I said a sad good by to the farm. The long nights and long days of peace and laughter, it seemed so much longer than the four days. I had stepped into another space, concerned just with the smell of the new-cut hay, harvesting the rhubarb (the largest and healthiest group of plants I have ever seen.), feeling the quiet.
Then, early, my friend took me to the vacant road to meet the bus. We had called ahead, and then called again in the morning to confirm that it would pick me up. Finally it came, and because it was full, I got to sit up front with the driver. It was a min-van and was full of tourists.
“Don’t Icelanders ever take this bus?” I asked.
“No,” he said. “They say they don’t know about us, but we have been running this bus for twenty years. It just runs in the summer of course since this road is closed later. I think the Icelanders just all drive.”
Included in the tourists was a German woman who had biked over the mountain road on her small folding bicycle. It sounded completely miserable to me. As you all know, I bike all the time and everywhere, but biking in Iceland—no. The roads are very narrow, people drive very fast, the distances between any habitations are very long and there is literally no one if you have a problem. Also the roads are terrible, the tourists are swerving all around the place on the roads, and the weather changes in a lightening flash. Also, there is continual wind. Iceland is great for hiking, kayaking, fishing, just wandering, apparently for pub drinking in Rvk—but biking, terrible idea.
The driver began to tell me about his life and family. He had had all his retirement fund in an Icelandic kind of money market, and in the crash, because the banks had invested everyone’s money in foreign banks, he lost it all (everyone I know here is either losing their house, is trying very hard to keep up with their doubled mortgage payments or have completely lost all their savings because of this crash). His father is a farmer, he said, a dairy farmer outside isafjordur. He grew up on the farm and would like to be a farmer too, but there is a ‘farm quota.’ It is supposedly to control how much milk is produced, but, as with the fishing quota, has been made into a privatized commodity in its own right, so it is bought and sold. And even mortgaged. So, in order for him to start a farm, he would not only have to invest in all the farm equipment and land, but also he would have to buy very expensive quota. And this he cannot afford to do. So he is driving a bus.
“And what,” he said, “will happen to our farming knowledge, those of us who know farming, who know the land? “
He stopped at a magnificent waterfall for us to scramble out and romp up the hill for a few minutes, then we were on again.
He let me out at the same hotel where I had begun hitch hiking several days before and I met a local woman for coffee. She and her family fish for lump fish on the fjords, just taking the roe which they sell mostly to Japan. She and her husband grew up in the area, on farms surrounded by mountains and stone, and had sheep before. Now they just keep a few sheep and for the rest they fish. She said that sometimes the sheep, when the moon is full, go down to the rocky shore at low tide to eat the seaweed. One night about twenty years ago, their sheep went to the sea and when the tide came in a hundred of them were drowned. Their herd was 185 so they had 85 left.
“I had this sheep, sometimes they are special when they are born. They are more intelligent than the others and they become like a pet, your friend. She was like that, she was always around the house. And she was the first one I found dead on the beach. It always seems to be like that.”
After coffee, she headed back to her farm, and I set off—again!—to hitch hike my way to Patreksfjordur, out by itself on a point probably fifty kilometers away. I thought it wouldn’t be so bad because at least the road it paved to there so perhaps it would have more traffic.
On this I was wrong. A Swiss couple (the Swiss always seem to be the people, if not Icelanders, who pick me up) took me along for some miles and left me beside a ‘gas station.’ This was the reality: a solitary farm above the fjord and near the road a shed beside a flat area of gravel that included a pump. I stood a half an hour and not a single car passed. I made a sign, “Patreksfjordur. Please” remembering my luck of the week before.
No car. The wind rose. I put on my jacket and put up the hood. No car. I couldn’t hold the notebook sign because the page kept trying to fly away. No car.
I began to calculate how long it would take to walk. If Patreksfjordur was ten kilometers say, then I could walk there no problem. It would stay light all night, so no danger of that. I would probably get there faster than standing here until the next ferry that night (the ferry comes twice a day).
I began waling up the road. It curved around a point at the mouth of the fjord, and the moment I began the curve, the wind blasted me at triple the volume. Then—a car zipped by! I turned quickly and put out my thumb, but too late. It was gone.
