Day 47-bolludagur

   February 20-Today started out early for Sally and Joslyn.  Poor Joslyn's stomach acted up on her again.  She blamed the cream puffs from the day before.  We think one of them did have some brandy in the whipped cream, but I doubt it was enough to cause any trouble.  Unfortunately, this bout of nausea hit at 1 am, so Joslyn was not as prepared to deal with it.  Sally must have been the lighter sleeper at that point, because only she heard Joslyn come into our room to tell us what had happened.  Consequently, she ended up with the clean-up job.  Thankfully, Joslyn had no more problems after that.
   Today, Icelanders seamlessly transition from the þorrablót and konudagur celebrations connected to their ancient pagan Norse calender to celebrations connected to their more recent Christian heritage.  Bolludagur, or balls/bun day, begins the period of celebration that leads up to Lent.  Traditionally, the "balls," to which the name refers were meat balls, but in the 19th century, Danish bakers began to introduce cream puffs, and today these delicacies
are the primary food associated with bolludagur.

   Preparations for bolludagur began last week, when
Icelandic kids spent valuable school time fashioning implements of torture to use on their parents.  If kids wake up earlier than their parents on bolludagur, the tradition is for them to sneak into their parents' room and strike their parents' bottoms with the bolluvöndur (bun wands) they made, yelling "bolla" on each strike.  They then get one cream puff for each strike.  When our kids came home with their  bolluvöndur on Friday, they seemed very eager for Monday to arrive.  As a result, we warned them that as Americans, we could choose to follow the tradition as we see fit and if they came in too early or struck with too much enthusiasm, then there would be no cream puffs for them!  They took our words to heart and only came in 20 minutes early this morning.  I don't know how many times "bolla" was yelled, but I think they got their fill of cream puffs today, so there were no complaints!

   Sally had put together some cream puffs the night before, so we all got up and forced ourselves
to enjoy this Icelandic tradition.  The kids all had more cream puffs
at school.  Spencer even got to help make some before eating them.  The coffeehouse on campus sent some up to the faculty lounge, so adults were not left out either.  In order to try to fit in, all of us continued to eat cream puffs as they were offered to us throughout the day.  I think that we were excellent ambassadors as we continued to show the locals that we are willing and able to partake in their customs, no matter how difficult that may be!  Sally got even more ambitious and made cream puffs for the students in her class today.  Since half of the class are international students, who are bemoaning the fact that they are missing out on their countries' more raucous pre-Lent celebrations, Sally figured she could help introduce them to the Icelandic tradition.  Overall, I think that this is a tradition that the Hays family would like to import into America, although we might want to leave the early morning parental beatings behind!
   What could make a day devoted to cream puffs even more decadent?  Not much, but we managed it.  Two more packages from the States arrived today.  Shan's parents sent over a large number of souvenir items to give out to our friends, whereas the package from Sally's folks contained nine pounds of Valentine's candy!  How those sugar-loaded kids went to sleep that night, I do not know.  We were very happy to see the candy arrive when it did, because we will be able to hand it out on Wednesday when a tradition similar to America's Halloween takes place.  Shan was able to work off some of the day's excesses because he joined the gönguklübbur on a hike to the waterfall Glanni in the late afternoon.