WHO: 31 May: World No Tobacco Day

Health professionals key in tobacco control

This year's World No Tobacco Day on 31 May highlights the importance of health professionals in the fight against tobacco, which is responsible for nearly five million deaths each year. WHO is urging health professionals to help people stop smoking through better advice, and by setting a good example and not smoking themselves.

A good Solution for the No-quitters?

This device will soon permit smokers to indulge in their habit without having to go outdoors.
The mechanism confines the smoke to the immediate region of the smoker's head.

"The Way his Mom taught him?"

If you have a look at my sidebar you can see why I´m the mother of a computer genius. Yeah, I just taught myself how to make "buttons" out of pictures and logos.

Daddara! Very simple!

(You know I don´t look like this one and The Wee Scot doesn´t either!)

The Prayer of Saint Francis of Assisi

Saint Francis of Assisi

"O Lord, make me an instrument of Thy Peace!
Where there is hatred, let me sow love;
Where there is injury, pardon;
Where there is discord, harmony;
Where there is doubt, faith;
Where there is despair, hope;
Where there is darkness, light, and
Where there is sorrow, joy.
Oh Divine Master, grant that I may not
so much seek to be consoled as to console;
to be understood as to understand; to be loved
as to love; for it is in giving that we receive;
It is in pardoning that we are pardoned;
and it is in dying that we are born to Eternal Life."

The Blue Ocean Restaurant - a Restaurant with a splendid Wiew

A Restaurant with a splendid Wiew - The Blue Ocean Restaurant

Hafið bláa - The Blue Ocean Restaurant - is a very nice restaurant on the south coast of Iceland where Óskar and I had a cup of coffee on our long Sunday drive today. Even though we just had coffee, they serve the worlds most delicious seafood soup - and the panorama wiew from the windows of mountains and ocean is breathtaking!

Lazy Town News

Magnús Scheving´s concept of Lazy Town for fighting the increasing danger to the health of children in the western countries in the form of obesity is showing to be a big succsess...

Lazy Town has just signed a contract selling the distributive rights in Southern-Europe and the Middle-East to Disney. Showings will start in Spain in June and in the fall in France and Italy.

The series have become popular in both North- and South-America, where they are being distributed by Nickelodeon Jr.

Contracts are being negotiated in Finland and have been made in Germany, Norway and Iceland.

So now at last we in the homecountry of Sportacus & Co. will be able to wiew them on an Icelandic station!

Congratulations to Magnús and his team!

S C O T L A N D

I was living in Scotland for four years, 1976-1980, or to be more precise, 3 1/2 winters, because we always went back home to Iceland for the summer.

Edinburgh

We lived in the small town Galashiels in the Borders area south of Edinburgh. My ex-husband was studying textile technology at The Scottish College of Textiles.

Galashiels

My older son Eysteinn started schooling in Burgh Primary School and learned to read in English. My younger son Úlfur was born there, March 15th, 1978, in the Galashiels Cottage Hospital. Very appropriately The Wee Scot decided to continue his studies in Scotland after completing his studies in computer science at Reykjavík University. He went to the University of Aberdeen, and after that he worked for about a year in Newcastle Upon Tyne for a company producing computer games. Now he is back home in Reykjavík and working in The Computer Centre for Icelandic Savings Banks.

Our landlords at 94 St Andrews Street for 3 winters were Isobel and Ian Aitchison, a very nice couple who gave us a lot of assistance in many ways. They have two sons, Peter and Michael. It was their plan to vistit us in Iceland, but I was so sorry that when they were able to come we had moved to Tanzania, Africa. Then me and my husband divorced while staying there and somehow I lost touch with those very nice friends.

I always look upon Scotland a little bit as a second home away from home.

Give it up for kids!

Spanking in Reykjavík

Fréttablaðið/The Newspaper, yesterday:

"A man has been taken to court accused of spanking a playschool teacher, laying her on the enginehood of her car and hitting her a few times on the butt.

