Thursday, March 15, 2012

Iceland 3-14-2012


At the airport in Seattle, I went to the news-shop to buy some gum for the flight, and in front of me waiting to pay was an African woman in white robes, the upper garment embroidered with multicolored intricate designs. 
            “That is beautiful,” I said indicating the embroidery.
            “Thank you, “ she said in heavily accented English.  “It’s from my country Anta.”
            “Where?”
            “In Africa,” she said, “Enoia.”
            I thought a moment.  “Ethiopia?” I said realizing how different the pronunciation I used for her country’s name was from what a native would say.
            She nodded and turned to the woman at the counter.  “You have fast gum, not sugar?” she said.
            The cashier, herself Asian speaking English with a very different heavily accented English, looked at her in non-comprehension.  “Gum?” she asked.  She pointed to the shelf below. 
            The Ethiopian woman looked at the large array of gum with dismay.  “Sugar?” she asked.
            I stepped forward and showed her the Orbit gum I was planning to buy. “This one has no sugar,” I said. “It is fine if you are fasting.”  The Ethiopian woman smiled, selected three packs and gave them to the cashier.  I then paid for my gum.
            “Have safe trip,” she said as we left the shop.
            “You too,” I said and we both laughed for no reason at all.  As I walked to my departure gate, I realized I was smiling.


I arrived at the Reykjavik airport to a slow blue-washed dawn, etched lava-black and snowy-white land, eggshell blue on the horizon deepening to indigo at the apex of the sky.
            On the second day, I took a bus to Grundafjordur, a village about three hours north of Reykjavik, for a few days.  On the bus were five people—and three got off at the first town where we stopped about an hour north.  As we drove further north, the snow deepened.  Then the sleet started, at one point buffeting the bus and slamming against the windshield with such fierceness that the road became invisible.  When this happened, the driver began to laugh.  He and the other passenger, who was sitting directly behind him, began to converse, to my untrained ear it seemed telling each other stories about Icelandic bad weather.  Whatever, it caused them to laugh for the entire storm. 
            At the juncture of the main road to the smaller road to Grundafjordur, we changed buses, standing alongside the road in a wide spot until a small van arrived.  Both the other fellow and I got aboard, leaving the driver alone with only a package to deliver on his journey north.  
            On first arrival Grundafjordur looked rather grim.


But the next morning, the sun came out, much of the snow melted and the birds began yelling, thinking for sure that spring was close.  A raven croaked on the post in front of the house where I am staying.  My friend Birna says that the raven is really the Icelandic bird, it stays here all winter, hangs around even when there isn’t much food and the weather is really terrible, doesn’t fly away when things get tough like the other birds do.  Every farm, she said, has its ravens, a couple claiming their territory. 
            Birna teaches at the local “college,” for students 16-20.  Icelandic young people go to school until they are twenty and they call this the “high school” or “college.”  Students come here from all over the area and a few members of farm families live here during the winter just so their children can go to school, returning to their farms on weekends and the summer.

The “high school”

            The school has a lunch program, serving hot lunches to the students and staff---and for a very reasonable 800 krona—to guests.  So, I have been going there for lunch—lamb meatballs the first day, fresh cod the second.  Frozen veggies of course but potatoes so good I wondered where they had got them—is it possible that they are from around here someplace?  
People are being very open and friendly to me here.  So, in the staff room after eating my lunch, one of the teachers asked me in Icelandic if I spoke Icelandic.  I said in Icelandic that no, I did not.  And then the whole room burst out laughing.  Ah well. Then the person said in Icelandic that Icelandic was easy, then the entire room--in Icelandic (which with my infant Icelandic I could get the drift) started talking about how easy Icelandic was, especially when you were drunk, that it just sort of spilled out of your mouth.  This moved on to everyone telling stories about people’s silly names, making puns or something out of them.  Soon the staff room was in an uproar, everyone laughing.  I wish staff rooms I have known in other places could be like that.
            After lunch I was supposed to be typing up my interviews, but it was so intensely beautiful that I took a long walk instead.   I wandered the main street


Then I thought, since I am writing about fishing, I had better amble down to the harbor.

And the few blocks to the edge of town.

Tomorrow I am heading off to a nearby town for some more interviews—catching a ride on the morning school bus.  We shall see how that goes…. 


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