International Herald Tribune Memories of a colder Iceland
Kristin Steinsdottir Sunday, March 4, 2007 REYKJAVIK: Would it be possible to go skiing over the weekend? This was her first thought when she pulled the curtains in the morning. Last weekend had been unusual. It shimmered like a beam of light in her memory and sent warmth into every nerve of her body. White ski slopes, sunshine, laughter and joyful shouting. Wasn't it a bit like being a child again? Such a weekend wouldn't have been unusual at all 30 years ago, but in the vicinity of Reykjavik, the skiing areas had been shut down one by one during the previous winters, and the little snow that actually fell was always blown away. Now she looked at the snow in the trees, vaguely remembering crawling through an upper-story window a long time ago to watch her father dig his way down to the front door. Or was it perhaps only a lapse of memory? After all, she had been a little girl at that time and in memory everything becomes larger than life. After a mild and rainy fall in 2006, no one in the city expected snow. The rain had poured from the sky and run down the streets, gathering into large puddles, reminding her of lakes. This past October, she felt that the rain was more frequent and heavier than the years before. Some people missed the old windy rain, spoke of "foreign rain," said the rain wasn't behaving as it used to, and that they needed to get an umbrella. Using an umbrella in Iceland is actually just a joke since the wind usually blows from all directions, flips over the umbrella and destroys it. No one uses an umbrella in Iceland except foreigners. The fall went by and it started getting colder, but it was on and off, as it often is in Iceland. There is an old saying that people never know what to put on when they leave the house. The sun may be shining when you go out, but you return in the rain or even a storm — and vice versa. It is said that this is due to the shifting weather conditions. But weren't the weather conditions shifting even more now? Wasn't there more of everything this winter? She furrowed her brow, looked over the garden and tried to answer herself: blocked roads, snowstorms and sudden snowfall in the city after many winters with hardly any snow at all rainfall above average in the same city an unusual surging of rivers all over the country just before Christmas. These days she also felt more often as if the roof of her house might get blown off in passing storms. Rescue teams were constantly being sent out; air travel was interrupted more and more. People wondered. Were these interruptions the result of stepped-up safety measures? Was the roof just getting older? But what about the temperatures? Although January was cold, the last 10 years in Reykjavik were the warmest on record, at least since records have been kept. She looked at the glacier through the window. It appeared in full view across the bay in the morning sun and reminded her of an old pyramid. The glacier Snaefellsjokull is supposed to be one of the seven sources of spiritual energy in the world. Many tap into its energy. Once the glacier had an even snow cap on all sides. Now the cap was uneven and here and there rocks were visible through the ice. The glacier is melting like others of its kind in Iceland. When looking at it she was reminded of another glacier, Vatnajokull, one of the largest in Europe. It would be gone within the next 200 years, it was said. When she drew the curtains in the evening it had started to rain. International Herald Tribune Copyright (c) 2007 The International Herald Tribune | -- Jim Devine / "The truth is more important than the facts." -- Frank Lloyd Wright
