A postcard moment or three.

A new batch of cards from Kolaportið! You probably already know what those flags stand for, but here it's even clearer it's actually just the Danish flag with blue instead of red - the proportions are exactly the same. A sort of a major FU at the Danish rule right there.

The woman holding the flags is Fjallkonan, the Lady of the Mountains. She's the personification of Iceland - a bit like Moder Svea and Suomineito. It's interesting to see how they're pictured, by the way. Svea is this fierce valkyrie-like warrior, Suomineito is more like an innocent little country girl and Fjallkonan is all sorts of cold, distanced and scary. She's often shown with scrolls of writing and in the most famous picture of her she has a sword as well, but here she's being at her most patriotic: two flags and the national bird, gyrfalcon, crowned and with sun rising from behind a mountain. You don't really need to know much about symbols to know this is a very pro-independence -card.

Here's some illustration to Brennu-Njáls saga (The Saga of the Burned Njáll). Ásgrímur Elliða-Grímsson features a lot in the saga and is f.ex. famous for opening quite a marvellous can of whoop-ass right in the middle of the Alþingi when a court case goes badly. 

This one was an awesome find. It's called "the last dog" and it concerns a random law that was passed once upon a time, that forbid all keeping of dogs in Reykjavík! :D The law was in effect for decades, as my sources say, and was only recently lifted to allow bringing dogs into the capital city again. The law apparently came to be in the first place due to people not cleaning up after their dogs, something that some of the local dog owners downtown still haven't quite learned. However, it's still not as common to have a dog as it is to have a cat.

 Every now and then foreigners who move in with their dogs find out to their great disgust that it's not allowed to bring a dog in a cafe with you in Reykjavík! The horror! The fascism!

(Yeah, as you may have guessed, cats aren't allowed in either.)