Oraefi

by Ófeigur Sigurðsson

  How was he dressed for the trip? Dr. Lassi asked the Interpreter, taking a great but knowing risk by disrupting the flow of truth and deep knowledge from the toponymist through the interpreter to her, to her pen and her report. Bernharður was wearing the same clothes as now, says the Interpreter and Dr. Lassi wrote this down after looking suspiciously at the Interpreter: laced-up Austrian army boots, he is saying he always wears laced-up army boots in the mountains, though it was a tedious business at the airports, having to take off his shoes at security screening, these new procedures, bizarre ones, I would have been better off taking a train to the Netherlands and a cargo ship from Rotterdam to Iceland where I would have been able to sit and write in my cabin and stroll around on deck and smoke a pipe instead of having to keep taking off my laced-up army boots for screening and be proactively terrorized and demoralized, said Bernharður, Dr. Lassi wrote. His green pantaloons made of fine wool, the ones he wears all the time; a coarse woolen jacket with many deep pockets always full of all kinds of stuff, a snuff handkerchief, a harmonica, a pocket knife, a notebook, a pencil stub, some fountain pens, a bird whistle, sunglasses, a comb. He wore a cream shirt and a spotted red bow-tie, a dirty v-shaped diamond-pattern sweater, a large vest with stuffed pockets containing snippets of letters with addresses and phone numbers and ideas; a loose scarf; and, on top of everything else, his raincoat. My mother always taught me to dress elegantly for a journey, Bernharður said; before going through customs I struggled out of my coat and put it on my left hand and pulled the trunk behind me, I did my best to look like a Central European intellectual, which I was and am, I wanted to look like it was Thomas Mann coming to Iceland or Thomas Bernharður or Stefan Zweig or Arthur Schnitzler, but the Icelandic customs officer apparently had no knowledge of the Central European intelligentsia and took me aside. Right away I fished out Écrits de linguistique générale by the Swiss linguist Ferdinand de Saussure, although it’s not really by him; I handed the officer the book and a conciliatory handshake, this is a gift and a hand of friendship, I said in Icelandic but he considered this act of friendship suspicious and immediately led me into an interrogation room, where he asked about my business in Iceland, I said I was an Austrian toponymist on the way east to Öræfi to record place names in Mávabyggðir and to follow my mother’s path, though she had a nasty experience there; he recoiled at that and returned my passport to me. I was a bit sheepish that I hadn’t belched this out earlier. He knew the Öræfi region well, this customs official, asking who I staying with, I said I didn’t know anyone in Öræfi and was planning to go to the campsite at the Skaftafell Visitor Center; happy days, said the customs official, good times are coming your way, say hello to everyone in Öræfi for me, I’m really jealous, soon I’ll get my summer vacation and head, of course, to Skaftafell National Park, the best place to be, perhaps I’ll see you there? said the customs officer, and he examined my gift, proud, happy, and bemused: Écrits de linguistique générale by the Swiss linguist Ferdinand de Saussure, though in fact it’s not really by him.

  When Bernharður finally emerged from the terminal, a strong wind blew against him; he had a hard time getting out the revolving door and got stuck there, the door would not budge, it was going to crush him to death, this door means to crush me to death! I yelled, said Bernharður, but then the wind stopped blowing against the door and began to suck instead, causing Bernharður to fly out the revolving door with his trunk, out onto the sidewalk, where an enormous bus stood purring. It surprised him how cold the air was, as if he had had a bitter candy or a Salem cigarette, everything was covered in cold menthol, it occurred to Bernharður that there must be large eucalyptus trees nearby, though that wasn’t likely given that the terminal faced lavafields in every direction, with not a single tree as far as the eye could see, except for several small aspens in beds by the parking lot, there for no one’s benefit or enjoyment. The bus idling there was headed to Reykjavík and Bernharður crawled into the luggage compartment and holed up there among the bags; there are few nicer things than lying on bags, he thought, on top of a luggage pile, he also enjoyed lying on piles of clothes, and piles in general; when traveling he would empty the contents of his trunk into the middle of a floor and lie down to sleep on the pile or else simply sleep inside the trunk. The pot-bellied bus driver with mirrored sunglasses spotted the gangling Austrian and asked him to kindly get out of the compartment, pay his fare, and move up to the seats. It’s horrible how brusque everyone is here, I said to myself, Bernharður said, he was quite contrary about getting on the bus, which he felt was designed for dwarves: why are the seats in airplanes and buses always so small? he asked the bus driver, the bigger the vehicles, the less space between seats, people always get less and less as vehicles get larger and larger, this bloody bus is only for dwarves. Get up there with you if you’re coming! barked the bus driver, or I’ll call the police.

