Let It Snow

I've had a fabulous summer, much of it spent in the sea at Tregastel, walking the Sentier des Douaniers and working in the garden, and now it's time to look forward to some snow (climate change permitting).

My Ragazzi and I take the business of snow very seriously and have a family tradition that whenever there is more than a few inches a snowman must be constructed.

Here's mine from this February.
 

snow -> noun [mass noun] 1 atmospheric water vapour frozen into ice crystals and falling in light white flakes or lying on the ground as a white layer.
- ORIGIN Old English snaw, of Germanic origin; related to Dutch sneeuw, and German Schnee, from an Indo-European root shared by Latin nix, niv- and Greek nipha (OED).



NEIGE n.f (de neiger). 1. Precipitation de cristaux de glace agglomérés en flocons, dont la plupart sont ramifiés, parfois en étoile.Quand la température des basses couches de l'atmosphère est inférieure à 0 ºC, la neige se forme par la présence, dans un nuage, de noyauxde condensation faisant cesser le phénomène du surfusion.
(le Petit Larousse 2007)



How full of the creative genius is the air in which these are generated!I should hardly admire more if real stars fell and lodged on my coat."--Henry David Thoreau

Picture courtesy of Snowflakes and crystals

You can buy stunning pictures of snow crystals here (I bought half a dozen in a bout of apres-ski trip nostalgia, and a book. I'd have ordered some snow too if it hadn't been too warm to post it)

Yes, we have been known to keep snow in the freezer...









At this time in France we have strong winds and blue skies interspersed with downpours, so I offer some photo's taken in Finnish Lapland, above the Arctic Circle, in 2006...

and my own tribute to snow...

The reindeer farm where we took part in a hilarious hijacking by reindeer. We were paired up and placed in a sled with a mad reindeer hitched at the front and then we were left to the mercy of our furry friend.

The reindeer took off at a canter, racing each other, trying to stay in front of the herd, jostling for position as we were tossed about in our sled, giggling hysterically.

After which we bought souvenirs, including a skin that has continued to shed all over my carpet, pictures and a slab of meat to cook back at our cabin.

Sorry Rudolf, it's a dog eat dog world out there!

We also took part in a husky safari


I can't express in mere words the wonder of a journey through a winter wonderland of snow-laden conifers, deep, thick blankets of snow on either side of the track, the silence pierced only by the panting of the team and our shrieks of laughter.

Pure pleasure...

One of the log cabins in the woods just outside Levi. I believe that the residents of this cabin may have witnessed an English woman of a certain age rolling naked in the snow outside a neighbouring cabin just after midnight on January 1st, 2006.

It's traditional, yes?

Especially after several tequila slammers and a hot sauna


The sun rises late during the winter months above the Arctic circle. By 10am it is just starting to spread a pinky, orange, golden glow across the morning sky.

And by 2pm it is sinking fast, colouring the sky with a glorious rainbow




I had thought that the lack of daylight, the merest glimpse of the sun for a few hours would induce a severe bout of SAD in me. Interestingly it didn't. My body adapted rapidly to the darkness and the thick, gleaming snow more than compensated for the lack of the sun's rays

Everything you ever wanted to know about snowflakes can be found at Snow Crystals

Everything, that is, except how to make it snow in Brittany. Now for that I would pay a handsome price!

and there's a museum dedicated to snowflakes, the Wilson Bentley Museum


The Perm International Snow and Ice Sculpture Festival has been held since  1995 to develop international friendship, mutual understanding, to establish artistic and aesthetic space through the art of snow and ice sculpture, and to position the city of Perm as part of the global art community and a place for international projects.


Wikipedia has an article that explains how to construct an igloo
(Inuit language : iglu, "house", plural: iglooit or igluit)

Incidentally, it has been said the Inuit have many words to describe snow. Probably true but so does English, and if one considers that there are several languages termed Eskimo-Aleut languages, then English begins to compete in the snow-word stakes. For example and according to Wikedpedia, Yupik, spoken by the peoples of western, southwestern, and southcentral ALaska and the Russian Far East, has been estimated to have around 24 — but English has at least 40 words that describe frozen water, including "berg", "frost", "glacier", "hail", "ice", "slush", "flurry", and "sleet".

Still, the idea of linguistic relativism states that our langage affects and reflects our view of the world. The belief that Eskimos had hundreds of words for snow led people to think that an Eskimo's eye-view of snow is vastly different from, say, that of a Mexican, or a man late for work and trying desperately to shovel the snow off his driveway.

Linguistics aside, for now, and speaking purely personally, I see snow as a beautiful, enchanting and fun phenomenon and I will continue to play with, roll in, ski over, throw around and eat handfuls of snow as long as it continues to fall from the sky...

 

A link to a translation of Hans Christian Andersen's Sneedronningen, The Snow Queen

A website that is All About Snow

And one for the kids amongst us who wish to spend the long winter months making paper snowflakes to hang from the beams of a Breton house

All I can say, in conclusion is

LET IT SNOW!

