by Paul Heiney
13
The saga begins
And so the saga of the northward voyage, which, thanks to Alan’s ancestry, we were now thinking of as the Viking Voyage. We were heading towards the land of increasingly fresh and clear air to fulfil my ambition to breathe it deeply and enjoy its restorative magic, to immerse myself in that North Atlantic environment the puffins so enjoy and where they thrive. That’s all I wanted to achieve, if I’m honest. The puffin’s name in Latin, Fratercula arctica, translates as ‘little brother of the north’, but brother in the religious sense, and the puffin is sometimes known as the ‘little friar’ because of the way it holds its feet together when taking off, appearing as if it is at prayer. If these bleak waters were your home, why wouldn’t you pray when you set off on an uncertain journey? I was often tempted.
The next leg of the voyage would take us another 40 miles north, to the true remoteness of Iceland, to what my sailing ancestors might have justifiably felt was the edge of the world. I carried a biblically thick edition of Iceland’s sagas on the boat’s bookshelf; a weighty tome that might well be used for pressing flowers or squashing flies, but for the moment had only the effect of upsetting the trim of the boat. If it is true, as Seamus Heaney declared of this book, that ‘here is the poetry of the North Atlantic… a testimony to the human spirit’s ability not only to endure what fate may send it but to be renewed by the experience’, then it was a fitting volume to accompany us. Since the comedian of the North Atlantic, the puffin, was clearly shunning us, instead of laughs we would have to turn to more serious matters.
I was cautious about raising the subject of ‘enduring what fate may send’ with Alan, who was driving his limbs into boots still wet from the previous day. His face betrayed his dread of another 40 miles of bilious sailing. I felt deeply sad for him, knowing that to sail to Iceland was his romantic dream and in return for his courage all he had was a churning stomach. I did not think it the moment to remind Alan, who enjoys a classical reference now and again, that Hippocrates said, ‘sailing on the sea proves that motion disorders the body’. The word ‘nausea’ comes from the Greek naus, relating to ships, sailing or sailors. Sickness and sailing are close companions, as we have all realised at times.
I was sure he knew the Icelandic sagas back to front, being a well-read man who can consume a book in a day. He overflows with references, often political and mostly to the far left-leaning fringes, and these he will throw into conversation with no prompting.
‘Need help with those boots?’ I offered. He grunted.
The Lad, more of a sailor and used to the daily struggle with the oilskins, was quickly into his kit and standing on the foredeck rolling a fag, which was his regular and slightly annoying pastime.
The word ‘kennings’ had first appeared in my life a few months earlier when I started to take an interest in Anglo-Saxon literature, and they started to reappear now. I had become amused by, and somewhat obsessed with them. They are compound words that act as metaphors, and are easier to recognise than to define, for me anyway.
So, the ‘whale-road’ is the sea, a ship might be called a ‘sea-horse’ and an ‘iron-shower’ consists of metal arrow heads that descend on you in a battle. The sun is a ‘heaven-candle’. They are hugely entertaining, inventive, and at times downright funny. We are inventing them to this day: a ‘bean counter’ is a modern accountant, a ‘pencil pusher’, ‘show stopper’, ‘tree hugger’ – we use them all the time.
However, they can be used to describe people too, and they are quite personal, if not rude. For example, names like Gunnlaug Serpent Tongue, Erik Bloodaxe or Ragnar Hairy Breeches tell you all you need to know about those characters. Or would it be more accurate to describe those as nicknames? My edition of the sagas defines kennings as ‘consisting of two parts: one which calls a thing by the name of something that it is not, and then a second part which modifies the first in a way as to make it poetically appropriate’. Once you enter the sagas you are in the world of Solvi Chopper – no guessing what his hobby was. Then come two brothers, Sigtrygg Travel-Quick and Hallvard Travel-Hard. The nicknames are a gloriously brief and pointed description of the saga characters, but to stumble across genuine kennings, such as ‘wound see’ (blood), ‘sleep of the sword’ (death) and ‘earth stepper’ (traveller), gives great pleasure and a desire to make up your own, which is not as easy as you think. I glanced at Alan, still trying hard to pull on his damp wellington boots over soggy socks – one of the most difficult journeys known to mankind. Alan Boot-Dragger? Not quite. Alan Bucket-Filler?
