1st birth class and Ina May Gaskin

Last night was our first birth class and we loved it. Adam and I drove to our teacher's home in a beautiful, rural part of Redmond to meet our teacher, Liz Chalmers of Birth Zone, and 10 other expecting couples.

Liz is a Midwifery student, mother of 4, and she loves Ina May Gaskin,*** I can tell it is going to be a great class and that I will already recommend it to all expecting couples. We are the only ones of the 11 planning a home birth, but about 6 others are planning birth center births, and about 4 or 5 are planning hospital births.

The first class was mostly introduction and general overview, of course, but we learned a lot and watched one of my favorite birth videos - Birth Day - about a Mexican midwife having her 3rd baby at home with her husband and two kids. I love this video and was hoping to find it online so I could watch it with Adam. It shows how beautiful and normal having a baby can be. It makes it look appealing, inspiring, empowering, and positive but does not lead you to think it will be easy or painless.

I am lucky to be a midwife's sister. My main childbirth educator has been Briana as I have learned from her on her journey to become a home birth midwife. It's like I have been taking childbirth education classes for 7 years! I have seen dozens of home birth videos, had access to her library of books, helped build home birth kits, and even attended a home birth all because my sister is a midwife. The exposure and education is a blessing and a gift she has given me over the years without necessarily intending to. Few women in modern society witness births or even hear much about them and I am glad I've had the opportunity to prepare long before I met Adam and we decided to have kids.

Art by Nikki McClure as shown on BuyOlympia.com

***Speaking of Ina May, I just found out she will be in Seattle from May 4-8th. May 5th she is leading a walk in Alki, West Seattle on International Day of Midwives to raise awareness for safe birth choices and on May 8th she will be speaking in Town Hall about her new book Birth Works and visiting with people at the Birth Fair following her lecture. Check this website for the details. Unfortunately, Adam and I will be out of town in Chicago visiting family and celebrating our second Anniversary!! I recommend anyone in the Seattle area to go see her and support birth. You can even order a wonderful shirt with Nikki McClure's art (shown above) as a donation.

Ina May Gaskin wrote "Spiritual Midwifery," among other books, and is considered the mother of modern midwifery as she was the leader of the home birth movement in the 70's after inadvertently becoming a midwife to dozens of couples in her hippie love train as they moved from San Francisco to Tennessee to start a commune in the 1960's.

baby hedgehog

I just found out my friend had her baby - a baby girl. I am excited to meet her.

It reminded me of the bib I sewed for her and I wanted to share it.

She said her baby "theme" was baby forest animals, and this is what I came up with: a velvet baby hedgehog. I don't think they live in the forest, but they are cute.

Grandma's Shawl

Over the last few weeks, I have dedicated some time each day to finish lingering projects. It feels great to make progress on things I should have done 2 years ago :)
One of the projects I recently finished is this knit shawl. Last summer, my grandma started knitting a shawl and when she got stuck on the lace border, she mailed it to me to finish. I was excited she thought of me to help her since she was the first person to teach me how to knit (then I forgot, then I relearned from her knitting books). Unfortunately, it took me forever to work on her project because I had other more exciting projects I wanted to do. Once I took out a few rows and actually started knitting, I finished the shawl pretty quickly (2 weeks), considering I had had it for 8 months.

The pattern is Aestlight Shawl by The Shetland Trader

The pattern was simple and easy to follow; I had no problem with the "Bird's Eye Lace" portion. I would not knit this shawl pattern again (too much garter stitch) but I will DEFINITELY knit the Bird's Eye Lace again. It was easy to knit and I love how it looks - I think it would make an interesting throw blanket for a couch if made from a soft, worsted weight yarn (instead of this fingering weight).

I am not a fan of varigated/handpaint yarns - like this one - because I think they make a knit piece look "busy" and you loose track of the knit details. The yarn in general was nice, though. It is Malabrigo sock, which is a little pricey.

All in all, I'm happy with how the shawl turned out, I learned some good stitches for future use, and I finished a lingering project! YAY!

old baby blankie

About a month ago I found a cute, old baby blankie at the Goodwill.