  The bus was a pain. From the city bus station, Bernharður went up Njarðargata and to the guesthouse Norðurljós on Freyjugata, where he got a small room up in the attic, Dr. Lassi wrote. The guesthouse is an excellent stone house from 1946 (it says so on the exterior, according to Bernharður), probably built with war profits and located in the heart of the residential area in the city center, the so-called Neighborhood of the Gods where the streets bear the names of Norse gods and goddesses as enumerated in Snorri’s Prose Edda. The room cheered Bernharður although it was very small and for the most part all roof, meaning he had to bow and stoop; the attic window faced Freyjugata, and he could see into an interesting sculpture garden he wanted to explore, Einar Jónsson’s sculpture garden. The room held a narrow, mustard-colored bed with a beautifully-woven woolen spread; the toponymist’s extremities hung off the end when he threw himself down on it. There was a bedside table made of teak, a small desk, a simple wooden chair, a sink and a mirror, perfect, Bernharður said to himself, a communal toilet and shower along the hallway, but Bernharður did not come all the way to Iceland to bathe and sit on the toilet, he was headed on a research trip up to Mávabyggðir to gather place names, or to experience place names, as he put it, according to the Interpreter, he set his toiletries by the sink, washed his face with cold water, splashed water through his wild and curly mop of hair using a narrow-toothed comb, he wet the comb well and brushed his hair again, it resembled a stormy sea, he brushed his teeth thoroughly and carefully with salt toothpaste, washed his mouth with Listerine, looked at himself in the mirror, feeling the alcohol and eucalyptus do its work, then he spit it into the sink and took a few deep breaths; he got some shaving cream and rubbed it onto his cheeks with a brush before shaving with a razor, taking his time, making two passes until his skin was completely smooth. He took out a large bottle of 4711 cologne, loosened the cap and poured a puddle in the palm of his hand; he rubbed his hands together well, slapped himself lightly on the cheeks, rubbed it on the back of his neck, massaged his temples and allowed the essential oils and herbs in the cologne to infiltrate his thin skin. This is good for one’s sanity, he thought every time he performed this ritual, he rubbed his temples slowly and gently, it increases one’s well-being and enhances cognition, according to research, then he covered his nose with his palm and breathed the alcohol and citrus fragrance deeply, clearing his airways so that he felt his brain open wide. This is how he adjusted to travel. Then he opened the cuminflavor Brennivín bottle he’d purchased in duty-free and filled his glass halfway there at the sink, then downed it in three gulps. After this, Bernharður felt fit as a fiddle, ready to head out.

  Bernharður had no option but to stay in Reykjavík for a night before taking the bus east to Öræfi, since the bus did not leave until the next morning. He decided to pass the time walking around town and looking at signs, the city’s place names, he could see a supermarket outside on the corner and thought to himself it would be nice to have some basic food supplies in the room, perhaps; he checked with the woman who ran the guest house and she pointed out a shared kitchen in the basement wh
ere he could store food in the fridge and cook something, just behave like you’re at home, the proprietess said. Bernharður was repulsed at the thought of a common kitchen and probably didn’t manage to hide that from her, given the way he recoiled; best just to have some snacks up in my room and entirely circumvent this kitchen, he thought. The little supermarket on the corner was called Matur & Myndir, Food & Films and Bernharður thought it was a great wonder, combining a grocery store with a movie rental place. At the very moment he walked through the door on the corner, he suddenly had a vision of cells damaged by a virus in the body of Western civilization. Inside Food & Films Bernharður bought some Finn Crisp crispbread, on the grounds that he’d come to a Nordic country, and crispbread is a characteristic Nordic food, or so he’d read in National Geographic at some point. Having picked up the original flavor Finn Crisp and carefully read the label, contentedly noting that the crispbread contained only rye, water, salt and yeast, he noticed another flavor, caraway, which is cumin, and he immediately swapped them out. Then he picked out the packet of butter in the most old-fashioned packaging, butter containing only cream and salt, the way butter ought to, not a pile of garbage as is usually the case, butter isn’t butter any more, he thought, but a heap of garbage, and so is cheese, he said aloud to himself in Food & Films, it would be nice to have cheese, but what cheese? After a long study of the small cheese selection it seemed to him like he was going around in circles, he could feel despair beginning to well up within him, and as he was about to return the stick of butter to the refrigerator, he spotted the maribo cheese, cumin-flavored, and that decided it; he paid for the three products at the cash register, happy with his purchase. He took the groceries to his guesthouse, up to his room.

