New Series: Stranger in a Strange Land Features

        ​I am excited to announce a new series for my blog: in the spirit of sharing the experiences of a “Stranger in a Strange Land,” I have started a collaboration project to highlight the stories of other “strangers” living in Iceland.
       All photos, unless otherwise noted, were taken by Thibault Salle, a French photographer living in Iceland who had the good (or bad, depending on the day and who you ask) fortune of sitting next to me on the first day Icelandic classes.  You can check out more of his work at http://www.thibaultsalle.com/. 
        Our first feature highlights a Dane who sometimes trespasses onto television series filming locations, hitchhikes through isolated towns, and occasionally revives house plants.

In transit between the Faroe Islands and Iceland. Photo taken by: Tommy Helle Jensen

​      Tommy Helle Jensen’s decision to take a break from studying for his English Literature and Linguistics degree and leave his native Denmark for Iceland at first might not seem that unusual.  After all, Iceland used to be a territory of Denmark and Danes fly in and out of Iceland all the time.
       Tommy, however, decided to skip the few hour flight in favour of transportation via boat. 
        “I had flown in and out of Iceland before.  I wanted to properly feel the distance between Denmark and Iceland,” he said.
          The ferry left from Hirtshals, Denmark, a city four hours from his hometown of Copenhagen.  Due to a storm, the ship was delayed, but eventually set off for Iceland, with a stop in the Faroe Islands.  It took a full day to voyage to the Faroe Islands.  What was originally a nine hour stopover, turned into a full twenty-four hours, again due to weather delays. During the day, he was able to explore the area and at night he slept on the boat.  From there, it was another day and half until he reached Iceland.

This photo was taken, despite my constant warnings of, "Don't stick your head in a plastic bag! Don't breath with a plastic bag on your head! Don't suffocate!" Photo taken by: Thibault Salle

​        The ferry arrived in Seyðisfjörður, a town on Iceland’s east coast.  He arrived with a vague plan of hitchhiking to the next town.  He met a fisherman named Runar was going to do groceries since it was too expensive to do that in Seyðisfjörður.
         “He spoke hardly English and definitely no Danish although his knew enough to tell me that his wife was a Danish teacher at the local primary school,” Tommy said.

Arrival in Tórshavn, Faroe Islands, after a day and a half on sea. Photo taken by: Tommy Helle Jensen

​        Next, he met a man named Albert who drove him another two hours away.  There was nowhere to stay in the town, except the flat that Albert owned.  So, for a relatively hefty fee, him and his wife gave Tommy the keys to the flat for the night and also showed him the fishing boat they were working on.
         Once again, weather got in the way of his plans so he hitchhiked back north with an 18-year-old girl who was headed to another city to visit a chiropractor.  

The furniture in the flat is sparse, but there is always room for a large bathtub in the living room. The plant in the corner was revived upon his arrival. Photo taken by: Thibault Salle

​       He found himself in Reyðarfjörður, where the town was full of TV crew filming the new season of Fortitude, a British psychological thriller that also features some predominant Danish actors. Intrigued, Tommy crossed through one of the blocked off roads to check out what was going on.  Someone rushed toward him with a walkie talkie and escorted him out of the film scene.  Playing dumb, Tommy asked what they were filming and got an explanation about the series. 
       “The whole time there was someone in a car filming us walking.  So when the second series comes out, maybe I’ll be in the behind-the-scenes material,” he said.

Photo of the blocked road in Reyðarfjörður where they were shooting for the British Nordic noir series Fortitude. Reyðarfjörður was the main location for the series. Photo taken by: Tommy Helle Jensen

​       After that, he visited one more town, Egilsstaðir, before growing tired of the lack of people so he bought a student-fare stand by ticket to Reykjavik.
In Reykjavik, Tommy works at Háskóli Íslands on IT.  He fixes websites and proofreads in both Danish and English.  Though he has been learning English in school since grade 4, his motivation for learning it came from outside the classroom.
        “I used to be a terrible student, all I would do was play computer games.  All of the other players spoke in English though and I couldn’t communicate with them well.  So I applied for a year of exchange in Australia to learn English.  When I got home, I was fluent in English, stopped playing computer games, and took my studies more seriously,” he said.
         While in Iceland, he is trying to learn the language by taking classes at the Tin Can Factory and reading a children’s book in Icelandic. 
The night before he boarded his ferry to Iceland, he wrote on a Facebook group in hunt of housing in Reykjavik and found someone willing to share their home with him.  He shares a flat with an accountant who has a tendency to bring in bathtubs and other random household items into the living room.
        “She’s always bringing something.  She says she doesn’t need the bathtub now, but there may come a time when she actually has space for a bathtub,” he said. 

A curtain serves as a door in his flat. Photo taken by: Thibault Salle

        His bedroom doesn’t have a door, just a curtain.  There is also a house plant that was nearly dead before Tommy moved in.  He started to water it and now it is alive and well.
        “She even noticed that the tree was no longer dead and commented on it,” he said.
Tommy will stay in Iceland until the end of April or May before heading off for a few months in Canada.  He also plans to briefly visit Brazil and San Francisco.