The Reykjavík Metro Police Instagram account is a thing of wonder

We at 6000 Towers think that Iceland is pretty cool. We might have mentioned that before. Repeatedly.

But here’s yet another feather in the cap of the chilly volcanic island’s cap: Lögreglan – The Reykjavík metropolitan police official Instagram account.

How cool are these guys?

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Brekkan getur oft verið ansi brött, en ekkert er óyfirstíganlegt… #þrjárbrattar & Brace yourselves winter is coming

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Fuglunum gefið brauð & Var sumarið ekki að undirbúa komu sína? #reiðhjólasumar #snjóengill

Presumably, there’s some actual police work going on at some point as well. Presumably.

I do use Instagram, but I use it to share photos rather than to follow other people – there’s Flickr and or twitter for that sort of thing. However, I’m going to make Lögreglan the first and only account I’m following. And I won’t be alone, with their cult following of almost 19,000 users.

I somehow can’t see the Cape Town metro cops doing something like this, and even if they did, I can’t see it being nearly as good as the Lögreglan one.

Yes, South Africa is very cool, but Iceland is (quite literally) a bit cooler.

Europe’s stereotypical billionaires

Here’s a map of Europe, labelled with the richest person in each country (via i100). And, given the integrated global economy, it’s actually a whole lot more stereotypical than you might imagine. In many cases, the first product you’d associate with each country turns out to be the one which makes its boss the most spondoolas:

18477-1qztgaqClick to make it biggerer

Examples include: Austria: Red Bull, Italy: Nutella, Denmark: Lego, France: L’Oréal (because you’re worth $37,000,000,000).

The only surprise in that regard might be that the richest guy in Finland, Antti Herlin, is in lifts and escalators rather than mobile phones.

Incidentally, South Africa also bucks the stereotypical trend, as Johann Rupert ($7.6bn) makes his money through selling luxury goods, rather than through iffy race relations, dreadful, rampant corruption or crime.

Please (because it’s apparently Iceland week on 6000 miles…) also enjoy Iceland’s richest man (who is not as rich as he used to be), Björgólfur Thor Björgólfsson, known to his friends as Bjöggi. He made his money by moving to Russia and selling beer to the Russians (sidenote: genius) before investing in investment banks and breaking Iceland’s financial system (sidenote: oops).

Dry The River

If, when he left this comment, Jon Liddle was attempting to generate some sort of interest in his son’s band’s new album, well then, he’s succeeded. I’ve had a quick wander through their back catalogue and – while there’s a bit of gospel, a lot of beard, some violin and more than the occasional hint of banjo – it’s well worth a listen. This ain’t no Mumford and Sons/Lumineers mashup. Thankfully.

Recording in Iceland was about shutting ourselves off from our daily lives and our heavy touring schedule to rediscover what Dry the River means to us. We suspected it would be some kind of otherworldly experience, and it was: beautiful and alien, lonely and taxing but ultimately rewarding.

So yes, the tenuous link was Iceland: its wild beauty and solitude. And they did a documentary on just how that worked out for them:

MOAR SCENERY!!!!

Apparently:

The end product, Alarms in the Heart, is so heavily engrained with that process, that strange location and the experience of being there, that you have to take the two together.

I’ll be giving the album a full listen and I’ll let you know how that goes, but in the meantime, here’s Gethsemane: which features on the documentary from about 8 minutes in and just. fits. perfectly.

My son doesn’t have a band, but when he does, I’ll probably advise him to head to Marion Island (SA’s equivalent of Iceland, I guess) to record that difficult second album. “Fewer beards,” I’ll also tell him.

Safety first.

UPDATE: More information about Dry The River? Here.

MOAR ICELAND!

We like Iceland here on 6000 miles… – you only have to look at our extensive Iceland section to see that. Now, you’d do well to remember that Iceland is the best place in the world to be if you want to take amazing landscape photographs, but even so, our love of all thing Icelandic has only been augmented by seeing Sarah Martinet’s amazing aerial photography of that country. Stuff like this:

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and this:

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What a nation of contrasts. And puffins (not visible in these photos).

There are more of Sarah’s photos of Iceland here (which I reached via here and here) and, this being the internet, I also tracked down her 500px page, where I was blown away by much stuff, but most especially this image:

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Wowzers.

All images: Sarah Martinet

Iceland whale tourism idea is brilliant

Iceland. Land of ice. And volcanoes. And financial ruin (like everywhere else these days). And puffins.

They’ve come up with another gem of an idea to attract visitors to their lump of rock: Whale watching – with a twist.
You get to eat what you see.

Watching and hunting whales “work perfectly together” in a look-and-cook combo of tourism and gastronomy, Iceland’s Whale Commissioner said on Thursday at the global whaling forum.
“Many of the tourists that go on whale watching tours go to restaurants afterwards to taste whale meat,” said Tomas Heider, speaking on the sidelines of a meeting of the International Whaling Commission in the British Channel Islands.

Iceland have a “Whale Commissioner”. That’s brilliant. And so is his idea, despite what others may say:

Many countries in the 89-nation IWC, especially in South America, argue that potential income from tourism far outstrips the value of commercial whaling, and that the two do not mix well.
But in Iceland, Heider insists, the industries feed off each other.
“Even though we have been increasing our whaling in recent years, the tourists are streaming in numbers to Iceland and going to whale watching tours like never before,” he said. “It works perfectly together.”

Of course, we’d never, ever, ever think of doing something so vulgar in South Africa, would we?

Unless of course you’ve ever been to Oudtshoorn, the self-proclaimed “Ostrich Capital of the World”, where you can see, feed, ride and then eat the local birdlife.

I trust that anyone commenting negatively on the News24 article or writing an angry letter to the IWC (on recycled paper with a recycled pen) will also be contacting Western Cape Tourism and complaining bitterly about these same heinous practices taking place on our own doorstep.

Disclosure: 6000 eats ostrich most weeks and has also tasted whale meat on two occasions. He was unimpressed.