“It was the best-selling fish shop in the country for eleven years,” says Kristján Berg Ásgeirsson, who many people immediately associate with the fish stores Fiskikóngurinn or the Fishing King. He is closing his fish store in Höfðabakki 1 today. He says he is almost flabbergasted when people under thirty appear in the store and says that pizzas have taken over seafood when it comes to the young generation.

A muddy flood fell in Patreksfjörður today around 10 AM this morning. No houses or persons were affected.

“The war was absolutely central to our conversation,” Iceland's Prime Minister Katrín Jakobsdóttir tells mbl.is of her meeting with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz in Berlin today.

Two hundred and eighty tons of pillar rock are used for the luxurious Torfhús Retreat accommodation in the land of Einholt in Bishopstungur. The very popular hot tubs by all the guesthouses are built with the pillar rocks. All the guesthouses are built in the old fashioned way of Icelandic farms with turf roofs.

Sometimes the life of police seems like a scene of a movie, chasing dangerous people on the run. While most of the population is fast asleep the police is on the beat looking out for the creatures of the night who sometimes are not up to any good and more often than not alcohol or drugs are involved.

The lawyer of former parish priest Gunnar Sigurjónsson in Digranes, questions whether the Bishop of Iceland Agnes M. Sigurðardóttir has any formal authority to make decisions on behalf of the church on the affairs of Gunnar.

It was the right decision not to postpone or cancel flights from North America yesterday morning based on the knowledge of the weather at the time, according to Icelandair’s CEO Nils Bogason. He says the weather forecast did not indicate that the weather would be as bad as it actually was.

The history of big events is worth remembering, celebrating, and learning from, as much as possible. The volcanic eruption in Heimaey in the Westman Islands, which started half a century ago, on the night of January 23rd in 1973, is such a case. It is still amazing that no harm or loss of life occurred when the cold winter night erupted literally in the outskirts of the town of Westman Islands and one of the biggest sea ports of the country. The islanders set out in the dark of night with fishing boats and made it to safety on the mainland.

The president of Iceland is currently on board the Coast Guard patrol vessel Freyja, bound for trawler Hrafn Sveinbjarnarson, which became powerless about 50 nautical miles north-northwest of Straumsnes last night. The ship’s arrival at the trawler is scheduled for eleven o'clock.

The Icelandic Edinburgh Society’s banquet, held in January each year to celebrate the birthday of Scottish poet Robert Burns, was cancelled for a few days due to the failure to secure the Scottish national dish haggis. The members of the Edinburgh Society are mostly Icelanders who have studied in Scotland as well as their spouses and Scots who are in the country.

One of two chairlifts in the skiing area in Hlíðarfjall in Akureyri failed midday today. There were not many people in the ski area, as the weather was not pleasant enough for skiing. Some skiers, however, were stuck in the elevator for a while before the Hlíðarfjall staff and emergency responders could bring them out of the lift and to a safe ground.

The warmer weather has brought some problems with excessive water after a long freezing spell. This morning some drivers have been getting water into their car engine so causing the car to stop after driving through large puddles or water collected on the streets.

The cost of building a bio-energy plant for the North East in Dysnes in the Eyjafjörður region could be around 5.1 billion ISK and its operations are expected to pay off in 15 years if the most optimistic plans for the operation’s margins are successful. This is reflected in a primary efficiency assessment carried out by the Association of Local Authorities and Economic Development in North Iceland (SSNE) and is currently being discussed by the municipalities.

There have been instances where seagulls, swan, geese and small birds have been frozen solid during the cold season. The Icelandic Animal Protection Association has encouraged people to feed the birds as in this unusually cold weather the smallest of our winged friends have problems getting anything to eat.

The two defendants charged with planning terrorist acts as well as weapon violations both denied the charges regarding terrorism at the hearing of their case today.

Tomorrow Veitur Utilities will cut the contribution of hot water to large consumers, including swimming pools in the capital area, due to excessive demand on heating systems during the cold season.

The Icelandic film composer Hildur Guðnadóttir was awarded the Critics Choice Award last Sunday. The award was given for her music in the film Tár.

