Day 197-visiting Viking World

   July 19-We had hoped to get around and gone somewhat early this morning, but that did not happen.  We finally got the group out the door and on the road around 11am.  We stopped at the Ólís gas station in Borgarnes, where Spencer and Alex finished getting their stamps in their Ólís books.  Now they can give them to friends to enter for the drawing for the grand prize of roundtrip tickets from Iceland to Denver.  Since Joslyn had given hers to Ágústa already, she picked up a new one to start over.  From there we headed straight to Keflavík, where we had lunch at Kaffi Duus and turned in the camping van.  Shan ferried the family members and bags to the airport and the Easleys checked in.
   Once they had gone through security, we drove over to Viking World, which Shan had already seen when his family was in town.  While the rest of the family viewed the Íslendigur replica Viking ship and the exhibit on the Norse gods, he sat in the petting zoo and worked on the blog.

The kids on the Íslendigur.

Restored 19th and early 20th century farm buildings in Keflavík.

The turf wall is obvious on the right side.
Most timber was driftwood.

To the left of the kitchen are bays for
and working.  Nothing fancy!

                    

                            We continued on into Reykjavík and met Sigrún, Gunnhildur, and Brindís for supper at an Indian restaurant and then wandered around the botanical garden in Laugardalur.  Laugardalur means “bathing valley,” because this was the site of the hot spring to which Reykjavík women used to carry their laundry to wash it.  A number of the women and some kids fell into the hot springs over the years and were scalded to death, so some protective bars were put in place, but it only ceased to be used as washing machines became more readily available in the 1950s and 60s.  The spring is now dry, since the city has drilled wells at the site and uses the hot water to warm buildings in the city.  Sigrún took us out for ice cream at the café in the middle of the botanical garden, the kids played on some of the structures in the park, and then it was time to say good-bye to them all for the last time this summer.  Sigrún asked a number of questions about skiing in Colorado, so I think that we will see her at our home some winter in the future. 

   We drove over to Pam and Marilyn‘s where we had some dessert.  The kids went to bed and we adults sat around talking for a short while.  Pam is attempting to parlay her Fulbright experience here into a more concrete connection between her home institution, the University of Wyoming, and her host institution, the University of Iceland.  This fits into the University of Wyoming‘s interest in expanding into a more international direction, but there are many administrative barriers that will need to be dealt with on both sides of the Atlantic before it can become a reality.

   We also talked about the Aurora theater massacre.  Colorado has been in the news a couple times over here this past month and none of it has been good!  Sigrún mentioned to us earlier in the evening that it used to be completely safe to walk around Laugardalur, but there have been sporadic attacks in the park recently.  This is rather shocking to her, since these sorts of things used to “only happen in other countries.”  It is pretty depressing to realize that minor occurrences of violent behavior are quite novel here, whereas grotesque acts of violence happen with such regularity in the U.S. that we basically treat them as a normal part of modern life.  In any event, we certainly take no steps legislatively or socially to address this issue as though it were recognized as a problem.