Over the last couple of days I have been working in the lab in Holar, rather than at Kolkous.  On Thursday, Zen and I cleaned and processed finds from the excavation.  We were able to see some of the most exciting settlement and medieval period finds from Skagafjordur which had been returned from a museum.  These included an iron lamp. scissors, a shoe heel and whale bones.  On Friday we floated samples from Kolkous and a site near to Reykjavik.  Flotation is essentially a method of separating the heavier and lighter materials in the soil like bone and charcoal by forcing water upwards through it.  After 8 hours standing over a plastic flotation bucket feels quite a lot like being a member of a chain gang.  By the afternoon, we were all looking forward to sleeping in.  Here is a picture of a Greek man sleeping in the back of a car:

On Saturday we visited a place called Glaumbaer which is Icelandic for "fun farm".  Surprisingly, the farm of fun turned out not to be a brothel.  In a lovely, wooden cottage we piled our plates high with pancakes filled with cream and sugar, cheesecakes, sherry cakes and many others; all apparently Icelandic delicacies.  It was a moment of pure happiness which I can only compare to sex, stripped of guilt, fear, mutual recrimination and crying.

At Glaumbaer, there is a reconstruction of a traditional house decked out in old world fair.  As in most pre-modern Icelandic houses turf was the building material of choice and beams and planks were primarily made from driftwood.  The building was quite large and very cozy though it would have been very snug in use with 2 or 3 people sharing each single-sized bed.

On the road back home we stopped in a beautiful wooden church where a guide told us about the importance of side boobs to Christianity and the importance of Christianity to getting a leg over in days gone by.