Independence Day.

This will be a very random collection of very random photos in no particular order, but hopefully you'll be suitably entertained nevertheless! Iceland's independence day is 17th June, and unlike my home country it's a very energetic all around carnival here, with cotton candy stands every five steps, live music, bouncy castles for kids, poetry, chess, dancing, performances and general mayhem. 

Talk about a culture shock, in Finland the habit is to be very somber, stay at home, burn blue and white candles at windows, watch Unknown Soldier on the tv (it's on every year without fail), make heaps of good food and wait for the presidential ball later on. Then we sit in front of the tv with all that food and plenty of drinks (because Finland will always be Finland in some contexts, even if it's a serious occasion a bottle bit of vodka is no breach of good behaviour) and watch people line up to shake hands with the president.

Anyway, let's get on with it! I'm wearing

OP + mini hat: VM Beth

Socks: Innocent World

Shirt and necklace: selfmade

Shoes: Dinsko

Naturally all the shops had decorated their windows in blue, white and red. This is a favourite of mine from Rokk og Rósir. I would so wear that bottom half.

We started the day at Cafe Paris. Note how my smoothie fits the colour of my dress. :3

This is a demonstration against joining the EU. There was a Finn, a Swede and an American all looking at it and understanding nothing, but the Icelander with them explained they were covering up freedom and independence. Apparently it was obvious.

This group, or parts of it, also made noise at the official opening ceremony which to me seemed highly inappropriate. Call me old fashioned or whatever, but in my honest opinion an independence day ought to be shown some respect at least. Protesting is all very well but it turns outright tasteless if you try to bleat over the people giving opening ceremony speeches.

It wasn't even very convincing bleating. Next time, bring sheep. They'll get the job done much better.

Beautiful national dress! I've never seen this type live before! She made it herself, I read from the magazines today. It was worth running after her in my high heels just to get a photo of it.

Btw, the official opening ceremony was a bit strange in the context that I've never experienced one in a country without an army before. For what Finns would use the army, Icelanders use policemen and scouts. The downside is that they cannot really move in unison or even decide what's the proper way of holding one's hands behind one's back, but on the upside all the marches were very non-militant. Don't get me wrong, I love military music. It was just unusual and refreshing.

Talk about music, it was indeed everywhere. On stages, street corners, what have you.

It's a sea monster!

A very tall swing, I think.

There was a cool cars show on the bridge.

I'll end the post with some flags. On the left the flag that was considered for the official flag, note how it doesn't have a red cross in the middle. Apparently someone went and secretly swapped a Danish flag on an official building with the blue flag, which was the first time an Icelandic flag was flown on that building. Therefore it's still considered a very, very independence-y flag indeed.

The other one is just upside-down. Sorry about that, it was way more amusing to me but I guess you had to be there.