When I work Friday afternoons, there’s a real push for everyone to finish at 9pm (other days during the pm shift we finish 10.30, sometimes 10). After all, it’s the weekend and people want to get out asap…and Icelanders take their weekends very seriously. There are two young men who work for me, Atli and Geir, good friends. Geir is planning a party Saturday night at his house because his parents will be out of town. “Going to trash the place” is what he said literally. However, Geir isn’t that sort of person, just fond of using English expressions like some many Icelanders. As I move along here I find the parallels between Icelanders and Americans virtually indistinguishable. There are differences, to be sure, yet at the core the parallels are remarkably similar which makes for Iceland not once being a "foreign" experience for me.

We all have defensive mechanisms in play at all times, even among those dearest. Not that these people are threats, but that constantly we are monitoring ourselves vis-à-vis everyone we encounter. Gradually they assemble a way of life from which we find it difficult to extract ourselves. That’s when the value of solitude comes into play, yet even there we have to decompress from these defense mechanism or societal constraints. Of all people I know, Icelanders in general prize moments of solitude and use it wisely. They love to get outdoors and be alone in the countryside, even for a day or part of a day. That’s why when driving in remote areas you see cars parked alongside the road in unsuspecting places. People simply get out and walk around, often spontaneously. Often in this blog and the one of last year I mentioned the Icelandic tendency to leap before they look, i.e., their child-like spontaneity. This has a way of swinging from intense sociability to equally intense solitude.

More wind and rain with occasional sleet showers. Mixed in are these wonderful tiny marble-like pellets not quite like hail but approaching it.