Maybe it would be best for both Jón Bjarnason and the whole country if he were to move to Grímsey, an uninhabited island in the West Fjords.
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The 11th annual Night of Lights festival begins today in Reykjanesbaer municipality in southwest Iceland. Tomorrow and Saturday night, many of the country’s best bands will play in Reykjanesbaer and on Sunday local choirs will entertain guests.
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Click on the picture to watch an audio slideshow of a hike to Hraunsvatn lake in Öxnadalur valley in north Iceland, which lies at a height of 490 meters, interlocked between two steep mountains and a small glacier with a view of the majestic Hraundrangar peaks.
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Fjallabyggd (“Mountain Settlement”) is a skier’s dream. Its slopes are perfect for slaloming and there are also tracks for telemark skiing. Winter sporting enthusiasts can also go ice skating or rent snowmobiles. In summer, Fjallabyggd turns into a paradise for hikers. Read this special promotion about one of Iceland’s best hidden gems.
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Dr. Yngvi Björnsson (right) and student Hilmar Finnsson (left) from Reykjavík University (RU) won the international General Game-Playing (GGP) Competition at the AAAI Conference in Vancouver, Canada, this week.
The conference is one of the largest and most prestigious artificial intelligence (AI) conferences in the world and the GGP Competition, held for the third time this year, is one of several side events at the conference.
Björnsson’s and Finnsson’s entry, the CADIA Player, fought for the first place against an entry from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). The university placed second last year and won the competition in 2005. RU has never competed before.
The CADIA Player was developed by Björnsson and Finnsson at the Center for Analysis and Design of Intelligent Agents (CADIA) at RU, the only laboratory in Iceland dedicated to the research and development of artificial intelligence.
The AAAI GGP Competition was founded by Stanford University with the purpose of encouraging research in the field of artificial intelligence. Software entered in the competition is designed to play nearly all games, unlike conventional gaming software.
Click here to read more about the competition.
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 2010 Eruptions 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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Dadi Gudbjörnsson's art with its smiley faces, Aladdin's lamps, gleaming hearts, blue mountains and psychedelic flora of unearthly origin reminds me of the cheesy R.E.M. song “Shiny Happy People”. The sugar-sweet naivety fails to amuse me but I must admit it infects my mood with delirious joy.
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Former President of Iceland Vigdís Finnbogadóttir turned 80 on 15 April this year and Mayor Hanna Birna Kristjánsdóttir—in making her an Honorary Citizen of Reykjavík to mark the occasion—observed that Finnbogadóttir’s life was interwoven with that of Reykjavík. In June 1980 Finnbogadóttir made history when she became the world’s first democratically elected female head of state.
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Today, August 30, and tomorrow is your last chance to visit the exhibition “Eau De Parfum” by Andrea Maack at the Spark Design Space in Reykjavík. In the exhibition space, Maack introduces three perfumes that are the result of her collaboration with French perfumery apf aromes & parfums.
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