Supernovanationalisticfever

Second-last episode of Rockstarsupernova this evening, and the Icelandic nation is holding its collective breath to see how our man Magni does. It's quite a fascinating social study - the most unlikely people are completely absorbed by the whole spectacle and Magni's part in it. Never mind that most are ambivalent at best about whether or not they actually want him to win - there seem to be few illusions about the Supernova band and its members. However, when you get a small nation like ours - pop. 300,000 if you’ve just joined us - and one of our countrymen is 'making it' [attach to the term what you will] out there in the big, bad world... the sense of nationalistic pride is palpable.

This evening, the Kastljós programme had an interview with one of Magni's most devoted followers - a 99-year-old man who spoke so eloquently and with such absolute sincerity about his wonderment at the Supernova circus that I have rarely seen anything so delightful. In his view - and in the view of many others - our Magni has conducted himself in an exceptionally gentlemanlike manner. A phrase you hear thrown around a lot is hann hefur verið sjálfum sér, fjölskyldu og þjóð til sóma - which effectively means "he has brought honor to himself, his family and his nation." Putting that sentence under the microscope, I can see how primitive we still are when it comes down to it. We're a tribe. We value honor. It's kind of nice.

Other amazing ways in which the Icelandic nation is showing its solidarity:

• What happened last week, of course, when there was a massive campaign to urge people to stay up and vote, to keep Magni out of the bottom three. I have no figures, but there were a lot of people who either got up or stayed up to cast their votes for Magni in the middle of the night. It worked - he was the only one of the six contestants who was never at risk of being eliminated.
• One of the oil companies here in Iceland lowered the price of gas for a limited time last week to celebrate Magni's success.
• The SPRON savings bank gave Magni's fiancée ISK 500,000 [USD 7,260] last week to celebrate his success on the show. If he stays in tonight they will give her [them] another ISK 500,000 and another ISK 500,000 if he wins. This came after reports trickled out that he was getting paid very little for being on the show and his family's finances were suffering. After all, the man has a small baby to support.
• Tonight there will be a special 'warmup' programme before the Supernova broadcast to whip up excitement beforehand - one of the highlights will be a clip from when Silvía Nótt went to visit the Supernova mansion in LA recently. That's right: they unleashed old Silvía on the poor unsuspecting Supernova contestants [apparently she told Lukas - the guy with all the makeup - that is was amazing he'd got so far considering that he is, um, developmentally challenged] so We Shall See. Not that I'm going to stay up and watch it, though. Probably. Not. I'll probably just wake up at 4am like last time and fire off a few votes before fading off into dreamland again.

AND IS THE WEATHER MAGNI-FICENT?
Nah. Kind of wet and cold. Definitely getting colder now. The Icelandic sweater even came out of the closet today. And for dinner there was no other option but traditional Icelandic meat soup. All because we're caught up in Supernovanationalisticfever, or something. Light winds, clouds lifting overnight, temps currently 9°C. The sun came up at 06.21 and set at 20.30.