The man admits to his crime, but says his excuse was that the playschool teacher had parked her car illegally, blocking the driveway to his house. As he had watched her park and she was getting out of the car he had walked up to her and asked her very politely to park elsewhere, as she was parking illegally, blocking a driveway and making it impossible for him to get his car into his driveway. He claims that she denied this and started making attacks on his manhood, sexually assulting him verbally by calling him names and that she had tried to kick his balls. He reacted to this in the way his mom had taught him by laying her on the enginehood of her car and spanking her lightly a few times.

The Way his Mom taught him ?

The playschool teacher claims that she had done nothing to deserve seach treatment and that she had never tried to kick his balls. Asked to remember the chain of events last fall, her feelings got the best of her and she started weeping, having to halt her testimony for a few minutes. She admits to calling the man "frekjudolla"/pushy just before the spanking took place. A witness claimed that the teacher called the man "rugludallur"/ idiot.

The defending lawyer of the accused claims that he cannot be judged for charges on a single link in an unfortunate chain of events. He claims that the playschool teacher herself broke the law abusing the man with demeaning comments; that she had attacked him verbally before he attacked her literally.

The verdict will be heard in the beginning of June."

Maybe they could learn something from this book from amazon.com?

Keep in mind:

Bad Beaviour never pays
Best not mess with a Playschool Teacher
Not everything your Mom taught you was right

Why won´t bears eat clowns?

Beacause they taste funny ;)

Hi Weatherpixie...

Reykjavík in the midnightsun

...you´ve got it all wrong, it´s NOT raining in Reykjavík right now, birds are singing and the sun is shining brightly - yes - still - at 6.50 p.m. !

Bravenet photocenter

I have started putting some pictures into my Bravenet photocenter. You are welcome to have a look; it´s located in one of the Bravenet-buttons at the bottom of the sidebar of my blog. It´s some photos from around the country that I´ve googled.

I also decided to try out this "free-links" that I´m not sure of how works.

Bravenet.com also has the same Icelandic flag that I have in my sidebar in their clip-art section - but theirs is moving ! - But I don´t know how to transfer it to Blogger with the motion, the Picasa service that I use a lot just demobilizes everything! I suspect that maybe it´s just my computer that doesn´t have the right installment for making this work ?

! O.M.G.! The troubles of the middel-aged millenium mouse learning to use a computer all on her own!

Please place your pin in my guestmap and have a look at the daily cartoon too for a laugh!

"The Rainbow Children"

Actor Stefán Karl Stefánsson

Read in the link above how "Robbie Rotten" helps Icelandic children with the organization he founded.

Am I Stupid?

OK

So I sacrificed my old addings and rechose the same template,after endless attempts to find out what was wrong so I could correct it. Looking the template over time and time again but saw nothing. Maybe I had just messed around too much with the old blog, I admit it was becoming a bit crowded!
So now I can start rebuilding,..oh, isn´t that after all the story of my life...;)

And pretty soon I´ll be changing my profile too because I was at the doctors yesterday and he told me OK to start working again. So then I am not going to have the time to be hanging by the computer all day. My bloodtests were fine, values going down slowly but steadily, I´m going to live to be 100 for sure.

BLOGGER

My blog has gone quite out of control and I don´t know what to do. It performs changes on its own and I seem to have nothing to say about it any more. And Blogger help is not of much use to me today. Maybe I´ll just have to learn html-coding from bottom to be able to manage this blog!

All posts have become centralized on an outstandish white background, biggest side-picture overlaps post-text and now my footer-troll has moved up, up up->This looks like an internet-troll at large? ;)

O.M.G.

Hehe ! ! !

Which File Extension are You?

Katie the Caterpillar

Katie the Caterpillar

Isn´t she sweet? Get to know her in the link above her!

Again and once more...

