All events in the Winter Lights Festival are free to attend and the full schedule can be read in English here.

Reykjavík mayor Jón Gnarr will formally begin the festival at 19.30 with a short speech by Hallgrímskirkja before handing over to Marcos Zotes who will paint the cathedral in moving light themes inspired by the elements of water, fire, air and earth.

Dance, film, exhibitions, theatre, music and more will all compete for attention at a festival which truly has something for everyone – despite how cliché that phrase has become.

The festival also includes free access to many of Reykjavík’s swimming pools this Saturday evening and pool guests will be artistically stimulated all the while.

www.vetrarhatid.is

Franek Rozwadowski, the permanent representative of the International Monetary Fund in Iceland, has completely denied claims the the IMF asked Iceland to close cultural centres following the banking crash and the country’s subsequent international bailout.

The claims were made by Minister of Education and Culture, Katrín Jakobsdóttir to the Alþingi parliament last Friday. Roswadowski this week responded with a press statement saying that the IMF was only ever interested in the overall size of Iceland’s budget deficit and not the individual components making it up.

“The cornerstone of the recovery plan was the main rule that the government was completely independent in how it intended to reach its goals to close the deficit; how taxation should be organised and where the cutbacks needed to be made,” Roswadowski said — adding that it is simply not true that the IMF recommended cutbacks to the government at any specific cultural institutions or even any individual sector of the national budget.

The buildings will be assembled in an area by the sea shore in the village and the project is the biggest project by the heritage preservation company Minjavernd outside of the capital region. The project involves rebuilding and/or renovating all the main buildings associated with serving the French fishermen whose presence still lingers strongly in local culture today. The centrepiece of the new heritage ‘village’ will be the French Hospital.

The ‘village’ within a village will become a tourist attraction, organisers hope — and they hope to help by opening a museum about Fáskrúðsfjörður’s French ties, as well as a hotel, RÚV reports.

The French Hospital was built in 1903 and later moved to Hafnarnes, outside of the village. The building has stood on that site for several decades and was in a considerable state of disrepair when it was taken apart and returned to the village for renovation.

The planned opening of the new project is spring 2014 and the planned cost is in the region of ISK 580 million (EUR 3.57 million).

The National Institute for Health and Welfare (THL) believes the number of workplace drug checks has now hit 100,000 a year.

The practice is particularly popular in the transport sector and in jobs within the healthcare, security or surveillance industries.

The law surrounding drug testing in the workplace, which has been in force since 2004, permits both the screening of new recruits as well as of long-term employees if there is reason for suspicion.

When the practice was first made legal, only around 10,000 workers a year were tested. However, this number has now shot up tenfold according to Kimmo Kuoppasalmi, Chief Physician at THL’s Drug Research Unit.

He believes the current rate has almost reached its peak, however. “I think that the number will not increase much from this point. A very small proportion of these tests turn up positive in practice—about 1-2 percent. The preventive effect and the message that the workplace does not tolerate substance abuse are perhaps the most important factors,” Kuoppasalmi said in a YLE report.

The video was taken of what looks like a giant, icy swimming snake in the Jökulsá í Fljótsdal river, which runs in to Lagarfljót. The unexplained creature, or phenomenon, appears to be swimming upstream, against the current.

The Lagarfjóts Worm, or Lagarfljótsormurinn, is possibly the best-known of Iceland’s many rumoured monsters and sightings have been regularly recorded since the year 1345.

The story goes that the worm was once just a little heath worm which was put onto a golden ring, as that was rumoured to make the gold grow. When the owner of the ring came back later, she discovered with shock that the worm had grown enourmous, but the ring was still the same size as before. In frustration she threw both the worm and the ring into the lake, where the worm continued to grow bigger still.

Whether the amateur video by Hjörtur Kjerúlf is of the legendary monster must be left to the viewer to decide. Cynics are claiming that some old netting ended up in the river and froze; giving the impression of swimming as the water flows past.

See the video on the RÚV here.

Police want to battle the growing trend of citizens tipping off news outlets in return for rewards, by providing better information services to the media themselves, according to the Keskisuomalainen newspaper.

“Citizens often first report a disturbance to the media or put a video up on YouTube before they even think that maybe they should inform the authorities,” Inspector Tuomo Korhonen of the Central Finland police told Keskisuomalainen.

In an effort to get back in the loop, officers asked journalists for feedback on their communication skills and were told that they are somewhat non-responsive in fast-breaking situations.

In a bid to ensure that information is made more readily available to the media, three new communication units are now being set up within the force. Videos, photos and reports will soon be posted onto police websites by the new units, making the information available to journalists worldwide.

There are also plans to post real-time updates on crimes and emergencies via social networking sites such as Twitter and Facebook. The plans will be finalised and announced by the national police administration by the beginning of March.

Summer events in Reykjavik draw hundreds of visitors every year to experience Iceland’s great atmosphere and cultural practices.

