“Window weather.”

That is literally what gluggavadur means in Icelandic.

It is the type of weather that you enjoy from inside your house looking out a window at weather – as one writer put it – “that would freeze your eyelids off” if you went out in it.

I well know the feeling. Until now, I never knew there was a word for it in any language.

It is a feeling I often conjure up when I am nostalgic. It is a cozy, wrapped in a fleece blanket, toes covered in thick woolen socks, nothing can harm me and a pervasive inner feeling of peace.

We recently added an electric fireplace to our home. It is the cherry on top when it comes to enjoying gluggavadur. It was an annual ritual when I lived in colder climes to haul in the cordwood for the winter to keep the hearth going.

These days, I live in the American South. Famous for promoting its’ perpetually sunny weather and the white sandy beaches that stretch in photos as far as the eye can see.

I am reminded of Albert Hammond’s 1972 hit, “It Never Rains in Southern California.” The dream of living in a particular place eventually gives way to the reality of your environs and day-to-day living conditions.

I live in another part of the American South where sun, sea and sand are not daily occurrences. It is equally beautiful in its way but hot, sunny weather is hardly perpetual.

There has been frost in the mornings this winter. Some mornings we have to wear long pants and a jacket or sweater to go out and about.

By now, I know my Northern friends are shaking their heads and muttering “cry me a river” under their breath.

I know they are living surrounded by a ton of snow and dress in long underwear, a down jacket, three more layers, mittens, toque, ear muffs and Kodiak snowboots. And that’s just to go out to get the mail at the front door.

Here we practice our own Southern special type of gluggavadur. We sit at the patio door windows and watch birds flit to and from the bird feeders. we try to gauge how much higher the bamboo grew overnight.

Still, there is a small part of me (a very small part, I grant you) that misses my former mid-winter days of gluggavadur up North.

There were some winter days when I sat beside the kitchen window sipping a fresh coffee and looking out at untouched brilliant white snow in the backyard.

Trees surrounded the periphery of the backyard and their boughs dipped low to the ground, heavy after yet another recent record snowfall.

Part of the emotional and spiritual appeal on those days was appreciating how perfect and beautiful it was outside. Appreciating that the beauty was created not by human hands but by the inherent divine forces of nature, whatever we conceive them to be.

I remember this very sentiment was so well expressed by American poet Joyce Kilmer in his poem, Trees.

I think that I shall never see
A poem lovely as a tree.

A tree whose hungry mouth is prest
Against the earth’s sweet flowing breast;

A tree that looks at God all day,
And lifts her leafy arms to pray;

A tree that may in summer wear 
A nest of robins in her hair;

Upon whose bosom snow has lain;
Who intimately lives with rain.

Poems are made by fools like me,
But only God can make a tree.

Joyce Kilmer, 1886 – 1918

We have trees to look out on from our patio. They are comforting and stalwart.

In a world full of chaos and instability, trees and the gluggavadur that comes from looking out at them is comforting, regardless of the weather.

Sounds like Kilmer fully appreciated whatever he saw from his kitchen window, with or without the need for a cup of coffee or mulled cider to warm his hands.

Maybe they should consider renaming Kilmer’s poem, Gluggavadur. Maybe it already is in the Icelandic translation.