  Cumin, Bernharður said, I love cumin, I’m going to eat cumin crispbread with cumin cheese while I drink cumin liquor. I was besotted with Icelandic cumin, feeling lucky to get to taste it. It’s called caraway in English, they stick to that, but cumin in Icelandic, German and Yiddish calls it cross-cumin, kreuzkümmel. An Icelandic man lived at Guesthouse Northern Lights, and not as a tourist; his was the room opposite mine up in the attic and his door was wide open. He was a bit of a wretch to look at, a vagabond who introduced himself simply as Guest; he popped his head into my room and immediately clocked that all my food contained cumin. He went back over to his place and returned with a jar full of cumin seeds, a gift for me. This is Icelandic cumin, said Guest, I collected it out on Viðey where it grows wild; the story goes that Skúli, the Chief Magistrate, sowed it in the 18th century. You can keep it, I have plenty. You’re called Guest, I said, and you’re a guest at the guesthouse; my mother’s name is Geist. I showed him the cake slice, which I was using for the butter, it’s engraved with my mother’s family name, it makes me wonder whether being a guest is the same thing as being a spirit or ghost. Guest joined right in and a cheer washed over him. I asked Guest to suggest a good bar in town and to tell me some things I could do in Reykjavík, a place with which I was completely unfamiliar. Come in, said Guest, cumin! I went into his room. Yes, he said, he’d like to show me the city; he was interested in toponymy. We did justice to the schnapps as we had a cumin chat in his room. He’d apparently been living there for some time: you couldn’t move for books and stacks of paper; bookshelves reached from floor to ceiling, which was higher than head height; in all the nooks and crannies there were stacks of books, the bed was unmade, a filthy sheet covered only half the mattress; his comforter was blue. Empty beer bottles were thick-packed on the bedside table, together with a full ashtray; under the sloping ceiling was an old and dusty pump organ. Norðurljós is a good guesthouse, said Guest, there’s always several writers or would-be poets living here in winter, unemployed, and from time to time psychiatric patients, junkies, students, tourists … I suffer an eternal displacement thanks to the tourist industry’s gold rush, said Guest; I lived next to the guesthouse but my home was swallowed up when it enlarged itself due to that infestation; there was little I could do about it, it happens repeatedly, everywhere I go, I’ve lived in three places here on Freyjugata, each for a short time, the neighborhood’s residents are all moving away but I decided to stubbornly remain and bed down with the virus, myself and my things as a kind of curse … I stood and scanned the book titles, Bernharður said, and noticed a picture on the wall, on it was written ICELAND 874–1874; between the dates, a long-haired woman with a sword sat on top of a glacier, and above her was a shining star; below, in the center, was a map of the country, and around the country you could see bull, eagle, dragon, and giant with a big staff; at the bottom I saw the name Ingólf Arnarson. Who made this picture, I asked, what is it? It’s a paean to Iceland by Benedikt Gröndal, said Guest, a memorial card to a thousand years of settlement in the country; that’s the mountain-lady, Iceland’s female spirit. He sat down at the organ on a small stool; in your honor, he said, I’ll play and sing Psalm over Wine, to the tune of Joseph Haydn. Next he played Sing Praise to God and some hymns I didn’t know. Then he sat on the carpeted floor, lit a cigarette, leaned back on a tower of books and said: I adore cumin.

  As afternoon wore on, the cumin lovers forayed over to a hostelry called Circus, Dr. Lassi wrote, giving the report a sprinkle of saga style because she was always reading the sagas, Circus is an ugly junk-hut of a bar on Klapparstígur, dark and shady inside, where they found some pitiful creatures playing pinball and drinking beer; a sad but homely atmosphere prevailed, and there was no discernible difference between bartender and customer, they ran together like so much does nowadays, the ununiformed bartender playing pinball along with the customers, they all greeted Guest like a colleague though he turned out to be a regular there and actually used that as his name, The Regular. He crossed over to the other side of the bar to serve us. I asked whether they might have any cumin beer, which cheered The Regular up no end; he asked at once whether I’d tasted such a beer some place? I said I hadn’t, it might perhaps be too much, and I leant against the bar; on the other hand, I was starting to connect cumin, caraway, with everything Nordic, getting carried away because German and Hungarian and Finnish and Yiddish and Icelandic are the only languages in the world which call kúmen cumin, as I said to The Regular, all other languages follow the Latin model, where the stem is carvi, which the Anglo-Saxons heard as caraway. Deep down the Icelandic coast is a red fish, said The Regular, called karfi; it’s almost the color of the packaging on the Finnish crispbread called Finn Crisp caraway! … I had a poetic etymology conversation with The Regular. At Circus, I got what one might call a poetic sensation as I noted a spiritual connection between toponymy and etymology; they are both the story of words, of the novels inside words, perhaps—it was that sort of feeling.

