Reflections

This blog so far has been fairly rough fieldnotes - not all, but some - from running this big project. I haven't really spent much time talking about the project itself.

First, to brag. My students brought a whole extra level of professionalism to the project. The inclusion of two of my best students propelled the other students to do very good work. Both Mary Alice and Carime do wonderful work. If I had money I would hire them. Their gruntwork delivered the UE grants that help offset the costs. They could be counted on to work til the next step was done well, rather than simply til 500. And in truth, when I couldn't raise them on the cell phone, I did find them in the cafeteria working at night. Such dedication and perserverance will take them far in life. This is true even if they don't pursue academics, although I would love it if they did.

Secondly, Icelanders, or at least north Icelanders, are a lot like midwesterners. They like snowmobiles, modified trucks, warm houses, new electronics. These are all things I like too, so I understand them more than I do other Europeans sometimes. However, they have a strong traditional streak as well, almost clinging to the notion that Akureyri is an industrial town.

We went into this knowing Akureyri was changing socio-economically. The truth was staggering though. More than 10% of the town's GDP is from tourism alone. The university employees may be responisble for more than 2 billion kroner in property investments. The university may also be responsible for an extra thousand people in town, including children in the schools, ppl in the workforce, and so on. The gov't funded university pulls in hundreds of millions of kroner into town every year. The cruise ships alone are responsible for maybe 200 million kroner coming through the economy each year. That is the same as 100 blue collar jobs. Averaged over the whole year, tourist nights spent account for a 25% increase in the town's population.

This town is succeeding because it is aggressively courting the new economy engines of growth - tourism, education, and health care. But the ppl who live there don't really acknowledge this. They will say that tourism doesn't really bother them, but they are unlikely to grant much of their success to tourism. A local realtor said that the university didn't really matter - university ppl are poor and rent, and live in the older parts of town. Completely ignorant of the 2 billion in property invested, or the fact that the rental market is so hot that undergrads routinely buy instead of renting, or the fact that college faculty love old houses in old neighborhoods, this realtor seemed to think that ppl of any stature are interested in the new builds in the suburban periphery.

Not acknowledging the new economy does a couple things. The first is that it keeps the people "real". After all, they are far more interesting characters as blue collar manufacturers in a fishing town than they are employees at disney of the north. Secondly, they are unconsciously acknolwedging the drawback of embracing the new economy. Namely, that while this growth is good for the city as a whole, it does nothing for the individual shipyard worker who lost his job. Is this guy really going to reskill and become a computer networker for the university? Not likely. Is he going to be thankful to be pushing a broom at the local guesthouse? Again, not likely. So the things that are good for the town's economy aren't necessarily good for the individuals experiencing these transitions.

But, as true as this is, it needs to be weighed against real future options. There are towns in the Westfjords, and north Iceland that are dieing because the fish quota has been sold off. Empty houses stand with hand written "for sale" signs taped in the windows of these towns. As painful as these transitions are, in some cases it is the only choice other than a downward spiral. This too is just like the midwest.

In the end, this kind of research is interesting because in part it is about holding on to the towns, the places we love, even when the world is changing around them. Is there a point where it doesn't make sense for people to live in Olafsfjorður anymore? What about Valley City, ND? If we love these places, this kind of research is more than theoretical. It is visceral.

Fieldwork Completed

Now everyone is home safe from the trip. Had to run through MSP airport to catch a plane. Lost the luggage. Drove home in the middle of the night.

Now that we are done with the fieldwork, there is still plenty to do. I will keep the blog posted on developments.

Thank you for reading.

Last few days

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Morning is not really morning here. It is the middle of the night. The last few days have been very cold and the trees are coated with a hoarfrost from the sea fog hovering low in the fjord. The snow sparkles diamonds in the morning nighht. The sacred early morning feel, like you’re privy to something, lasts and lasts. Going to work in it feels wrong. Of course, it’s the same time I go to work back home. It’s just that dawn is still four or more hours away. Funny. Quiet, Cold Beautiful.



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Last few days.
Dinner at Erla’s
Discussion about energy saving in the Icelandic context.
Melt off. Grass is now out. Snow is gone. Just slippery packed ice.