It's pretty small (3'x2') and made of various flannel scraps. It reminds me of the flannel nightgowns I used to wear as a kid.

I bought it (for $1, hahahaha!) because I liked how it was already broken in.

Now our first baby can come out with a hand-me-down blankie as if it were the 6th baby :)

One of the flannel prints didn't wear well over the years, so I replaced 4 of the squares yesterday, washed it, and now it's ready to go!

Spring Cleaning

Today and yesterday were devoted to Spring cleaning - deep, spring, cleaning.

After hours rearranging furniture, scrubbing the floors, and hunting down every last dust bunny, I have a spotless kitchen and bedroom...and a messy - though clean - living room (a bunch of things ended up without a home).

Here is our new bedroom arrangement. Nothing amazing, but a big step up from how it was previously. I'm excited to finish the black and white quilt I started - it will look nice in our "new" room. I am also going to finally make or buy a bed skirt.

In this space above our dressers, we are going to hang some photos from our wedding (finally!).

The newest addition to our house is the baby dresser/baby shrine where we can store all the little things we've been collecting and making for our coming baby. It's a really cute wooden dresser Adam saw at the Goodwill, thought I would love, and emailed me a photo to see if he should buy it - I said YES! It needs to be repainted, but it's fine for now.

It has been a productive and tiring weekend.

25 weeks

It has been a month since I've posted anything - though I have several half finished entries I intend to post in the next few days.

There are many things I want to document from the last month including a few pics from our 21 week ultrasound, family visits, finished knitting projects, etc. Stay tuned...

For now, here are some pictures of me in the 25th week of pregnancy:

Iceland's Geography

Iceland is a relatively new land mass, created by volcanic activity at the Mid-Atlantic Ridge

where the North American and European tectonic plates are separating (here is an actual crack of separation).

The effects of this volcanic activity is one of the reasons Iceland is so oddly beautiful and incredibly picturesque.

The entire island is made of recent lava so nearly all rock is black (some are red from mineral deposits).

This means (almost) all the beaches have black sand, the country side is vast stretches of broken up black lava chunks, and even the urban sidewalks are black (well, grey) because they were made from ground up black lava. Many coastal areas are cliffs of hexagonal basalt columns formed by fissures when lava was rapidly cooled as it hit ocean water.

Here are some pictures near Snaefellsjökull peninsula (W. Iceland)

Me standing on a bridge created by water eroding some of the basalt columns.

Basalt fissures on the beach in a curved pattern.

As lava floes cooled over rivers and air vents, horizontal caves were formed

and subsequently Iceland has many spelunking tours.

Not much grows right off lava.

Primary organisms like lichens and moss must first grow, decompose, collect in the cracks and crevices, break up the rock and eventually make soil for larger plants to grow in. There is a lot of green in Iceland, and it's mainly from moss and lichen.

The time is takes for soil to build and trees to grow is part of the reason (combined with grazing sheep, wind and weather patterns) there are few forested areas.

One old forested area called Thórsmörk (Þórsmörk) in S. Iceland is situated in a warm, protected canyon and has small conifer and birch trees, ferns, and hundreds of mushrooms (at least on the day I was there). It has somehow avoided being covered in lava at different times and was thought to be a sacred place (deserving to be named after Þór/Thór).

(house/garage on Vestmannaeyjar/The Westman Islands off SW coast of Iceland destroyed by lava)

There is still considerable volcanic activity causing numerous (small) earthquakes on a daily basis not to mention the smoke plumes and threats of eruption by various volcanoes - remember Eyjafjallajökull (sounds like "A-yah-fyat-la-yuh-kult") last year whose smoke plumes closed European travel for a few weeks?

The geologic activity of the North American and European plates manifests itself in many ways beside volcanoes; thermal pools and geysers dot the island. The first geyser recorded is the one pictured below: Geysir or The Great Geysir, named after Geysir, a prominent Goði in early Iceland.

In Iceland, hot water from thermal water vents is collected and pumped into towns for domestic use. From the smallest villages to the largest city, Reykjavik, all hot water coming from the tap is untreated, straight out of the ground and smells like sulfur (something you get used and come to love to when taking a shower). All cold water coming from the tap is also straight out of the ground, but from a non-heated, non-sulfury source. If you want to make tea, for example, you let the cold water run for minute then fill the kettle to boil the cold water - if you use warm or hot water it will taste bad.

