30 July to 1 August, 2011 (Verslumannahelgi)

Verslumannahelgi is the last long weekend of the summer, indeed, the last long weekend until christmas. It's often a big camping weekend, with music festivals and events around the country. For a lot of people, it's also the end of summer, though I think that's far to pessimistic. There's plenty of good camping to be had through until at least late September.

Anyway, Kata's father and family were going to their summerhouse in Skagafjörður, in Steinsstaðir (Just south of Varmahlíð) and a nice weekend in the country sounded like a pretty good idea. Kata was already up there, as she'd been travelling around the country making videos for the summer, so when I drove up late on friday night, I arrived just in time for board games with the family.

Saturday we all had a leisurely sleep in, a very leisurely breakfast, then with pretty decent weather, and a friend of Valdimar's, we planned to go fishing in the afternoon, in Héraðsvötn. But first, some garden work!

Fishing was fun, I'd never gone "fishing" before where you drag a net the width and depth of a river downstream for a while. With granddad we'd often used a similar net to drag around the beach, but that was just to collect bait. I'm actually surprised how few fish we caught, given how much of the river we dragged. One got away, and we caught four, a trout (urriði) and three char (bleikja).

The weather deteriorated over the afternoon, so we all returned home damp but happy, to cut up some fish for dinner! It was interesting the different colours of the char, apparently due to how recently they'd come into the river from the sea.

But, this only gets us to Saturday night! More board games, totally dominated by Kata's father and grandmother (Icelandic trivia games) then a Ball in the nearby social hall until the wee hours.

Sunday calls for a sunday drive, so we all headed up to Siglufjörður, to catch the end of their week long herring festival. Kata, Begga and I also found probably the best petrol station food in Iceland, at the Olís by the harbour. Spectacular egg and bacon roll, not at all the standard fare of a petrol station around here.

Sunday night we were very refined, and went to see the local men's choir with guest singers, and monday we mostly just cleaned up and headed home!

A very relaxing verslumannahelgi, esecially compared to previous years :)