...on the subject of Eurovision in retrospect.
Excerpts from another columnist writing on the Fréttablaðið´s backpage today:

She's the Number One! The Grand Final - Congratulations, Helena Paparizou

"...it was a strikingly beautiful girl from Göteborg and Greece that won The Eurovision Songcontest this time with a song sounding undeniably Greek, as the group emphasized by dancing a Greek dance on stage. The girl from Malta that came in second was also very attractive. Like a galoping mare she stood on stage and gave her number without the assistance of backup voices in bikinis or twisting bodies. Without tricks or pretence her voice glided over all borders.

11,935 votes for "Angel" the Maltese national final

...Eurovision this time was good entertainment and a good intoduction to Ukraine. This colourful event has become a real "Bank of Joy" (which we in Iceland were also quite, quite sure would win the contest back 1986 when we started participating!). And this time it was interesting to see and the contestants from the smaller countries roll up the otherwise powerful big ones, because both France, Germany, Great Britain and Spain ended up at the bottom. This was very nice entertainmen and most funny was the young boy who brought his granny along and let her beat the drum."

Moldovian Band "Boonika bate doba" "Grandmamma beats the drum-a"

Lazy Town

Daily Life in Lazy Town

Lazy Town is the succsessful enterprize of a very engergetic (some would even say overactive!) and innovative Icelander, originally a carpenter and a former world aerobics champion, Magnús Scheving (top left in picture). He has all along right from the start of Lazy Town been acting the charcter of Sportacus himself. (In fact that character IS himself!)

It all started at first with just that sporting elf going out on his own to Icelandic Primary Schools promoting healthy living, an enterprize totally mr. Schevings idea. Then he made up the other characters and put together a theatre show for kids. And now it has become a succsessful TV-show in many countries. A great guy who knows how to let things happen!

For fun I want to tell you that we regularly have at Hótel Frón guests staying with us from the Nickolodion who come here in connection with the production of Latibær/Lazy Town located in Garðabær, a small suburban town just outside Reykjavík.

I was just reading some Googling about Lazy Town and I must say that I found some of the reactions of viewers in the USA quite amusing; many of them obviously didn´t know what to make of it, in the beginning at least!

! Robbie Rottens chin is of course not real and his magnificient hairstyle is not his usual daylylife hairstyle (Magnús´ moustache is not the real thing either!) The part is actually played by a very handsome Icelandic actor, Stefan Karl Stefánsson, who used to be seen as a serious actor on the scenes of both our biggest theatres in Reykjavík, The National Theatre and The Reykjavík City Theatre, but has now, to the regrets of many, moved to Los Angeles, USA, with his actress wife Steinunn Ólína Þorsteinsdóttir

"Waiter Rant" on Beauty:

"Sometimes a girl is so lovely a guy becomes stupid."

On and on...

...about the Eurovision Songcontest...

"You are posessed by the opposite of paranoia.
You live in the illusion that everybody
likes you..."

- Quote from a Woody Allen movie.

Moldovian Band "Boonika bate doba" "Grandmamma beats the drum-a"

Opinion: ...Maybe - just maybe - the retrospective selfirony of the columnist on the backpage of today´s Fréttablaðið-newspaper on behalf of the Icelandic nation and it´s superb morale on the issue of the big event of the Eurovisione, like all other great issues, is right...

"What went wrong?
CAN IT REALLY BE THAT IT WAS SIMPLY OUR SONG THAT WAS NOT GOOD ENOUGH?
NO, we cannot for a moment allow ourselves to think so!

... If it was not the singing, the dancing, the costumes, the filming, the East-European tastes...

...maybe it was just that the hot dog vendor in Bratislava, the gay hairdresser in Baden-Baden and all the other people that went to the telephone - yeah, it must be said - in enthralled stupidity and voted in this huge contest didn´t like our song, didn´t care about Iceland or hadn´t even heard about it!

Scandalous taste, of course, but if those people prefer to vote in favour of the ethnic drumming, the fact remains that in Iceland a lot of grills (for the Euro-parties) and television sets got sold, but nobody had any of these for free, as promised if Selma would win.