I had a quiet word with Alan. I told him that trying to paint or read while sitting below on a tossing boat is not a pastime for someone without a cast iron stomach. He’d already worked it out. Even so, I feared the worst as we left Arnarstapi. It remained grey and overcast, and bleak weather always makes you more prone to sickness than does sunshine. From the motion of the cluster of boats in the harbour, I could tell that the wind had changed direction and was kicking up a swell. It was the rise and fall of the sea, not huge but sufficient to suggest turbulent times on the far side of the harbour wall. We dropped the lines and as soon as we were clear of the harbour wall it was apparent that a fresh breeze was blowing from the south. As we were on the south side of the Snaefellsnes peninsula, care would be needed to avoid being blown ashore. But that wasn’t my main worry; it was simply going to be a rough bit of water till we reached the tip of the peninsula, when we could turn to the north, put the wind behind us, and have a smoother ride. It would only be for a couple of hours, but plenty long enough to get stomach muscles twitching. I offered Alan pills but he thought he would be all right. I should have insisted. Nor did I mention the fact that the impressive volcanic cone of Snaefellsjökull, now to the north-east of us but hidden from view, is where Jules Verne set the fictional Professor Lidenbrock on his Journey to the Centre of the Earth. Given half a chance, Alan would surely have voted to follow in his footsteps – anything to avoid any more time at sea.
I increased the revs to get us offshore and a safe distance from the tall cliffs, caves and basalt columns that are a feature of this coast. A tourist would see them as natural wonders, a sailor sees them as traps. The Lad and I hoisted sail on a lumpy sea but I kept the engine going to get the rough bit over as soon as I could.
It was to no avail. We were soon reaching for the dutiful sick bucket and passing it to Alan, who was rising, ghost-like, from his bunk to throw up at roughly five-minute intervals. Alan Bucket-Filler would do nicely.
My own predisposition to sickness is when the boat pitches and leaps up and down when sailing into waves. Just writing that makes me feel it. But if the boat is rolling from side to side, as it does when the wind is coming from behind, then I am not troubled at all. So although I felt Alan’s misery for the first couple of hours, as soon as we had rounded the peninsula and brought the wind behind us, I lit the stove and started making more toast while the Lad tucked into the biscuit box in an energetic way. Perhaps unwisely, the box sits by the cooker and is filled to the brim with chocolate and biscuits, to which the crew are invited to help themselves whenever they wish until it is empty, when it is not refilled. The Lad’s appetite meant that a week’s worth of chocolate might not last till midday and I gave him a look as he reached for the final, lonely KitKat.
We were heading towards the north-western part of Iceland, known as the North West Fjords. On a map it looks like a splayed hand consisting of mountainous fingers divided by deep, cold fjords. The north-west fjords are places of even more mystery, truly the land of sagas and myths and legends from the old Norse days.
If the sagas are anything to go by, we will have to watch our backs. Anyone who thinks it is only contemporary writers who have an exaggerated appetite for death and violence should turn to a few of these Viking tales. Pick any one of them and there will be family feuding, heads being chopped off, violent reclaiming of kingdoms, slaughter of children, torture, burning, disembowelling, and all before t
he story really gets going. For example, in one of the most famous, Egil’s saga:
Egil stood up and walked across the floor to where Armod was sitting, seized him by the shoulders and thrust him up against a wallpost. Then Egil spewed a torrent of vomit that gushed all over Armod’s face, filling his eyes and nostrils and mouth and pouring down his beard and chest. Armod was close to choking, and when he managed to let out his breath, a jet of vomit gushed out with it.
And so the vomiting match went on, Egil and Alan fighting for who could fill the bucket first.
