Suddenly it was May 17th 2021 and we were still on Iceland. We travelled to Iceland a week before Easter (March 19th ), and the plan was to stay for 3 weeks: First a week in quarantine (away office), then a week of Easter vacation travelling around, and finally a week in Reykjavík on ‘away office’ when we were here anyway (and ordered to work at ‘home office’). Now we had been in Iceland for 7 weeks – and we did not have a Norwegian flag for the Norwegian constitution day: May 17th!
Here our habit of quiz really payed off. During these weeks we had struggled through a number of questions like this:
‘Hvaða þjóðfáni er blár með hvítum krossi og rauðum krossi innan í þeim hvíta?’ (Correct answer at the bottom of the article)
What we had learned was:
a) Þjóð means country
b) Fána means flag
c) Smiðja is a place where you make things (smith).
And there – in Ísafjörður – on May the 17th (!) we suddenly saw a sign we had never seen before: Fánasmiðjan. A flag factory!
As is written in the ‘Heimskringla’: ‘Betre byrdi du ber ‘kje i bakken enn mannavit mykje.’ (heimskringla.no) ‘Better burden you don’t carry uphill than a lot of wisdom.’
So all there was to do was open the door, go one floor up and browse the huge selection of flags from around the world. Once you have obtained a Norwegian flag, time is perfect for a bath. We went down to the city beach and had a bath with the super sailing ship ‘A1’ in the background. Hipp Hipp Hooray!
After a bath in Ísafjörður bay, a trip to Tjöruhúsið is a good idea. There you get the very very very best fish buffet in all of Iceland. Try it! The fish is served newly made at certain times, so here you have to be on time, book a table in advance and not eat too much of the phantastic fish soup you get as a starter!
Correct answer to the Icelandic question: the Icelandic flag