The writer, the witch, and the board head.

Not long after my encounter with the witch, I come back to Arnahóll Hill. It is a holiday, the day Iceland got sovereignty from Denmark, and instead of a parade, there is a protest. Today's rally is just as inscrutable as the last one for me, so I talk with a group of people holding question-mark and exclamation-point signs against the wind. (The cumulative effect among the crowd is ??!?!!?!?, like punctuation in a late-night e-mail.) When I ask Sára Riel, who designed the signs, what they're supposed to signify, she looks at me as if I'm a moron. "I think it's pretty obvious," she says. "We have questions, and we have demands." I ask what the questions are. "Lots of questions," she says.

The rally ends. As people file back into the downtown streets, I talk with a guy selling civil-disobedience literature on a foldout picnic table, a guy who identifies himself, when I ask, as "Siggi, a local anarchist and nurse." Siggi directs me toward the bank, where "leftists" have resumed the heckling of Davíð. The insurgents made it past the foyer this time and to a second doorway where police in body armor hold a blockade line. The demonstrators raise their hands above their heads to show they are unarmed. Behind the police and their transparent shields, a gaggle of businessmen are milling. For nearly an hour, nothing changes. People occupy themselves as they might spend a boring car trip: They chant ("Davíð, come out!"). They sing. They play Icelandic hip-hop on a big, tubular ghetto blaster. Smokers light up, and the foyer of the bank starts feeling like a basement disco.

Finally, one of the bank administrators shuffles out behind the line of armored officers. He makes a little speech. The people cheer. The demonstrators turn and leave, exuberant. What happened? A bearded young man tells me, "They said, 'If you leave, then we'll leave.' And they left. And so now, we're leaving." He grins and pumps a fist into the air, then looks into the courtyard, where music is playing. It's twilight. The sky outside has the effect of being low and broad and slightly canted, like the fabric of a tent collapsing toward the pole.

"It was like a small victory," he says.

(Photograph by Michelle Komie.)