Roy Sigurd Karlsbakks blogg

Yet another sunny day, temperatures up to 15 degrees and I’ve been around photographing new parts of town. Back at Prikið for some food (I’m not going to eat at that hotel again).

I kept trying to make MMS work with this temporary Icelandic subscription, and logged into tal.is to see if I could find anything there. Finding the web page was in Icelandic only slows down things a wee bit, and I yet haven’t found much about that. I had to smile when I came across the name under which the subscription was registered. It seems the guy in the shop has given me a new name and all – instead of asking, he just registered me as “Utlendingur Ljósmyndari” (foreign photographer – I usually carry a camera) and a fictional national identification number and ditto email and mailing address.

Walking around in Reykjavík is strange and somehow depressing. Some houses are old and shabby, just looking into a backyard from Laugavegur can show decay. Prior to the market crash, there were lots of building projects here. Some still are in the works, but very slowly. Some have even been abandoned. Hildigunnur told me some of the older houses were bought by people for them to fall apart so they could be replaced by modern buildings. One rather new building I passed had large stone tiles falling off its facade, potentially hurting or even killing people passing by. When the flat owners tried to have it fixed, no one could trace who actually built the building in the first place, much like the owners of the ferry Scandinavian Star were never found when the ship caught fire and 158 people were killed. Somehow they may have found a solution, since I saw a guy on a lift working on it the other day. But then – if the tiles continue to fall off, the whole facade is likely to need replacement, which won’t come cheap.

Going by Kolaportið, the weekend flea market mentioned yesterday to look around and see if I could find anything more interesting. I bought some more dried fish and even found found some kæstur hákarl, fermented shark – if people here actually eat that, the least I can do is to taste it.

I seem to have forgotten to show pictures of Prikið. This place deserves a black and white picture. The place is protected by preservation laws, so they can’t change anything apart from some stuff like new loudspeakers and so on. The service is, as mentioned earlier, quite variable, but mostly good. Their website shows an old couple, which matches the interior here, but not really the clientele, which are mostly people of all ages with younger people (20-25ish) at night. First time I was here, they were playing Edit Piaf and other fifties’ music, but it seem to vary a lot. Nice place!