Yesterday
Driving over the pass
Rented a car to drive out to Myvatn on Sunday. It was very cool. The car was a little corolla, and I rented it from the same guy I rented the Yaris, at budget, at the airport. I walked in, picked up the phone on the wall, and he anwswered it. I could hear his kids playing in the bacground. He was at home. He would be in in a few minutes, and he was, with the kids in tow. This guy sits at home in the winter with the budget phone hotwired to his house. Then he is always on call. Better than sitting around doing nothing in the airport. But, it must be a little aggravating to be on call all winter as well.

Hot spots and Mudpots
Past Myvatn, there was a geothermal hot spot. It had all sorts of activity. Steam spouts hissing sulfurous teapots, boiling cauldrons in the ground, mud pots bubbling away their stinky bubbles (blurp!). There was a walkway through the area, and the dangerous parts were marked off with a rope strung from stakes a foot off the ground. There was a little sign explaining that the water was hot, around 100C, in Icelandic. Back home of course there would be big signs and constructed people barriers. And of course crowds. This place I had to follow Thor’s jeep into through the deep snow. One other truck of people showed up just as we were leaving.
We then went to a geothermal swimming pool out in the middle of nowhere. These places have been active for many years, with sulfur mining (for gunpowder) in the middle ages, to a small power plant, including some sort of abandoned looking building, and a tourist swimming pool. We stepped into the shop, but did not go swimming. The place was finished with nice plywood fastened tight with machine screws. It made for an interesting aesthetic. Through the windows was the swimming area with no swimmers. It did have the characteristic blue water, and was a pool fashioned into the lava rock there.
On the way up into the hills to see the geothermal area, we passed a big caution sign. Barb and I cracked jokes about not understanding the caution sign. Thoroddur later told us it said, “You have entered the highlands. Does someone know where you are?” Heavy.

Santas in the Elvin church
We parked at the place with the rocks. These are formations that stand up twisty and creepily out of the snow. There are several areas in the formations, named things like large church, small church. We went to elvin church, which was also where the trail was packed down. A hundred yards down into the rock formations, along a twisty trail, we came to the elvin church. It was a clear spot, surrounded by spires of stacked up lava rock. There were a couple of windows, or arches in the spires.
There in snow was a pair of Icelandic yule lads. One was sitting in a big solid chair made out of 4x4 lumber. He had on an ill fitting santa jacket and was asking kids to sit on his lap and have their pictures taken. He had a goodie bag full of apples to give the kids. The other fellow was skyr-gobbler, with a long grey beard and stringy hair sticking out of his cap. Both blew around in the winter wind. The santas wore traditional wool clothing, down even to a mukluk style boot (with a modern rubber sole). They had wool patches sewn on old wool sweaters, and were layered up pretty well.
There was another couple leaving as we arrived, and our kids spent a good twenty minutes talking to the santas, while we took pictures. Just as we left, another family was coming in. not much traffic outside of us and the santas in the elvin church in the snow. There was a commercial side to this whole thing as well. If you sent 1000Kr to the farmhouse, you could get a picture postcard of you visiting the santas.
The Icelandic santas, or yule-lads are interesting characters who live in the mountains. They are not strictly giants, or elves, but their mother is a nasty character who collects the naughty children for dinner. They also live for hundreds of years, as evidenced by skyr gobbler who claimed he was “one hundred and two hundred and three hundred years and almost seven.”

Direction finder
As people were loading into the cars, I climbed up to a platform. The platform had a pedestal in the middle. I brushed the snow off and there was a silver plate underneath. The plate had a pointer in the middle, and the directions engraved around the plate’s outside. There were also landmarks’s names in the engraving as well. So you would squat down, line a mountain up with the pointer, and read where the pointer went on the plate. It told of every mountain, every crater, and every lake you could see, their height and distance away.

