Gleðilega páska! …a few days late.
I have, not surprisingly, been absent from the Tumblr world again; I am sorry. I will try and make it up to you somehow…?
Since I have tried to center this blog around my Icelandic experiences, I believe that sharing a bit about the celebration of Easter in Iceland from a foreigner’s perspective is a good topic for this post. So, :
Easter (Páska) seems to last for about a week in Iceland. The hype seems to begin at Passover, with more added the day before Good Friday, and last until Easter Monday. To put this into perspective, Americans tend to do all of their celebrating on Easter Sunday and it is on this day that some establishments may not be open; the days preceding and proceeding rarely receive any real celebratory recognition. Passover and Good Friday are acknowledged and “celebrated” in the U.S. by those to whom they are deemed spiritually relevant; outside of these individuals, nobody seems to notice them much. Here, in Iceland, stores (including the vast majority of grocery stores and even pharmacies) are closed on Good Friday, Easter Sunday, and Easter Monday; the Saturday between seems to afford the people a chance to stock up on necessary items for Easter dinner the next night.
The cutest thing about Easter here, in my opinion, is the páskaegg (literally Easter egg):
It is for this reason that I will dedicate the remainder of this post to said egg.
It is customary to give your children and loved-ones (or anyone else you feel should receive one from you) a páskaegg. This is a large egg fashioned out of chocolate, hollowed-out, and filled with candy, fortunes, and more chocolate.
In order to access the contents of the egg, one must, of course, break it open. This action is done in many ways, however, as I have noticed, it often requires the use of some kind of tool…and this tool is most often a dinner fork.
However, other methods are used:
I am not exactly sure why the concept of this egg is so cute to me. However, the combination of already insanely cute Icelandic children with cute chocolate eggs is the best.
Conclusion:
Alright, that’s enough. Hopefully I will not have Icelandic parents suing me for posting photos of their children. I’m sorry, but, maybe if you would stop having such cute kids, this wouldn’t be an issue.
LOVE,
Gwendolyn
Note: I actually received two eggs myself this Easter (thank you to Ari and Ari’s mamma!). I do not have photos of my eggs as a result of their cessation of existence; I ate them.
