the report returns

Gleðilegt nýtt ár! Happy 2007, and a belated one at that. Sometimes, as I learned this past month, the muses just stop singing for a little while. Indeed in the deep dark of an Icelandic winter, it can feel like I haven't really been fully awake for weeks. This year I feel like I've been dozing at least as far back to when my American readers were celebrating Thanksgiving. It's been a long, dark slog, this one.

But the light is returning. The other morning, walking down the hill toward my new job, I detected the faintest glow over in the southeast. It was 8:45 a.m. So things are starting to happen. The dreamy long midwinter's night is coming to an end.

And then last night, in a flashback to my halcyon days as a plugged-in local, I went out for a beer with an NPR journalist. He's in town for several weeks interviewing Icelanders (and me) about why we think Iceland is such a happy place. Every year when the "happiness" surveys hit the presses, Iceland always finishes respectably, usually in the Top 5. (American readers, hold your vitriol. I know it hurts to hear that another country might have a slightly happier populace. But hey, it's a big world.) So we talked and one beer became two, him frantically scribbling notes in a little Moleskine at various points. It was odd which of my comments would trigger the frantic scribbling and which didn't. And I realized just how hard it is to convey a whole culture and a lifestyle to an outsider who's in town for just a couple of weeks. There's just so much to convey and we really just scratched the surface. So it's back to the Iceland Report where over the past couple of years you, my faithful readers, have hopefully gotten a bit of the flavor of life in this happy land.