It was utterly magical for me to have my first days in Iceland around the 6th of January and to be in Reykjavik on Epiphany day. In fact, it is the evening that is important, but being there also during the day and strolling is no less of a joy.
It especially helps you to locate the place where the traditional bonfire is going to be; that evening, the bonfires on beaches, accompanied by what was left from the New Year's Eve fireworks, will not only light up the sky and get people out of their houses, but also signal the end of the Christmas time.
No, not the "winter" celebrations, but... Christmas.
Icelanders are very fond of this celebration, which is related to the Christian Epiphany. In Romania, we have almost the same way of looking at it, Christian-wise. Otherwise, though, it is called Boboteaza and usually signifies a mystical/magical time, a passage between the sacred time and the profane, when girls can see their beloved or the one that is destined to them, when water is at its most cold, when some pagan rituals are being done, usually in connection to purifying waters, and the beginning of the agrarian year. Water, ice, fire and smoke, noises and shouting, they were all mixed together in the wealth of traditions of the past - now, almost extinct.
So I was walking around that day, through the city still Christmas-decorated and was so lucky to see the bonfire place - a huge pyre, ever growing, being fed with small Christmas trees that people kept on bringing, as you would drag behind you a naughty kid, by his hand.
And when the big cathedral sang 6 P.M., I took my Nokia phone with me and off I was.
To see the fire.
I didn't know what to expect - except for what I already knew: that it is going to be very close to the rocky, volcanic beach and that it was very likely to go off very soon. Christmas trees are burning so quickly! You don't get to throw them into the pyre and, with a whistling, they melt under the heat.
But when I got close, I've seen lots and lots of little pieces of wood - it seemed to be like carpentry wood - in the pyre, burning nicely and spreading out a very distinct flavour, not at all pine-like. They fed the pyre with all that wood for the on-lookers delight. I felt rather strange, knowing that wood could have been used more…
And children, unlike in many countries, were enjoying their hands fireworks without no fire truck to attend the performances. Just like that, they were left to spin their fireworks to extinction, and I could do nothing but watch their excitement as they did that, with the adults chatting around them, no worries whatsoever.
There were hundreds of people around the fire, mostly families with children and tourists, hypnotically looking towards the blaze, to the fireworks that continued for hours or simply, at each other. With the odd families or couples taking selfies with the fire on the background and not being happy with the contre-jour results, it was a great experience. And even more so after one hour, when people got tired of looking into the flames, when fireworks became scarce and when the evening was turning into night.
And so, the dense wall of people surrounding the fire loosened, and then gave way for those who, warming by the fire, with twinkles in their nostalgic eyes and some deep buried longing in their hearts, looked in it as they were looking inside themselves.