***
We were crossing the broad mouth of the Breidafjöður in improving weather and a flattening sea, and a clearance in the murk gave us what was our first proper view of the Snaefellsnes peninsula. The parting clouds revealed a volcanic cone, snow-capped, glistening. It brought to mind the paintings of Japan’s Mount Fuji, so well defined was its outline against a patch of blue sky. I called Alan to cast his artist’s eye over it but he was down below, hugging his bucket and refusing to budge.
Then a strange noise filled the cabin, high-pitched like rusty hinges, piercing stabs of sound so high on the musical scale that they were almost at the limit of hearing. They rose to a crescendo, becoming more electronic in tone and getting louder to the extent that I reached for the radio to make sure it was switched off, which it was. Then the Lad shouted ‘Whales!’
I scrambled on deck and saw at first a small pod of four or five following close in our wake. They were pilot whales, the smallest of the whale species and looking like large dolphins. After the initial pod overtook us, another one surfaced, then another, till there were 20 or more whales in sight. Suddenly, a shoal of fish appeared on the surface of the water, thrashing and terror-struck, I imagine, by the advancing army of whales. Then more whales joined and I gave up counting when we got past 30. These black, shiny, streamlined creatures swam so close to the cockpit that you could have reached out and touched them as they ducked and dived, swimming in formation across the bows of the boat, criss-crossing with never a collision with either us or a fellow whale. The din inside the boat grew louder as their chirping communications resonated through the hull. So powerful was it that it even brought Alan up on deck, from where he stared, briefly, in amazement. In fact, we all stood there, mouths open, unable to fully take in the balletic yet at the same time military-like display.
The pilot whales stayed for a good 20 minutes, till they decided that they’d had all the fun they were going to get out of us, and one by one they peeled off to find someone else to play with. And for them it was fun, for sure. It was a game; anyone who has watched animal behaviour would recognise it. We had been playing with whales!
As I bid them farewell, I remembered it was pilot whales like these that the Faroese ritually drive into the bay for slaughter. Oh dear. ‘Go carefully,’ I warned them. ‘And keep going north. It’s safer.’
We were now into the southernmost of the North West Fjords, the remotest part of Iceland, and were heading for the town of Patreksfjöður, which is the biggest settlement in these parts. Even so, there are only 600 souls living there. Fishing and fish processing is its industry, as in every coastal town in Iceland. The pilot book said there was an anchorage at the far end of the fjord, which appealed because although being able to step ashore is convenient, to swing to one’s own anchor in complete isolation is a more powerful experience. But we’d been cooped up for quite a while and might appreciate a little space, so I decided to forego the anchoring experience this time and crept between the harbour walls to find a space alongside a quay conveniently near yet another constantly running freshwater hose. Back home, any attempt to tie up in such a place would have been met with ‘You can’t leave it there, mate!’… and so on. But in a remote maritime community like this, where everything comes from the sea, those who arrive by sea are made warmly welcome. I found this in every Icelandic harbour I visited.
Alan’s blood was up. He was burning with an idea.
‘I’m going to get us a cod,’ he declared, and set off down the quayside to where the trawlers were moored. I didn’t expect to see him for some time, so made tea.
Half an hour later there was a thump on the deck as Alan’s heavy boots made contact. I stuck my head out and there he was, as proud as any Viking just back from a day’s rewarding looting. The cod, which he was carrying by its gills, stretched from his elbows to his feet. It was truly a classic of the species, a perfect specimen.
‘A knife,’ he demanded, his blood still pumping.
I thrust a blade into Alan Fish-Finder’s fist and had to dissuade him from doing his surgery in my clean cockpit, knowing how much gunge spews out of the innards of a mighty fish like that. I persuaded him to take it on to the quayside, where he sat, on a mooring bollard, hacking away – the happiest Viking you have ever seen.
The fish meat glistened and was translucent in places, and being fresh had not the slightest fishy smell about it. Thoughts turned to supper, Alan insisting the potato pancakes would have to make a reappearance.
‘How much was it?’ I asked.
‘Nowt,’ he replied, well chuffed.
