The collage above includes some photos from the previous week, a sign that I’ve been heads down since returning from my trip to the north. The upcoming week is the last for my classes, and I’ve mostly been focusing on the remaining tasks to wrap up the semester. I have a couple of assignments, a couple of exams, and four papers to complete before the end of the month. I can’t decide if the continued cold is more of a positive — because it keeps me inside working — or more of a negative, as the winter starts to feel draining. I’ll tell you, though, a little warmth from the sun would go a long way right now.
The war in Iran and Lebanon is weighing on me this week. The senselessness of civilian deaths, the war crimes and threats of civilizational erasure by an American president. I don’t have anything unique to add, despite months of classes on Security Studies and negotiations. The current US administration is so chaotic and unprincipled that it scrambles my ability to analyze the situation through theory or history. Even thinking of it as the “madman theory” is wrong; it’s just madness. I wasn’t able to attend, but there was an anti-war protest in Reykjavík this week at the US embassy.
In much lighter news, let’s talk about hotdogs. Many of you sent me the New York Times story about inflation in Iceland as told through hotdogs. Thanks for thinking of me. It’s a real deep dive into hotdog options in Reykjavík, but had nothing to say about the unique options available in Akureyri. So I had to seek out Pylsuvagninn when I was there, which was a bit tricky given their non-standard holiday hours.
Pylsuvagninn in Akureyri, Iceland on a snowy day in early April.
The toppings are certainly unique, including potato salad, bacon and eggs, and blue cheese.
Hotdog options at Pylsuvagninn in Akureyri.
I went with the Volcano Dog, which has onions, jalapeños, ketchup, cocktail sauce, remoulade sauce, mustard, and sriracha. A 2024 article in the Grapevine notes that the black buns are made in a local bakery by adding bamboo charcoal into the dough. Overall, A+ from me on this one and I thought the buns were the best of any Icelandic hotdog I’ve had so far.
The volcano dog at Pylsuvagninn in Akureyri.
On August 12, 2026 there will be a total solar eclipse in Iceland. To get the fullest impact of totality you need to be on the Snæfellsnes Peninsula or the Westfjords, but it will still pass through Reykjavík for 2 hours with totality lasting 1 minute and 4 seconds. That will be my last week in Iceland, and I was already excited to experience the eclipse, but now I have actual plans beyond just looking up at the sky. This week, Björk announced that she is throwing an eclipse rave, in conjunction with her exhibition at the National Gallery of Iceland. I bought tickets immediately. Knowing that my final week in the country will include dancing with Björk under a rare celestial phenomenon feels auspicious.
My mind was in two places for quite a bit of the week, working to refine my class schedule and set up a study structure that works for me, while trying to grapple with news from the US. The never-ending barrage of authoritarian power grabs and hateful propaganda from White House is bad enough, but the latest school shooting in Minneapolis was extra fixating for how close it was to where I used to live. I don’t have anything unique to say. It’s heartbreaking, and it keeps happening, and it’s only one of so many threats to people’s physical and psychological safety that are compounding and festering over time. I wondered when I moved here if being in another country would allow me to feel some remove, a release from the daily horror of present-day America. It does not.
I ended up dropping one of my classes, the one about Hybrid Threats. I was overloaded to the maximum allowable credits, 40 ECTS instead of the typical 30, so I knew it might be too much. It would have been doable, but I decided to choose quality over quantity and reducing to 34 ECTS will let me focus more energy on the topics I’m most interested in. Between this choice, and the need to swap a class due to a scheduling conflict, my final schedule ends up much more balanced throughout the week from where I started. Also, no classes on Friday means I have expanded possibilities for weekend trips.
I went searching for a sculpture today, which I saw when I first visited Reykjavík in 2016 but didn’t remember where it was located. I found it outside the Catholic Church in Landakotstún. It’s titled “Köllun,” which seems to translate to either “Calling” or “Vocation” and was made by Steinunn Thorarinsdottir in honor of Icelandic nuns. I love the way the glass lets the light shine through; the artist said she “strived to have the work be gentle and quiet” and I think she was really successful.
Her website includes examples of other sculptures that make use of similar glass inlay techniques, such as this stunning example.
Noted & Done
Finished reading How Infrastructure Works: Inside the Systems That Shape Our World by Deb Chachra. Yes, this means I’m finding time to read outside of my grad school workload, and yes again that when choosing to read a book for pleasure, I picked one about infrastructure. Highly recommended! Engaging throughout and Deb is a really great writer.
Finished reading The World of the Cold War: 1945-1991 by Vladislav Zubok, which was assigned for my class “Iceland‘s Foreign Relations.” It came out earlier this year and the author brings an interesting perspective having spent 30 years in the USSR, and now 30 years in the West. A good refresher for me, especially on the earlier decades that weren’t as top of mind.
Watched Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning, which you know, is what it is. I like a good non-stop action movie from time-to-time, but while I can overlook the lack of believability in technology and physical feats, I’m more of a stickler for geography. There’s no spoilers in telling you that a key scene takes place on St. Matthew Island in Alaska, which is unrealistically depicted as being surrounded by thick ice that you could run a team of sled dogs on. The waters around St. Matthew don’t freeze solid like that, but luckily the folks over at Northern Journal have already written a fact checking article about it.
