"In the 2008 economic meltdown, Iceland nearly collapsed. Its three banks failed, it's currency lost 50 per cent of its value and in an unprecedented display of anger, usually peaceful Icelanders took to the streets to protest.
But Iceland defied the orthodox economic wisdom of the time---bailouts and slashing government services---and now is on the road to a recovery that the rest of Europe envies.
The hero of the hour and the man almost solely responsible for this remarkable turnaround is the country's president Olafur Grimmson."
This CBC Sunday Edition Interview is a fascinating listen. [more inside]
posted by smudgedlens
on Dec 21, 2011 -
35 comments
The Burton Holmes Archive has information about Burton Holmes, the travel writer who became the first person to make filmic travelogues. More importantly, they also have a lot of
film clips by Holmes and his associate,
André de la Varre, who was also a great travelogue maker himself. Watching these clips is not quite time travel, but it is as close as we can get. Take a look at
Reykjavík, Iceland, in 1926,
Lake Michigan in 20s,
Cairo in 1932 and
the 1955 Rio de Janeiro carnival. The later films have sound and narration, but I prefer the silent ones.
[Burton Holmes previously, André de la Varre previously, and the Travel Film Archive, which runs Burton Holmes site, previously]
posted by Kattullus
on Oct 26, 2011 -
5 comments
The Midnight Sun is a natural phenomenon that occurs in the summer months near the Arctic and Antarctic Circles, where the sun remains visible at the local midnight. This short, time lapse film was shot in June 2011 over 17 days and incorporates 38,000 images. The photographer/videographer traveled over 2,900 miles throughout Iceland.
Midnight Sun (SL-vimeo, via) [more inside]
posted by zarq
on Oct 18, 2011 -
24 comments
Halló humans on the Inter-net. My name is Iceland. I am an island, full of mountains and glaciers and hot water and sheep and many nice Icelandic people, who like to make music, and who are sometimes cold. (Maybe you have seen me on your tele-visions, or your Inter-net.) I have heard that many humans use the Inter-net to make friends, and to talk about themselves. I decided to do this, too.
Iceland wants to be your friend. [more inside]
posted by carsonb
on May 19, 2011 -
57 comments
Did the Scots visit Iceland? New research reveals island inhabited 70 years before Vikings thought to have arrived. This appears to be the first physical evidence that
confirms the stories of celitc monks being on the island when the Norse arrived.
posted by novenator
on Dec 26, 2010 -
41 comments
This Christmas Eve spare a thought for the Chrildren of Iceland, who will be suffering a traumatising visit from
Kertasníkir, or "Candle Beggar", the thirteenth and final of the strange and somewhat sinister Icelandic Santas, or Yule lads, who are the childre of the ogress
Gryla. Most of them don't seem to care if you've been bad or good - mainly they want to steal your food and wreck stuff.
[more inside]
posted by Artw
on Dec 24, 2010 -
27 comments
Health, Grooming, and Medicine in the Viking Age. "John of Wallingford, the abbot of St. Albans Abbey wrote in his chronicles that the Norse invaders in England were far more attractive to Anglo-Saxon women since, unlike Anglo-Saxon men, they combed their hair daily, took baths weekly, and laundered their clothing regularly."
posted by rodgerd
on Aug 19, 2010 -
48 comments
Air traffic in much of
northern Europe halted – due to ash from a volcanic eruption under the
Eyjafjallajokull glacier in Iceland. The volcano under the glacier erupted for the first time in 200 years last month and whilst Iceland is renowned for its volcanic and geologic activity the sheer ferocity of the latest eruption (thought to be 20 times more powerful than the initial eruption on the 20th March) and prevailing wind conditions have culminated in the current
traffic chaos.
