We interrupt this trip rambling to inform you that... this all took place last month, and I'm home and blogging now.
Proceed.
I arrived in Stockholm on Monday, September 2. The land in Sweden is far different from Iceland: green, rolling farmland, rivers and lakes in the place of volcanic fields.
On the plane, I met my uncle from Minnesota. In the airport, I met my best expatriate friend during my year in Mongolia. She is Finnish and lives in Sweden. What a wonderful thing to see her again!
I visited with her family, and the next day, visited the holdings of the Folk Museum of Stockholm. So wonderful to see some of the Sámi items there. Later, Eeva took me around old Stockholm.
The square in front of the Royal Palace and the Nobel Museum.
The next day, the two of us were back at Arlanda airport. This time to fly to Luleå, Norbotten, Sweden.
The plane landed in Iceland very early. 6am? But, my bag was lost from my very first flight. By the time I had found the correct people and reported it for the second time (first time was in Toronto, just hours after not receiving it), and bought my round trip ticket for the flybys, and then driven the 50 minutes to downtown Reykjavik, it was eight in the morning.
I checked in, then started walking around the city.
Dora and I had exploring in common. I guess she's been here, too.
Hallgrímskirkja - the National Lutheran church.
Hallgrímskirkja is the largest church in Iceland, and one of the tallest buildings in Reykjavik. For about $8, one can take an elevator to the top and look around through the no-glass windows. Word to the wise: wind was from the west and rather cool.
view to the North/Northwest
Aren't the colored roofs charming?
I stayed for the Sunday service and chatted with some kind people who shared the history of some nearby army bases and their connections with Indiana. I had my first Lutheran church coffee, nearly a sacrament, and then walked out into the chilly rain. I visited the Handknit Guild store in the capitol, purchased a hat and some Einband yarn, since my knitting needles and project were in my bag that didn't arrive. Then, I went for quite a tramp through the city.
I ended up at the National Museum. What a lovely display of many objects both new and hundreds of years old. They included a beautiful carved horn from the 1500s, a Bible in Icelandic from a similar time period, woven rugs and carved furniture, a bronze molded object that could be 1000 years old, and a beautiful display of Icelandic knit shawls.
Icelandic knitting is traditionally in varying shades of natural wool, like these shawls. Aren't they etherial and beautiful?
Today begin my Sapmi adventure. Chris took a half day off work and drive me through bumper to bumper Chicago traffic to get me to O'Hare and my flight to Reykjavik.
Or, Toronto. That was the problem, it seems. We went to the international terminal #5, and no one had heard of Icelandair. And, no one at Icelandair had heard of marking on my itinerary that my first flight was with American Eagle.
We got to the right terminal at the end, and the right gate. I've boarded now.
The plane before ours at the gate was a bit delayed, so that meant we were, too. Once we all boarded, a wall of black clouds were upon us. We all de-planed.
O'Hare wall of storm
Then, we re-planed and were grounded. Then, we made it into the queue for take-off. At that point, our flight was cancelled.
O'Hare is kind of crazy when a couple hour of flights have been cancelled. We all scrambled to get rescheduled. I managed to be one of those chosen to make it out that night. Unfortunately, my connecting flight had already left for Iceland, so I got to spend a day in Toronto.
Having attended university in Canada, I have a deep appreciation for all things Canadian. I used my day there to travel downtown and FINALLY see paintings by the Group of Seven. Perhaps the most famous painting by Tom Thomson, West Wind, was not on display currently, but his preliminary painting for it was.
The Art Gallery of Ontario also had a special showing of Ai Weiwei's art. Wow. Totally worth seeing. I was very impressed with his woodworking, craftmanship and overall view of life as seen through an artist's eyes.