Smoked fish place
We pulled into the drive of a farmhouse at Myvatn. It was right on the lake. We walked into the fish room, where several racks of trout hung drying. Nobody came, so we went up to the house. As we exited the fishroom, I stepped on a trout tail in the snow. We passed the smoke house, with barrels of manure out front. The best smoking is done with manure I’m told (eww!). We walked up to the house, and the lady there said that the farmer was in Copenhagen, so ask at the guesthouse on the property. We crossed the gravel lot and knocked. This teenage kid opened the door and said he’d be down to the fishroom in a couple minutes. We returned to wait for him, stepping over the same fish tails in the snow. He came and sold us two kinds of trout, manure smoked, for 1700 a Kg. Pretty cheap actually.

Turf house
The turf house rocked. It was one of the church farm houses, so the priest in it was fairly wealthy. As such, it had little of the nastiness I was expecting. First it was large. It was a lot of rooms connected together by a long underground hallway. There was an upstairs too, with narrow steep stairs. Second, the interior was very nicely done. While parts of it were the exposed rock and turf, other parts had been paneled with plank lumber, making it look just like any old fashioned house. The one we visited was lived in until 1936. My grandma would have been 25 years old already. Not that long ago. These things were dug into the ground a few feet. The first few feet of the wall were stacked rock. Then there was sod, stacked into bricks, and laid edgewise at angles, like books on a shelf falling over. There was interior framing that helped support the walls and the roof. The roof was raftered like any other, with some sort of planking, and then turf on top. Grass grew on the roof. The walls and roof had several feet of turf to insulate it. The front was planked around the door, giving it a formal façade. Otherwise, it looked a lot like a hobbit hole. There was no auxiliary heat other than the kitchen fire, which would have been restricted to the kitchen itself. The fire was mostly open, with a little vent chimney at the top. Meats hung in the rafters of the kitchen. Maybe they stayed continually smoked that way.

The folks putting the show on were dressed in traditional clothing and were performing traditional tasks. They were candle dipping, weaving scarves, knitting mittens. They had double sided mittens, so the palms would last twice as long. That meant also they had an extra thumb bouncing around, which makes for strange mittens.


General things
Icelandic staring
Icelanders don’t have a sense of not looking at people like Americans do. In the US, if you catch someone’s eye, you nod and look away. To do anymore is aggressive and inappropriate. Here however, people look right at you for some time. Maybe they are seeing if they know you, who knows? But they look for a long time, and then they look away, without any acknowledgment that they’ve caught your eye. Disconcerting certainly, until you realize that you can look right back at them without intruding on their space.

Sense of space
They don’t have the same sense of space. As a Yank, I am not really comfortable with anyone being within arm’s reach. If I can reach out and touch someone’s body, they are too close. Not for Icelanders. They park close. They squeeze in behind you to get into a restaurant table. They stand in the middle of the walkway when they are having a conversation. With Icelanders, you must get used to people standing much closer, watching much closer, brushing your coat in the store. They are just closer than Americans.

Unisex bathrooms
Yeah, that too. These guys are so gender egalitarian, that many of their bathrooms are unisex. Some aren’t even marked as bathrooms. Very different than home.


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Iceland is confounding. We are having better weather than the American Midwest. It is nearly 40F right now, at 1230 am. There is a warm wind blowing, and everything is melting. The moon is out tonight, and the clouds are skidding by. The illumination highlights the valley wall across the fjord. The snow is spotted along the dark swampy wall in the moonlight. Almost glowing. The northern lights were out a little earlier. A beautiful night. And I thought my little island was cool.

Further, since it is so dark so long, it doesn’t really matter what time it is. There are about 6 hours of useful light, with the sun over the horizon for just about 2 or 3. By 530, it is full night. And it is not daylight until 1000 or later. So, your body clock just doesn’t seem to work right. The kids are upstairs watching a video right now., for example.

Here is another thing. Icelanders not only have a different sense of personal space, and eye contact, they also don’t have an innate sense of right-of-way. Walking down a sidewalk, there is no rule which side to step to when passing someone. This makes for a lot of dancing

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Looking out the office window right now, I see the mountain across the fjord lit up in shades of pink against a baby blue sky. The sun is just crossing the horizons these days, and soon there won’t be any sun at all. On my side of the fjord, just a sliver of the top of the valley is illuminated. The sliver glows various shades of pink while the valley wall beneath shows different depths of blue. Very cold air settled in last night, and a heavy fog hangs low in the valley. My house would have almost no visibility, but the university is higher than that so the air is crystal clear, with the fog bank below. Not much wind to speak of, but enough that the fog flows gently down the fjord toward the arctic ocean.

