Here you can see a composite image of Mýrarkirkja church in Dýrafjörður, Valdimar Haukur Gíslason, and Þingeyri in Dýrafjörður.
Composite image/Sigurður Ægisson/Submitted photo/Sigurður Bogi
Valdimar Haukur Gíslason and his wife Edda Arnholtz spent Christmas Day without electricity at their home in Mýrar in Dýrafjörður. Valdimar says it turned out just fine and was actually rather cozy.
“Of course it would have been nice to have electricity, but it worked out well enough. It was warm, so the house didn’t get cold, and we just used candles and flashlights. We heated some water with gas so we could have instant coffee and tea, and then we just popped into town to get proper coffee,” Gíslason told mbl.is.
Enjoyed Christmas ham instead
Power went out in several homes in Dýrafjörður on Christmas Day after an underground cable broke in Hjarðardalsá during the night. A church service at Mýrar Church was cancelled, and residents had to rely on candles for light.
Gíslason says the couple skipped cooking and instead ate cold Christmas ham left over from Christmas Eve.
“We didn’t bother cooking. We just had some of the ham and that was perfectly fine.”
Warm weather saved the day
The mild weather helped residents cope with the power outage, as unusually high temperatures were recorded around the country over the holidays.
“It also wasn’t very windy, although it did start raining quite a bit later on. But they handled it well
— the conditions were difficult, and they did a great job fixing it. There was a lot of water in that river,” he says.
Old equipment brought back into use
The couple had to dig out old equipment that hadn’t been used in years to manage during the outage.
“In the end, we found a battery-powered radio and got the gas gear out — things we haven’t used in years. We thought that once the underground cable was installed, we’d never lose power again, and it’s been very reliable until now.”
He adds that power outages have been rare since the cable was installed and that electricity usually returns within a couple of minutes.