Arriving In Reykjavik

So I was browsing around some blogs last night, and suddenly this word jumped out at me:

Reykjavik.

I got so excited! As you may know, I've been involved in a mission to memorize the capitals of all the countries of Europe. And as you also may know, Reykjavik is the capital of Iceland. 

You can call me an ugly American if you want, but honestly, I know precious little about this city. There was something about Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Korbachev meeting there back in the 1980s to discuss some nuclear missile treaty, but other than that, I'm clueless.

{Come on, watch it. It's only two minutes long...and it's history! You'll love it. Pretend I am serving you some fresh baked lagkaka to eat while you watch.}

Lagkaka, a favorite Icelandic cake usually baked with five layers.
Photo by Nanna Teitsdottir on Flickr

So I was excited and interested to see what this Canadian design blog might have to say about this mysterious city.

Well, as usual, I looked at the pictures before I read the words, but look at what I found!!

biblio tyto on Flickr

Glory hallelujah, that's a TREE SOCK!

As you may know, I have a thing for tree socks. On a dreary day last March, I visited a Seattle-area park filled with colorful, stripey, sock-covered trees, and wrote about it here. 

But I never knew tree socks were a Thing.

jademsx on Flickr

So I did a bit of research (Googled 'tree socks' and read random articles for 15 minutes). From what I can tell, the tree sock phenomenon started in Sammamish, Washington, a Seattle-area suburb, back in December 2010. Long story short, the city had some tall, dead tree stumps standing along a busy city street. First, they were thinking of hiring someone to carve the stumps into totem poles. But when that plan got too expensive, two local artists offered to knit the trees some socks. 

Yes, I am serious.

The Sammamish trees got several updates for the changing seasons, and after a year, the stumps were removed and the socks went away.

But the yarn bombers decided to strike again. Sock artists Suzanne Tidwell and Beth Newfield now took their show on the road. In the summer of 2011, there were trees wearing socks in Seattle's Occidental Park, and then in spring of 2012, the socks rolled up in Redmond, which is where I saw them.

The Reykjavik socks seem to have sprung up after their American counterparts. The photos shown above were taken in late spring of 2011, about six months after the first Sammamish-ian socks. I found the photos below in a blog about Iceland's creative and kooky culture, dated April 2012, and in a Flickr feed dated September 2011, respectively. 

The Family Adventure Project

So how, pray tell, did the concept of yarn socks leap across the North American continent and swim the icy waters of the North Atlantic to land on the shores of Iceland, all in a few short months? 

I have absolutely no idea.

But tree socks have definitely arrived in Reykjavik. And I, for one, could not be any happier about it.

Timothy Donaldson on Flickr