Text: Ellen Wild
There are two winters here in the north. There are many more seasons than four in these parts of the world, but there are two winters. There is the winter where the light disappears and then there is the winter where the light comes back.
Right in the middle is where we are in our story. Right where the first rays of sunshine caress villages here and there. Depending on how here and there is seated between the black and white mountains, the first lover's kiss of the sun comes sooner or later.
But how we were patient, how we awaited these tender days. Oh, how we chased the sun, how we crave those pecks of gold warming our eyelids. It’s a promise us that light will come. That all the light we could wish for, will travel back to the North. And as we emerge on the other side of darkness, we celebrate the sun. We make sólarkaffi or solboller (also known as how humanity finds excuses to eat ridiculously sweet things).
Not that the weather has allowed us to enjoy those three rays of sunshine.
Blowing, howling, falling to the ground.
Light or no light, we do still live on this island.
But, always choose cold and light over cold and dark, common wisdom that is.
Waking up to the light, also brings what was hidden in the open.
Those things that grew in the dark. Specks of hope growing into intentions.
But also, those things that hid in the shadows. Those things that emerged from deep underground.
We woke up to ashes and loss of home.
Burning, claiming, fires in the night
We woke up to the world still being a political mess. To old leaders channelling their inner toddler.
There are some things, we can’t do anything about, but to be in awe of the magnitude of nature’s power. There are some things we can do very little about, were our voices of despair and disgust, have to travel a very long way to the other side of the world. But there are things where we do have power, were our voices, spoken from the heart, can protect this land we live on. How we can fight to honour and respect our mother Iceland.
So, please, let us not wake up to whaling too.
Please, let us respect what lives under those crashing waves.
Please let one rich man not play God over the oceans. Let one old man, not again, be crowned king over the seas.
It is time to bring into the light, those things that are morally questionable.
Always choose cold and light over cold and dark.
Let the sun give us courage.
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