  The bartender was occupied with his pinball but The Regular substituted now and then, pouring drinks for the few patrons who sat at the bowed bar. I noticed they were putting drinks on their tabs, they were probably all regulars. There was something appealing about my neighbor’s face: it was not at all ugly, and some unshakable happiness shone through the sad darkness of the bright blue eyes. The Regular asked my purpose in being in Iceland, and I could easily have led the conversation toward ontology and protected myself from inquisition; however, I answered the question straight, I was headed to Öræfi to research the place names I was writing about for my doctoral thesis in the Nordic Studies Department in the University of Vienna, I wanted to experience them physically, to go into Mávabyggðir and climb Fingurbjörg because my name was Fingurbjörg; you might call it self-searching, I’m going to Mávabyggðir to find myself because I’m lost in the world.

  I know Öræfi well, said The Regular mildly, because I went there a lot as a kid. It seemed strange to me, almost suspicious, that The Regular should be familiar with Öræfi, and be living at Guesthouse Northern Lights on Freyjugata, in the room opposite mine—but he for his part seemed still warier and more suspicious and got hung up for a long time on the fact that I lived on Freyung in Vienna and had come t
o Reykjavík to stay on Freyjugata; he could not stop asking exactly where Freyung in Vienna was located, he regularly came back to this connection between Freyung and Freyjugata, fixated on it.