Comment received via email:

The world is lots of little places. Most of them are "home" to someone and things are done there as they are remembered. It is a joy to hear of this one. It is a pleasure to have it seen through eyes I can see and hear of it in my language. I find the changing length of days moving.Michael Metz

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20051205.0706

Slow few days. But busy still. Thursday night we were to Giorgio’s house for dinner. He’s Italian and his wife is a Scot who just had a child 8 months ago. He teaches in the social sciences as a social philosopher. She is on leave as a law professor. Camilla was along and she teaches in psych. She is a native Icelander who is married to a Mexican teaching in Canada. Crazy world. American politics came up, and some in the crowd seemed to confuse being anti American politically, with being anti American citizenry. As long as we were willing to agree that our big truck driving, wal mart shopping, overweight countrymen were a bunch of rednecks, we could get along.

Funny thing is, as soon as the more vocal in the crowd disappeared for a few minutes, others stepped in fairly quickly to mediate the message. It was a little challenging even to say that the current conglomeration of political interests in both parties is unusavory.

Friday the American students came over and we took them to Bautin for dinner. Turned out to be a great place for dinner. They had a little playroom for the kids. We took a long time to eat and enjoy the meal. It’s funny that a fairly nice restaurant like that would havea kids playroom. It captures one of the important differences we’ve come across. These people are way more prochildren and profamily than we are. Kids are welcome just about anywhere. They are given loads of independence. You don’t ever see the walmart smackdown in public.

This is funny to compare to home, since the US is supposed to be so religious and so pro family, or at least the conservatives would like to portray that. Back home, easy divorce, easy abortion, easy welfare for single moms, and a minimal stigma for unattached parenting would make the social conservatives apoplectic. They would also argue that such policies would only make for loose sloppy families. While the Icelanders here do have more fluid families, the whole culture is pro child. Having a kid is not the tragedy for a young person here that it is back home. In many ways this is a really cool thing, especially bringing kids over. They have been no problem at all, because this place is so accommodating for families.

Saturday, Thor and Bryn had us down for brunch, during which he told us about the newswpaper, email, gym instructor, new school business, supreme court scandal. I didn’t really follow the whole thing. But it was funny.

Sat night, they came over to our house and brought dinner. Salt cod Spanish style. When they were kids, salt cod would just be watered and boiled. Passable. But then someone noted that the Spanish ate it in a variety of spicy Mediterranean dishes (this is a huge export product). They imported the style, and this is a great meal.

Sunday, nothing. Literally. Sat home and watched it snow. Refreshing though because of how busy it has been lately.

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Yesterday to visit Hólar

Holarskoli is a humbling place. First, there has been a school there for more than 900 years. They want to celebrate their 1000 year anniversary next year. The art in the church dates to before the protestant conversion in Iceland. That would be 1500s. Some is even older. So the altar-back was brought over from Norway by the last Catholic bishop from his ordination studies in 1400-something. There were two crucifixes and two altar backs that were 500 years or more. The altar in the church was closer to 900 years old, they think. The bishop was the last catholic bishop, and he was a holdout for the true faith. When Norway and the South-Iceland folks changed, he would not. For ten years he stayed back in his valley and insulted the converts. At one point, he rode around the island, kidnapped the south bishop, and brought him back north. When he got home, he tied up the other bishop and insulted him with poetry. After a few days, he let him go. This bishop was finally caught by the Norwegians and was beheaded. The bells in town tolled spontaneously upon his exectution, and some of them even broke with sadness. His two sons were exectured also, and the weight of their three spirits sitting on the altar-back that was being taken from the church, made it too heavy and the usurpers left it behind. That bishop is buried in the church’s tower. Some of the other notable historical figures in that region are also buried in the floor, including the only woman to have an in-church grave in Iceland. The tower is not attached to the church since that bishop was beheaded. The church itself is only a hundred or so years old. The churches sometimes would blow down in storms, so they would have to be rebuilt. This one is made of local red rock, with a little bit of timber framing from the church immediately prior.

