for about
two months in the Icelandic summer.
So the fun fact about the end of Shab-
bat in Iceland is that it ends on a Sun-
day morning because there is techni-
cally no Saturday night.
Once you hit the Arctic Circle,
though, that raises some difficult
questions as at certain times, there
is no sunrise or sunset. These are very
new questions because when the code
of Jewish law was written, there were
no Jewish communities in these re-
gions. It’s a di$erent world today. In
fact, there was a Jewish astronaut who
went to space, so there was a ques-
tion of how best to observe Shabbat
when each revolution around Earth— a
day—was 90 minutes!
People might wonder why these
technicalities are important, but in
Judaism, the technical and the spirit
need to come together—like the body
and the soul. But for Iceland, from a
Jewish law point of view, the case is
pretty straightforward. It’s just that it’s
very extreme, very unique, and, I think,
very cool. HJC °
ASK A
Rabbi
Q: How Does One
Celebrate Shabbat In
The Midnight Sun?
Save our… Rhinos?
New Volcano Just
Dropped
New fissures open near ori(inal Geldin(adalur eruption
Words:
Andie Sophia
Fontaine

Photo:
Art Bicnick
First 6 The Reykjavík Grapevine
Issue 04— 2021
LOST IN GOOGLE TRANSLATION
Look at this show-o%
Photo by Timothée Lambrecq
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