In shock

I am in shock right now. At least I think I am. I am apparently too numb to actually be aware of the shock. I think I just finished my dissertation. I don't know what to do now.
I have been working on it and thinking about it constantly for more than a year now, so I feel almost like an orphin now. I don't know where I belong. I just finished putting on the finishing touches to it. I probably have something more to do, but at the moment I don't know what. I have been working on it from 8 o'clock tonight and I didn't even realize what time it was until I closed the draft12.doc, 10 minutes to 12 o'clock. I was so absorbed in my work I hardly even took notice of Mock the Week, even though I specifically put my alarm clock on so that I wouldn't miss it. Now that is bad.
My dissertation ended up being 9670 words + bibliography of about 300 words. That is not bad.
I came home today in another shock. Clarie and I were almost reduced to tears in Medieval Welsh Poetry class today, when we realised what amount of homework we face for next week. But I feel a bit better now that I have finished the dissertation. That clears a lot of space from my calander. But for Tuesday I have to translate a page (about 40 lines) of middle Welsh text, for Wednesday I have to translate a page (ca. 40 lines as well) of Old Irish text and Thursday is the killer. I have to translate a poem Y Dref Wen (The white town), thankfully a short poem, but the teacher is actually wanting us to do some work on it of our own, and refused to give us a wordlist. How can I put this delicately. SHIT!

A note on the poem! The first line looks like this;
Y dref wenn ym bronn y coet
Now we know that y dref whenn means the white town, but also, from today I know that bronn means chest or breast. I am almost certain that the line is not 'The white town in the breast of the forest'. So I am hoping that bronn can be a middle of something as well, as in 'The white town in the middle of the forest'. We will see.

Burns Night

"Tae a Fert"

Oh what a sleekit horrible beastie.
Lurks in yer belly efter a feastie.
Just as you sit doon among yer kin,
There starts to stir an enormous wind.

The neeps and tatties and mushy peas,
Stert workin like a gentle breeze.
But soon the puddin' wi the sauncie face,
Will have you blawin all over the place.

Nae matter whit ye try tae dae,
A'bodys gonnae have to pay.
Even if ye try to stifle,
It's like a bullet oot a rifle.

Hawd yer bum tight tae the chair,
Tae try and stp the leakin' air.
Shift yersel frae cheek to cheek,
Pray tae God it doesnae reek.

But aw yer efforts go assunder,
Oot it comes - a clap o' thunder.
Ricochets around the room,
Michty me, a sonic boom!

God almighty it fairly reeks,
Hope I huvnae pooed ma breeks!
Tae the loo I better scurry,
Aw who cares, its no ma worry.

A'body roon about me chokin,
Wan or two are nearly bokin.
I'll feel better for a while,
Cannae help but raise a smile.

"Wis him!" I shout with accusin glower,
Alas too late, he's just keeled ower!
"Ye dirty thing!" they shout and stare,
I don't feel welcome any mair.

Where ere you go let yer wind gang free,
Sounds like just the job fur me.
Whit a fuss at Rabbie's party,
Ower the sake o' wan wee ferty!!

I am going to a Burns night and ceilidh! Ligga ligga lái!!!

Detta mér nú allar dauðar lýs úr höfði

!Bara láta vita ég er ekki með lús!
This is going to be a rant about Americans, or at least a particular American. But not Bush. Probably someone related to him though.
Yesterday I woke up to Glasgow covered in snow. Nothing much in Glasgow, it faded quite quickly into slush But around Glasgow it a bit different and it made it difficult for a lot of people to reach Glasgow. A few days earlier during the evening it snowed a wee bit, but nothing that stuck. That didn't matter to the people outside my window who shrieked and shouted and stuck their tounges out to try to catch the snow. It was so funny to vitness this extreme reaction to snow.
But what I heard yesterday, breaks all records.
One of my classmates is from America and she was telling me about her flatmates reaction to the snow. Her flatmat is from the southern states and has never seen snow before. What she said shocked me, to say the least.
She said that they had been in the kitchen talking and that all of a sudden her friend had gone silent. She looked up to see her friend staring outside the window. My classmate then commented that it had started snowing and her friend looked at her and said; 'snowing, that's snow? I thought it was a volcano!'
A VOLCANO!!!
How in Gods green earth is that the most rational conclusion to get to when seeing why flakes flutter by your window.
I think that it is obvious that this girl has been watching Volcano way too often and never seen The Day After Tomorrow.

How can I not include these ads

These are probably the most funniest I have ever seen, usually Icelandic ads are no laughing matter but these just take the cake.

Ad #1


Ad #2

A friendly reminder ...

A special part of going to the cinema is the ads that run before the movie. My mom and I are in the agreement that ads before movies at Scottish cinemas are among the most funniest you ever will see. Now a new thing has been added to the list of fun things to watch at the cinema, not just the film. This bit runs just before the film starts as a friendly reminder to shut your phones off. It is hilarious!

