A group of young icelanders practice the art of hanging out : )
Álftanes
GUEST PHOTOGRAPHER: Guðmann þór Bjargmundsson
This gorgeous seaside scene was taken by filmmaker and photographer Guðmann Þór, known as Mummi, out at Álftanes, a small district of about 1800 people just southwest of Reykjavik. Be sure to check out his website where you'll find many more stunning images of our lovely land.
Álftanes is an amazing place for nature walks, and has a very rich and colorful history starting from the Settlement era twelve hundred years ago. There is actually a very nice book highlighting easy nature walks in the Capital region which I was asked to translate into English called 25 Beautiful Walks - Walking Trails of the Greater Reykjavík Area (if you click on the red "Smelltu hér"link under the large image of the book, you will get a PDF preview. The book can be purchased here.)
I agree with this Iceland Review book review that additional info could have been added for non-locals, but I also agree that it is overall a very informative and enjoyable trail guide for just about anyone, local or intrepid guest.
If it's ICESAVE info you're looking for, here's a video recap from 2010 and here is a statement from the Government of Iceland to the world.
p.s. I'm really happy with the big new photo size on Iceland Eyes! Unfortunately, I can't increase the sizes of past posts without losing comments readers have made, unless someone at Flickr (ahem! Kevin : ) finds a way to make it so.
Climb
At the Reykjavik Zoo and Family Park on a beautiful spring day. (I'd rather not mention that the kid's pirate ship play feature is now sponsored by an oil company, with no less than five white signs posted along the ship's side, for all the spaced-out moms and dads to see...)
Pebbles
In macro, even the most mundane things in life show their true beauty. Here, a centimeter-sized stone, one of untold millions that provide softer landings in Icelandic playgrounds, does just that.
Our Harpa in Progress
The final touches on the Harpa concert hall are being put into place for the May 4th opening show with Vladimir Ashkenazy directing the Icelandic Symphony Orchestra.This immense and oddly-angled building, which hunkers at the eastern edge of the Reykjavik harbor, was part of a grand pre-crash scheme to redesign the city center as an international center of finance. The award-winning Danish Bjarke Ingels Group of architects (be sure to visit their website because it is very cool) was commissioned to design a global headquarters for Landsbankinn bank, which Ingels himself said he was excited about in his TED lecture until he found out the bank had gone bankrupt in October 2008. Watch this video from 2007 to get a visual on the once-grand plans for the Reykjavik harbor area and also for a virtual tour of the hall itself.
The big question, then, post-crash, was whether or not construction should continue on the concert hall, which is also to be used as a conference center. After much debate, construction did continue and today I think we are all fairly excited to see the finished results. (There is still some grumbling at the cost of cleaning the hall's thousands of individual panes of glass, a whopping 8 million króna or $70,000 a year.)
Conceptually, this is a gorgeous design and I think we are all hoping that, when finished and glistening like a multi-faceted jewel in waters of the bay, it will live up to it's lofty aspirations.