This will be our last blog for now.... We've finished meeting all our 10 people we have interviewed in the Nordic countries for everyday stories. We received funding from the Nordic Culture Fund that allowed us to travel to Norway, Sweden, Finland, Denmark and finally Iceland, and we've met amazing people. Not only the 10 we have filmed, but many more.

Now the editing begins for real and we will be sharing with you these stories in the coming weeks and months. Before going to our computers for working, we had a day of Icelandic nature with our friend Katla, where we had plenty of water ...

Yesterday we went to Hveragerði to meet Gunna and Einar at their lovely home.

The couple greeted us warmly and shared their story. Gunna a visual artist and Einar a computer programmer launched www.natturan.is, a comprehensive website covering matters of sustainability relevant to Iceland. It started as an idea for sharing information on herbs and grasses that grow in Iceland but it quickly grew to cover all types of issues ranging from households, growing food, waste disposal, mapping organic food and green companies production in Iceland,  and general information on Icelandic environmental policies.

We arrived last night at Keflavik airport. The sun was still up at 21.30 in the evening and it was refreshing getting the cool wind in the face after the traveling.
Our friend Katla surprised us by picking us up and taking us to our friends' Vala and Haddi who are hosting us this week. Yup a great start that gets only better!
This morning we woke up looked out our window at the main street in Reykjavik and then excitedly headed off to do our first interview...

We went to visit Sóley Elíasdóttir at  Sóley Organics in hafnarfjörður.

We visited the HUB Copenhagen on our last day here. It's a collaborative coworking space where Anders, Simon and Eimantas are members.

The HUB Copenhagen is a part of this amazing global network. It is a collaborative co-working and connecting space for social entrepreneurs and people who want to be a part of creating solutions...

3rd day on "tour" interviewing everyday heroes, today we met Simon and Eimantas. Two entrepreneurs determined to assist European (or even outside of Europe) cities to get the Copenhagen bike experience.

They have a start up called Bikway. They came up with an easy solution of really innovative bicycle path that can be put on top of existing infrastructure - and also taken off. In this way, cities are improved and made more livable and bike friendly in a flexible way. As there is often resistance to change and solutions for cities need to be tested, this "movable" bikepath makes it easier for decision makers to test and participate in getting the city closer to the bike paradise (that Copenhagen is). And of course they use sustainable materials.

Today we went to interview Anders. A mechanical engineer whose passion it is to change the way products are being made, from short term low quality to sustainable materials that meet the needs of the purpose of the objects. He started his company Green Machine with the goal of helping companies find sustainable materials to replace the current ones. So today, we learned more about materials and interestingly that there are many options available that make the ecological impact of what we own so much lower.

Anders showed us some plant based samples with various functionalities, and Louise filmed...

We arrived today in Copenhagen and the sun was shining.

Louise had a laughing attack: she had never seen so many bikes before at the same time! We can't wait to rent bikes to move around the flat bike friendly city!!!!

And Olof got all excited about eating fresh ærter from the fruit and veggie market (she lived in Copenhagen 20! years ago and this was her favourite food back then... and still is)

We had an extra day in Helsinki being tourists... so what does the city have to offer?

...The random walk in a foreign city began

We got a bit lost but accidentally bumped into a famous church,
Surprise find - walking with no map is an adventure.

What a weekend! Another sunny inspiring day today. Helsinki is great!
Starting with food, we met Inari Virkkala for a super brunch...

After food, we tagged along on a journey with Inari; meeting  colleagues, flatmates and hearing her stories.

Inari kept describing herself as ordinary person, but there's nothing ordinary about her. She's not over selling her projects, but matter of factly telling us about building a house for a youth center in Cambodia, putting collective urban gardening plots on the roof of the Nokia building, biking to Germany, working on migration and building bridges between Finnish people and Roma people, and on top of all that finishing her studies as an architect and having a job... And she's also super friendly and we had a really easy going  fun day.

We've  had a great sunny day so far. We spent the day with Petri Luukkainen.
As Petri is a documentary maker himself, we got some extra eyes for the filming and some tips and help.

Petri told us about his film "My Stuff"  that came out just over a month ago and he told us about his journey, where he put EVERYTHING he owns in storage to test what stuff he needs and how much of it. He was looking for more meaning in his life, and was bothered by the overflow of stuff in his apartment.  Petri didn't wait for the solutions or answers to come to him, he went all the way and did something about it. We think Petri is pretty cool.