Now that we stupid, I thought. I also reconsidered my walking idea. I didn’t actually know how far Patreksfjordur was. I decided to walk back to the ‘gas station’ and see if there was anyone inside I could ask.
The gas shed was indeed inhabited, by two gentlemen in their late eighties. One was clearly the person running the place and the other, who walked with a crutch, seemed to be a friend who had stopped by for a chat.
“How many kilometers to Patreksfjordur?” I asked.
They both looked at me with complete noncomprehension. Most Icelanders speak at least a bit of English. These fellow did not. Not a word. “Patreksfjordur?” I said, showing them my sign and walking my fingers along the counter to show I intended to walk.
“Nay, nay” they said in unison. The owner showed me a map on the wall. He pointed to a spot on the road, clearly us. Then he held up his fingers to demonstrate 28 kilometers. My heart sank. That was a long way. They asked me where I was from. This at least I understood. I said in Icelandic that I was from America. This they understood.
“Obsma?” the owner said, “og Bush?” I smiled. He then indicated that he wondered which I liked.
“Obama,” I said.
“Nay, nay,” he said. “Obama.” He pointed his thumb down. “Bush,” he pointed it up. I smiled and nodded. Probably the first person I have ever met in any country outside the United States who preferred Bush. Oh well, I thought.
The man with the crutch picked dup my bag and indicated to his friend that it was very heavy. It was heavy for its size being full of my computer and all kinds of other heavy things. I noted that he, and the gas station owner afterwards, seemed to lift it with ease. Strong men.
They continued to talk and stopped me as I headed toward the door. The idea of a lone woman standing in the wind was apparently too much for them. The man with the crutch was going to give me a ride. At least that’s what I thought. I wasn’t completely sure, but he indicated that I should put my bag in the back of his jeep. He got in so I got in as well. The gas station owner waved us good by.
My new-found ride began to amble down the road at about five miles an hour. He scanned the horizon and the mountain slopes, all the while chatting to me. I smiled at him and said, “yeow, yeow,” the best rendition of the Icelandic for yes I can do. I have not idea what I was saying yes to.
Then he stopped before a group of sheep, halting the car dead in the middle of the road. Of course, there had been zero cars for the last hour, so I didn’t think this was a grave danger. He explained me in great detail something I assumed was about the sheep. We drove on—slowly. Soon, we came to another group of sheep and again he stopped. Again, the massive detail. “Yeow, yeow,” I said.
About the fourth time, I began to understand that he was showing me the markings of the sheep, that this indicated to him who owned them, and probably he was telling me all about the owners, or the sheep. Too bad I couldn’t understand any of it.
Then, at the top of a hill, we saw another Jeep bumping its way along a dirt track. It neared the main road. My driver waved his hand out the window and it stopped. The other fellow got out and he and my driver chatted. They clearly knew each other. Then the other fellow, who was in his late fifties, said to me in English, “I am going to Patreksfjordur to get a part for my hay machine. I’ll give you a ride the rest of the way. And he,“ indicating my driver, “wans me to say his name is Oli and he loves you.” I laughed. “Actually his name is Einer,” he said.
“Well, tell him I love him as well for giving me the ride.”
I grabbed my bags and piled into the next Jeep. This fellow told me he had a farm, that he was haying (as was everyone), trying to get it done before the impending rain, but of course, as would happen when one is trying to get it done, his haying machine broke. He was going to Patreksfjordur, hoping that the part he needed from Rvk had arrived so he could continue that night.
He let me off at the guesthouse where I was going to stay. I was going to spend the night to see some people, then head off to catch the noon ferry the next day. And, I thought, I am NOT going to try to hitch hike that road again. So I asked every person at the guesthouse (two French girls--no car, they came on the bus a couple of days before; an annoying man on a motorbike who I think was South African; a group of Icelanders in a car backed to the gills and—a German couple in their expensive rental Jeep (cars are SOOO expensive to rent in Iceland!) who said they would be happy to give me a lift. Ahh. I could relax.
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