The Reykjavik Art Festival, taking place May 18th – June 3rd, is Iceland’s premier cultural festival bringing together the best in local and international theatre, dance, music and visual art. The programme offers a variety of curated exhibitions, concerts, dance, theatre, and opera performances across downtown Reykjavik.

The National Day of Iceland has been celebrated on June 17th since 1944. The festivities in Reykjavik include colourful parades, street theatre and music, sideshows, and dancing.

Hotel Odinsve is located just a few minutes walk away from downtown Reykjavik’s main shopping street, Laugavegur, where over 100 bars, restaurants and cafes are situated, alongside numerous boutiques and retailers.

All of its rooms have wooden floors, comfortable beds and high quality duvets and pillows from Kronborg of Denmark.  Each room includes a shower, minibar, complimentary coffee and tea, satellite TV, radio, telephone, and hair dryer.

The hotel holds a range of amenities for its guests, including a restaurant, a coffee shop, a café, a bar lounge, all located on-site – it also boasts free wireless Internet for its customers.

For more information regarding the hotel in downtown Reykjavik, visit http://www.hotelodinsve.is.

Café Teatret has used Breivik’s so-called ‘extremist manifesto’, published online shortly before he killed 77 people in Norway on 22nd July last year, as the inspiration for their drama Manifesto 2083.

The play, directed by Christian Lollike, will see the right-wing extremist’s views performed as a monologue, with Christian Lollike playing the lead role. The announcement has however attracted heavy criticism, as the car bombing in Oslo and the massacre on Utøya Island still sits fresh in the minds of survivors and victims’ families six months on.

Entitled ‘2083: A European Declaration of Independence’, Brievik’s manifesto praised Denmark for being “the only Scandinavian country with some spine left”, regarding the “ideological war” against Islam. Many felt that such comments referred to the right-wing Dansk Folkeparti’s (DF) attacks against multiculturalism.

However, Pia Kjærsgaard, leader of DF, was one of the first to speak out against the new production. Writing on her Facebook profile, she said, “I find it deeply embarrassing, distasteful and shameful. Personally, I would be ashamed to go in and see the show. [Breivik] can sit back and rub his hands together because he gets all the publicity he longs for.”

Also offended by the offering are some of the families and friends of Breivik’s many victims. Ragnar Eikeland, who lost his son at Utøya, said it is, “so offensive that I really have no words”.

“It will be an extra burden for [the victims’ families] to know that it will be performed while the court case is underway,” he told Norway’s NTB news bureau. “No-one should do something that spreads Breivik’s opinions.”

In a written submission to Politiken however, Lollike defended his artistic decision.

“Is it not precisely the task of art to help understand how something so terrible could happen?” he wrote. “Where do we go with our anger, our pain, our frustration and the big ‘why’? How could this happen? What kind of mindset and view of humanity has he filled his mind with, and where does it come from?

“Writers, journalists and analysts have sought to answer these questions based on the manifesto. They have a right to. Doesn’t theatre – based on Breivik’s manifesto and with the critical and analytical resources of the performing arts – have the right to examine these same questions?” Lollike wrote.

Thanks to the open sign language website SignWiki, Icelandic sign language is finally available to everyone in the world with a computer, smartphone or tablet. The website contains a signing dictionary where users can look up the meaning of signs or see videos of sign language.

There are also short lessons on the language, as well as articles about it, and much more.

As the site is made on the open Wikimedia network, it means anyone in the Icelandic sign language community is free to contribute and edit material. The site marks the first time Icelandic sign language is available for study to all.

Head of the deaf people’s communication centre, Valgerður Stefánsdóttir, told RÚV that it is always fun and lively in sign language classes; but that many students have no opportunity to practice anywhere else. Children, for example, who need a lot of practice, have not had good enough access to materials up until now.

It is not actually known how many individual signs are in Icelandic sign language. There are some 1,200 on the website already and the number is steadily growing. The education and culture minister added the signs for ‘education’ and ‘culture’ onto the website when she formally launched it. The website is already gaining attention overseas.

Valgerður says that the Norwegians, who have an excellent deaf people’s communication centre, intend to visit Iceland at the end of the month to study and that it is also planned to make use of the site in Africa, among the people already being helped by the Icelandic Deaf Association.

According to RÚV the Presidential couple sailed out of the Argentinian port of Ushuaia yesterday and their trip will take them along the Drake Passage all the way to Antarctica. The party plans to go ashore three times, if weather allows. The trip ends on the 6th February.

The trip includes European and American scientists, the Canadian film director James Cameron, the American journalist Ted Turner and Christiana Figures, the president of the United Nations climate agency.

Al Gore’s climate change organisation, the Climate Reality Project, and National Geographic together organised the expedition.

A press release from Bessastaðir, the Icelandic head of state’s official residence, states that the goal of the expedition is to investigate the fast melting ice and to discuss how the nations of the world can best be encouraged to unite behind realistic and tangible action to fight global warming.

Ólafur Ragnar Grímsson has become known as a strong climate change campaigner among world leaders and regularly gives speeches at environmental conferences.