Flightradar24.com shows the current impact on the skies. Whilst the particles will disperse at high altitude and pose no threat to those on the ground, the
volcanic ash is very
dangerous to aircraft . Not only is there the problem of it clouding pilot vision but the ash can cause engine malfunction and damage the delicate airframe skin. One silver lining in all this is the anticipated glorious red sunset that should follow.
posted by numberstation
on Apr 15, 2010 -
149 comments
The Jónsi and Alex (Recipe) Show: join
Jónsi Birgisson (frontman of
Sigur Rós),
Alex Somers and their very loud blender to make
raw food recipes. They made three videos from their
Good Heart recipe book, for
Macadamia Monster Mash,
Raw Strawberry Pie, and
Nammi Nammi. If coconut, almonds, dates and agave (heavily featured in their three recipes) aren't your thing, enjoy a couple dreamy videos from the couple's album
Riceboy Sleeps:
All the Big Trees and
Daníell in the Sea. See also:
Sometimes I Get Scared (a distortion-heavy non-album track), and
Jónsi and Alex talk about their album, with parts of the tracks in the background.
[more inside]
posted by filthy light thief
on Apr 12, 2010 -
7 comments
As They Say is a 20+ minute musical composition by Icelander
Ólöf Arnalds, where she plays and sings all the parts herself in nine-fold splitscreen. She created the piece from interviews with 17 New Yorkers, each of a different nationality, and she sings in all 17 languages. Other Ólöf Arnalds videos:
11 minute documentary,
4 songs live on KEXP,
covering That Lucky Old Sun,
original song that morphs into Springsteen's I'm on Fire live,
new song,
an interview broken up into 17 chunks and a
10 minute documentary. The interview, the first of the documentaries and
some songs are in English.
[Ólöf Arnalds previously on MeFi]
posted by Kattullus
on Feb 9, 2010 -
4 comments
Juan Cabral, the commercial maker behind the
Sony Bravia bouncing ball ad has completed a new piece: this time, he and collaborators, including Múm, Richard Fearless (of Death In Vegas) and the people behind Sigur Rós' live concerts,
transformed the Icelandic town of
Sey∂isfjör∂ur into an ambient sound installation, placing speakers throughout the town, playing music (from folk to electronica to ambient orchestral) and filming the reactions of the locals as they went about their lives.
[more inside]
posted by acb
on Oct 12, 2009 -
17 comments
After a disastrous experience with international banking, Iceland has a new angle to attract investment.
BBC News reports that a company called
Verne Global is currently converting an unused warehouse at the former US Navy airbase (Keflavik) near Reykjavik into a carrier neutral datacenter / colocation facility. The promise is abundant carbon-neutral low cost electricity and the lack of need for any air conditioner system. With a mean June/July temperature of only 13C, Iceland can use
air side cooling to dissipate the heat generated by densely packed servers. Iceland is not exactly the best place in the world telecom-wise, but it is linked to Europe and North America by the
FARICE ,
DANICE and
CANTAT-3 cables.
posted by thewalrus
on Oct 10, 2009 -
15 comments
This year's winners of the Ig Nobel prizes are a bumper crop of wild and crazy SCIENCE!, featuring sword-swallowing, knuckle-cracking,
benefits of cow-naming,
pregnant women NOT tipping over,
a household use for giant panda poop (take that,
Packham),
diamonds made from tequila,
a brassiere that can be used as TWO gas masks,
"Ireland's Worst Driver", Icelandic banks, Zimbabwean currency, and a 'Peace Prize' earned by hitting people over the heads with beer bottles (and comparing the effects of
empty vs. full bottles) (
related inquiry)
posted by wendell
on Oct 2, 2009 -
23 comments
100 Best Icelandic Pop & Rock Albums all streamable in full for free. Icelandic state broadcaster RÚV and Icelandic subscription music website
tónlist.is have published what they, their team of experts and the Icelandic public consider to be the 100 best Icelandic rock and pop albums of all time. Björk, Sigur Rós, Múm and The Sugarcubes don't need much introduction but below the cut there are short description of the other artists.
[via RÚV] [more inside]
posted by Kattullus
on May 6, 2009 -
47 comments
In the early 1980s,
Roni Horn travelled to Iceland and lived alone for a few months in the (
supposedly haunted) lighthouse at Dyrhólaey. While there, she made rocky, earthy drawings. They formed the first volume of a currently incomplete, abstract
encyclopedia of the country [flash navigation] which has now progressed to include beautiful photographs of
hot pools, glaciers, lava and rivers. A river's surface has appeared in different guises within a university. She has even made
a library of water in
a little Icelandic town. However, those currently in or near London can visit
an exhibition in Tate Modern.
