50 Words 4 Snow

      Sullarniq: Eskimo for snow blown in through a doorway.

↑ "Nocturne in Grey and Gold - Chelsea Snow" James McNeill Whistler (1876)

        Tuaq: Eskimo for lump of old ice frozen into new ice.

↑ "Hunters in the Snow" Pieter Bruegel the Elder (1565)

       Qanipalaat: Eskimo for feathery clumps of falling snow.

↑ "Moscow. Red Square" Boris Kustodiev

      Pukak: Eskimo for snow crust.

↑ "Ipatiev monastery in the winter light" Aleksey Savrasov (1870)

       Nittaalaq: Eskimo for air thick with snow.

↑ "February" Grant Wood (1940)

Here's a little send-off from Kate Bush — it's my favorite song on her album 50 Words For Snow (2011):


For extra credit, check out the title track "50 Words For Snow". (SPOILER: Stephen Frye monotonously recites Inuit snow words, probably poorly, for eight minutes. It makes me feel like I'm watching performance art that I reaaaly shouldn't be giggling at but I juuust can't help it.

      Inuit words via Azimuth.

Björk's House

Here she is, the queen of Icelandic music, Björk Guðmundsdóttir! When the days are so dark and short where I live I start eating lots of gjetost cheese and lighting candles all the time.

Björk's 1992 MTV Cribs house-tour of her Icelandic nest is awesome. She has this enormous and beautifully modern chandelier with blue taper candles in her living-room. As she lights the candles for the camera she chirrps and trills:

"I think this big room definitely needs a center-point, you know? And a light in the middle... I think chandelier is a heart of every home and in the winter its, like, dark - It's dark almost twenty hours a day. It's quite amazing how these candles can - they actually [light] up the whole flat and in a nice kind of way."

       I love how her possessions have been curated.  Everything is special!