(Hot water pumping plant. The pipeline on the right goes directly to Reykjavik)

All the houses and building in Iceland are heated with hot water radiators powered by the naturally boiling-hot water pumped from the ground. I loved this (no hot, dry air blowing through your house) and it also makes heating a house nearly year-round quite inexpensive since all you pay is the cost of transporting the water.

Another use for the abundant hot water is as public pools; every town has a public bath, and large towns have several. Here, the natural, untreated hot springs water is cycled through tile or cement pools so the water never cools too much or becomes dirty because there is a constant flow of fresh water in and used water out. What is so awesome about this is you never have to think of wasting water - not to mention wasting hot water - because there is an endless source down the street

.

(The Blue Lagoon, not a typical bath house, but a fancy touristy one near the airport)

Laugardagur is the Icelandic word for Saturday, but it comes from "laugar" meaning to wash. Laugavegur is a street in downtown Reykjavik that used to be the women's trail to laugardalur (washing dale/valley) where they took their laundry to wash in the local hot springs.

As I mentioned above, there is also an abundance of cold fresh water for drinking and some of it is naturally carbonated, such as this Perrier/club soda spring:

This is my favorite picture of the Icelandic landscape because it captures all the aspects that were unique to me (coming from S California) and the "essence" of Iceland in my mind: dark sky from northern latitude, flat lava floes, small hills/mountains, green moss and lichen, and light dusting of snow.

Icelandic Literature

(A great compilation of translated Icelandic Sagas)
Iceland has an incredible literary history.

The consensus is that most of the history of events, genealogy, stories (sagas), and legends from about 900 -1000 AD were orally recorded and passed down before they were physically written in the 13th Century.

Record keeping and genealogy was an important aspect of the Norse - and consequentially Icelandic - society as evidenced by it's strong presence in the manuscripts available today. Early Icelandic writings are a variety of both poem and prose.

Songs/poems/chants were composed for celebrations or to commemorate events and those who were skillful at recording events in beautiful verse were highly respected. The collection of poems we have called The Eddas are the main source for our knowledge of Norse Mythology (since paganism was driven from mainland Scandinavia by force and the manuscripts there were destroyed. There will be more about this in the "Religion" post coming soon).

Sagas are prose stories interspersed with poetic verse typically about the family affairs of farmers and their occasional family feuds.

The Icelandic Sagas, or Íslendinga sögur, are acclaimed for their realistic portrayal of human frailties and their glimpses into Icelandic life of the time period. They are about 3rd and 4th generation Icelandic settlers living in goðorð. Usually, the sagas are about the goði or someone in their household. Often someone is insulted and a domino effect of honor retaliation brings clans into feuds. Women have a large presence in Icelandic Sagas; they have strong, confident characteristics and run the domestic affairs of the household. They play political roles by convincing the men into pursuing retaliation or offering forgiveness for insults depending on the character of the woman - or by starting feuds outright themselves.

Unfortunately, it's been a while since I've read through some sagas - and my book is out on loan - so I can't remember any to summarize here. Dramatic events like someone stealing cheese and then giving it out as gifts to visitors who happen to mention to each other that they all got the same kind of cheese that was reported missing and they realized their host is the thief. OR, someone being strung up by their Achilles tendons after instigating a feud and they survive the ordeal. Njall's Saga is one of the most famous sagas; it is pretty long, about the length of a medium sized novel. One of the main characters, Njall, is a good, honest man but is insulted for his inability to grow facial hair. A family feud ensues and he is eventually burned in his house.

On another note, Icelandic Sagas are full of kennings - short, descriptive phrases for objects used to add detail to stories. I'm sure you've heard of these...things like "man-slayer" (for a sword) or "sea-steed" (for a ship), etc. These were used not for lack of vocabulary, but for love of descriptive language.

Due to the nature of Old Norse (and modern Icelandic) word order is less important in sentences because each word is conjugated and declined (more to come in a post on the Icelandic language) giving contextual information to each word and more freedom for rhyme and artistic expression.