There has been a school there for hundreds of years, and they have found the old printing house. They have excavated it, finding lead typeset. They have a copy of one of the first bibles that one of their significant scholars translated into Icelandic. They had an Icelandic bible a decade before the Norwegian state had one in Norwegian. They located a collector who just died and has one copy each of every book put out by holar’s press. They are hoping his estate will make them a gift of the books. I can’t say I blame them, and I hope they get them.

They have a “theory” house. This is a building that is to replicate one of the historic buildings that is gone now. They built it Norwegian log building style with massive stacked timbers on one side. The other side was a different Norwegian style, that included vertical planking or logs. That side was locked so I didn’t get a good look. The doors were these little five foot things you had to stoop to get into. Inside it was an old fashioned log building. The marks of the hand tools (they didn’t use power tools) were present. The electricity was on remote control, so the lights weren’t wired into the logs. IT was simply one of the most beautiful pieces of handcrafted building I’ve ever seen, in one of the most beautiful places I’ve ever seen.

The school there is tiny, and occupies mostly one building. There are residential houses that are unattached. True to old fashioned form however, there is a main building that houses the classrooms, the departments, the administration, and the cafetria. What a place. It gives you an insight into what all the old church schools around the Midwest might have felt like, minus the wireless of course.

This says nothing about the beauty though. This place looks like it comes from a movie set. It honestly looks like the valley from the lord of the rings movies. The valley is small enough that the enormous walls rising up around you close you in. Further, their nearness reinforces how high the valley goes. The school itself is situated right on the flanks of one of the valley walls. It could not be any closer to the steeps or it would be unstable. So the wall rises right out of their backyard. I saw some pictures, and pictures just don’t work. You can feel the enormity of the valley, its closeness. And yet it is not so small as to feel claustrophobic. You stand there and look down the valley to the sea, and hear nothing but a little creek, and the whispers of the wind in the valley. I got out of the car and said to Thoroddur, it looks like Yellowstone.

The irony that these people are researching and teaching tourism is unreal. This is one of the most quiet contemplative places I’ve ever been. It’s got a thousand year history. The first farmstead in the valley is visible from the school. The natural beauty is truly awe inspiring. This place is so stinking real. I can’t imagine selling it. Whoring.

I hope they fail.

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Energy Sociology
Friday talked with another sociologist interested in energy. The only other bona fide energy sociologist I’ve met in person. Both of us agreed that it was surprising nothing was written on it. At the same time, that means there is tremendous room for writing.

She had with her a boyfriend who was an environmentalist and an urban planner. It was interesting discussing it with a sociologist, because the sociological take is so different from an environmental one. The environmentalist sees a green problem that needs to be solved. And somehow or other the environmental perspective always ends in ideology. As in, it’s good if everyone uses one CFL lightbulb so that the one less nuclear plant can be built. To an environmentalist, who has internalized the concern for nature perspective, this is inherently a good thing, and it is obvious.

As a sociologist, my initial response to that is: so what? That’s the kind of thing that can only appeal to the faithful. However, if the energy people are right, the problem we may end up having will need a solution. And in that case, everyone with one little CFL light bulb so we can build one less nuke plant is meaningless. We may find that in order to power society we need lots of CFL light bulbs, and lots of nuke plants.

Further, the environmentalist says of getting sweaty riding bike to work – that’s part of what you put up with because bike riding is a technical part of the solution to energy scarcity. The sociologist recognizes that regardless of the technical solutions, people’s social awareness is not insignificant. If people perceive riding bike to work as uncomfortable and unfashionable, they won’t do it. Period. So any suggestions that ignore such things is less useful, and perhaps completely useless. This is another reason the environmental perspective can be frustrating. They are likely to think such things as status symbols, fashion, discomfort are silly and frivolous. Fortunes have been won and lost on such frivolity. We can’t ignore it, and the sociologists should know this.

