After I’d got set up, turned on the camp stove and put the kettle on, I took a selection of books from the trunk and first read the travel books conscientiously, I wound my way through books by Árni Óli, Exploring I–XV, books which apparently cover everything the nation has forgotten; Annals, 1400–1800, a refreshing and tasteful stash, Espól’s Yearbooks, 11 installments, the Registers, aka the Icelandic Charter Collection in 16 thick volumes containing letters and deeds and judgments and settlements and other records pertaining to Iceland or Icelandic people from the earliest times to the year 1590, as it stated; there was also the agricultural newspaper Freyr, 80 bound volumes, a Historical Narrative of Mail Delivery, volume I and volume II, there was Skaftafell Customs & Place Names, Country Perceptions, reprinted, also the Diaries of William Morris from his time in Iceland, County Proceedings 1749–1752, Árni Magnússon’s Land Registrar, which admittedly omitted the Skaftafell region because Árni was afraid of Lómagnúpur and stopped at that point, he was deadly afraid he would meet the mountain giant Járngrím and become fated to die before he finished the work, Arni was scared for his life because he had substantial work ahead collecting all the manuscripts he could and rescuing Icelandic culture from destruction but laying waste to it in the process, there was also Women’s Studies, the Sheep Markings List for the Skaftafell District west & east, sixty volumes on unbound sheets that dispersed all over the place in the trunk, The Sheep, The Land, the Nation; The Sheep and the People; Livestock Reports from the South; and the Markings List, 300 issues, Skaftafell district and her citizens and occasional visitors, Skaftfell poetry & skaldic poetry & glosses, one volume, Hikes & Round-ups I–V, Non-Hikes and Non-Roundups I–IV, A Different Age, A Better Time, Agricultural Progress for Eternity, Progressives, Sweet and Happy; the complete magazine The Mink, comprising three paper-thin installments brimful of information, the articles Lupine, Friend or Foe? The Book of Tvísker, The Glacial Writings, Skaftafell in Öræfi, Iceland’s Thousand Years, The Mountain Book, The Sand Book, The Bird Book, The Flag of Iceland, Icelandic Biographical Dictionary, Distinguished Icelanders … there was no end to it, there were many more books in the trunk than enumerated here, no wonder the trunk was so heavy to lug about, and to set a bow on my account I must mention, last but not least, Grímnir, a magazine of place name studies, published by the Toponymy Room at the National Museum of Iceland, every issue and volume was in the suitcase, 1980–1996, I considered this a treasure, a great discovery on the part of The Regular and Bragi, even if it was only three small volumes; things proceed slowly in the world of names. Then the kettle boiled and I wanted to go and drink tea and think of home and think my way up into the mountains, to think about Mávabyggðir and think about women; mostly, though I wondered, as I gulped down the tea, why had Bragi thrown so many books about sheep into the trunk? I couldn’t consider myself a real man without having read all of it; then I’d be ready to travel up to Mávabyggðir like the rest of the Yule Lads.
Not until I had finished reading all the stuff from Bragi would I be spiritually willing to go to Mávabyggðir, I said to myself, not until I understood all this, so I don’t end up like those found dead down below. Then Edda the ranger came to charge me and I stone forgot my journey and laughed carelessly at the campsite in Skaftafell and let my studies slide. On the afternoon of Saturday April 12th I left on foot from Skaftafell’s Visitor Center, pulling my trunk behind me, in a good mood as I waded Skaftafellsá and Svínafellsá, ignoring the bridges, I walked past Freysnes, where there’s a hotel and a supermarket and a gas station serving boiled hot dogs and hamburgers in buns and a great smoky smell. Further east lies Svínafell, where Flosalaug is heated by the burning of tourist trash in an old fox farm; beautiful blue clouds lie over the settlement like the spirits of murdered foxes. Here, in Svínafell, is the best weather anywhere, the sources say.
As I walked out of Skaftafell National Park, I was amazed to come across the Öræfings, Eggert Ólafsson and Bjarni Pálsson’s Travelogue still with me; according to The Regular they are great friends to men, animal lovers, plant lovers, lovers of stones, Eggert and Bjarni both say that Öræfings are the most perfect men in Iceland, gentle, silent, quiet, the least polluted; they speak the clearest, most perfect language due to their isolation.
