Cool Cash

We always like to have some local money on hand when traveling to new places, so I ordered Islandic krónur (singular króna) through our local credit union. It's not going to go far -- 6000 krónur is worth about $50 / 32 GBP / 37 Euro. We have a few more 5000 krónur banknotes, as well as debit and credit cards, so we'll be fine, but I think this is likely to be our most expensive vacation to date.

I love colorful money like this -- ours is so drab, just green. I was particularly pleased to see a woman on the 5000 krónur banknote, and had to look up the story behind the image, as from her dress, she seemed to be wealthy, but not a royal personage.

And indeed she was well-off -- Ragnheiður Jónsdóttir (1646-1715) was the daughter of the last Catholic Icelandic bishop of Hólar in northern Iceland. One of twelve children, she was a skilled seamstress and wife of two consecutive Lutheran bishops in the Hólar see. The reverse side of the banknote shows her instructing two girls in embroidery.

The 1000 krónur banknote shows Brynjólfur Sveinsson (1605-1675), who served as the Lutheran bishop of the see of Skáholt and influenced modern knowledge of Old Norse literature. The back of the banknote shows Brynjólfskirkja church (1650–1802) at Skáholt -- to my eye, not nearly as interesting as the women embroidering!

(Phil has also blipped some colorful currency here, from the first "foreign" country we'll visit on this vacation.)

(There may be some breaks in my journal and fewer comments over the next couple of weeks, as we won't have WiFi everywhere we're staying.)