[more inside]
posted by paperpete
on Apr 4, 2009 -
7 comments
Eiríkur Örn Norðdahl is an Icelandic poet. He
translates Icelandic poetry into English (I particularly like his versions of Sigfús Daðason), and he has an interesting
interview on Icelandic poetry ("Curiously enough, back in the days the nationalists would sometimes write in danish. And writing in a foreign language was more or less seen as the only alternative to literature being a mere hobby until Halldór Laxness came along"). But really this is an elaborate excuse to post a link to
Höpöhöpö Böks: Köld öld Böks mjög örg, Ölböl örlög Böks! (Warning: My wife thought the linked video sounded like vomiting.) Via
wood s lot.
This one goes out to my man Kattullus; hope you can stick around! [more inside]
posted by languagehat
on Feb 17, 2009 -
12 comments
Protests have rocked Reykjavík since Tuesday:
Envious of Obama, Icelanders hurl yogurt and stage riots for new leaders,
Global financial crisis overwhelms tiny Iceland,
Flickr set of pictures of Tuesday's protest in front of parliament (complete with
pepper spray on camera lens),
AFP photos from Tuesday's protest, video from protests
1,
2,
3 &
4,
Icelandic protesters pelt PM's car (includes short video).
New age of rebellion and riot stalks Europe,
The Icelandic "Facebook Revolution", Iceland is Burning
part 1 &
part 2 and
Reuters factbox on Iceland and its economic crisis.
posted by Kattullus
on Jan 22, 2009 -
45 comments
Letter from Iceland. There you see the Iceland of today – the victim of an economic 9/11 and one of the very few places in the world where the words “financial meltdown” can be used without fear of exaggeration. [more inside]
posted by jason's_planet
on Nov 15, 2008 -
33 comments
More subprime collateral damage. Iceland's now getting a
$5B bailout from Russia. What does Russia want in
return? Access to shipping lanes? The old US base?
via
posted by blahblah
on Oct 7, 2008 -
48 comments
Surtsey was first observed on November 14, 1963, as
a pillar of smoke on the water some ways south of Iceland. The very next day lava and tephra broke the surface of the Atlantic and by May, 1964 the formation had grown to 2.4 km². Over the next three years lava eruptions continued, coating the loose debris in a hard shell and protecting it from erosion.
An island born. Naturally, Surtsey has been under close scientific observation since its emergence, and courtesy
The Surtsey Research Society you can read published reports on the
geology and
biological colonization of this new earth.
posted by carsonb
on Jul 17, 2008 -
9 comments
A few years ago when I was visiting Alaska, one of the more interesting portions of the trip was the 45-minute drive from Anchorage to Girdwood along the
Turnagain Arm of Cook Inlet. This is one of the world's rare bodies of water that features
bore tides, an amazing scene. The highway is one of only 15 roads in the United States that have been designated an "All-American Road." What about some of the world's greatest highways?
[more inside]
posted by netbros
on Apr 17, 2008 -
17 comments
An Artist's
view from her tent. Listen to the view. Yes, listen. Katie Paterson via mobile phone and underwater mike at a glacier lake in Iceland, captures underwater sounds of melting and cracking Jökulsárlón Glacier.
Hear it piddling away. Call to listen what the seals are talking about, if they're nearby.
[more inside]
posted by alicesshoe
on Apr 2, 2008 -
9 comments
About 10% of Iceland is covered by glaciers. Thanks to the ongoing catastrophy of global warming, we Icelanders have noticed drastic changes in our poor glaciers. On of the more concerned individuals regarding this is the now retired physician Leifur Jonsson, who is seen in
this report by National Geographic.
The report does not contain, however, the story about when Leifur almost died on a glacier. In his younger years he got lost in a blizzard, skiied off cliffs and fell 900 feet into the crater of
Grímsvötn, an active volcano underneath Icelands largest glacier Vatnajökull.
Decades later, two people, also lost in a blizzard, accidentally drove off the same cliffs, as is reported
here. The interesting part is that when they were brought to the Emergency Department of Landspitali-University Hospital in Reykjavik, the physician taking care of the was Leifur...
posted by nucleus
on Mar 3, 2008 -
14 comments
