The Shire is actually in Iceland

For my Icelandic Folktales and Beliefs course we had a field trip to Árbærjasafn. It is an outdoor museum with old buildings (old being only from the mid 1800´s). There was a church, which had actually been moved the from the north of the country and then a few houses, a barn and a sheep hut. Most of the buildings were made of sod and stones, which I was told the method was passed down from the Celtic women and slaves that had been kidnapped by the vikings in order to use less wood. I will post the pictures on my other site soon (my stupid laptop still doesn´t like my camera even after installin the software again). All the buildings are also very short and small, which could be due to the cold and natural selection prefered smaller bodies that could keep the cold in better or perhaps malnutrition, their diet consisting of mostly meat.

Walking into the place you kind of feel like you´re stepping into Middle Earth and you might understand when you see the pictures. My friend Leif had commented a while ago how a lot of Icelandic guys look like hobbits (though their height has increased). Some may say that Tolkien was inspired by Iceland for his books (or perhaps more for the movies). The place was really neat though.

I got my cold back again. It is really annoying. It comes and it goes, I´ll feel fine and then it pops up again. I think I have to take it easy for a week, rest a lot and hopefully it will go away.

This Saturday I am going on a trip through the school for the sheep run. All the sheep are allowed to roam around in the fields freely and in the fall all the farmers round up all the sheep into a pen, and they are shorted and distributed to the rightful owners. I don´t really know what we will be doing but I´ll find out on Saturday. I think we are also visiting Geysir and Gelfoss on the way.

Then on Sunday, Leif and Tom are planning on having a Drag Show for the residence. I don´t quite remember how it came about, but something about Leif checking out Tom´s butt and how both had dressed up in drag dancing to It´s Raining Men in school. So THAT will be an interesting site.

till next time...