Barbie Berserkur

During Viking times, before computer games became the release of choice for pent up male fighting hormones, men tended to get into battles or feuds where swords of steel were brandished and no pixel ever entered the picture. Sometimes, or so the story goes, they would eat „berserkjasveppir“ to get fully into the groove. Berserkjasveppir are mushrooms – berserkur means nearly rabid person prone to high levels of violence and not particular to wearing any protection or saftey gear while fighting, while sveppur simply means mushroom.

Having spent time on trying to explain what a berserkur means I now realise there is an English variant of this word: to go beserk. It has obviously come into the English language through the Vikings. Could have saved me some typing to think of that sooner.

Berkerkjasveppir look like the mushrooms children draw and Smurfs use for landscaping. These mushrooms are hallucinogenic and are the reason why people here have not picked or eaten wild mushrooms for centuries. Once we became civilised it was not considered suave to foam at the mouth during dinner and end up smashing the dining room furniture for desert.

Things constantly evolve and now it is considered the PC view that the Berserkir did not eat any mushrooms to get into a frenzy but were epileptic or crazy. I do not think it will take long for my countrymen to realize that this is the least possible PC view available as an explanation. I for one am sticking to the mushroom theory.

I have mentioned here previously that we get very happy here when famous people decide to visit the country. Thankfully we have the good sense to leave these people pretty much be – unless they venture into the bars.

The most recent visitor to Iceland is none other than Valeria Lukyanova, known as  the living Barbie. See photo – no words are really needed unless maybe to note that she has really got the look down pat. Living Barbie is supposedly not a young girl from the Ukraine as her passport would imply but a space alien from the Pleiades galaxy. Apparently everyone from the Pleiades galaxy is very deep and philosophical. Her comments to the photos she has published while here is proof of this – here are a few examples of the captions:

• When you're in space, you see that black does not exist. All bursts consist of endless different colours. It's like a living, ever-changing canvas ... Consisting of living beings who create for human beings, the illusory appearance of black – Please note that the photo was of a blue sky, green grass and a silver river.

• All of our lives, our world is not more than an illusion – This photo was of her standing in the middle of a quaint shopping street.

• The more watched the people inhabiting this planet, the more I feel the inevitable desire to quickly get out of this strange game ....and this one showed her standing next to Gullfoss, a waterfall.

Makes me wonder if Barbie by any chance happened to find a red mushroom with white dots. Or two.

Yrsa - Wednesday