So the winners this time, like always, are the merchants. Huh!"

...and I think we will all watch the grand Finale tonight, even though it will be with a great deal less enthusiasm than before, when we still though Selma had every chance of getting there.

Apropos

...hrrmmpphh!!!

I was just reading an article in the paper by an Icelandic female writer, who is now residing in the States for some time and writes us epistles about life in the big America. She had been to a party, where there were also two ladies who had just seen an Oprah show about Scandinavian women. The writerlady did not enjoy that party very much and less so as it went on and the two ladies got around describing the content of that show to the other guests. She was feeling hurt and angry when she left the party. Apropos this I just wanted to write this here:

I have NOT yet seen that Oprahshow about Scandinavian women, with an insert about Icelandic women, but I´ve heard a lot about it, so I just want to say:

Icelandic women are NOT all SLUTS ! ! ! They are not always doing dodo in drunken stupor with any man that wants them. But, like in any other countries societies, there exist in Iceland women that are looked upon as sluts. Maybe the difference with us is that we are more tolerant about those so-called than many other nations. And what an ugly name too to call any woman (are there any MALE SLUTS out and about? Ever heard of them?)

There exists a very strange and thin line, or contradiction, between today´s image of the very glamorous sexy sexy lady portrayed in many ads and almost every musictape you see, versus this concept of being considered a slut. I think it must be quite confusing for young people today. We women should all be oh so sexy, but no, no, no, not sluts, even if it´s considered oh so tough to be "slutty"!

So how on earth are our young little sweet (but not so innocent!) girls supposed to know how to be and behave when it comes to sex, with all those impressions that are forced upon them? I think it must be even more diffucult to figure out than ever before. Guess it depends a lot on having a strong background from home to build on.

Which leads me on to the subject of unmarried teenage mothers and our very high percentage of those. With us if a teenagegirl gets pregnant and does not want the pregnancy terminated, her parents will generally support that girl in having that child and bringing it up. The parents often make quite a big effort in this matter, sacrificing time and money to support their daughter in bringing up what is sometimes their first grandchild. It´s considered unfortunate, but not catastrophic for a girl to become a single mother at a young age.
Link: UNICEF - At a glance: Iceland - Statistics

But what also makes the percentage higher is the number of couples with child or children living together without being married. As our stupid laws are financially punative with regard to those who choose to get married, people tend to delay marriage for quite some time in many cases.

But now I´ve drifted into pondering on matters of social context, upbringing and education...

So, like we say in Iceland; On with the Butter! :)
( and if you have a look at the link I made on this, you´ll see some real sweet Icelandic girlies, like the one below!:)

Icelandic women are beautiful, very independent, well educated, strongwilled, highly energetic and resolute, with a mind of their own.
They are no sweet lambs or dainty roses; they are valkyries, viking ladies.
They choose for themselves the men they like and want!
(Yes, sometimes they eat them too...mooah...so best behave...)

Oprah and Icelandic Svanhildur

There you have it, regardless of some intended misunderstandings and malicious cutting on the Oprah show on an interwiew with a very well liked Icelandic TV-newswoman, Svanhildur Hólm, who has had to take a lot of criticism from some of the Icelandic public after that show.

I have managed to obtain an excerpt from that show, you can judge for yourself how fair it is to judge the female half of a nation on an answer so obviously cut out of context, just for the purpose of adhering to the tastes of an audience eager to experience some oscenity:
(right click here and "Save Target As")

And of course regardless of some horribly stupid males designing a stupid, stupid advertizing campaign for Icelandair, presenting their fellow female countrymen and the nightlife of Reykjavík´s centre on weekends in a highly twisted mirror.

And Icelandairs stewardesses are NOT like you saw them on the Sopranos!

