Instead of waiting for the high school bus to drive us home, Astrid and I preferred to walk two miles to her house, which culminated in a 10-min steep climb. But once we were there, we had the place to ourselves. Totally worth the trek! Their house was perched on a cliff with a view…

Happy (or Merry) Christmas!  Sharing a few insights I learned about how the “island of fire and ice” celebrates Christmas … Yule Lads Instead of one Santa Claus, Icelanders have 13 Yule Lads. According to local lore, they live in the highlands and come down from the mountains, one each night for the 13 days…

Few trees. Few people. Many churches. On our first day driving the Icelandic countryside, I observed the ratio of churches to people and asked my husband, “Since Iceland was first settled by the Vikings in the 9th century, wouldn’t they have been a pagan country?” We pondered how Christianity became the dominant religion. By the…