Bill & Sheri’s Icy Adventure

So it’s day five and Sheri and I decided to just hang out for the day. We got up and went and had coffee at Te and Kaffi, then did a little shopping for ourselves and others. Won’t list them here since there are surprises.

Sheri found the Aurora Museum which is dedicated to the Northern Lights. I wish we had known of this exhibit before we went on the tour as it was very helpful and informative (although our guide Tony did cover some of the items from this tour). Following is how an Aurora is created:

The Sun sends us more than heat and light; it sends lots of other energy and small particles our way. The protective magnetic field around Earth shields us from most of the energy and particles, and we don't even notice them.

But the Sun doesn't send the same amount of energy all the time. There is a constant streaming solar wind and there are also solar storms. During one kind of solar storm called a coronal mass ejection, the Sun burps out a huge bubble of electrified gas that can travel through space at 80 million miles per hour. Within 8 hours, these storms blow past Mars, after 16 hours it passes through Venus, next up Earth.

When a solar storm passes earth, some of the energy and small particles can travel down the magnetic field lines at the north and south poles into Earth's atmosphere. Creating the Northern (Aurora Borealis) and Southern Lights (Australis Borealis).

There, the particles interact with gases in our atmosphere resulting in beautiful displays of light in the sky. Oxygen gives off green and red light. Nitrogen glows blue and purple.

Following are how some cultures view the arrival of the Northern Lights:

In the far north of North America the Inuit Indians believed the lights were shadows of deceased relatives and friends. When the Northern lights appeared it the deceased marching and dancing around to remind them of their presence.

Russian Folklore associates the lights with the fire dragon Ognennty Zmey. It seems that if you left your wife alone too long, the fire dragon came and she would end up pregnant. (Only the Russians would come up with this one).

In China’s folklore, the Aurora Borealis has been linked to fertility and child birth. In Chinese culture it is believed a child conceived under the Northern Lights will be blessed with good fortune, beauty and intellect.

In Norse history, the Northern Lights have many versions of their effect. One story is that the lights reflected on the shields of the Valkyries racing across the sky to their final resting place in Valhalla. The Northern Lights are also linked to dead women, especially dead virgins and children who were killed by accident or still born.

When the lights were dancing around, the spirits were happy, if not then the people would whistle or clap their hands to cheer up them up.

For Iceland, the Northern Lights supposedly lighten the pain of women in childbirth. However, if the mother stares into the Northern Lights during childbirth, the child will be cross eyed, definitely a double edged sword. If the Northern Lights are red, it portends bad news.

The Finns believed that the Northern Lights were created by the arctic fox running around in the dark on winter nights. Their tail would sweep across the snow creating big sparks which were the Northern Lights.

From the Aurora Museum, it was time for lunch. I had fish and chips along with a fish soup at the Reykjavik Fish Company. Excellent food. Sheri on the other hand wanted a hot dog….

The dog came with brown ketchup, and a yellow…ish mustard (it’s regular mustard mixed with remoulade) and a crunchy onion spread. Sheri liked most of it (especially the crunchy onions) but the mustard was sweet. Next time NO mustard.

Then we roamed around for a while and Sheri found her favorite place so far. A local coffee shop and bookstore, where we had Illy coffee and Swiss chocolate and perused some to the books.

Then back to the apartment. Only sour note of the day was the dinner. There is a Vietnamese Pho Soup chain here, should you come, avoid it.

The stone and small brown building in the second picture, appears to be where the Russian Orthodox Church will be built at some time in the future. The third picture is just a street that Sheri liked the looks of. The bird was hanging around the hot dog stand and was more interesting looking than that stand itself or so we thought. Some interesting facts about that little stand:

It’s name is Baejarins Beaty Pylsur
It’s been located in and around the Reykjavik harbor since 1937
It has made it onto the list of most popular restaurants in Reykjavik and is now a major tourist attraction.
It reached global fame when President Bill Clinton at there in 2004.Läs mer