I´d like to stress too that in Iceland prostitution is illegal. I don´t think there has been made a single pornofilm this country by an Icelander (for publication, anyway, I don´t care what people might do in private!). If there has been, it has certainly been by bl.... foreigners doing it on false pretetexts. How big is the porn-industry in the States, anyway?
Get the answer here: Link: CBS News | Porn In The USA | September 3, 2004 16:36:14

And we are fighting modern slavery, net- and childpornography as best we can, like other nations.
Link: ECPAT USA

So now you know! ! ! Hrmmpp ! ! !

And on a final note in this ever elongating post of mine: I realized something funny Google-surfing with the word "slut":

In Danish the word "slut" means "the end".
So I would like to ask you:

Is this a book about "A Danish Slut"?

Is this "A Slut-Butt" or is it "The End"?

N O !

... Very obviously the Eurovision Songcontest has been taken over by the Eastern European countries!

Out of the 10 entries that ended up on the top ten list contesting next Saturday, 7 were from the former Eastblock. It´s crystalclear that these countries are all voting in favour of each other. Of the countries from the west, only Denmark and Norway got to be on the top 10 list. And still Israel hangs in there, even though it´s not even in Europe. I´ve never fully understood why it is in this contest at all?

Congratulations to our good neighbours, Denmark and Norway even though we here in Iceland think most of the rest of the list is very unfair, to say the least!

Grumble, grumble, hrrmp!

But of course, it´s all a game, anyway...! :)

May 20th: In todays´s paper Selma says: "Naturally one can only laugh at this outcome. But we are unbelievably satisfied with our part and we did very well on the stage. We did our best and there is nothing that I would have done differently.
The scene of the contest has changed a lot since I participated last. I don´t like it. It has turned into a CIRCUS and it´s an outrage that Iceland and the Netherlands did not reach the finals."

"...If I had your love...

...I could live my dream..."

....Bravó ! ! !

S E LM A...Winner of tonights Eurovision Song Contest....(?)

Anyway, I was watching her number just now and thought she did great, the best performance up to now. It was easy to see that she has been gaining a lot of experience acting in musicals on the big scene of The Reykjavík City Theatre since her last appearance on Eurovision in 1999, where she just missed the first place by a few votes (to Sweden) and came in second. Which goes to show that she was very good even then. So, tonight she must be a certain winner, n´est-ce pas, since her song was also the best....yebb!

I´m the sort of person that never takes much interest in this contest, until on the night; then my heart beats for our contestant, our girl, like everybody elses on this small island of ours with a population of just under 300.000.

(Iceland Population: 296,737 (July 2005 est.)According to http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/fields/2119.html, same as the population of a single street in N.Y. I´m told).

Toni Morrison

Toni Morrison

I know a boy who is sky-soft brown
I know a boy who is sky-soft brown
The dirt leaps for joy when his feet touch the ground.
His strut is a peacock
His eye is burning brass
His smile is sorghum syrup drippin´ slow-sweet to the last
I know a boy who is sky-soft brown


This song is from the one of Toni Morrisons novel that I read first and like the best:

The bluest eye

"The Bluest Eye".

Tanzania

I bought the book in a very small bookshop in Tabora, Tanzania, where I lived 1983-1985. I was living also in Moshi, Tanzania 1985-1986, where I had a fantastic wiew of the Mount Kilimanjaro from the porch of my house (and also of the Police Academy´s big maize-field!)

The Kili

Link: Great photos of Moshi and Kilimanjaro
(and Iceland as well I just discovered!)

Looking back on Whit-Sunday

Akureyri Main Street

Last Saturday I drove my parents (both aged 82) to the airport. They were flying to the north cost of Iceland to Akureyri to visit my two younger sisters that live there, one of them in Akureyri and the other on a farm in Eyjafjörður in the vincinity of the town. ( I have four sisters, two are older than me and living in Reykjavík like me).

