Season of Thankfulness

By Sharron Arksey

Celebrating Thanksgiving is held at different times in Canada and the United States. Our Writers' Group wrote stories about thankfulness for both holidays. With our American cousins anticipating its arrival, Sharron shares her thoughts on thankfulness after the trip to Iceland this past September.

I did not try to count the sheep I saw in Iceland during the 2025 Icelandic Roots tour; there were too many. I did, however, smile often as I watched their woolly rear ends hightail it out into the fields as our tour bus passed by.

 “They have such cute bums” is not something you can say about just any animal – rabbits perhaps, but I did not see any rabbits in Iceland, although I know they are there. (Rabbits are not indigenous to Iceland, but pets have escaped or been set free and once loose they do what rabbits do; they proliferate.)

The time of rettir was near; within days the sheep would be rounded up and brought home for the winter. Their fleece would be shorn, sorted, graded, scoured, and carded until it was ready to be used.

Earlier in the trip, my cousin had given me a new pair of handknit woolen mitts. I call them Stapi mitts for the farm where she lives. I love my Stapi mitts. I live in Manitoba, after all. Manitoba winters and Stapi mitts are made for each other.

I looked at wool in a new and different way when we visited the textile museum at Blonduos. We saw mitts there, of course, and sweaters. But also, we saw Icelandic national costumes, children’s sleepwear, scarves and tapestries and stylish feathery hats. Wool became art before my eyes.

Later that same day, we sat in the restaurant at the Hoffstadir Guesthouse, looking out at a vista of water and mountains. Five adult horses and one foal waded through the water at its edge. They seemed almost ethereal, as if we had dreamed them and they magically appeared.

Several tour members stood up and moved to better vantage points, bringing out their cameras as they did so. The horses continued their trek.

One woman told me that later that evening the horses passed in front of her guest room window, and she was able to get a video of their movement. I wish I had known; I was in the room next to her and would have seen it for myself if I had not had my drapes pulled. Sometimes a lost opportunity is as simple as pulling the drapes.

In the morning, I could still see the horses on the other side of the water. Five adults and one foal: I knew they were the same animals.

It was raining the morning we gathered at a coffee shop in Akureyri’s Botanical Gardens to meet translator Philip Roughton. Roughton, an American by birth, has translated books by Icelandic authors such as Halldor Laxness, Jon Kalman Stefansson, Gunnar Gunnarson and Arnaldur Indridason. He has been a guest at the Icelandic Roots book club several times and would be again a few weeks later.

I can see us sitting at the long table and I can see one of us holding an orange cat that had made its way out of the rain into the cozy café.

It seemed right at home, and we thought perhaps it belonged there. But a staff member told us that the cat was an uninvited guest. Please put him out, he said.

We tried, but to quote a Manitoba children’s entertainer, “The cat came back. It just couldn’t stay away.”  It came back several times. The last time I saw it, it was heading down the hallway to the customer washrooms and the kitchen area. I did not see it come out.

A day or two later, a white dog sat outside the entrance to Hotel Varmaland, located near Bogarnes and the Snaeffellsnes Peninsula. The entrance doors were open, letting in the crisp morning air. The dog did not move. Unlike the cat in Akureyri, he showed no interest in getting indoors.

“He comes almost every day,” the woman at the reception desk said. “Especially if there is a tour bus in the parking lot. It is almost as if he knows that there will be more people here to pay him attention.”

If attention was what he sought, he was surely getting it. Departing guests stopped to pat him and several dug out their phones to take his picture. That included me.

I had seen this dog running down the road behind the hotel. The hotel staff did not seem to know who he belonged to, just that he was a regular, friendly visitor.

So now all memories of Hotel Varmaland— wonderful accommodations housed in a former women’s college teaching cookery and housewifery skills— will include this dog.

Sheep, horses, a cat, and a dog: they are small things compared with the grandeur of the country’s scenery and history. Yet they colour and enhance memories of my time in Iceland, and I am thankful for them.