Light a Candle and Curse the Darkness

As my son and I were preparing for our recent trip to Iceland we naturally devoted some time to background reading in various travel guides.  By now I have a couple shelves full of guides, mainly Lonely Planet, which I sometimes pick up and peruse, even if I'm not headed back to that particular country, almost as if I were rereading a favorite novel.  One of the things that struck us was the Icelandic tradition of putting up outside lights and leaving them up on all night long, for months.  Sure, part of this relates to Christmas, but it was also an attempt to dispel the gloom of those endless northern nights.  When we were there the first week in January there was barely more than four hours of light a day, which made Vermont seem equatorial by comparison.  What we didn't know is that this desire to hold back the oppressive night extended to cemeteries.  As we drove around the western coast we saw multiple cemeteries that featured lights.  How depressing would these little, isolated, wind-swept cemeteries, dug out of rocky soil, be, especially in the endless Icelandic night, if not for the lights?  This little happiness shouldn't be reserved for the living.  So, truthfully, what better place to have lights? Clearly there is a Lucinda Williams or Otis Gibbs song waiting to be written on cemetery lights.  On every trip I bring something back, although it is rarely anything physical.  This time I've brought back the desire to put up my lights, even if it's just to string lights on the misshapen evergreen at the end of my driveway earlier next year, and leave them lit from the beginning of November through the end of February, as an homage to Iceland and a celebration of the living and the dad.

A little cemetery that my son spotted as we were driving around on our next to last day in Iceland.  We had noticed the cemetery lights a couple days earlier in Stykkisholmur, and I regretted not snapping a couple pictures then.  Luckily his younger eyes spotted this cemetery and we pulled over.  I don't consider it disrespectful to take picture of the cemetery.  Rather, to me I wanted to celebrate the spirit of a people who will not be cowed by an unforgiving landscape.

You can just see the extension cords which crisscross the cemetery.

I don't know why I found this tradition so moving, and it could be that other countries have the same practice, but I'll always associate it with our trip to Iceland.