Go Iceland!

I guess most of you know about this by now, but it is still very cool:

"Johanna Sigurdardottir, named as Iceland's prime minister on Sunday, is the first openly lesbian head of government in Europe, if not the world - at least in modern times.
[...]
In Iceland itself, however, the new prime minister's sexual orientation appears to be causing less excitement than it is abroad.
What is really historic about this new cabinet, says Skuli Helgeson, the general secretary of Ms Sigurardottir's Social Democratic Alliance, is not the fact that its leader is a lesbian, but that for the first time in Icelandic history it boasts an equal number of men and women." The rest of the article on BBC news is interesting too. The Huffington Post also writes about it.

As for her politics:
"After President Olafur Ragnar Grimsson formally asked Ms. Sigurdardottir to lead a new government, she signaled at a news conference that she planned a shake-up of the Haarde government’s policies, particularly on housing and jobs. “All the ministers in my cabinet must work fast, take firm action and accept responsibility for their actions,” she said. “The people of this country must see that there is a new government in place which will defend their homes and rebuild the job market.”

Ms. Sigurdardottir comes to the prime minister’s job with a formidable reputation. As social affairs minister in several governments since 1987, she is credited with pushing through policies that widened housing opportunities for Iceland’s poor and strengthened the social welfare system. She has said she will use her powers as prime minister to push for debt relief for the most vulnerable Icelanders" (NY Times).

Roadside toilet

I've nicked a photo from the wife (again). She's been driving around the western part of Finnmark, and the winter landscape is gorgeous - especially now that the day light is coming back. I'm sure she'll post some photos in her own blog soon.

She didn't just take a photo of the toilet, she had to make a stop there as well. According to her, it was really really COLD. Looking at the photo, I can believe that!:-)

Lurking in the poetry section

I bet some of you might recognize this feeling:

"So I set off towards my local bookshop, the Borzoi, in Stow-on-the-Wold, and then I had a panic attack and found myself calling our very own literary editor, Erica Wagner: I wanted to be sure that I had the title of Bechdel's book just right. It's all very well ordering a book called The Essential Dykes to Watch Out For in London or Manchester or Paris or San Francisco, but my bookshop is full of retired gentry piling up their biographies of Churchill and taking home multiple copies of Niall Ferguson. Even as I went through the door, some chap was booming away about ordering the Schofield Bible and had they got that “Mitford thingy?”

Erica calmed me down - she is like human chicken soup - and I lurked in the poetry section until there was a lull, then I babbled my request.

No, they didn't have it in stock, but, and, what was the title again? Dykes? At that moment a dozen colonels' wives appeared at once, so quick-thinking Kevin at the counter said: “I will find that book about HOLLAND for you.”

Sure enough, a few days later, the call came, and Anthea, who runs the shop and always wears pearls, said: “Your HOLLAND books are in. We've got them under the counter for you - in a bag.”

So I went and collected my dykes, and just to save face ordered a vastly expensive print-on-demand copy of Ted Hughes's Shakespeare and the Goddess of Complete Being. I had to do this so that I too could boom a title over the counter, instead of finding myself speaking something like French - or certainly a language where none of the words meant what I thought they meant."

Great writing by Jeanette Winterson, as always. Read the rest here.

Snowy weather

This is a photo of our house! In the background you can see the wife trying to shovel some snow. Go here if you want to see more photos from yesterday's weather in Båtsfjord! Click "Neste bilde" to see next photo.

We've had this kind of weather the last couple of days. The mountain road is closed, and the stores have run out of milk! Yesterday the schools were closed. It's not often it is like this, fortunately. Today it is already a little better, so maybe they'll open the road tomorrow.

Swimming in November

Earlier on I bragged about going swimming - here's the proof!



It's two o'clock, and already dark of course. I have to admit we cheated a little bit - there's a sauna nearby! Still, some people opted out. They prefered to drink a small brandy, while watching and telling us how brave we were:-)




Here's the beach while there's some daylight: