Iceland AMA

[Puffinshop]

I'm a naturalised Icelandic citizen, born and raised in England and living in the capital area of Iceland for over a decade. Fluent Icelandic speaker, mother of Icelandic children.

Can't offer a native Icelandic perspective but if you have any questions about Iceland please feel free

I've never heard anyone say they love Selfoss before unless they were from Selfoss 😄 I will tell my in laws, they'll be chuffed.

😂. Its cute! We like the Dairy food hall and the little shopping precinct next to it. Some lovely shops. The river as you go over the bridge is lovely.

Also a house (which I think is a barbers) was all lit up with perfect Xmas decorations. Super cute.

We went last year and loved it.

2 questions:

I remember walking down the Main Street which seemed a mix of pedestrian - cars. The cars would drive very slowly allowing people to walk slowly ahead - is everyone always that polite driving?

Is everyone as really into trolls / fairy stories / myths as our walking guide suggested?

Oh and one more - does everyone really know Bakkus the cat?

I mean, I won't say everyone is always polite. But drivers are actually generally more respectful of pedestrians than in the UK. If you stop and look like you want to cross, on slowish roads people tend to stop for you even if there's no zebra crossing. But Laugavegur in 101 is a special case, it's not a route you would generally drive unless you had to as it is so slow and officially pedestrian priority. Most of it you are not allowed to drive down unless you have a blue badge or you're making a delivery.

No, this is just people trying to be cute for tourists. Yes, some people believe in elves and trolls but, you know, some people in the UK believe in healing crystals. It's not a majority.

I think it's Baktus, as in Karíus og Baktus (en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karius_and_Bactus). No, I'm sure not everyone knows him, not sure I'd recognise him but I know he's a black and white cat who lives downtown somewhere. I think Diego the cat who sleeps on the printer paper in a stationery shop in Skeifan is the biggest feline celebrity in Iceland.

Confirmed, the Baktus group has fewer than 500 members while Diegó has over 15,000 fans 😄 He's clearly the top cat.

I love that you have notable cats @Puffinshop ! 😄

Oh no! I was about to have a rant and ask why Iceland no longer do Greggs mince pies..... interesting do you think the appearance of the northern lights are becoming more frequent?

@Puffinshop
What's the situation with regards to Grindavik now? I hear it's back open but are people still living and working there?

Have people who are displaced even offered assistance? Is it true that the best thing would for the lava to destroy the houses so the insurance pays out?

I hear it's due to blow again soon and if could be the biggest eruption yet! 🌋

If I Google it, it says that this is the case thanks to where we are in the solar activity cycle, but I can't say I would have noticed this personally. They have always been very frequent throughout the winter for as long as I've been here.

Is it true that women are comfortable having babies in casual relationships and generally a lot more relaxed about what people "should" do when it comes to sex and marriage?

You can go into Grindavík if you want now, yes. Seems slightly distasteful to me to see tourist coaches go to look at people's destroyed houses and communities when it's so recent but yeah it's happening.

Yes, some people are living and working there but the school, the sports hall, the pool, shops etc. - none of this is open so most people do not want to live there for the foreseeable. It is not a functioning town right now.

The government set up a company to buy housing from people who wanted to sell. I believe they will have the chance to buy it back in future if the situation changes. But I don't think it's likely. It's also very unlikely that lava will destroy the whole town, though yes there will be more eruptions.

Oh goody; this thread is back again.
I think I read somewhere that bits of southern Uk has had 18 minutes of sun in the past fortnight. Are Icelandic winters cloudy (and dark) or do you see the sun. Does everyone buy ultra-bright lights to compensate?

I hope Grindavik has calmed down too. It must be heart-breaking to watch your homes become uninhabitable.

I was going to ask what happens at Christmas (but a quick internet search tells me that it goes on for weeks). I'd love a baked recipe to try.

Since you have been chatting about cats, can you explain Jólakötturinn ?
Do people just buy new socks/pants or do they buy something more obvious?

Yes, I suppose so. There's very little stigma about single parents and unplanned pregnancy / having unplanned children young.

Probably most people don't bother to get married before kids - it's more something you do after kids. But there's not really any 'should' about it.

@Puffinshop do they really take buses of tourists to Grindavik? That's awful!

I really hope it calms down, but like you say it probably won't for a while as each eruption seems bigger than the last.

I'm interested in how the weather makes you feel. Do you take VitD? Do you go on lots of holidays?

I live in rainy Cornwall and end up desperately seeking sun!

Yeah winter is often gloomy as hell, when it's not actually dark. It's also extremely windy. There are plenty of sunny days in between the storms though (albeit the sun is much lower in the sky in midwinter so it's never exactly that bright, and obviously the 'day' is very short). I don't think the lights are anything out of the ordinary.

Christmas is good in Iceland. It starts at 6 pm on the 24th. Everyone dresses up in smart clothes and you open presents and eat usually ham with sugared potatoes and canned peas. Or lamb, or ptarmigan if you're being very traditional but then you must have shot the birds yourself. The kids can stay up late and then the 25th is just for relaxing. In the 13 days before Christmas children get little presents in their shoes from the Yule Lads (trolls), like a spread out Father Christmas.

Jólakötturinn is just a bit of fun. The story goes that he will eat you if you don't get new clothes (this was to encourage people to finish their handicrafts before Christmas, and to encourage charity). People usually do get new clothes but nobody would actually care if they didn't.

You definitely can. We did and were made to feel very included

We take Vitamin D, yes. I also buy Vitamin D fortified milk. Honestly, it makes me feel like shit, but sort of slowly so I don't realise how bad it was until the spring and I'm like oh yeah, this is better. I hate getting up in the dark.

Love going to England for Christmas to get that sweet daylight, don't care if it is pissing it down 😆

Thanks for the thread OP.

Am going to Iceland next year. I have wheels to get me around as am disabled. What is accessibility like? Eg do you know if I can get on all trains, trams and public buses? I know it's not an easy question to answer if you are not disabled yourself but I had assumed that it would be good but I now wonder if I can get into the pools etc and whether there are generally flat good sufraced pathways to see the sights out in the countryside.

Great do you know how we find out the locations?

Make sure you come at a time without snow as that is a complication you don't need - we often have to climb over drifts to get onto zebra crossings and it's bad with a pushchair or a bike so I don't even like to think how it would be in a wheelchair.

Sorry to say it but I suspect you'll find Iceland very lacking in accessibility compared to other countries. There are no trains or trams so no worries there, and the buses and tourist coaches should be OK. Definitely many pools are accessible.

But I think that although things are getting better, Iceland may still be quite behind, plus the landscape means that flat or flattish paths are just not achievable in a lot of places in the countryside. The most popular sites that have been most heavily developed are probably accessible to some extent but I would definitely talk to the tour companies about your needs in advance.

This should be a good round up: https://guidetoiceland.is/travel-info/iceland-in-a-wheelchair-adventures-accessible-to-everyone

My fairly limited experience of Iceland in winter has been that it's not so sunny but the snow makes everything seem brighter than a grey winter's day back in the UK. But I really love snow and cold so I'm always frustrated that we rarely get snow or even frost these days in the UK.

Yeah it's nicer when it snows for brightness, but the really dark period is November to January and out of those three months often only January is snowy in the capital area. It often doesn't snow until after Christmas (and then it keeps snowing on and off until April).

Before that it's more wind and rain/sleet. So January is much nicer than November, which is absolutely the worst month imo. I love a snowy December for exactly this reason but it doesn't always happen.

@Puffinshop thank you!

My teenage sons would like to go mid Feb for a week. Is this a good time to travel?