Northern Lights - NOT in time lapse

Though I am now on Facebook Lite, trying to stay off the news feed because it irritates me so, I still do the occasional flip-through. I can't resist aurora borealis videos, and it's not true they're "all the same". What I like about this amazing light show over Reykjavik is that it is NOT in time lapse! It seems that looking at the normal speed of things is no longer fast enough, you've got to cram more and more into the few seconds you can spare. No shade of green is quite like this.

This video is better watched full-screen, with the sound on.

A waterfall in Iceland

Icelandic horses: disaster on ice

I saw a gif of this a few years ago and quailed. Yes, I quailed. Not to be confused with kvelled. I just couldn't believe what I was seeing. There is a complete version in the video below, but I am not sure you want to see it. I watched it - the parts of it I could watch - through my splayed fingers.

It soon becomes apparent that the water is not terribly deep, only coming up to the horse's backs, but that poses problems of its own. Trying desperately to gain a footing, the horses flail violently. Broken legs and hypothermia were a dread here, because these horses are small - ponies, really, though accustomed to harsh conditions and thick-coated. This is ice water, however, and they are soaking in it for God knows how long.

I want to tell you, and I WILL tell you, that all of them were rescued, though no one was remotely prepared for this sort of thing. There was much criticism of having this many horses run on the ice at the same time. It's some sort of traditional race held every year, but with global warming - well, never mind. I promised never to write about that again.

The shock and horror of this tiny clip still resonates. It seems like a disaster without a solution, but these horses are plucky and tough. They must have good grips in their hooves, too, or the ice would have proven too much for them.

Just laying on the ground in Iceland

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1,000 year-old Viking sword found just laying on the ground in Iceland

SO OKAY, we already know The Vintage News is just the internet replacement for Weekly World News, with its Bat Boy, its 5000-pound man, and its alien abduction of Newt Gingrich. (If they could only come back for Trump!)  Grammatically, it's the worst thing I have ever seen. They appear to have some illiterate community college kid chained to a desk, fuelled by Starbucks or Red Bull or both, cobbling together blobs and swatches from other web sites in a manner which is virtually incoherent.

It's not even worth telling you about this story, the contents of which are self-evident from these photos (hah!). Nerd finds sword, nerd wants sword, nerd has to surrender sword to the Icelandic authorities. End of "storey".

Though the comments are usually equally stupid (and one guy, a regular, always stands up and vociferously defends Hitler, who, after all, was unfairly maligned and a pretty swell guy), they were sort of funny this time. "Laying" was defended by some, since "lying" might not be accurate if the sword was telling the truth. There were lots of joshing remarks about "getting layed", and one that I particularly liked about the Icelandic sword producing eggs on the frozen tundra (or whatever-it-is they have in Iceland).

Then I found this!! I never knew this, but there really are Icelandic chickens, and they are really beautiful. And just like that Icelandic sword, they're just laying on the ground, or else on a nest. Pick one.

Icelandic Chickens

or Íslenskar Hænur

or Íslenska landnámshænan

or Haughænsni

A pair of Icelandic fowl

Photo courtesy of Lyle Behl

Wait, there's more. . .

Just a snippet (any more and I'd gag) of the kind of writing I'm talking about.

"According to the Icelandic law, any archaeological find found on or inside the ground are automatically the property of the Icelandic state. This law has been hailed within the archaeological communities since it has always been a cause of concern among experts around the world. China has been one of the few places on earth with very flexible laws when it comes to Archaeology, recently a hoard of locals attacked and ran-sacked a plethora of ancient artefacts from a canal; there has been a number of such cases of looting the archaeological sites around the world."

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Disaster in Iceland

I first saw this as a gif (just the horrible falling-in part) and was very upset by it. Managed to track it down pretty easily by googling "horses fall through ice": it happened in Iceland, where some bright bug decided it would be cool to parade eleven stocky Icelandic horses over ice that was who-knows-how-thick (or thin). Think of the weight on the ice of those thousands of pounds of horses, proceeding not one by one (which might have made some kind of sense), but in one impressive high-stepping row. One crack is all it would take.

Idiots! The horses look done for, but as the video unfolds the news isn't quite as bad as it seems. Still, without quick action, horses and riders would all have perished of hypothermia. Think of the terror of those horses floundering around in ice water, unable to gain purchase on a too-thin sheet of sinking ice. Those people should never have access to a horse again.

(The eeriest part is the slow-motion replay, in which you hear slowed-down screams of horror and yells for help.)



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