Iceland Noir

I've been in Iceland, having adventures, as I always seem to do.
(An aside, sometimes I think it would be nice if my life were a little less exciting, but most of the time I think it's all great fun!)

2018 was the year of the Iceland Noir literary festival. It's held every two years, in 2016 I had planned to go, having been introduced to Icelandic writing by such brilliantly dark and twisted authors as Yrsa Sigurdardottir  and Ragnar Jonasson one of whose books I was delighted to proofread. So delighted that I went to London for his launch party and even had my picture taken with him, though I was too shy to ask him to turn around. Hey, it was a huge deal for someone so camera shy and introverted. He is also very tall.

 


But I digress, as ever.

I had planned to go to Iceland Noir in 2016 but at the last minute I went horseriding instead.
It was  my post-twelve-months-of-cancer-treatment challenge: fly to Iceland and spend five days riding Viking horses up volcanoes.

This year I went to the literary festival.
Very nervously, it's stressful for me to leave the security of my comfort zone in this commune, and this particular trip involved boarding my pets, travelling to Paris via Rennes by TGV, an overnight stay in a hotel at CDG, a flight to Keflavik, a trip to the Blue Lagoon on arrival, finding my hotel at midnight, attendance at the festival itself with the prospect of meeting some of the authors whose books I have proofread, and the publisher for whom I have worked, a couple of outings, horseriding up a volcano, and retracing my route back to my small French village.

So very much could go wrong...
So very much did.

Mostly thanks to Iceland Air  who were once my favourite airline but whose lack of communication/information/accuracy/efficiency and care caused one problem after another.

From the acute stress of the Paris flight that was first delayed, then cancelled, then arrived to take the dozen of us who'd not made the alternative flight with everyone else, to the mistakes with my booking at the Blue Lagoon, to my hotel room being overbooked and me being sent off at midnight to an unsatisfactory alternative place by the harbour that was so noisy I did not sleep a wink, to a cancelled excursion for which there was no refund, to the non-arrival of the transport for the riding excursion to the failure to provide the requested wake-up call for my 4:30 a.m. departure, to the pilot whose unilateral decision to wait for a dozen Canadians delayed our departure by over 45 minutes and caused me to miss my train from CDG and thus to have to wait over six hours for the next one. 

But my trip was wonderful, once I'd decided not to be stressed and annoyed by Iceland Air's mess-ups, and Iceland Noir was amazing. Of course it was. I knew it would be worth it.

The Orenda Books team were, for me,  the stars of the show.

Especially Antti Tuomainen  and Johanna Gustawsson  seen here making everyone laugh, and yes, that's Yrsa sprinkling them with glitter...

Karen Sullivan,  the amazing publisher at Orenda Books who produces some of the best books by the best authors. Seriously. Check them out. yes, of course I am biased, but I love them all.

Roxanne Bouchard. Author of We Were the Salt of the Sea (among others).  Another lovely lady, very wicked sense of humour and very approachably kind and warm-hearted.

I could go on, and on posting pictures of the people I met, the authors whose books I've had the pleasure to proofread, those whose new books I have on my Christmas List for Santa - did you know that in Iceland the tradition is to spent Christmas Eve reading the book that someone has gifted to you while eating chocolate? I am spending Christmas in France while the Rags are in the UK so I am planning to embrace this Icelandic tradition with a new book, some Baileys chocolate liquer and a box of chocolate brazils. 

I ate cod and chips for lunch at the festival on both days because Icelandic cod is so fresh I just had to make the most of it, and having it infrequently makes it more of a treat. A little likethe kouign amanns that I only eat at Trégastel...

It really was good.
Very good.

This lady is wonderful. She is Lilja Sigurðardóttir she not only writes brilliant books, she is also kind and funny and incredibly clever.

Of course, I went riding.

This time with Ishestar  They are excellent. Before we met the mounts they gave us a video lecture on the Icelandic horses, how best to ride them and a little info about the area etc. They were ultra-cautious about bio-security because the horses are pure-bred, have no exposure to other horses outside of Iceland and thus no immunity against equine diseases. I had washed and disinfected my riding boots but not my hat so it was left in a locker and I used one of theirs.

We rode along tracks through lava fields, careful not to let the horses stray onto the lava because the ecosystem is very special and precarious: it's taken thousands of years for the mosses and lichens to establish themselves and they are dependent on the health of their neighbours, so if you damage one plant, the destruction can spread to the whole lava field.

I'd like to study lava fields in depth one day...
Maybe Reykjavik University has some online courses...

So, Iceland Noir in a nutshell.

I made it there, coped with the challenges, was stoical and pleasant in the face of more than my fair share of problems, mingled and met with authors, publishers and translators, and generally had a blast.

And these guys were the cherry on the cake.