In August we will not take it easy rather than in other months - and there will be some music at the Centre !

Next sunday, August 7th we will have Skúli mennski, the very human Trubador Skúli, who has the deapest voice and the most ironic lyrics in the region. Skúli will be accompanied with our good friend Mugison and together they will probably form the most creative duet in the history of this town ...
the concert starts at 20.00 and the entrance fee is only 1.000,-   we have filled the cooler with cold beer and white wine, the coffee is also great !!

On Saturday, August 13th we will play as many types of games and cards as possible, we bring some for you to join in and you can also bring your own or whatever - this will be a nice treat for us who love joining others in various table games and playing cards ... we will start at 20.00

The Blueberry festival takes place in Súðavík on the weekend 26. - 28. of August ... more of that later ... further on www.blaberjadagar.com

July has been busy at the Arctic Fox Centre - we have finished one week´s monitoring in Hornvik with great volunteers: Edwin, Carla, William, Dotan and Moritz and are soon heading for the next one next week with a new group.

We have been to two daytours with West tours and one 5-day tour with Borea Adventures to see the foxes in Hornstrandir Nature Reserve - running around us, busy feeding young pups who were born late or small this cold spring - but weather has been extremely nice in July, lot´s of food and everything is fine..  next daytour is on Thursday 26.7. with West tours.

Tatjana from Orkney island has done a miracle in our garden, piling up the heavy stones and making a nice flower bed for Icelandic herbs and plants. Aslo a stone bench and seats down by the river, this will last forever and is totally in harmony with our natural surrounding, we want to keep Tatjana.

Moritz has now left us after two months here, helping around as well as working on a nice study on "den geography" where he mapped various den sites in Hornstrandir Nature Reserve. Hopefully his study will become a basic for a larger study on the den sites in Westfjords, how they are formed and what structures are useful for foxes in a long term perspective, as permanent den sites...

Westfjords Vikings came for a visit but they had been lifting stones in Raggagardur earlier. Altogether they weighted something over 3 tons but the house is strong and well built ... nice vikings :-)

We have had one beautiful concert on our loft, with Svavar Knútur, melodic sweed guitar and soft voice with great stories behind each song and filling the house of nice tones... more of that later if we can fool him out here again :-)

Next weekend we will offer our visitors a music festival in collaboration with Amma Habby - we will have a concert at 21.00 on Saturday 23th. Eggert and Michelle Nielsen with our friend Skundi Litli, will come and play and then around 23 we will move on to Amma Habby and continoue the concert there, singing into the night ... this will be fun

Our little arctic fox pups, More and Less, are growing fast on the good food from Murr - they love visits ...

See you at the centre...

The Arctic Fox Centre will celebrate it´s one years anniversary on Monday, June 13th from 1 to 5. Amazing how time flies ..

We will have open house from 1-5 and free access to the exhibition. There will be a birthday cake and coffee on the house and Olgerdin will give the yellow summer drink MIX.

Three documentary films will be showed, one German (by Tobias Mennle) and two French (Marie-Helene Baconnet, Ecomedia and Cecile Favier, Ushuaya tv). These films were partly produced in Hornstrandir Nature Reserve with our help.

At five o´clock Eggert og Michelle will join us with acustic music and happy faces.

-          Welcome, we look forward seeing you

The Arctic Fox summer 2011 is beginning and on June 1st we have open from 10-22 as will be the opening time for the rest of the summer. We offer you Arctic Fox Café, Exhibition, Theater loft, Nature films, childrens corner and conserts all summer. At The Café we have traditional pastry as before and a brand new soup&bread as well as smooties from fresh fruits. Beer and wine will be available and we have a special brand from Borg Brugghús. Later during the summer we will offer various blueberry dishes in relation to Blueberry days in Augst 26th to 28th.
 
We will have some of our "old" but also new staff members as well as helpers around at the centre this summer. Mauritz from Germany has been with us for two weeks and has shown great talents in lecturing, guiding at the exhibition, baking waffles and serving coffee - we call him Móri, a traditional male arctic fox name in Iceland. We have had some volunteers already, such as lexie and Conor from US, Tobi and Karlien from Belgium, Sabrina and Remco from Netherlands, and Móri.

The arctic fox monitoring in Hornstrandir Nature Reserve will begin in mid June and there will be some arctic fox watching tours too.

We have got positive responses from the almost three thousand people who have visited us since we opened for the first time in June 2010. Furthermore, it looks like our little centre is still in some peoples mind after they come home from their Iceland tour.

One of our new friends is Lillie Calistri-Yeh from New Jersey, USA. She is only 12 but has achieved many things in her life. Lillie is an arctic fox supporter at WWF and travels around with her „teddy arctic fox", Lucky. As soon as she heard about the Arctic Fox Centre, she asked her parents if they could visit it. When they came at the centre last summer, Lillie and Lucky met Frosti and loved him, of course. Now Lillie is writing a book about arctic foxes and dedicates it to Frosti and the Arctic Fox Centre. We are proud of Lillie and find her a great roe-model for others who want to make an effort and let their dreams come true. We look forward to have the book sent - congratulations Lillie.