A Flock of Confirmation Kids with their Shepherd

My parents went there for the Church Confirmation of the youngest of their 17 grandchildren on Whit-Sunday. In Iceland the Confirmation-time in towns is around Easter, while in the countryside it´s Whit-Sunday, don´t ask me why.

With the Icelanders the confirmation is a big event in the life of youngsters, taking place the year they turn 14. The parents give big parties and the kids get expensive gifts, top-fashion clothing and stylish hairdoes. Even though the seize of the goings on of course depends on the financial status of the individual families they put a great deal of pride into making the event as glamourous as possible. The media is also full of advice on arrangements, e.t.c.

All of this even though the Icelanders can´t be called a very religious nation, with a very low percentage going regularly to church. About 95% or more of the nation belongs from birth to the Lutheran-Evangelic Protestant State Church (I´m not sure of the most recent numbers, with the number of immigrants we have, it used to be 98%) Most people go to church only at Christmas and Easter if they go at all, also for weddings, funerals and christenings; and of course, for confirmations in the family! Even so most people here claim themselves to be religious, that they believe in God in their own way, which I think is true.

But somtimes you can´t help feeling that the real meaning of the the confirmation gets overshadowed by all those goings-on,with the kids thinking more about all the gifts and parties ( like Christmas?). I think the closes thing to resemble the commotion around this event with us is the Jewish "Bar Mitzvah", as you see it in films at least (we don´t have many Jews in Iceland).

But, anyway, I haven´t spoken with my parents since they went; just hope all went well and that everybody was happy; and that my niece was happy with the present I sent her.

A Confirmation Girl at her Party

This weekend is for many people one of the big weekends in the year for travelling inside the country. But Óskar and me just stayed at home, beacause he was working in the hotel and I went there to help in the mornings; now it´s getting very busy on weekends with the touristseason coming into full bloom.

Today´s Angel

...At last it´s Springtime in Iceland!

Graduation time in The Icelandic Film School !

Working in films sometimes gets you into strange circumstances!

Yesterday I went to my older sons Eystein´s graduation from The Icelandic Filmschool. At long last he has got himself an education! He dropped out of school as a teenager and for some years I was really worried what would become of him, as he is a very gifted guy in many ways. Well, it just took him a long time to realize what he wants in life. Films and books and gathering knowledge of all kinds have been his main interests since childhood. So it was a good idea to make a start for a career in filming. His aim is to be able to work mainly in documentary films and scriptwriting in the future.

I found the quality of the shortfilms shown at this graduation very varied - some were good (and not too long!) But I must admit that I was getting really bored watching some guy eating baked beans from a can for 5 minutes (or was it 10?)...in fact he ended up eating his canary-bird as well, poor thing...!

I was pleased with the film in the individualist film group by my son and his companion. It was only 10 minutes, but actionpacked with something happening every minute. Actually I found it surprizing how they got their story over in such a short time without it becoming too hectic. "Completely unknown" a story about a young couple in lack of money getting a very strange offer of it and their reactions to that offer. A remake of an old Twilight-zone episode.

It didn´t take the first prize offered, though. It went to a film called "20 minutes to the end of the world". Maybe I´m judgemental in favour of my son, guess so...but the fact is I found it boring and very sombre, but I admit that the filming was good, in rotating-wide angel-one shot-one location-take, uncut, black and white, minimalistic lighting, very artistic filming.(I don´t know if this kind of filming is maybe the most fashionable thing today?) But the acting was so-and-so ( two amateur actors, one of the producers himself and his girlfriend, I guess. Many of the other pupils had professional actors come in and take part in their films, something hat these actors are quite pleased to do) . The script was bad and it was far too long for a shortfilm, 24 minutes (to the end of the world?). AND it had the most violent scenes of all the films, with a husband strangling his wife, pregnant with their first child, at her request, so that she would not have to experience the END! MOOAH!
But I guess it was the filming that counted, not the content; the artistic value of the filming, not the enterainting value of the content nor the fluency of the dialouge.

