Hey DJ, keep playin’ that song

A common denominator with all the human members of the farm is a love for music. Sveinn loves old country, Johnny Cash and Rúnar Júlíusson classics like “Ég sé um hestinn” (“I take care of the horse”) in particular. 

A variety of genres are welcomed however, and I remember last visit riding with him and granddaughter Alexandra in the tractor out to feed the horses, perched behind them in the cab as Madonna's "Like a Prayer" serenaded us over the radio.

German Saskia’s, whose acting training includes years in musical theater, brought the house down in her rendition of Amy Winehouse’s “Valerie” at a recent raucous Akureyri karaoke night, and commonly softly sings beautiful classic jazz standards like “How High The Moon” to the sheep when going about her chores. Rakel is also a vocalist extraordinaire and performs regularly in lounge acts, getting booked at both local bars and restaurants and spots as far away as Reykjavik. Her favorite music is anything from the musical “Grease,” especially “You’re The One That I Want.” She had the full soundtrack playing from her phone the other evening, mindlessly serenading a sheep deep in labor with “Beauty School Drop Out.”

While coincidental, the particular song felt apt due to the sheep’s, to me, unorthodox haircut. They shear their sheep here twice a year–once in November before they bring them all into the sheep house for the winter, and then again in March. Sveinn does all the shearing himself, and as a young man, would travel around to farms throughout the region shearing other herds as well. If the sheep is really old, however, they either skip shearing them all together or, more often, just sheer their upper half, from their neck down to just past their front legs. Apparently senior citizen sheep, like their human counterparts, get cold more easily and enjoy the comfort of a good wool cardigan.

I have been extremely promiscuous in my musical tastes throughout my life–a product of a household in which tunes from the American Songbook and classical piano were on heavy rotation, along with Paul Simon and other pop classics. Starting as a pre-teen, I became obsessed with Aaliyah and classic 90s hip hop, as well as any music (Klezmer, New Orleans and Mozart concertos were high on the list) that featured my chosen instrument, the clarinet. It’s the hip hop that plays most often in my head here these days, though. Specifically the 1995 Skee-Lo classic, “I Wish” (“I wish I was a little bit taller, I wish I was a baller…”). I come from a tall people. I have two aunts who are 6’, but perhaps my sister and I were raised under power lines with a particularly virulent frequency because were are both a respectable, but decidedly average 5’6”, on a good day. I swear though, if I were just an inch and a half taller, I would be able to clear with grace the gates that carve up the isles into individual sheep birthing stalls.

This would be especially handy when carrying buckets full of water, or when simply wishing to more swiftly move through a stall without disturbing an immediately postpartum mother (the snarkier ones will stomp one front foot and shoot you a look that is impossible not to anthropomorphize: (“excuuuuuse me! I’m trying to lick the afterbirth off multiple creatures here, do you mind?!”). As it is, I have learned to navigate these hurdles with as much grace as is, for me, humanly possible, and I know all the little foot holds that will accommodate my wide galoshes nearly by heart. 

Often though, I feel like I’ve been transported back to high school, the one time in a track meet when, due solely to my preference for long distance, I was thrust into a steeplechase race (for the uninitiated, Snoop Dog’s on-air commentary of the event at the last Paris Olympics, when, apparently, he was encountering the event for the first time as well, is golden). Ginger Rogers I was not, as I awkwardly beached myself up onto every belly-button high road block of a hurdle over the course of the mile event, before two footed jumping– splash!-- into the waiting coy pond beyond each one. At least then, unlike here, I wasn’t in full baggy coveralls. 

Suffice to say, these sheep are developing an incredibly eclectic Spotify playlist that defies easy algorithmic prediction. And I’m sure in the rare night time moments when they find the sheep house free of humans, their dance parties are pretty epic too.