[Photos taken 26 July 2025, posted online 05 July 2026. Warm day today. Oh, what to do?… ]
The big hike of the ladies-trip was exploring Þakgil (“Thakgil” means “Roof-canyon”) and Remundargil, both a drive inland from Vík í Mýrdal, in Katla Geopark. The weather was excellent, and it was a fabulous day!
[Photos taken 25 July 2025, posted online 04 July 2026. Yes, I’m basically a whole year behind myself, but this time around I’m ok with it. Maturity is me? Also, this year’s ladies trip is coming up soon!! ]
Few things are as wonderful as when a group of people organize an activity, invite me along to enjoy the fruits of their labor, and the only expectations are shared costs, a positive demeanor, minimal complaining, and doing the dishes!
Yes, it was time for the third outing of “The Tens”, a group of ten ladies that are connected around a core of teacher-buddies. The destination was Vík í Mýrdal (“The Inlet in Swamp Valley/Mire Dale”), the southern-most village in Iceland. The big hike of the trip was in and around Þakgil (“Roof-canyon”), where I’d e-biked with my e-biking group a few years back. It’s such a pretty area that I was excited to go back.
However, finding affordable accommodation for 10 people, even a silly number of months in advance, was difficult. We ended up renting two apartments, which may have given us a potentially expensive taste for luxury, after staying in cabins the two previous years…
[Photos taken 12 – 24 July 2025, posted online 28 June 2026. Today marks Bjarki’s 19th birthday! Also, after mostly dry days for weeks, we’ve switched to intermittent showers, and the plants are grateful.]
The seemingly never-ending source of tasks that is our backyard got a little bit of extra attention for a few days. Flowers bloomed, bringing happy colors to our life. We upgraded our tent, summer vacation began, we visited Finnur’s parents, I kept going to the gym after tearing my calf so no more running for a while, we had social dinners, and I started prepping for my weekend-trip with 9 other ladies.
[Photos taken 01 – 11 July 2025, posted online 27 June 2026. Yes, pretty much a year behind my own self. Anna arrived in Iceland from Denmark last night for a summer break from the extreme heat in mainland Europe.]
July always turns into a summer-vacation count-down. Emma went to an all day scout-“camp” (her last year of eligibility, she was denied access the following year). I started jogging a bit after caving into my new Garmin watch’s insistence to make a running plan for me. We made it to the summer house with friends and played frisbee disc golf (folf) in nearby Hvanneyri.
[Photos taken 22 – 30 June 2026, posted online 30 May 2026. We’ve been busy! Bjarki graduated from junior college this week, a huge milestone!! And Finnur and I just returned from a long weekend in Scotland with my company.]
After long and detailed negotiations, Bjarki got permission to take six of his buddies up to the summer house over a weekend, unsupervised, to celebrate his 18th birthday at the end of June.
Previously, Finnur would have gone up to the house ahead of the group to get everything up and running, but the morning after Anna’s graduation he headed to the airport to spend a week in Germany for work! Thus, it fell to me to take Bjarki and two of his buddies for a daytrip to the summer house to go over their impending arrival and subsequent departure.
The rest of the week was a tale of stuff breaking and getting it fixed: Our charging station gave up the ghost, and so did Emma’s orthodontics. I also met up with a few girlfriends, there was a double 50th birthday party, and an old coworker of Finnur’s from California came for a visit with his gang.
[Photos taken 21 June 2025, posted online 17 May 2026. We’re back to mild weather, perfect for helping build a deck and glass-house at Finnur’s parents’ summer house.]
After three years of studying “biomedical engineering” (heilbrigðisverkfræði) undergrad at Reykjavik University, Anna graduated with a B.Sc, alongside her boyfriend, who completed “energy-engineering“.
She opted for a small family party (aka “the usual suspects”), which still filled our small house, especially since the weather gods decided on “pouring rain”. Thankfully we’d managed to put a small cover over the patio, so that’s where Finnur’s family congregated, while mine took over the living room.
[Photos taken 13 – 20 June 2025, posted online 15 May 2026. As of today, Bjarki has unofficially finished junior college, which means he can attend university in the fall. Well done him, finishing degrees is not to be taken for granted!]
Anna’s B.Sc. graduation from Reykjavik University loomed, and we planned to host a small celebratory party at home (which would still fill the house to breaking point). She’d decided to make home-made macarons both to give her fellow graduating friends, and to have at the graduation party, so she spent a lot of time in the kitchen. Others helped tidy the garden.
The week saw three (!) birthday celebrations, among them Finnur’s own very belated 50th birthday celebration at our summer house. We tried to make the most of the glorious dry weather by staining So. Much. Wood. Ironically, the weather gods decided to throw rain and wind at the Independence Day celebrations, so that became a cozy-indoors-day.
[Photos taken 12 June 2025, posted online 14 May 2026. The weather so far is staying “typical” for May, bright window-weather days (beautiful but very chilly), interspersed with rainy/cloudy milder days.]
My hiking group gathered after work to hike up Móskarðshnúkar (“brownish-grey-pass-peaks”), the Eastern-most part of Mount Esja easily visible from the capital area, one of the very few hikes on my “bucket list”. It’s a 2-3 (?) surprisingly lightly colored triangular peaks on top of a regularly colored base, often shrouded in clouds. Everytime I see them I now say to myself “I’ve been up there!”.
This hike was speed-controlled by the guide who is a physical therapist, and she kept the pace very slow and steady, which was great since it’s just up, up, and up. She also gave me the best technical hiking pointer I’ve ever gotten: it’s actually your back leg that should be doing all the work lifting you upwards. Take short steps, and use your rear-leg butt, back of leg, toes to lift yourself, so the front of the forward-foot thigh doesn’t have to do much except hold steady. This saves the front of the thighs for the descent.
Lo and behold, this was the first time ever that I wasn’t the last one off the mountain, since I still had some juice left in the front of the thighs! Totally blew my mind!
[Photos taken 01 – 11 June 2025, posted online 09 May 2026. Am I almost a full year behind myself? Yes, yes, I am. Most of my free time and mental energy has been eaten up by a voluntary treasurer position, but I can glimpse calmer seas ahead…]
June reverted back to normal-ish weather, after the insane heatwave in May. We kept prepping the backyard at home for Anna’s upcoming graduation party, and Finnur was very motivated to get the summer house into good shape as he’d invited his parents and siblings there to belatedly celebrate his fiftieth birthday (just in time for his fifty-first birthday!).
We managed to actually go on a date-night (we seem to need a booking far in advance, or we’ll just not go because it’s easier), and I kept gymming, in spite of my pinky finger leaking joint-gel again (yucky photo below). I managed to go frisbee golfing with Emma, and somehow convinced Anna that making dinner would be good practice before she moved out of the house!
[Photos taken 25 – 31 May 2025, posted online 11 April 2026. Most of the snow is gone, the sun is high in the sky, and gosh-darn-it spring may be in the air?!]
I’d signed up for a spring hiking-group, but ended up missing a lot of hikes because a) my Achilles tendons were super sore and fragile, b) I’d already hiked the same place in much better weather. But, finally all the stars aligned, and I made it to a hike, and had a lovely time.
The week that followed included a photo session, matching my deadlift PR of 1×140 kg without injury, making sushi at home (and nobody got sick afterwards), dinner-and-a-walk meet-up with a cousin, seeing signs of spring/summer for real, playing the Blue Prince computer game, buying a new watch, lots of garden work, a junior college graduation party, and going sailing!