* Zachary Parker *

The showing of the shortfilm (yeah, 8 minutes!) "Pískó" (Psycho) by Eysteinn and 4 others, that I have told about in a previous blog (29/4) went very well. I MYSELF was seen in ONE scene, entering the cinema after a too- young boy trying to sneek in had been told to go away; AND I had my name on the screen at the top of the list of assisting actors, (or whatever you call it in English, it´s STATIST in the Scandinavian languages). So now I´m famous in films, hehe!

"Art without Borders"

*See me twinkle*

Last Wednesday Óskar and I went with my sister to The Reykjavík City Theatre to see a show staged by a group of mentally disabled people. It was the closing part of a great Arts Festival arranged in the cooporation of disabled and able artists in Reykjavík, May 5th-13th, named
Art without Borders.

My sisters son, who has got Asperger Syndrome, is a member of a singing group consisting of six young people that call themselves "Blikandi stjörnur", in English "The Twinkling Stars". And twinkle as stars they did, in numbers from "Jesus Christ Superstar" and "Grease", assisted by professional actors from The Reykjavík City Theatre and a group of kids from one of the secondary schools invited to participate in the show.

They also had a play about a prince and princess, based on mimicry with the voice of a narrator from tape, which worked really well. The leading role of the prince was in the hands of a young man with Down´s Syndrome, who gave a very lively and amusing interpretation of is part!

The show opened with a band of four people playing some popular music, starting with an Irish song. It was rendered very convincingly by an overseized guy, who in fact looked quite Irish and was not in the least inhibited by the dimensions of his corpus, but really let loose and gave his heart out to the audience, which got the show going from the first moment.

The Twinkling Stars are well known in Iceland and are quite often asked to perform at various events in Reykjavík and other places as well. They have been on tours abroad, participating in concerts in Copenhagen, Denmark and in the Ruhr-District, Germany.

And some more about the musical triumphs of the Twinkling Stars:

From Reykjavík´s official website 3.10.2003:
"Blikandi stjörnur" win in Brussels

An Icelandic-German project was rewarded as the best in their category. The directorate of the European Council announced yesterday in Brussels which projects would be rewarded as the best that had been produced by the project "Youth for Europe" in the last 3 years. The choice was between 40.000 projects, therefore the result of the German-Icelandic cooporation is outstanding.

The project is called "Music in my Life, Music is my Life" and was done in Germany in 2001 and in Iceland in 2002, by the groups "Blikandi stjörnur" and "The Rockers". The two groups made a CD, produced a music-video and performed at concerts. They also visited protected workplaces for the handicapped and discussed the rights of disabled people in Iceland and Germany.

The CD:

Rockers & Blikandi Stjörnur:
- It´s normal to be different -

Title list:

* ROCKERS & BLIKANDI STJÖRNUR
* Iceland Blues
* German Reggea
* Blikandi Stjörnur/Twinkling Stars
* Punk more never this
* Lifi Ijósið/Let the Light live

* BLIKANDI STJÖRNUR
* Yesterday
* Sandy
* Lifum allt að nýju/Let´s live it all again
* Jesús guð/Jesus God
* Maístjarnan/May Star
* Sumarást/Summer Love

* ROCKERS
* Hallelujah baby
* Rockin´ in the summer
* La Rocka
* We are the Rockers
* Radio Rockers
* Hot for Love
* - Hymne

Album by The Rockers:
- Hallelujah baby -

Title list:
* Hallelujah baby
* Rocken in the summer
* la rocka
* we are rockers
* radio rockers
* hot for love
* muezzin one
* you are thereby
* motorway hero
* - hymne

* gonna some rockin ' - session

Some interesting links to this subject:

European Commision Youth Programme
"Die Rockers" [Translate this page]
Ruhr-Guide -Rockers - [ Translate this page ]
Tonhaus Records - Label - [ Translate this page ]
Waltrop Official Press Site/Stadt Waltrop | Presseinformationen | Translate this page