Day 17-Hreðavatn

   January 21-Everyone slept in this morning.  The family contingent in Reykjavík went out for breakfast at 10 am.  If that sounds late, I should point out that hardly any restaurant is open before then!  We did a little shopping downtown and then headed for Bifröst.  The day was beautiful and we saw the Sun in the most cloud-free sky yet!  These are pictures from the drive.


The mountain Esja across the bay north of Reykjavík

 

The mountain Hafnarfjall, south of Borgarnes











 

Borgarnes from across the fjord to the south



Bifröst University from the south

   Joslyn continued to have fun at the birthday party during the morning, playing cards and watching a movie.  She walked back over to the apartment at noon and we got back at 1:30.  After eating dinner, the kids and I decided to take advantage of the cloud-free weather to go for a hike down the road to Hreðavatn, the small lake that is about a half mile southwest of Bifröst.  Sally took advantage of the kid-free apartment to rest and recover from the celebration the night before!  Once we got past the lake, we were just post-holing through foot deep snow, so we turned around and came back.  There were ski tracks heading on down the road and on the hike back we met Joslyn's friend Águsta, who was Nordic skiing for the first time, so maybe we should try to find some skis to use around here.

   The kids spent the evening at the apartment enjoying all of the electronic gadgetry while Sally and I had supper with Sigrún and Jón, the provost.  They live in Reykjavík and Jón normally is at Bifröst only on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, but he decided to spend this weekend here in a friend's flat, so he invited us over for supper to get the chance to get to know us.  We had a very enjoyable evening.  Sigrún is an architect, who lived in England until 2007.  All Icelandic architects were trained abroad until 2001, when the Iceland Academy of the Arts opened an architecture department, which Sigrún now directs.  Jón is a political scientist who moved into the administration only recently. 

   It was interesting to learn about the political situation here from him.  After the economic crash in 2008, four former governmental ministers were brought up on charges of malfeasance.  Since the Icelandic constitution is practically a carbon copy of the Danish constitution, it contains some archaic provisions, including the stipulation that members of the government may only be tried by Parliamentary committees.  When the charges were finally voted on, there were two main blocks of votes.  Out of a Parliament of 63 members, 30 wanted all charges dropped and 26 wanted all of the ministers convicted.  So, that made the remaining seven members the ultimate deciders.  All seven wanted the former prime minister convicted, but five of them also wanted to see a subset of the other ministers convicted as well.  If you add all of those votes up, you will see that only the conviction of the prime minister had the necessary 32 votes.  However, only two members actually wanted that specific result!  Consequently, the political machinations to revisit these convictions has continued until today.  In fact, when the foreign minister addressed the party the night before, he said that he could not stay and talk long, because he needed to return to Parliament for an important vote.  It turns out that it was a vote on these issues.  And, we aren't the only ones with a Presidential election this year: Iceland votes for its president at the end of June.  But, no one has started campaigning yet.  Do you think that we can find some way to emulate that in the U.S.?