Shire of Klakavirki

When: 18:00 Friday June 6th 2008, until 16:00 Sunday June 8th.
Where: Heiðarbær, Reykjahverfi, 641 Húsavík, Iceland

From the journal of Lady Ysabella-Maria Vasquez de Granada

Friday 6th - Is that your Minke, Monsieur?

The day before the event is traditionally the day to take any visitors on a whistle-stop tour of northern Iceland. I'd rearranged the normal schedule to take into account an afternoon of whale-watching and the fact that the event site was close to Húsavík, the whale-watching centre.

What I hadn't realised was that both of my two guests were sporty, outdoors, climbing mountains-types, which meant that the stops at local beauty spots were a little longer than intended. This meant that we ended up on the tea-time whale-watching trip rather than the afternoon one, but that wasn't too bad. Unlike last year the weather was quite pleasant and spring-like, and not only did we see two minke whales but our boat was also accompanied for a while by a pod of white-nosed dolphins. The dolphins, who included at least two mother and calf pairs, were quite athletic in their leaping around.

Saturday 7th - Introducing Milady Firmboobs

Revel in the Midnight Sun III was, to all intents and purposes, a fencing event. We spent most of the day doing seven authorisations (I am officially impressed by Cernac's energy and staying power) before rain stopped play and we had to run the fencing tournament and the melŽe indoors.

Everyone who was due to authorise did so successfully, so we had all seven in a 'unbraided' tournament - one which was only open to fencers who were not members of the Academy of Defence... which sounds much better than a we're going to hold a tournament but Cernac and I aren't going to enter it so that one of you can win tournament. :) This was a round robin to select the best two fencers for the final, which turned out to be Hrafngunnur (whose wearing of proper fencing breast protection has gained for her the nickname Milady Firmboobs) and Enrique, with the final victory going to Enrique (who was justifiably pleased with himself for the rest of the weekend).

There was then a melée (involving a Spanish treasure ship and a bunch of cut-throat (literally) and treacherous (literally) pirates. All seemed to enjoy this immensely and could have gone on for some time had we not had to set up the hall for Hrafngunnur's magnificent feast. Mnom mnom mnom.

Post-feast we were all in definite need of a dip in the hot tub and, as the site not only had two hot tubs but also a swimming pool, the bransle in the hot tub became a bransle in the pool with some impressive high kicks just to make the splashes visible. Sadly we didn't have too long in the pool before it closed (it was after midnight by now) so to round off the evening I introduced the Shire to Tablero. Mwah ha hah!

Sunday 8th - To Hell and back

Sunday morning saw a lot of pick-up fencing and the archery tournament (won by Cernac), after which we managed an around-the-table lunch before doing the site clean-up. Once we had everything clear it was back into tourist mode again for our guests, who went off to walk around one of the local volcanoes - Viti, which means 'Hell' - and then off around the blue mud zone before a relaxing soak in the pool at the Nature Baths at Mývatn. This was our planned evening rendezvous location, as a couple of us who hadn't gone walking had done the trip back to Akureyri to return carloads of stuff before coming out again.

Finally we went to the main rift area to do the photographs with the split pipe that shows how one of the crevices is widening. That and the pool under the lava flow, which Cernac promptly decided to climb out of up to the top of the lava flow rather than back through the main entrance. Not bad for after midnight.

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Updated on October 30th, 2008 by