In the morning I looked out of the small aperture that the snow had left on the window pane. Much as I had expected, some of the houses below were half buried and I had to chuckle (although with a note of admiration) as the postwoman climbed a snowdrift on all fours in order to deliver the mail to one of them.
Saevar, who with his wife Ella runs Finna Hotel, had already dug away the snow from the front. He must have been hard at it long before I emerged, for the hotel frontage is lower than the level of the road outside and the snow really tends to gather here.
The local authorities here in the Strandir region are much better geared up to deal with situations like this than their counterparts in Britain. It is all a matter of experience and expectations, I suppose, but within hours of the storm bulldozers were already out, clearing the roads and shovelling the snow into vast banks where it would impede traffic least. The bulldozer crews carried on working late into the next evening and for days afterwards.
When I had eaten breakfast (porridge with honey plus two mugs of tea), I ventured out with the camera to take some photographs.
The hotel itself seemed to have come off quite well, but then it is relatively sheltered by several other buildings.
On the other hand, the health centre just down the road was in the midst of a major snow drift.
Turning back in the other direction, towards the downhill road that I usually take down to Hafnarbraut and to the shops, I encountered a neigbour and asked her to stand by the drift that the excavator had cut through, just to give an idea of the size of it.
The most beautiful thing about the snowfall was the blue light emitted from within each small pocket in the snow banks, gathered and refracted even as the light was falling. It glowed in a way that I had never seen before, waking dreams of Elven dwellings deep within. Standing and peering in wonder at this enchanting phenomenon, I was aware of people staring at me from nearby windows and wondered what they thought. Perhaps they thought their strange, English neighbour had never seen snow before? If so, they were right in a way, for I had never seen snow like this previously. Unfortunately, the camera could not capture it adequately. The camera never sees things as the mind sees them. A memory came back to me from when I was about 15; a girl from Malaysia had joined my class at school and when the first snow of the winter fell she stood entranced at the window because she had never witnessed it before. I watched her and loved her sense of wonder, but in those days I was too shy to tell her that.
My usual route downhill was still blocked, but the other was open. Most of the houses were still in the grip of the ice and snow.
The downstairs apartment of my friend Siggi had its window completely covered. He usually keeps it open so that his cat Hippo can get out, but on this occasion I expect Hippo had to use another exit - or a litter tray.
Just a little further on, more houses had snowdrifts completely obscuring their doors and windows; and so it continued, all the way along Hafnarbraut and until I reached the general store (Kaupfélagið), where the carpark had been scoured of snow by bulldozers and heaped into steep piles.
Of course, in conditions like these there was one easy mode of transport. Noisy but effective! One of these days I will get to ride one.