Pit

Icelanders are notorious for their hole-digging, an activity which often leaves roads and sidewalks unusable for indeterminate amounts of time. These holes appear literally overnight and are of various depths and dimensions. Whole streets are trenched and refilled summer after summer, creating a kind of seasonal, and very mysterious, work load for young Icelandic ditch diggers, renters of heavy earth-moving equipment and, of course, paving stone manufacturers.

This hole, near the intersection of Bankastræti and Þingholtsstræti, appeared miraculously a few weeks ago. Sadly, I barely remember what used to fill it, though I once lived on this street and walked past this site many times a day. What will this hole's future be? We'll just have to wait and see...

By the way, this Uncyclopedia is a funny and unique take on Iceland and the world. Read and enjoy...!

Comments

Anonymous said…
Nice link to the uncyclopedia. I enjoy your blog.
10/01/2005
Anonymous said…
Hi maria,

i'm from italy and i found your blog while looking for reykjavik images on the web. I've been interested about Iceland for some months, since i began listening to sigur ros and mùm, so it's even a pleasure to discover, by reading your blog, that your man is in a band and you're friend to a band like gus gus (they're quite famous also here!!!).
in these days i'm trying to convince my girlfriend to have our next summer trip (2006) in iceland, because i'd really like to enjoy some concert of iceland bands up there!! and also have a trip along the sprengisandur road across the central area of the country... anyway i'm building my trip with the help pf the lonely planet's guide to iceland!!
I'll soon have a look to the advices you posted for travellers on the blog this spring about everyday life in reykjavik, and by the way i mean to thank you for giving infos and interesting news about your great town and country.
i hope one day i'll get to visit iceland and enjoy its beautiful charm!!! greetings from italy!
10/08/2005
Einar said…
Nice blog! You're writing interesting articles here, good and ideas, nice pictures too. For me as an icelander abroad, or luxembourger of icelandic origin (depending how you look at it), it's particularly interesting to see your point of view, you've got a good sense of observation and good humour, true "iceland eyes", nice pictures too.

Nice link to "uncyclopedia" too :-)
10/10/2005
American Crusader said…
Nice blog... I actually came across it while reading another blog on Western Society(http://westernworldpolitics.blogspot.com/) I remember my father telling me about his time in Iceland. He was in the military and he said that he had never seen a country with such natural beauty and where the people were as nice. What is with the holes?
10/13/2005
Anonymous said…
Hi Maria --

I'm one of your sister Addy's co-workers and I just wanted to tell you how much I love your blog. It makes me really excited to finally visit Iceland soon & experience it for myself.

-Paul
10/14/2005
Iceland Eyes said…
I hope everyone got the slight cynicism entwined in this post. I mean it when I say that Icelanders love to dig holes, but it's not in the same class of cultural phenomena as, say, Japanese tea ceremonies or fetishistic totem-carving. Its extremely practical; its all about improvements to infrastructure and the betterment of living here in Iceland. What's noteworthy about it, though, is that someone, somewhere is deciding what holes get dug and when, and we the general population never know about it until a street is closed off and torn up, seemingly overnight and we are left trying to re-route ourselves through the city's streets in confusion, with a vague memory of that same street having been torn up last year for an equally mysterious reason (i.e. the laying of broadband cables, the refitting of old sewage pipes, etc.) We wonder out loud until someone inevitably says, "Well, whatever they're doing, it creates jobs, right?"

Thanks for all the nice complements, by the way. I've slowed down my posting, but haven't bailed out!
10/15/2005
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