Party Like an Icelander

So it's over, the island is mostly free of litter and vomit and thousands of tents which dappled the hillside for more than a week. What am I talking about? The annual 3 day (more like a week) long festival which marks this island's settlement. A festival which has been going on since 1874 and has grown to somewhat nightmarish proportions. Pjodhatid began as a family festival where islanders would set up large white tents in the Valley below Blaútindur and the Há and move house and home into them for a few days. Other locals would stop by these tents and eat smoked puffin and salted fish and consume libations, presumably not beer until the 1980s when it came off of the prohibition list (all other alcoholic beverages being legalized many years previous) and sing the old songs. Now it attracts about 5000 people annually flying and ferrying in from the mainland for up to a week beforehand and unable to leave for many days after, due to poor planning and only two ferry trips a day and a handful of planes which seat a handful of people at a time. The festival seems to be mostly about drinking now, but many of the old traditions still prevail. The giant bonfire on top of the big rock, fireworks and the famous sing-along on the final night. We could hear and see all of these events from our balcony which faces the valley and on the final night I took a little walk down there at about 9:30 pm for a closer look. Apparently they were still charging about 9,000 kronur a night (roughly $120 - to benefit the local football team) to get in, but I just walked in. Hey, I thought it was supposed to be over and I was just examining the dregs at the bottom of the barrel. The only one who seemed to care that I was there was the drug sniffing dog, who gave me a pass, and whom I resisted petting and making gooey cooing noises to, as I would to any other dog who sniffed my knees. I must admit to a small welling of joy as I heard the wet and muddy Icelanders singing from the hillside and I have to say the band was pretty good. Sounded a bit like Greenday, but I am calling them Dead On Jeff, since I don't know their name and the lead singer looks like my friend Jeff. Let me not forget to mention that many of the festival goers dress up in costume (they have no Halloween here, so this is their chance) and the festival grounds also display some rather incongruous structures such as the Moulin Rouge here. None of it makes sense and no one can agree what the festival is really about (some say it's because they couldn't get off the island for the Independence day festival in June and so had one here on their own 2 months later, and some say it's to benefit the football team, but the local historian told me it was about the settlement). Whatever the reason, it's a hoot.

Much more fun and of much clearer origins, is the festival in early July commemorating the official end of the eruption on July 5th 1973. On January 23, 1973 Islanders awoke about 1am to the sound and fury of fire in the sky which was raining lava bombs down upon them. The island was evacuated in a stunning demonstration of calm and ingenuity, that very night. Some stayed behind or came back to fight the lava which was overtaking the town and the harbor. They did it with fire hoses, pumping water from the sea at about a gazillion tons a minute for 6 solid months, despite poisonous gases which floated in a blue fog over the ground sometimes 2-3 meters high. The woman I spoke to, Gisla, who came back to the island to cook for the eruption fighters, said she was never scared, you just had to keep your head above it, but if you did breath it, you could feel your legs go heavy and could barely move. The plan then? Climb on top of a car, if you could. Miraculously, only one soul was lost, a man who had broken into the pharmacy, for his own reasons, had breathed the poison gas and perished there. Naysayers said Nei, the hoses would never work, but the islanders prevailed and on July 5th 1973, after changing the landscape of the island and the harbor forever (it actually made the harbor better, more protected) consuming many houses and burying entire lives in ash, the lava was officially stopped and the eruption officially ended. Now that's a reason to party! Then the clean up began. Thousands of tons of ash had to be removed from the roofs of houses, stores, graves in the cemetery...If it was here, it was buried, but it was still home and so the work began and continues to this very day. Did I mention the volcano is still hot after 35 years? I was up there, it steams, kinda freaky, but pretty neat.





So, each year they celebrate for two days, but this year three (it was the big 35th anniversary). These old fish houses (which are now used for storage) are opened up, decorated (each by a different group) and opened to the public. Again, there is lots of drinking, but it feels a lot more hometown and everything is closer, a little too close as the evening wears on. Oh, by the way, don't even bother leaving the house until midnight, you'd be too early. And you're probably not going home until about 5am.