Thinking about energy makes me deeply uncomfortable, simply because the threat is so significant, and the silver bullets so few. At the same time, Akureyri here has really given me a new perspective. And it is one that is more callous. I had hoped we might see some forward thinking with gas prices going up a little bit in the states. All we had was a lot of bitching and moaning. I could ride my bike a feel like an anarchist, and like I had averted some financial negativity. Then the prices came down, and things immediately went back to normal. No sooner did fuel hit 2.50/gal than I saw someone’s full size half-ton dual exhaust really rocking chevy truck idling at the drugstore. I parked next to it. Went in and did ten minutes worth of shopping, came back out, and it was still there idling with no one in it. Seems sad, but whaddya do right?

Well, then I get here, and people do walk more. But they still love their cars. This is ok, because so do I. They have more than enough energy for power and for heat, so it seems like this would be a great place to be. Then I toured the suburbs. Yep suburbs. In a town of 16000, where gas is is around 1.70/litre (that’s more than 6.5USD/gal)! What the hell are they thinking? They are locking themselves into the same fuel dependent box that characterizes so much of the US. Interestingly, Reykjavik is developing in just the same suburban lines. And you know what? Not only is their gas hugely expensive, their cars are too. They have many little SUVs here, and I really like them, but let’s do the math. The nice ones seem to be going for 4 or 5 million kroner. That’s 65k USD for a truck that in the US would only be going for 30k. The heavily modded highland trucks are going to cost more than that.

Now, if the Icelanders are willing to pay almost 7 dollars a gallon, and 65 THOUSAND for a family truck, why the hell am I riding bike around Evansville, getting hit, to save 2.50 gallon gas? Why drive around in an old ratty 3000USD Toyota? I mean what’s the point? This is truly a crisis of faith for someone who thinks “the revolution will not be motorized” and “cars r coffins” and “bicycles = freedom”. Anarchist my ass. It truly feels pointless.

Whatever will happen, will happen quite a ways into depletion influenced high prices. I knew this. Strauss and Howe reinforce this. But Akureyri drives it home and makes me feel it. Can you feel both more and less doomerific at the same time?



Yesterday went skiing up on Hilþarfjál

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Little bit of snow last night. Went to bed with the streets finally dry. Now there is just a little more than a powdering. Windy out, don’t know the temp.

Did a lot with Bjarni and Thorbjorg yesterday. They had us over for dinner, salmon and potatoes. There was a vegetable salad which was a little like a slaw. The salmon was the best I ever had. Fish here are different than back home. Edible, enjoyable even.

Bjarni told a story about an American who came in 1912 and stayed in the Hotel Akureyrar in their nicest suite for four years. While he was here he spent lots of money, built several charitable sorts of places, stables for some horses. He wrote books on cooking, dealing with money, health, and horsemanship. He told everybody he wa a wealthy businessmen from Manhattan. After four years, he wanted to get back to the States, but couldn’t catch a direct ship because of the War. So he was on a ship to Norway when he reportedly killed himself and fell overboard. No one saw though. They just heard a gunshot on deck and couldn’t find him. He was overweight and had trouble breathing, so he wasn’t very healthy. Funny thing is no one has ever traced back and found out who this American was. He just stepped off the steamer one day, and then left four years later.

We went to the pool with Andrea and Funn’s family. Do not remember the husband’s or the baby’s name. He is a computer guy taking some courses to teach – maybe at the college level if I understood him correctly. We went to the pool with them so the kids could play. And they did. It wasn’t long before Abby was off with two little Islensk kids splashing and chasing. They are more lenient with their children here, and the children are more independent. At the pool, they run around, throw snowballs, climb all over things, let the 6-year olds run. Saw Giorgio at the pool too, and sat in the sauna with him a little. He is a social philosopher in the dept, but I don’t know his status. He has a little baby at home with his wife. After swimming Andrea walked us up to the convenience store called Samlaup for groceries. Icelanders are pretty standoffish, but we got along with these people immediately.

