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Click on the picture to watch this audio slideshow about bird watching at Óshólmar, an area at the mouth of Eyjafjardará river just outside Akureyri in north Iceland, the largest Icelandic town outside the capital region. Not many tourists know about this attraction, which is perfect for a walk in the sun.
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Located just 40 minutes by car and six minutes from Keflavík International Airport, Sandgerdi (“Sandy Hedge”) is a growing town of 1,700 with a storied history and loads to see. Read this special promotion about the hidden secrets of one of Iceland's most charming seaside villages.
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Icelander Helgi Tómasson, the artistic director of the San Francisco Ballet, was honored with the Grand Cross of the Falcon Order, the grandest Icelandic reward, at a special ceremony at the presidential residence Bessastadir yesterday.
“I am extremely proud to receive this from my own nation,” Tómasson said as he received the medal from Iceland’s President Ólafur Ragnar Grímsson. Morgunbladid reports.
Fifty years have passed since an Icelander was given the Grand Cross for his contribution to culture and art. In 1957 the medal was given to Nobel Prize winner Halldór Laxness. Usually only heads of state are rewarded with the Grand Cross.
“I feel nervous to be taken into such a group; this is fantastic. I could never imagine this would happen; it didn’t cross my mind,” Tómasson told Morgunbladid.
Tómasson is in Iceland with a large group of dancers from the San Francisco Ballet to perform in Reykjavík City Theater in relation to the Reykjavík Arts Festival.
Next year the San Francisco Ballet celebrates its 70th anniversary and on that occasion ten pieces by Tómasson will be staged. “It is work seven days of week and all day,” the artistic director said.
Tómasson (born 1942) worked as a dancer in New York for 25 years before he was hired as the artistic director of the San Francisco Ballet in 1985, which is the first professional dance company in the United States.
A skeleton from a person who suffered from the Paget’s disease of bone was unearthed this week during an archeological excavation project at Skriduklaustur in east Iceland, where a monastery was once operated.
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The human being will be on display for the first time in its natural environment in the Reykjavík Family Park and Zoo next weekend. Visitors can observe three men and one woman in a cage after 10 am on Saturday and Sunday.
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The formal Videy island swim took place yesterday and there were three participants, two men and one woman, Thórdís Hrönn Pálsdóttir, who is the first woman to participate in the Videy swim since 1959.
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The Environment Agency intends to investigate whether the Heath Protection Authority handled the situation in Eskifjördur, east Iceland, in the correct manner when contaminated water from a trawler was carried into the town’s drinking water system.
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The second issue of the print edition of Iceland Review 2010 has just been published. Entitled “Under the Volcano” the magazine dedicates 20 pages, words and pictures, to the volcanic eruption in Eyjafjallajökull glacier which made headlines all over the word. New subscribers will receive the book Puffins as a gift and all subscribers are part of a draw to win a trip to Iceland. Click here to subscribe to the magazine.
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REVIEWS
Hendrikka Waage is an accomplished jewellery designer whose first children’s book Rikka and Her Magic Ring in Iceland, takes readers on an enchanted and educational journey through the country. It’s beautifully illustrated and a good lesson in geography, but the plot could have been better thought through and the moral of the story is a bit too prominent.
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On the third day of the Eyjafjallajökull eruption we drove from Skógar to Hvolsvöllur in total darkness, a distance of 18 kilometers. It was frightening, the darkness being so impenetrable that we could hardly see out the windows of the car. We could see faint lights from the farm standing right next to the highway.
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Ásmundur Sveinsson is among the foremost Icelandic sculptors. The current exhibition in the Ásmundur Sveinsson Museum in Reykjavík is entitled “I choose women who thrive…” and features women as symbols in the sculptor’s art. The works in the exhibition are selected from his entire career.
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