Northern Lights

Hotel Rangá, originally uploaded by blue eyes.

I didn't take this photo, but uploaded it from the Icelandair Hotels website. It's a lovely shot and appropriate because we're sliding in Aurora Borealis season here in Iceland as the weather gets colder.

Actually, it's not that cold here right now about 45°F/8°C today. There's no snow, only sporadic rain and occasional gusts of wind. By law all cars are to have winter tires on by now, but there's hardly a reason to; the only thing they accomplish at this point is the tearing up of the asphalt on the roads. Still, you never know when you're going to wake up to a frozen landscape here...the weather on this island is so unpredictable that there's hardly any way to plan for those deep-freeze days. Pretty much everyone over twenty agrees that there used to be a lot more snow in winter here in Iceland. Now we never even know if we'll have a white Christmas or what we call a red, or snowless, one. It's a little disturbing and very frustrating: the winters end up being just cold, grey, seemingly-endless stretches where the ground freezes and thaws in turn, and arctic winds whip up the barren, crystalized soil that stings into your eyes and ears with menace. Snow, though definitely not romantic past the first few days of the season's first fall, at least provides a much-welcomed diversion to endless winter grey.

That's what the norther lights do as well. We usually only get the green auroras here, with maybe a little purple blended in, but when they show it doesn't matter what color they are. They slink across the sky like silky dancers, always giving me the feeling that the performance is solely for me. An amazing natural phenomenon.

We just moved back into the apartment on the third floor of our building on the top of Þingholt, and have a stupendous view northwest over all of Reykjavík and beyond. When the auroras light up we can watch them from our living room windows or even just lay in bed and let the show lull us into a soft and dreamy sleep.