Hello from Ísafjörður!!
I have spent the past week settling in here and am enjoying my time with my host family. There were a handful of minor holidays this week in advance of Ash Wednesday: I got to eat a bolla (sweet bun with cream inside that was very tasty), I got to hand out candy to children in costumes who sang for me, and I got to eat salted lamb and potato soup. I don’t have photos of any of this so here’s a photo of Kisa instead.
Kisa means "kitty" in Icelandic! He has a real name but everybody just calls him Kisa.
My Knitting Journey
Knitting is a big deal in Iceland. It’s very popular here, and it’s more socially acceptable to knit in public, in class (!), and so on. There is a lot of wool yarn in Iceland thanks to all the sheep here. Most wool yarn comes from the inside of the sheep’s fur, where it is very soft. But Icelandic yarn utilizes the fur that is on the outside of the sheep, which is more rough and scratchy but is also more insulating and water resistant. Both of these types of wool are combined to make Icelandic lopi.
And thus comes the traditional Icelandic lopapeysa, which literally translates to “wool sweater”. It originally came around in the 1940’s, the same decade that Iceland gained its independence from Denmark. It features a pattern on the yoke, which keeps your shoulders warm thanks to the extra yarn.
Some of my friends here have decided to buy a lopapeysa as a souvenir of their trip. There certainly are a lot of them for sale, but they are very expensive; most of them are more than $200! But there’s a reason for the high price: The Handknitting Association of Iceland was created to preserve the integrity of the lopapeysa. They ensure that items sold as “lopapeysa” are actually handmade in Iceland and made with 100% Icelandic wool. This is why they’re so pricey -- the knitters are getting paid fairly for their work!
I’ve decided that instead of buying a lopapeysa, I am going to make my own. While I am more of a crocheter, I know the basics of knitting. But I’ve never made (knit or crochet) a sweater before! So this is going to be a journey of learning how to knit, learning how to make a sweater, and learning how to do it the Icelandic way.
In my very first days in Selfoss, I went to a local yarn store, bought some Léttlopi (a type of Icelandic wool yarn), and started making a hat. It was my first time knitting in a circle and my first time knitting with multiple colors; I knew I needed to practice before I started the sweater.
Hat in progress and hat completed!
I finished making the hat on my first day moving into my homestay. This was a great way for me to start a conversation with my host mom about knitting. She is a big knitter and was more than happy to help me with my sweater journey. She brought out some of her Lopi pattern books, then showed me the website where I could look through more. Once I chose my pattern, we found the designer’s website and I bought the pattern from Ravelry, a knitting/crochet website. I also got a bunch of Léttlopi -- my host mom’s own mother had made the same sweater pattern before, so she called her to get advice on how much yarn I should get -- I got 9 balls of black Léttlopi, which will be my main color. For the other colors, my host mom is letting me use her supply because she has a lot and wants to get rid of it.
And then I started knitting! It’s been a learning experience already (I accidentally knitted the hem inside out…) and I am having a great time. I just hope I can get it done before I leave Iceland! Here is my progress so far:
I just finished the hem and am almost done with the hem pattern!
Albedo
I haven’t talked about environmental studies or science at all in this newsletter and I need to change that! So I’ll introduce you all to a topic that we discussed in class this week: albedo.
Albedo is basically a measurement of how well a surface reflects sunlight. Things that are darker will absorb more sunlight, while things that are more white will reflect it. Thus, snowy landscapes and sea ice have a very high albedo because they are very white and thus reflect sunlight back into space.
The albedo is high here in the Westfjords.
This week in class we learned about climate models, and all the interconnected earth systems that scientists need to represent in their models. The sea ice albedo system is a perfect example of a positive feedback loop, or is a system that feeds into itself: When the earth gets warmer, sea ice melts. When sea ice melts, the reflective white surface is replaced with the much darker ocean. The darker ocean surface absorbs more sunlight and heat, which makes the sea ice melt more, and the cycle continues. Feedback loops like this are part of why it’s so hard to create accurate climate models; for example, sea ice loss is happening at a faster rate than predicted. I know that’s depressing, but this also makes me appreciate how fascinatingly complex the world is. There are so many brilliant scientists and coders, and even they can’t make a perfect model of Earth because there are so many components of our natural and unnatural world that play into each other so intricately.
One last thing!
I saw the Northern Lights last night! Here's a photo!
Yay!
That’s all I’ve got for this week, thanks for reading! I hope everybody is doing well!