Earlier in the day Thorbjorg and Bjarni took us walking in the woods near here. I will find the name somewhere. The parking lot was pure ice, a choppy sea frozen solid. Cars driving through the slush and the freezing melting made it into a scary place. The first place we stopped when we got out was a playground. There were kids playing, crusty snow on the ground, different equipment than you might find in the US. There were also hiking/skiing trails. Cross country should be fun there. The trail wound up along a little creek for a while. With all the melt going on, the creek was running pretty quick. The native rock of the mountains lay here and there tumbled together, and exposed. Elsewhere the melting snow exposed some green grass hoping for some anemic winter sun. Where the little gorge was too narrow, there was a walkway of wooden slats built over the creek’s bend.

Bjarni said he sometimes takes little Bjarni biking on the trails in the summer. That would be a great ride. I would love to be here in july with a bike or two. This town’s hills would be a blast on the street single. The roads curve and switch back up and down the hills. The town’s layout is compact and European in the older parts, and sprawling around the outside. This place would be completely within reach on a bike, even though walking is not realistic for the outskirts. For a single bike, maybe a 5x5 trailbike. Just fine for getting around town, if a little slower than a road bike. And the trails around here just must rock. There is a trail just out of town which hikes up one of the low mountains here. I am sure you could go for miles into the backcountry. What a blast. Climbing too, what a great place to start a midlife crisis. You can see 3 peaks right from town. Good starters.


Other points:

The Christmas House
Walking in the woods
Akureyri potatoes
Shoes at the door
Singing valley
Theatres in every little village

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It is dark like night here much of the day. It is not complete utter darkness however. Even at eight in the morning, with three hours left to daylight, there is a dawnish blue on the southeastern horizon. It is not enough light to light up the day, but it is enough to suggest morning. Night is similar. The sun slowly sets, and then evening very slowly comes. It is dark early, and nights are very long, but these arctic sunsets and sunrises take forever. Reminds me a little of visiting Fairbanks, except that it was almost the equinox then rather than the solstice. Would love to see summer solstice here.

May go skiing today. The weather has been warm so I can’t imagine what the snow is like. We had some snow last week, but it has warmed to 5 or 8 degrees for the last few days, and everything has melted and refrozen into an ice rink. Thorbjorg and Bjarni lent us some shoe spikes, which is a very good thing.

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20051118.2217

Today was a big day. We had a meeting of all the teams that lasted the whole morning. It almost had a conference flavor with each team presenting their research plans and everyone else asking questions and offering suggestions. The groups all did a good job, and it looks that the research will go well. The different groups should interlace quite well.

We went to the swimming pool again with the children. Sundlaug Akureyrar. It is wonderful and surreal to sit in a hot pool or swim around with ice and snow ringing the deck. The local kids all go swimming during school hours, so if you stay long enough you will see a couple rounds of children come and go. Kids are the same here with all of them running and jumping and horseplaying in the pool.

In the evening we went to the local handball game. The KA (Kow-Ah) club was playing another team from the south. It is a little like soccer meets basketball. The players cannot hold the ball for more than three steps and so dribble and pass like basketball. The object is to throw it into a goal, guarded by a goalie. Where basketball has the three second lane, this game has a semicircular offsides surrounding the goalbox which no offense or defense may cross into. So the game takes place on a line that looks a little like a football scrimmage line, arcing about 15 feet in front of the defending goal. It is more than a little weird chanting in a different language for your team. And suffice it to say that 98% of the insults, fouls, crowd chants, and other assorted noise went without understanding. When the team won, many of the kids ran out onto the court with the team. The team surrounded them and linked hands and danced in a circle around the children. A little like a mayflower dance or “Ring Around the Rosy”

The 10 year olds all sat together, boys and girls cautiously flirting, but mostly just hollering insults at the refs and the opposing team. It was held in a building that was a lot like a pole barn or Quonset hut. It could have been a hockey rink. But, true to the Nordic flavor around here, the structural beams were laminated wood, rather than something else. The crowd all sat just a few feet off the out-of-bounds line, so that walkers into the bleachers easily spilled onto the playing field. The ball went into the stands a few times and just got tossed back. In scale, it is similar to a varsity volleyball game at UE, in the little gym. The crowd size was similar, and the closeness to the game was similar.

What a hoot.