The gutting and butchering complete, a carrier bag full of innards was disposed of in a harbourside skip, which already reeked of stale fish, as did most things around that harbour. Alan proudly came below with his catch, a man restored. But he didn’t reach first for the frying pan. He grabbed his pad and paints and within no time at all came up with a portrait of the generous trawler skipper who was the founder of our cod feast – let’s call him Egil Sea-Sweeper. In Alan’s watercolour depiction he wore a blue-and-white check shirt, a waft of thinning ginger hair, a face the shape of a dinner plate and a broad neck that seemed to thicken above his ears and ran vertically down to his shoulders. It was mesmerising; an apparently simple piece of art but within its light brush strokes was a complete image of that man and his character, so strongly portrayed that I really thought I’d met him.
There is much, much cod in a whole fish and, once portioned, some pieces went to the bottom of the fridge. The rest sat in the galley to await the frying pan, but for the moment it only served to taunt us with the promise of the freshest cod supper ever. But how to kill the time till evening, when we could finally devour Alan’s catch? There were no pubs or bars that we could find, nothing that spoke of any kind of entertainment, and so we sat there, on the boat, glancing at the clock every five minutes, pretending that the cod was not at the forefront of our minds. Alan couldn’t contain himself so went for a stroll and came back with a far less delicious-looking grey, putrid fish head, which he thought might have the makings of a still life. Patience eventually overtook us. On the stroke of seven, Alan was reaching for the bag of flour to churn out more of his scrumptious potato pancakes. The oil in the pan started to sizzle, the precious cod was placed in it, and it was cooked with more care and attention than any piece of fish before it. Once on the plate, we each broke it with a fork. It was dazzling white, but creamy, and melted in the mouth – honestly, it melted. We dined slowly, enjoying fish with a greater depth of flavour than any cod I have ever tasted. No word spoken. Nothing needed to be said. Cod beyond description.
14
One slip and I’m in icy waters
Did I tell you about the time I performed a small miracle at sea? Certainly, the lad who benefited from it thought it was nothing less. It resulted in a transformation so truly miraculous that he assumed it could only have been achieved by the hand of God himself. It happened some years ago and miles from Iceland, off the Spanish coast in fact, on a tall ship on which I was sailing back to Antwerp as part of the Tall Ships Race. I was a paying customer taking a wild and satisfying ride beneath acres of canvas in a raging wind that tossed the massive ship like a cork in a washing machine.
Almost everyone was sick, horribly sick, and the galley went on to short hours, having few customers. There was one young lad for whom I felt deeply sorry. He was a shipyard worker in the Netherlands, building ves
sels on which he never thought he would ever be able to sail. So he worked overtime, saved every penny, and bought a ticket on the Dutch sail-training ship Europa.
But he was so ill, so stricken with sickness, that all he could do was lie down on the deck, eyes closed, letting the sea wash over him. To venture below was unthinkable. His dream had turned deeply sour.
I had a trick that I had performed on myself and thought it might work on him. I had bought a drug that came contained in something the size of a corn plaster – it was the same drug I tried to infuse into poor old Malcolme when the raging seas of Orkney proved too much for his poor stomach. You attach the plaster to your body (most people put it under their ear, as this is where the seasickness problems arise, in the brain’s balancing mechanism) and the well-tested drug, hyoscine, leaches through the plaster into your skin, and eventually into your bloodstream. Why is this better than pills? Because at the first hint of sickness, your digestive system shuts down and your body is unable to absorb anything, so the seasickness drug just sits there until you vomit it up. With the patches, the digestion is bypassed and no matter how poorly you might feel, the drug is still feeding into your system and eventually you will feel better. This was my experience, anyway. Some have reported hallucinations. Others have thought they’d try a test dose and cut the patches in half! All they achieve is to release a large dose all at once, probably enough to set any mind down a fanciful path.
I knelt down beside the poor lad and told him I was going to give him something that would help. He didn’t respond. I pressed a patch gently beneath his ear. I don’t think he heard a word I was saying, and he didn’t flinch as I applied the patch.