During the Easter we got a package from Birgit Lattermann and her family in Germany. They came to visit the centre in March and wanted to give us something. They looked out for a literature on arctic foxes in German and found this great old children's book about a little fox: Der kleine Polarfuchs. It is a Russian story by Juri Kowal, translated to German. They sent us the book and now we have a special literature for German speaking visitors at our "library". We are grateful for the gift and it´s nice to know that there are people out there, willing to share. 

The Arctic Fox Centre will be open 13 - 17
during the Easter weekend:

Saturday, April 23th and Monday, April 25th

- Arctic Fox Café: Hot chocolate, Fine Coffee, New baked pastry, ..

The Exhibition is open too - entrance fee 800 ISK for adults, free for kids with parents

Happy Easter

The first volunteers of this year have already arrived. They are Conor Handley and Alexia Siebuhr from California. They came to Westfjords last weekend and have already experienced their first Icelandic winter storm. Borea Adventures got them some activities, for example they went to Simbahöllin in Þingeyri and horseriding in Dyrafjordur. Now they have placed themselves in Heydalur, just like the hunters do, waiting for the foxes to show up. We hope they will see Frosti and Flame, but every fox would do since photographers are arriving soon, aiming for good winter photos of arctic foxes.

We wish Conor and Lexie all the best and hope everything works out as planned.

More about volunteering plans of 2011 on a special page here

 

Ester, from The Arctic Fox Centre and Sigursteinn Másson, from IFAW visited all elementary schools in northern Westfjords during the last days. Later on we hope to get a chance to visit schools in the southern part of Westfjords and Strandir.

Sigursteinn introduced animal welfare and projects where animal and human welfare were combined while solving problems caused with conflicts between humans and wildlife.  Ester went into ecology and ecosystems and how these factors are important for animal welfare and the abilities we have to utilize the nature in a sustainable way. The Wild North project was introduced, the aims and ideas of the project as well as the Arctic Fox Centre´s rule, in collaboration with other partners, in Westfjords and wider.
It is our hope that the younger generations will have the knowledge and awareness needed to be able to solve many of the problems that we, the older ones, have left for them to deal with. They will need all the effort they can get and sustainability is a key word for the coming generations if the nature is supposed to be the major resorce in the future as it has been in the past.

Generous friends came for a visit to the latest board meeting of The Arctic Fox Centre. Those were Sigurdur Jonsson and Runar Oli Karlsson, from Borea Adventures. They formally handed out their 1% donation to the centre, as members of 1% For The Planet. Borea Adventures and The Arctic Fox Centre are the first Icelandic members of 1%.  The board was of course very happy to receive this support but as donors, Borea can support any non-profit organisation out of approximately three thousand organisation on the 1% list. The Arctic Fox Centre is proud to have such encouraging support from Borea and hopes to to meet the supporters' expectations. 

There are many ongoing projects at The Arctic Fox Centre despite our winter closing, this is the time to prepare for the coming summer and the many projects we want to accomplish this year.

We have had several guests this year and our visitors have had to show patience towards construction works since the house is being restored a bit. Last weekend we had a bus load of happy people from Oddfellow, on an adventure tour and that was fun. Never have so many people gathered in our little café but everyone's faces were smiling and the guests were thrilled about the house and the exhibition. Inga Vala and Lilja served light refreshments while "Little Skundi" played live music. Thorsteinn from muurikka.is brought smoked mussels from the fjord - delicious light food which we´d love to have on our menu next summer (great with beer or white wine)..

We are preparing the volunteer´s schedule for next summer and this will be listed up on a special site on our web page soon. There interested people can choose project, time and send an e-mail to see if we can agree. This is new for us because we have never had so many volunteer offering (thanks to Lonely Planet Tour Guide). We could also use people with skills in techniques, statistics, graphical design, childreens guidance/playful education, puppies, theatre, music, garden design.... etc  

The first volunteers of this year will work on the project: "Where is Frosti?" and as it sounds, they will try to find Frosti, our little fox from last summer, locate him and see if he is ok and willing to participate in the "winter photographing period" ...

Next weekend The Arctic Fox Centre will take part in the conference "Without Destination" and have a lecture with other members in The Wild North group under the theme: Practicing Nature Based tourism. The conference is in English, free of charge and you can find it here: http://www.artmuseum.is/desktopdefault.aspx/tabid-2182/3368_read-1723/date-1625/ We still have the „open by agreement" scedule and regular openings will begin in June. During the Easter we will probably have some event going on, which we will let you know on the web page in time.