Icelandic TV is on right now, and it is about 1100. The chances are about even that you might find something in English (Enska) on one of the channels, but not necessarily American (although not necessarily not). After 1000 or so however, it is entirely possible to find something entirely inappropriate for children. They have nudity, sex, bad language, everything that would drive American prudes nuts. Much is in pretty bad taste and really isn’t appropriate for the kids. This wouldn’t matter except that the children are still jet lagged and don’t really go to bed until about midnight. So you do have to watch what’s on TV when the children are up.

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Darker today. We are losing daylight pretty quickly. But it is also warm today, 5C, so the snow is melting and the water is running down the street. Now that a good melt is underway, you can only hope that it melts the rest of the ice on the streets and sidewalks. Otherwise this water freezes solid to a slick sheen. Scary slippery. The people have ways of dealing with it. They have traction spikes that slip onto your shoes – urban crampons if you will. The cars all have studded tires.

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Wind rushing around the house with a muffled roar. Occasional whooshes of individual breezes eddying around the corners. What must the weather have felt like to people in ye olden tymes?

Why Akureyri?

Why Akureyri?

As a Midwesterner, this is a great question. It turns out that while there are very good reasons to study Akureyri on its own, it is a great counterexample to developments in the American Midwest.

Akureyri was a fishing and trading village for many years, and in second half of the 20th century, it grew in manufacturing as well. At the turn of the 21st century we find that these industries do not support the thriving economy they once did. Just as elsewhere, globalization and economic concentration have concentrated and increased competition so that far fewer people are employed in these areas than previously.

The Midwest has seen similar changes. Farming has concentrated enormously, meaning that far fewer farmers are working than in the past, the margins are tighter, and the capital necessary to start up is greater. Towns that grew up supporting farming have stagnated in the face of these changes. The same is true of other industries near the Midwest, such as mining, logging, and fishing. Manufacturing too has concentrated, so that many Midwestern rust belt cities have decaying factories at their core. Cities that have not effectively managed these economic changes, are dying. Cities that are successful have grown their third sector industries. Des Moines, Minneapolis/St. Paul, Omaha, Chicago, and others are cities with a heavy third sector concentration. Education, Health Care, software, and insurance, are industries that have helped these Midwestern cities grow.

Akureyri is a good example of this. The second largest town in Iceland, it has become a regional center of the northeast side of the island. The town has pursued several avenues of growth in third sector economies. The University of Akureyri has grown from a handful of students to 1500 in only 15 years, with the last 500 happening in just a few years. The arts have grown, so that they have a small arts district, and a year round theatre. They have grown their ski resort, drawing skiers from all over Iceland. They also have grown international tourism. There is a focus on eco-tourism, as well as cultural tourism drawing in cruise ships with thousands of passengers into the town in the summer.

All this growth represents third sector economic growth, and brings needed cash into the community, as older sources have plateaued or diminished.

There are a few problems associated with this kind of development however. First is that while this growth does bring jobs into towns, it does not bring jobs for those who have been laid off from more traditional industries. Third sector growth is of course better than no growth, but the individual problems associated with being an unemployed blue-collar laborer don’t really change. Second, much of the third sector economy relies upon general economic prosperity and stability. Tourism is one of the hardest hit in times of economic slowdown, and all of it rests upon successful and efficient delivery of the extraction and manufacturing economies. They are still important – they are just too competitive for lots of families to make livings off them.


So, an excellent reason to study Akureyri is that we may learn more about this economic transition. This is a small enough town, in a small enough country, that we may be able to uncover some of the essential mechanisms of this transition. With a broad enough comparison, perhaps to Midwestern cities, we may be able to make generalizations about this transition.

Finally, this is an interesting transition in an interesting town all on its own. It is the regional center for the north of Iceland. While histories have been written, the process and effects of this transition has not been studied closely. As a small town in the arctic arena, its success is an interesting story.

Welcome

This blog will detail the day-to-day events of this research project, as it unfolds. Several people have expressed an interest in following the project, and this journal should allow them to do so. The US participants in this project are Dr. Michael Gibbons, and research students Carime Lechner, and Mary Alice Van Wagoner. Icelandic participants include Dr. Thoroddur Bjarnason, and several University of Akureyri students.

Thank you for reading and welcome to our project.