Next weekend, the first weekend of August, is an annual CRAAAAZY festival in the Westman Islands called The National Festival. The former population of about 4000 people will be doubled and people from the mainland will be infesting the communty for this mad weekend. The festival takes place in the valley Herjólfsdalur and they are now prepairing it, putting up stages, tents etc. I go past it everyday and its interesting to see the transformation. I have never been here during this festival (shame) and I am getting SOOOO excited :) I have friends coming over from the mainland and we are prepairing ourselves for a long, fun, exhausting, sore throated from singing, wet and a bit drunk weekend :)

My family visited me on the the weekend and we had great times. We walked everywhere, climbed a vulcano, went on a crazy boat ride, walked on Costa del Klauf (the beach is called Klauf, which means cow-hoofs/something diveded in two) - i guess its only funny in icelandic sorry... hahah :) We also saw loads of puffins and other birds and funny looking people. We were chased around by two women tourists that we thougth were twins because they were dressed in identical clothing, why do people do that?????? We found a very cute garage sale and I found a fantastic thing there, the ICELANDIC STUBBY HOLDER!!! Made out of wool with the patterns of the icelandic woolen sweaters. Very very very cute :) It was a fantastic weekend and great to reunite the family in this amazing place. KNÚÚÚS !!!

Today we climbed up Hani to get rock samples. Hani and Hæna means Cock and Chick and they are very small islands west off Heimaey, the main island of the Westman islands. It was quite a steep climb but probably is easy peasy for good climbers... which I am not :) But all went well and the island is amazing, a puffin haven with stunning views. Thousands of puffins whirled up when we got there and they kept flying in circles waiting for us to pass. Climbing down pictures were taken by Ingvar Atli Sigurðsson. More pictures HERE !!!

Virk sprunga liggur nærri Kárahnjúkastíflu og önnur liggur undir Desjarárstíflu. Vondur staður fyrir háar stíflur vegna þess hvað þetta er sprungið

Í gær var viðtal við Grím Björnsson jarðfræðing í Spegli RÚV. Hann telur stíflustæðin á Kárahnjúkasvæðinu óheppileg og bendir á að ekki var sagt frá jarðhitanum á svæðinu í skýrslu Landsvirkjunar um mat á umhverfisáhrifum sem jafnan er merki um sprunguhreyfingar í skorpunni. Athygli vekur að hönnun Kárahnjúkastíflu var breytt eftir á til að laga hana að jarðfræðilegum ástæðum. Sprungur geta opnast og vatnið fer í aðra átt en menn ætla sér. Þ.e.a.s. ekki í gegnum vélar virkjunarinnar.

Viðtal við Grím Björnsson, jarðfræðing í Speglinum 19. júní.

Check out this lecture given by David Attenborough :)

My friends Sigrún, Snævar, Steinunn, Ari and Bo (Ari´s danish friend) came to visit me over the weekend. This was SOOOOOOO much fun and we were very lucky not to have pissing rain the whole time :) They came with the ferry and some of them got extremely sick since the sea was quite rough. It was very windy on Saturday and we saw thousands and thousands of flying puffins in Stórhöfði, they filled the air and left us breathless. Ari forgot about the puffin ticks and was lying in the grass taking photos and his jacket was covered with huge ticks afterwards :)
We did "spranga" which is an Westmanislandish tradition of hanging in a rope on a cliff and throwing yourself between the rocks. They did this originally to practice for the egg collection on the high cliffs. We also walked a lot, went up the vulcano Eldfell, ate a lot of ice cream, went swimming, where we met our highschoolfriend Nonni, and ate more ice cream. We also explored the crazy nightlife of the town which involved a lot of indirect smoking which we had to avoid because of Sigrún´s pregnancy and there was also a local guy hitting on Snævar. The day after we saw that guy in the bakery with his wife and three children... For those who dont know Snævar, he is Sigrún´s fiancé... :)

MORE PICTURES HERE !!!!

More pics from Surtsey... Me doing a "David Attenborough" on gull eggs hatching

















Me and Rosie on the boat... my suit is 10 sizes too big ;)



















A group photo, Steini, Ingvar, me, Kristján and Rosie. Austurbunki behind...