Attended the release party for Jack Armitage’s “Strengjavera” at Mengi. The music was made using a Magnetic Resonator Piano (MRP), and is compiled from recordings of his installation at Nordic House in 2023. Apparently he also used an MRP in collaboration with composer Atli Örvarsson on the soundtrack for the Apple TV+ show Silo.
The Love That Remains will be Iceland’s submission to the Academy Awards. It’s Hlynur Pálmason’s third time having a movie selected for the awards (previously A White, White Day and Godland) so finger’s crossed that this is his year.
This is the first week where I wasn’t sure if I’d have time to write an update. It’s 9pm on a Sunday and I’ve been doing school work for the last 12 hours. Whew! Grad school is no joke. Of course the last week has been more than just starting some classes. It’s an entirely new field, with different assumptions of pre-existing knowledge, and a structure that might be typical but differs from what I’ve experienced before. It’s been a lot, but good, and I’m sure that as things keep rolling it’ll quickly become familiar.
One small snag is that I had to swap one of my courses. My program requires either ASK105F Iceland in the International System or ASK103F Iceland‘s Foreign Relations and while I didn’t have a strong preference I chose the former because the scope seemed broader. But when the class started we found out there was a scheduling error, and its actually longer than the published timetable, which means it conflicts with one of my other classes. So I switched to ASK103F, which actually smooths out my week a bit, making my heavier 2-class days Monday/Thursday instead of Wed/Thursday.
One of the things I was curious about is whether or not I’d be an outlier in this program, given my age and background. That question was answered immediately when I met the person sitting in front of me during my first class. He’s 8 years older than me, with a background in air traffic control, and is currently a member of the Icelandic Parliament! Can you imagine a US congressperson finding themselves on a foreign affairs committee and enrolling in a graduate program to brush up on their knowledge?
The photo above is an Icelandic keyboard, and while it looks familiar the changes to accommodate Þ, Ð, Æ, Ö, and some accent marks make it impossible for me touch type with confidence. I have to use this keyboard to print from the campus computer lab because the printers won’t connect to a laptop. Entering my username and password for the first took a few minutes. The @ symbol that is paired with the Q requires pressing the AltGr button to the right of the spacebar. And when my fingers reach for the left shift key they naturally land on the combined less-than/greater-than key, providing a nice row of >>>>>>>>>>s in the middle of your password. Some of these shifts are subtle enough to make you question your sanity, like pairing & with the number 6 instead of 7.
A visual comparison of the differences between the US and Icelandic keyboards.
Yesterday was an hugely packed day in Reykjavík. In the morning was the marathon, and all the additional races of various lesser lengths, snaking their way through the city. By noon, events had kicked off for Culture Night, with over 400 events across the city from free museums openings, to craft markets, to live music everywhere. I had a loose schedule of things I wanted to see, but also just wandered around, stumbling into strange and delightful happenings.
Perhaps the most low-key event is Waffles and Coffee, a two-hour period where the city supplies the ingredients and materials to the host and people open up their homes to serve the eponymous items. It fosters these casual gatherings throughout the neighborhood — strangers and friends in backyards and living rooms, sharing a snack.
A Waffles and Coffee sign, welcoming people to come insideMarathon runnings in front of EsjaThe 3K fun-run had a bubble machine near the endBattle of the Bands at HarpaA sizable portion of the country gathered for a concert on the hill
Noted & Done
Had dinner with an old friend and her family before they headed out to explore Iceland on their vacation, which was really nice.
Went to the National Library for the first time, which will be a good place to study.
<rant>You know how every elevator in the USA has a “close door” button but it never does anything when you press it. Apparently this placebo button is meant to comply with the Americans With Disabilities Act, although I question that explanation since the timing of the door automatically closing is what would matter for someone with a cane or a wheelchair. Is it because Americans are so insensitive they would close the door manually in someone’s face? Also, why have a fake button — just leave it out, or put in a blank! </rant> Annnnnnyway, the elevator in my apartment here has a functioning “close door” button and it is glorious! I press my floor number, and then the close button, and I’m off.
After three weeks of various adventures to the countryside my step count was considerably more modest this week. I got my first haircut in Iceland, which might just complete the checklist of day-to-day life things to figure out, and I was out and about in Reykjavík, but not too far afield. I’m really glad I was able to move here with this five-week buffer before the start of the semester. I’ve seen amazing landscapes, I’m familiar with the city, and now I’m ready to start my grad program.
As a reminder, I’m enrolled in a 1-year graduate program in International Affairs, focusing on the Arctic. That focus shaped my course selection, and I’ve mapped my first semester to largely overlap the shorter micro-credential in Arctic Studies. One consequence of that is that I needed to overload: I’m currently registered for 40 ECTS instead of the typical 30. I can re-evaluate that within the first couple of weeks, but since some of the courses are mandatory I’d have to drop the ones I’m most interested in, so I’m inclined to try and make it work.
