We arrived after the blizzard which made our trip to Iceland a long and winding one. When we arrived, only the first few streets in Akureyri were passable. It’ll be many days before normalcy returns. Our flight landed in drifting snow, with drifts on the runway, after a glorious flight over the highlands.  It’s a good thing we picked a guest house right downtown, just in case of something like this! Here’s our view at 4 a.m.

As you can see, Akureyri is still beautiful. We have some washing to do, but drying is going to be a challenge. Here’s our clothesline.

Do note the lights. Yesterday afternoon, in all the small towns across the north, no one had any power at all, and all the roads were still locked down tight with avalanches, snow and drifts. But here in Akureyri, people were out and about. Piles of snow everywhere, and big machinery moving it around.

Kind of a city of mountains at the moment, as the winds (35 metres per second) blew it all off the mountains and left it in town. But Christmas shopping carried on, I got to shovel snow, and the cinema was open!

And the advent lights were in all the windows.

We came to find the darkness of winter. We also found its light.