I thought of a better story about the aurora borealis so here is another picture.
My boyfriend and I went to Iceland for spring break about a year ago. We were staying for a week, and all I wanted to do was see the northern lights. Our first night there, I convinced him to take a stupidly expensive bus trip at midnight out to the middle of nowhere, where we would (ideally) see the lights sweeping up and over the frozen tundra.
We saw a lot of frozen tundra, wide expanses of brand-new earth covered in snow and frost, but we did not see any northern lights. And it was cold. We went back to our guesthouse.
Then the next day, we both came down with the most vile, debilitating 24-hour stomach “bug.” I feel like calling it a bug is too nice, because it was really a horrible awful monster. We spent a day and a half alternating hours in the bathroom with hours lying carefully in one specific position on the bed because it hurt too much to move. We watched the entire second season of How I Met Your Mother on iTunes because it kept us vaguely distracted from the nausea. And finally, the sickness mostly passed, and we fell asleep, too tired to do anything else.
My boyfriend woke up around nighttime, more recovered than me and very hungry. He ventured out into downtown Reykjavik to find a late-night food stand; I stayed home, sleeping. About an hour later he shook me awake. “Get up,” he said, “The northern lights. They’re outside.”
I dragged myself out of bed and pulled boots and a down jacket over my pajamas, then stumbled outside clutching his arm. We walked to the end of the street and looked up at the sky. Neon green undulated above our heads, small and wispy like a cirrus cloud. It moved more slowly than I expected, flexing and stretching.
It was still cold, and I still felt exhausted and a little sick. But we saw the northern lights.
Pretty volcano stuff abounds (if you guys haven’t been looking around the internet today).
pretty/scary
Iceland, yesterday. via
Whoa.
Amazing. Watch this.
“go quiet” is a film of jónsi performing the entire album acoustically, shot at home in reykjavík, iceland over new year 2010 by dean deblois, the acclaimed director of ‘heima’.
“the concept behind ‘go quiet’ was simple: it’s new year’s day in reykjavík, and jónsi awakens to a trashed house in the wake of his party. he avoids cleaning up and instead procrastinates by playing songs that reflect the night before, the bittersweetness of new year, and the melancholy of a year gone by” – director dean deblois.
This film is available on the limited edition of his new album. Aaaaannnd once again, I am completely blown away.
Seriously, watch this. Also, if you haven’t seen Heima, go do that now too. It’s one of the most strikingly beautiful things I’ve ever seen.