  To head over into Öræfi—but what do you know about Öræfi? The Regular asked. Not much, I replied, and then he was angry and called me a tosser …You can be such a tosser, Bernharður, said The Regular, tosser! … surely you aren’t so witless as to plan to gad about around Eastern Skaftafell without having read The Regional Development of Eastern Skaftafell District Vol. I–III carefully!? … He tugged at me, saying we had to supply me with some essentials for my trip east to Mávabyggðir. What books did you bring with you on the journey? … None, I answered, embarrassed, but I’ve read some stuff, I subscribe to National Geographic, there are sometimes articles about Iceland in there. You are rushing to your death! said The Regular, let’s go to Bragi and stock you up, off you go and get your trunk so we can stack the books in it, he said like an officer, so I dashed to Freyjugata and fetched the trunk and sped back down to Klapparstígur again. The Regular was stood outside waiting and led me across the street to where the rare-and-used bookstore Bragi sits on the corner. All the bookstores except one have been destroyed by tourism, said The Regular, the bookstores don’t sell books anymore, just souvenirs and junk, the only actual bookstore left in Reykjavík is the second-hand bookstore Bragi, look here, he said, pointing to the doorbell, a true wonder, the offices of Skaftafell National Park, which is in Öræfi, are here on Klapparstígur in Reykjavík, above the bookstore Bragi, it’s a symbol, I should say, an omen, at the very least a mystery, I sometimes give myself up to life’s wonders, Freyung and Freyjugata and all that, the bookstore Bragi and the National Park …The Regular was well known in the second-hand bookstore and we got a tremendous reception, everything was very cozy, the radio set to Radio 1, an aroma that was part-book mold, part-dust and part-incense, there were cigarettes burning in ashtrays, we were both invited to take some snuff and enjoy a shot of liquor, dogs waddled between the bookshelves like wolves in a hall of mirrors or were sleeping on the carpet between the book boxes, a large green parrot stood at the cash register and counted while cats padded sleepily about on top of the shelves. We were sucked into the atmosphere. The Regular drew me right away to the section containing national lore, here’s a swarm of good books, he said, we need books about Öræfi and not tourist books, either, but books written by local people at the very kernel of culture! Or by a folklore scholar, someone who is stuck inside the subject and cannot get out. The Regular suggested he ought to choose books for me and that he would translate them for me letter by letter; I liked the generosity in that, even if The Regular had not yet managed to absorb the fact that I spoke Icelandic—we had been conversing in Icelandic this whole time. First, he took down a book called Fjöll og Firnindi, that is, Mountains and Wilderness, and said we were fortunate to have it, it would be best if he guided me through the book before I headed east, inside were stories of Stefán Filippusson recorded by Árni Óli, and few give a better account than Stefán Filippusson, said The Regular; the next book he selected was simply called Skaftafell: Aspects from the History of Family Dwellings and Work Customs by Þórður Tómasson from Skógar—he knows everything! The Regular said of Þórður Tómasson from Skógar, even when he doesn’t know something, he still knows it; the magazine Skaftafellingur is like that, too, it contains many well-written articles, chiefly by the Tvísker brothers, especially Sigurður, we’ll buy everything written by them, you’ll enjoy reading about wild sheep in Núpstaður in books like Skaftafell Pass Folklore by Guðmundur from Hoffell, that’s one you should buy whenever you come across it even if is a bit expensive at that moment; gift it when you have extra copies, spread the knowledge, said The Regular, always spread the knowledge. Now let’s hustle over to the travel section, I don’t want to be seen in this section so let’s be quick, The Regular fished from one large stack the Icelandic Travel Association Yearbook from 1979; Sigurður from Tvísker wrote this, and there’s much excellent information about the Öræfi region, said The Regular; however, even more essential is the 1937 Yearbook concerning the Eastern Skaftafell district; you can nourish yourself on the true Öræfi spirit inside that, because back then the rivers weren’t bridged—the older the better, you must have The Travelogue of Sveinn Pálsson, which is excellently written, Sveinn Pálsson was a very remarkable eighteenth-century physician and writer, said The Regular, I wish he was rather better known, Sveinn Pálsson had great affection for Jón Einarsson from Skaftafell, no less important a man, Bernharður, you simply must know about him if you plan to set foot in Öræfi, Jón Einarsson from Skaftafell made Sjónabók, or Patternbook, one of the greatest works of art in Iceland, although few know it, I think there probably aren’t more than ten to fifteen people in the whole world who know Jón Einarsson from Skaftafell’s Sjónabók, which is a shame for Icelandic culture, although it is equally wonderful having a valuable and hidden treasure, Jón Einarsson from Skaftafell, remember that … well, and Eggert Ólafsson, Sveinn Pálsson’s spiritual mentor, mentor to all Icelandic scholars since 1800; he had a great affection for Einar, the father of Jón from Skaftafell, the infamous Einar from Skaftafell, the very same, he knew everyone, Eggert visited with him over a span of forty years and Sveinn visited his son Jon, if this is getting confusing I can repeat it all night, Eggert visited Einar, Sveinn visited Jón, there’s something very special about arriving in Skaftafell because it’s one of the most remote places in the world, and father and son were some of the best carpenters and artists in Iceland ever, completely selftaught, which is traditional in Öræfi, though now there’s no self-educated folks, everyone’s just uneducated, said The Regular, in The Travelogue of Sveinn Pálsson you can read how Jón had, using his own diligence and ability, learned Latin, Greek, and Hebrew grammar at an early age from books he borrowed here and there, being too poor to acquire his own books, although he created the most beautiful artist’s book in the Nordic countries, little Jón studied Latin and Greek and Hebrew grammar from others’ books and was inquisitive whenever the opportunity offered; more than this, little Jón also spoke German and Danish, he studied basic surgical methods, phlebotomy, and wound-binding, he knew botany through and through, so Sveinn Pálsson tells us about Jón Einarsson, The Regular said, but most of all he was a great carpenter, he learned that from his father Einar, an art-smith; father and son built many valuable treasures as well as instruments and tools, sundials and compasses, which are also great treasures, they fashioned guns and gave them to their neighbors to protect against polar bears and to help with subsistence; these guns were considered exceptional, nothing like them had ever been seen, foreign chieftains came to town to press hard for the two, Einar and Jón from Skaftafell, to fashion more guns, but the two of them were busy with arts other than the art of war. It was hard to be a farmer in Skaftafell, the so-called “little ice age” had recently begun, Öræfajökull had erupted in 1727 and had laid waste the countryside for the second time since the Settlement, destroying fields and grazing pastures, the river, the Skeiðará has always been the greatest destroyer of the country, that untameable river smears sand and gravel over the guts of the land, laying waste whatever it runs across. Father-and-son went around the sands on a four-wheel, sail-powered carriage, hunting seal and foraging driftwood on the shore; on their sand-ship the two hustled widely about the district and had a great deal of sport and adventure, but I do not know if I have time to recite and translate the whole Travelogue of Sveinn Pálsson into English for you, or into German, because it is long and fairly comprehensive; but hold on, I’ve been speaking Icelandic all along, The Regular said, finally noticing I knew Icelandic. Let’s scram from the travel section and go back to folklore, there are many books you need to have with you in your trunk, The Settlement History of Eastern Skaftafell District I–III, for example, Industry in Eastern Skaftafell District, Commerce in Eastern Skaftafell District, Transportation in Eastern Skaftafell Distr
ict, Press On, the history of Eastern Skaftafell District, Aspects of Öræfi, and The War of Water: The History of the Skeiðarárjökull Flood & Grímsvatn Eruption, also the Biography of Ragnar from Skaftafell, the Biography of Þorleif from Hólum, and Skaftafell in Öræfi: Iceland’s Thousand Years, and many other good books.