I went to Ystiklettur today with Ingvar and we cheched out on the Shearwaters ... and ohhh my gooood... there are chicks now at all stages, we even found a squeeking egg, it must be a matter of minute/hours before it hatches :) it was the cutest thing, hearing the chick from the inside of the egg... I had to put my hand in all the burrows and i got really really dirty haha... Then I had to let the birds bite me a bit so I could get a firm grip on the beak and then pull them gently out of the burrow... amazing :)

There are more pictures HERE :)

This poor Sand Plover chick ran for his life when I chased him around... Isn´t it the cutest thing you have EVER SEEN?

Gorgeous puffin, I had to crawl to get this close to him...













A bit tired ;)
















My favourite the Golden Plover...

I caught this goregeous little Sand Plover (sandlóa) today. We are trying to get the male for marking but the female got into the trap. They are so funny trying to lead you away from the nest by pretending to have a broken wing, clever littla creatures. They also didnt like having the trap over their nest and kept walking around it, circle after circle after circle and by the end we had to give them a chance, took the trap away so they could lay on their eggs in peace for few hours. We will go back tonight and try again :)

Borat: Cultural Learnings from America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan

You´ve gotta love Borat :)

OMG, its so nice and warm outside but still they say its only 11°C .... I just cannot belaeave it, damn weather people ;) There are half naked children running around pouring water on each other and the grown ups are sunbathing or walking around in shorts and thongs (aussie thongs - flip flops). Perhaps Icelanders are so crazy to feel this warm in such cold weather, but I think the weather people are reading the thermometers wrong.

Well I have just been visiting my puffins in the lovely weather, there is egg shell everywhere so there are definitely lots of small little puffin chicks in the burrows, I cannot wait to see them with the camera, its being fixed at the moment.

The only problem with this amazing research is the damn puffin ticks, they are everywhere, it was not too bad today but there were still few of them crawling on me... I take the advise of the locals and always take a shower as soon as I get from the field and put my clothes outside and so far so good. I am so allergic to the bites and DONT want that to happen again, not after the tick horror I experienced in Australia... brrrrrr....

I am so stoked with all the new exciting music I am listening to... Last weeks it has been the Cary Brothers and now its Paul Mac (the half of The Dissociatives duo that I discovered in Australia).... Lots of cool music on these pages...

Hahah, my 4 seconds of fame ;) I was supposed to be interviewed but since I went home over the weekend I missed that chance, but as you can see I am very serious about my work ;) I dont know how long this link will last but if you go to to the link VefTV and scroll down until you find "Lundinn faðmar börnin sín" you will see me in the field watching my puffins. There will be a follow up in end of the summer so I might get the chance to be on TV again muhahahha :)

... mozilla firefox does not work on this link so use internet explorer or another browser...

Bird terrorism is happening in Iceland. Some IDIOTS have taken all the arctic tern eggs from Dyrhólaey !!!!!!!!! How can people DO THAT ???????? The poor terns have been suffering all spring since the sand eels are disappearing and people were afraid they might not lay eggs at all and when they finally do those disgusting people ruin everything. On top of everything they drove a big car off roads and left terrible marks in the delicate vegetation. The terrible truth is that this is not the first time it has happened in Dyrhólaey, and last time the birds did not come back for few years. If anyone has heard or seen anything about this please contact the police so these damn poachers can be caught.

Since I have been in the Westman Islands the last month and a half I have not had the chance to see the Da Vinci Code in the movies... But last night it happened and ohhh myyy goood :) I am a HUGE fan of the book and the movie is just amazing. Its been two years since I read the book and Im glad that its been a while since there were few things that i had forgotten. I am very happy how loyal they were to the book but still managed to make it extremely interesting and the casting was just perfect, specially Paul Bettany as Silas. The scenes where they take us back to the past just gave me goose bumps, this movie is pure cinema-chocholate :)

In my opinion this film has gotten undeserved bad critics and I guess people who have not read the book might not understand it completely and therefore not fully enjoy it. And also some poeple are just not interested in the topic and therefore find it boring. Im not religious but I am very interested in different religions and history and Dan Brown has definitely given me plenty of things to think about. Seeing the book brought to life in such an amazing way has really inspired me.