I should start charging taxi drivers

Today I became convinced I should start charging taxi drivers for my service. Usually, when a person takes a taxi, they expect to be transported to whatever destination they desire and I am fine with that. But, here a wee situation presents itself. Quite often when using the service taxis provide the drivers strike up a chat with the passenger, namely me. Now, I have not been back in Glasgow a week, but already I have held 3 presentatoins and open discussion on Celtic history and civilization. In a way it is good, because it keeps the material fresh for me, but it does become a wee bit annoying when you are battling "weekend historians" or taxidrivers who "I was always very intrested in history" start filling you in of all the historical or scientific knowledge they "don't" have just because they read a book. Well hooray, they read a book, and all of a sudden they are experts. They talk about stuff that makes no sense and I don't even know how such rubbish ever got into print what some of them are spouting at me ... and I have to pay them for taking me places. A lecturer at the University of Glasgow gets about 40.000 pounds a year, I wonder if I couldn't charge them about 10 pounds for my servic of correcting them.

In memoriam

Magnus Magnusson, a great British / Icelandic broadcaster died today. He was born in Iceland and never gave up his citizenship although he had been living in Scotland from when he was very young. He was educated in Oxford and Copenhagen in Icelandic sagas and truly a great scholar with a vast knowledge about the viking era and the sagas. In Britain he is mostly known for being the presenter on the popular Mastermind quiz show.
Magnus Magnusson was a great inspiriation for me in regards to what I wanted to study. His works helped and guided me in what I hope is going the be the right direction. I am now in my final year of Masters degree from the University of Glasgow in Celtic Medieval studies, including civilisation and languages. For my dissertation I looked at the work of Magnus Magnusson along with his late friend Hermann Pálsson who truly were the great scholars of their time regarding the Icelandic sagas and the age of writing in Iceland. My essay; Celtic influence on Icelandic medieval literature; with special attetion to Laxdæla saga I rely a lot of Magnus Magnussons thoughts and research on Irish influence on Icelandic culture and his work is truly worth noting.
There truly is a want of scholars of his caliber, especially in the field of the Icelandic sagas and the Irish literature. He leaves a great void behind, a void that will take a very long time to fill.
God bless you and your family.

The 14th santa clause has gone ...

to Glasgow. Left Iceland early in the morning and am now (sing-a-long) All by myself in Glasgow. And I am cold. There is no hot water in the building ... that I have found so far. Even though my window is closed and my radiator on full, the floor is still icy.
I'm gonna let them know tomorrow so that I will hopefully get some hot water in the very near future. I will not survive winter in Scotland without it. I don't want to be flying home every weekend to have a bath... heheheh.
Will write more on my progress here when relevant.

All kinds of news

During my stay here in Iceland I have enjoyed all types of weather, and today is no exception. The Christmas snow is finally here and already everything has gone white that can. And these are big flakes and it must be said, it is a beautiful sight although not so much a welcome one.
Yesterday sure turned out to be a surprise. I stayed home studying and am now on the final meters of my essay. But there are some things that have to wait until I go back to Glasgow (incidentally which is tomorrow) because some of the sources I need for the essay are there. And then I decided to send a copy to my teacher as well as take a copy of the files. Thank God I did. My brother came over with his family around dinner time and they stayed for dinner and then he was trying to install a new virus protection program on my computer and after 3 hours of one thing after another failing, the computer went dead in the water! (A few years ago my computer got a bad case of the virus and some eenybeeny little bits that got left behind were wreaking havoc with the computer now). But I just spoke to my brother and he managed to move all my files from the old harddrive over onto a new one (and a bigger one) so I am just totally happy, right now. I only had about 2gb left on my old harddrive. I have a considerably more to spend now. But this just shows how important it is to take backups of all your files, I have a backup of my files on two other locations as well as a backup of my essay on four locations. So no matter what goes wrong I wont suffer too heavily. But it doesn't lessen the severity of not having the computer near you for a few hours, it is agonising, I feel almost like I lost a limb. But it is being returned to me today, which leaves me totally happy.

BACKUP!!!!! YOUR FILES

New Year Photos

Here to the left I have put up a link (or here) to my photoalbum on the net for you to see photos of New Years Eve. My brother took these photos (with one or two taken by me) last night when Iceland was busy celebrating the coming of the New Year and buring out the old. There are photos taken at the bonfire in Kópavogur and the firework display. Then we are at my place on the balcony taking photos of Reyjavík loosing itself celebrating the new year. These photos are incredible and I promise you they have not been photoshopped in any way, directly from camera to computer to the internet. Hope you enjoy them and please leave a comment either on the photo page or here if you liked them.