Day 9

June 18, 2018

10:32 PM Iceland Time

Today has been a beautiful day. It has been a bit cold with a wind chill, but the sun was out a lot of the day and we saw some blue skies! I started the day with a trip to the thermal pools. A few of us Snorris woke up early to go before class since we missed it yesterday. We tried to practice some of our Icelandic with each other while we relaxed. Then we headed over to the University for our Icelandic classes.

After our Icelandic lesson, we had a special guest named Svavar Knutur who is a singer songwriter. He was hilarious and was a great storyteller! He told us a bit about Icelandic culture as well as some Icelandic myths and legends that he sings about. He not only writes his own music, but he also sings some old Icelandic folk songs. One of the stories that I found quite amusing was about the Tilberi. A tilberi was believed to be a demon that was conjured by witches to steal neighbor’s milk. For a woman to create a tilberi, she would get a rib from a goat or another type of corpse and would twist sheep’s wool around it. Then she would put this bone in her cleavage and go to church and pretend to drink communion wine while secretly dripping it onto the wool between her breasts. She would do this multiple times and each time, the tilberi would become more and more alive. Once she did this for three Sundays in a row, she would let it suckle on the inside of her thigh, which would create a creature resembling a worm with sharp teeth. Then the woman would tell this tilberi to go to neighboring farms and steal their milk! Sounds a bit familiar doesn’t it? (Goes to show how ignorant men were back in the old days about woman’s anatomy; it was their explanation for menstruation! Haha) Anyways, after Svavar told us a few stories, he serenaded us with a few of his own songs he wrote as well as some old Icelandic folk songs. Turns out he is on iTunes and Spotify, so check him out!

Later in the afternoon we had a lecture about Icelandic culture. After that, we had a bit of free time. Today was one of the Snorri’s birthdays and she wanted to go on a bike ride on the city bikes that you can rent. So we had a little short bike ride along the coast. Then we met up with more from our group and went to the Icelandic Phallological museum. It is officially the largest collection of mammal phalluses in the world! All of us weren’t able to keep a straight face. The collection started out as a joke between brothers when they kept giving their brother whale penises, and after receiving about 13 specimens, they decided to open up a museum. They had whale, polar bear, seal, walrus, elephant, zebra, narwhal, homo sapiens specimens and more.

Then we all broke off into smaller groups where we each went to a different family’s houses to have dinner. Most of the families hosting dinner were either on the Snorri board or were past Snorri West participants. I went to the home of a past Snorri West participant. They family was so happy to have us over and were very hospitable! I’ve come to realize that if anyone knows that you are a western Icelander not only do they say, “Velkominn heim!” (welcome home) but they treat you like family. Everyone I have met is very kind and is happy that we are here learning about our heritage. They had prepared an amazing meal for us, and we talked about where we were all from, where we are going and what everyone does. We chatted for a few hours about Iceland amongst other things. It was so nice, apparently their aunt knits all the time, and they had an overstock of Icelandic wool hats, so they gave us each one! I may end up meeting up with them later during my home stay here in Reykjavik.

I should get off to bed, I do have a full day again tomorrow. Stay tuned for more updates!!!