Fast forward to the modern era and Iceland is one of the most literate countries with the highest number of authors per capita. The most well known Icelandic author is Halldor Laxness; he won the Nobel Prize in Literature (1955). One of his books I have read is Paradísarheimt, or Paradise Reclaimed; it's about a family in Iceland in the mid-1800's who converts to Mormonism and moves to Utah to live with Brigham Young. I'm serious. (More in a future post on Religion in Iceland).

Icelandic Settlement

In brief:

Iceland was settled by rough, independent personalities primarily from Norway/Sweden, but there are records of people from other parts of Scandinavia, the British Isles, Faroe Islands, and Russia. They left their home country to settle Iceland from 874 AD - 930 AD for a variety of reasons:

1. Arable land was becoming scarce. Traditionally, the oldest son inherited part of the parents' farm and the other sons had to move away and buy their own land or become a professional blacksmith, cobbler, clergyman, etc. If that didn't suit them, I guess some moved to Iceland. After a few generations, the farm portions weren't large enough to sustain the oldest son's family and some of them moved to Iceland.

2. Outlaw types and people who were banished from their hometowns as punishment went to Iceland to escape ridicule and find a fresh start.

3. Escape the current king, Harald Fair-hair.

These Norsemen were excellent boat builders and sea farers. Families moving to Iceland forged across raging oceans in small, shallow boats with their tools, provisions, and domestic animals.

(a replica of a very nice, large, Norse ship)

If they made it, they then set about exploring, claiming land, building homes, sowing seed and raising livestock. There were no large native land animals to hunt, but there was an abundance of fish and migrating fowl to catch and preserve for the winter. Though the northern side of the island is within the arctic circle, the southern side of the island has areas of fertile farm land and is relatively warm and mild due to the Gulf current bringing warm air and water north from the Caribbean area.

(an example of some early settlers)

An amazing aspect about the new colony on Iceland was that despite the inhabitants' varied backgrounds, they created their own democratic parliament and maintained an orderly, non-centralized society. Within about 50 years from the first record of voyages to Iceland, the Icelandic Parliament (Alþingi, or Althingi) was established (in year 930 AD). It is claimed to be the longest standing democratic parliament - from 930 AD to present day - because even after Iceland accepted Norwegian rule in 1262 and Danish rule from 1814-1944, their geographic distance allowed the Althingi to more or less continue.

The island was divided into 4 regional quarters (eventually a 5th was added to make 5 "quarters") made of clans called goðorð (sounds like"go-thorth"). The clan leaders were called goði (sounds like "go-thee") and they provided protection and appointed judges to settle disputes within the goðorð.

There was a single, elected lawspeaker, or lögsögumaður, who memorized the lawbook and would recite it orally once a year to the gathered goði at the Alþingi. Occasionally, a conflict would arise crossing regional borders, and the representatives would seek the lawspeaker's advice. The current lawspeaker is Ásta Ragnheiður Jóhannesdóttir.

The Alþingi/Althing met near present day Reykjavik at Þingvellir, or the Parliamentary plains (sounds like "thing-vet-leer"), an area large and flat enough (see photo above) to make camping and tending animals convenient for the attending goði and their household for the duration of the Alþingi session (up to a few weeks).

The lawspeaker stood on a large rocky area called the Lögberg, or Law Rock, in front of a natural amphitheater created by the separating North American and European tectonic plates.

The Alþingi moved from Þingvellir to Reykjavik in 1844.

(below photo from Wikipedia)

Here are some poor quality photos I took of the building:

Denmark officially owned Iceland from 1814-1944. However, in 1940, when Denmark was occupied by Germany, Iceland became unofficially an independent state. In 1944, the Republic of Iceland was officially formed. The President of Iceland is the head of state and appoints the Prime Minister of Iceland, who is the head of government. Vigdís Finnbogadóttir, the 4th President of Iceland (from 1980-1996) was the World's first democratically elected female head of state. The current president is Ólafur Ragnar Grímsson (photo below in Springville, UT, 2005)

and the current Prime Minister is Jóhanna Sigurðardóttir