If you’re from the US, you might be scratching your head about “ECTS,” like I was when I first started looking at this program. The European Credit Transfer and Accumulation System is a standard across academia in Europe, and they’re calculated a bit differently than the US “credit” system. One ECTS is supposed to equal 25–30 hours of student workload (per semester), counting time both inside and outside the classroom. Whereas in the US, each credit maps to an hour spent in class. Most back of the envelope conversions I’ve seen claim that 2 ECTS is roughly equal to 1 US credit, but ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ — seems fuzzy.
Anyway, here’s what I’m planning to take this semester:
One note is that The Arctic Circle is sort of a mini-course centered around the Arctic Circle Assembly, held in Reykjavík October 16–18. This is the main international forum for Arctic topics, which I would be attending anyway. I’m viewing this less as a extra course and more as a way to ensure that I get the most out of the conference. Aside from that anomaly, the other six classes meet once a week for anywhere between 1.5 and 3 hours. I have classes on campus every weekday except Tuesday.
I had a moment this week when I realized I really needed to figure out an organizational system to manage all the readings I’ll be doing. I felt much better after I remembered and reinstalled Zotero, a free and open-source application which lets you organize documents, associate them with notes, and manage citations. It converts PDF highlights, syncs everything between Mac and iOS, integrates with Google Docs, and keeps track of your spot in a PDF when you switch devices. I feel dumb for not using this when I wrote my book.
If you have suggestions for other tools to help me manage my research, writing, schedule, or all-the-other-things, please send them my way. The last time I started a graduate program was 20 years ago, I’m sure things have changed a little bit.
For the last decade, by shear coincidence, I’ve lived in very close walking distance to a movie theatre. In Pittsburgh the Row House Cinema was less than a block down the hill, in Minneapolis I could walk to the Edina 4 in 10 minutes, and now in Reykjavík I find myself living half a block from Bíó Paradís. What makes this latest cinema situation so great is that I’m a big fan of Icelandic films, but normally have to wait for years after their release to see them, scrounging for access in the dark corners of the Internet or subscribing to niche streaming services. But this week, given my newfound proximity and geography, I saw two recent releases that thankfully aired with English subtitles.
The first was When The Light Breaks (trailer), directed by Rúnar Rúnarsson, which came out last year. It centers on a small group of friends, two intertwined relationships, and an unexpected tragedy. It’s shot entirely in Reykjavík, much of it at the Iceland University of the Arts and Harpa, so it was fun to recognize the locations throughout.
The second film was The Love That Remains (IMDB), written and directed by Hlynur Pálmason, which was actually its Icelandic debut after premiering at Cannes in May. This is the fourth film I’ve seen by this director, and it was interesting how he incorporated a similar technique used in the 2022 short Nest to convey the passage of time. Like that film, there are shots where the camera captures an outdoor scene from a fixed point-of-view, and flashes between drastically different weather conditions that the Icelandic countryside so easily provides. Both films take place over a year, and these temporal jump cuts are interspersed with slowly unfolding scenes of everyday family and work life. He has a beautiful, simple, quiet storytelling style that showcases the story’s environments, both manmade and natural, alongside his characters’ complex relationships. There were also some metaphorical/supernatural elements, which I’m less sure about, but overall I thought it was great.
At Cannes, The Love That Remains won an award that I didn’t know existed but that I’ll be tracking from now on — The Palme Dog! More specifically this award goes to Panda, an Icelandic Sheepdog that steals scenes throughout the film. The best part is that Panda isn’t a trained actor, but the director’s longtime pet, probably not sure exactly what a film is, but always happy to be involved.
Got my first haircut in Iceland, by a Greenlandic barber. I apologized on behalf of the US, although he was convinced that nothing would come of Trump’s rhetoric of making Greenland part of America. He actually thought the attention that Greenland’s been getting could have positive outcomes. I hope he’s right.
Realized that my electric tea kettle here boils water noticeably faster than in the US. because it can pull more watts from the higher-voltage supply. Relatedly, I also realized that I need to buy a new induction charger for my electric toothbrush because my US version is only rated up to 130V. It hasn’t caught on fire yet, but I really don’t like using the word yet in the same sentence as fire.
Saw Autechre perform at Harpa, in complete darkness. Honestly, the darkness and the unrelenting aural assault that is their live show was a bit overwhelming and claustrophobic. I think that a seated venue would have made it easier to take in.
Went to RVK Poetics at Mengi, a recurring reading event. Over half were in English, so worth checking out again.
Went to an event at Hönnunarsafn Íslands, the Museum of Design and Applied Art. Small but interesting collection of Icelandic designs across a variety of mediums.
Went to the Nauthólsvík Geothermal Beach, which I learned is not one of the places my pool pass works, but cold plunging in the ocean is fun.
Did my first “vibe coding” with ChatGPT to create a script that scrapes concerts from Setlist.is and creates an iCal file I can subscribe to in Google Calendar. It works, took less than an hour total, and I wrote zero lines of codes.
