Þjóðhátíð: Part II

Þjóðhátíð Part II

The scandalous description of the Þjóðhátíð festival needs to be tempered.  As I walk to the festival grounds, I'm walking alongside a lot of people in their 20s, but alongside just as many prams, families and kids, retired folk, the lot.  And I definitely don't see a lot of teenagers on their own.  

What I do see and was surprised and shouldn't have been, was the number of the traditional Icelandic sweaters I saw, on perhaps a third of the crowd. This festival is in Iceland and for Icelanders.  Not a posted sign in any other language but Icelandic.   It's an interesting feeling, not having a clue.

  

Main stage.  

Behind it is the children's playground and putt putt. 

Tent city with streets and addresses.  

Locals rent them and invite you in to enjoy 

their company and food and drink and general good time. 

High above the festival grounds.

In the foreground, the tent city, stage and crowd to the right; 

in the back, with the tower, is the children's area 

and far above it on the hill behind is where we'll have a bonfire.

The festival grounds are in a natural amphitheater, a rounded out bowl of an ancient volcano that is impossibly high and no matter how noisy the music might get, the town on the other side won't hear any of it.  The grassy grounds rise steeply to rock cliffs way way up but still cliffs.  The kind of cliffs that now and again drop rocks which roll down the side.  And there's a boulder here and boulder there.  

The Wall in the background protecting the crowd from the boulders in the background. 

So there's The Wall.  A wall of stones, boulders all bound in wire, about a meter high. It blocks off the seating area from the mountainside, and behind it the slope rises very steeply.  A kind of break wall should any stone find itself falling off and rolling down the slope to join the party.  It's also the men's toilet. 

I leave at about 10:30 because I'm way underdresst and I'm freezing.  About this time of the evening it's a sing along which is kinda fun to watch and listen to, but I'm going back to put on a lot more clothes.

I return at midnight, just before the bonfire is lit.  On stage is a famous pop star in Iceland and everyone is nuts for it and singing along properly to every song as one does at any pop concert.  Then a red ball of fire comes flying in the air to the largest bonfire pile of wood possible.  It's a huge cube matrix of wood and the size of any house on your block.  I didn't bring a camera this time, and wouldn't have filmed any of it anyway.  It was way too cool watching this massive fire take over.  I thought I'd at least wait until the fire burnt out before I headed back, but at 3am it's still burning.  Fun to watch, it's on a hill, and now and again a large ember would tumble down the slope and light a fire.  This is all quite aways from the concert area, so there's not any fuss about putting these out.

Before, I was too cold to get a beer or anything else, but warmed up by the bonfire, I go get a Tuborg, and it's in a half-liter can.   I made sure I went on a completely empty stomach.  Along with my second beer, I order a hamborgari and franskar but forget to ask for kokkteilsósa to dip your fries into.  (It's not ketchup or mayonnaise, but a kind of bearnaise.)   No matter.  I go to the shelf around the tent where there are many abandoned hamborgari baskets, half-eaten hamborgari and lots more masht franskar on the floor.  Oh look!  More than one basket had a left-over cup of kokkteilsósa.  That I could dip my own fries into.  

I said that I could dip my own fries into.  I didn't say I did.  And wouldn't I admit it if I did?  I admit that after two half-liter cans of Tuborg it did cross my mind.  But because it was a funny notion.  The lot of you reading this won't believe me either way (did he or didn't he?), but I did so only because it was funny.  Did what, Benjamin?

I'm not writing anything about the music!  There was that sing-along earlier, and then the big pop star Páll Óskar who ended with the lighting of the bonfire, then Skálmöld, a Viking heavy metal band (translates into "Lawlessness") and who´d´ve thought an intensely angry Icelandic ice pick drilled into your ears would get your head nodding to the beat?  That was the only set I stayed for the entire time.  

Did I find people dropping over drunk?  Tumbling down the slopes?  Trouble getting to the Wall (to pee)?  Yeah, of course, and then medics/security would get called over to the fallen and passt out, and they pickt him up and walkt him to the recovery tents.  It was more "poor idiot let's get him to the tent" than "stupid drunk we're off to the cells".   Making out.  Of course.  Sex.  None.  Not on or near the grounds at least.  There was another team of security, G something something something Eyja written on their uniforms (which does not translate into The Night's Watch) with torches, that I noticed monitoring the Wall and what might lie behind the Wall.

I did not wait for the bonfire to go out.  I'm sure it's still smoking this morning as I write this.  

(Where's Part I?  I'm having a serious debate with myself about that one getting posted.  You may have to ask for a e-postcard for that story.)
(Having been advised, Part I will only be available upon request.)
(Having been re-advised, Part I has been posted.)