A rather gloomy and rainy day, but not too wet to pre­vent me from tak­ing a long urban hike of about thir­ty kilo­me­ters that would give me a good idea of the lay­out and neigh­bour­hoods of greater Reyk­javik. My start­ing point was the Höfðy, the old house where Ronald Rea­gan and Mikhael Gor­bochev held their famous sum­mit meet­ing in 1986. I first went north­east from the cen­ter to Sun­dahöfn Har­bour. One end of the har­bour has some huge cruise ships; the oth­er is con­tain­er port, look­ing very mod­ern, but qui­et these days. I then turned south through the Lau­gardalur, a large park con­tain­ing var­i­ous urban amuse­ments, includ­ing a zoo and one of the most pop­u­lar geot­her­mal pools.  Read more »

Kåre Hede­brant is a Swedish actor who starred in Let the Right One In [Låt den rätte kom­ma in] (2008), Amors Baller (2011), and the sci­ence fic­tion tele­vi­sion series Real Humans [Äkta män­niskor] (2012–2014)

In about three weeks, I’ll be land­ing at Keflavik Air­port, in Ice­land. While I do have some pre-set appoint­ments, for the most part, I’ll be explor­ing that inter­est­ing coun­try in my usu­al unplanned, eccen­tric way. I must cram as much expe­ri­ence as I can into a mere ten days ― not much time, con­sid­er­ing how much that coun­try has fas­ci­nat­ed me over the years, and how much I’ve read about it. But read­ing about a place, no mat­ter how thor­ough­ly, is no sub­sti­tute for walk­ing in it, talk­ing to its peo­ple, get­ting the smell of the air and the lay of the land.  Read more »

I’m read­ing a lot of Ice­landic his­to­ry, late­ly, and came across this fine descrip­tion of the Ice­landic horse in Mag­nus Magnusson’s Ice­landic Saga. It sounds very like the stur­dy lit­tle native ponies I saw in Wales: Read more »

Here in Cana­da, Con­ser­v­a­tive Prime Min­is­ter Stephen Harp­er is joy­ful­ly ram­ming through a mas­sive omnibus bill (C‑38). The spe­cif­ic con­tent of the bill is not the real issue, it is the arro­gant con­tempt for democ­ra­cy, for Cana­di­an tra­di­tions, and the Cana­di­an peo­ple, that is inher­ent in such a huge, catch-all omnibus bill. Such things have long been seen in the Amer­i­can sys­tem, but they are for­eign to our par­lia­men­tary tra­di­tions. But Harper’s con­tempt for Cana­da and Cana­di­ans is already well attest­ed, so it should come as no sur­prise.  Read more »