The Norwegian aquaculture giant Mowi, which aquired a majority shareholding in the western aquaculture company Arctic Fish in December, last year delivered a positive operating result for a biomass correction of around EUR 1 billion, which is worth as much as 155 billion ISK. This is the best operating result in the company’s history.

A visitor visiting Þingvellir National Park in Þingvellir yesterday was in danger of losing his life when he walked along the bank of the Öxará River where the river flows into Þingvellir Lake.

A decision was made over the weekend to temporarily block the traffic of cars on Hrafnadalsvegur in Tálknafjörður, Iceland, and to turn the road into a sledge slope for townspeople to enjoy. Ólafur Þór Ólafsson, the municipal manager of Tálknafjörður, says the townspeople have been very welcoming of the change.

Nothing has still been heard from Modestas Antanavicius, 46, from Borgnes, who disappeared more than a week ago. The investigation in the last few days has not yielded any further clues, and police are still appealing to local residents to keep their eyes open.

When Danish writer and journalist Lise Nørgaard, who passed at the beginning of the year, made a long-awaited visit to Iceland at the invitation of the Danish ambassador, it would be a shame to say that she received a generous welcome. This respectable older woman was taken for a thorough drug check at customs. She was severely insulted, and flew home immediately with the next plane.

The cold weather persists in the country in this unusually cold winter. This morning the temperatures went down to minus 22 degrees Celsius in Þingvellir.

“This picture was just taken on the phone on my porch,” says amateur photographer Hallgrímur P. Helgason about a photograph he took of the Northern Lights last night that has drawn a lot of attention on social media.

The NATO Air Policing will begin its operations in Iceland on Monday with the arrival of the Royal Norwegian Air Force air force squadron. The operation is scheduled to be completed in mid-February.

A man from Switzerland has been sentenced to ten months in prison for the importation of a considerable amount of cocaine into the country, but the substances had the concentration of 30 to 56%. He transported them to the country hidden in head pillow and in the sponge layers in a backpack and a winter coat.

The police in the Northeast encourage people to be careful when requests for nude photos or videos are made through social media from individuals who are not known friends of the person. In some cases, there could be fake access and behind the account a person involved in organized crime.

Residential property prices have risen more in Iceland than in any other of the 30 European countries is reported in the new Eurostat comparison from the European statistics office.

A rescue team from Höfn assisted two Dutch tourists down from Mount Ketilaugarfjall yesterday.

“The population composition here has changed as in many other parts of the country and twenty percent of the population here are immigrants,” Eiríkur Ólafsson, chairman of the “Couples' Dance” committee in Fáskrúðsfjörður, told mbl.is.

Minister of Culture and Business Affairs Lilja Alfreðsdóttir visited Keflavík International Airport this week and studied the airport’s operations.

Reykjanesbær will in cooperation with the government receive up to 350 refugees. Minister of Social Affairs and Labour Guðmundur Ingi Guðbrandsson, Kjartan Már Kjartansson, the Mayor of Reykjanesbær, and Nichole Leigh Mosty, director of the Multicultural Information Center, signed an agreement on a coordinated reception of refugees yesterday at the Reykjanesbær town hall.

The town of Akranes has offered the municipality of Hvalfjörður even wider cooperation after the municipality rejected the change of municipal boundaries in connection with the town’s acquisition of the land of Akrakot farm in Hvalfjörður. It also requested negotiations on the acquisition or exchange of part of the land of Akrakot to be able to to make a direct connection from the town into Akrakot’s land.

There has been very bad weather in the West Fjords this weekend and yesterday, the West Fjords police announced the decision to close the road between Ísafjörður and Súðavík last night due to the risk of avalanches and a little later the police announced that Flateyrarvegur in Önundarfjörður was also closed at 20 pm last night for the same reason.

Father and son, Sigurður Brynjar Pálsson and Sölvi Steinn Sigurðsson, are both learning to become carpenters at FB’s night school. Studying together in school has been nice and they plan to build together a guesthouse at the family’s summerhouse next summer.