I threaded my way south in Destrikt, which is down in sandstone flatlands; tourists can rent horses there, because government subsidies to farmers are certainly not enough to get by on. I rented 5 horses. These are all strong water horses, the farmer at Destrikt said, the tourists usually get nags, but because you are going to go to the glacier, I will equip them with spiked hooves and snowshoes. I wanted to pay him in euros but he did not want to see them, just krónur! What the hell would I do with euros? said the farmer, black with grease, barely paying attention to me, busy trying to loosen a screw from something. Fortunately, I had a whole stack of hundred-krónur coins I’d won on the one-arm bandit at the bus terminal the morning we left, and I offered the farmer the coins, it was the only Icelandic currency I had, they were not worth as much as the euros, they’d said so at the bank, he struggled and swore at the stuck screw and said he had never been to a bank and did not want to as long as he lived, banks are coffins, he said, sweaty from the screw. Perhaps it’s the other direction, I said, but the farmer’s patience cracked and he snapped at me, do you think I don’t know which way to screw!? …Then he said he needed material to cast nails anyway; he led me into his smithy where he dumped all the hundred-krónur coins down into the container and melted them and began to cast nails but told me to scram with my trunk and said he would grab hold of both my nipples if I didn’t treat the horses well, twist them, rip them off, but where did you learn to speak Icelandic? the farmer asked … back home in Vienna, I said …You speak like a horse with its mouth full of bread, he said and laughed deep down … I said I had come to record place names … Record place names? asked the farmer outraged, record the places names for whom? They’re fixed to the mountains and everywhere, they stand written there, they won’t benefit anyone in books, place names are only useful to those who own livestock, you don’t learn place names unless you use them, what’s that you have in your hand? It’s a walking stick, I answered the farmer, I read that you couldn’t go anywhere in Öræfi except with a good walking stick …That’s a broomstick! he said and shook violently, are you planning to sweep the names off the mountains? You’re as good as dead if you’re going to walk about in the mountains with this reed, you need a proper pole, for damn’s sake, you can borrow this one, he said, and handed me a big pole, I had read about such broad Skaftafell staffs in some of the books, I don’t remember where …This is a handsome stick, I said, trying to hold it confidently …This isn’t a stick! Never call a pole a stick, a pole is a pole and not a stick, you can call this broom handle of yours a stick, in my eyes it’s nothing but the stalk of a pole, it might just suffice to pick my teeth …Then the farmer took my walking stick and broke it into pieces and threw it into the fire so that the hundred-krónur coins simmered … It seemed strange to me that all the shelves and slats of the smelter were clear, but the floor was covered with tools, so that I was standing on tools, the man seemed to know exactly where the tongs or screwdrivers were, the crescent wrench, every nut and every bolt even though he threw everything away from him in such a way that being nearby was high risk … It’s good to get the hundred-krónurs; I was really short of nails, said the farmer in Destrikt, there’s a boy here, some fool Southerner from Reykjavík and he is cleaning the nails out of rotten wood for me and fetching me the nails but he is so lazy and has taken so long doing it that I’m forced to cast more nails … this boy thinks he’s here on vacation, he just wants to laze about or wander off in the mountains, watching birds and staring into thin air, but there’s plenty of tasks to do and no need for a dreamer, we must collect the timber that was used to shape the concrete for the new outbuilding and clean the timber of its nails, not count birds on the sand or measure the height of the tree
s in the woods, if he wants to do that he ought to go into Tvísker country, where men lie in bed all day and pick their noses and nothing achieves anything.
I set two horses in front of the trunk and climbed on it, using it as a wagon; I left the other three tied to the tailgate behind. I took a big Vienna Cake and gave it to the farmer when I left; that cheered him up and he danced about on the slope with the cake. I hurried back to Hálsasker, where they all were, The Regular and Worm Serpent, having a high old time at the farm. The farm is named for the place, said Kiddi, the place name “Hálsasker” is composed of two geographical phenomena, háls, or neck, and sker, or skerry, a neck indicates a slope or a hill, a skerry usually means a crag in the sea, but here it has a special Skaftafell-ish meaning, a rock that is cut out from itself, though you can’t find a rock outcrop here any longer, there’s no crag because everything has grown … Sker has transcended its meaning of a sea-crag, said The Regular, just as on land the neck transcends the body, that’s what a sker is on land, for example a low, flat rock in the vegetation, a belt of rock, of bare rock, on the glacier, that’s the idea of sker, the surface of sker, which goes beyond its original meaning to become a symbol, where before at the edge of the neck there was flaky, naked rock there’s now abundant growth, especially angelica, back in the day you had to go all the way to Hvannadal to get angelica, now no one collects this medicinal herb any longer, angelica is really healthy, a useful herb, good-tasting, similar to cumin, the root has saved many from hunger and was thought a delicacy, the leaves saved people from scurvy, it’s always said that lamb saved this nation’s life over the centuries, but angelica protected people’s lives, today no one thinks about it although it blossoms across the meadows, angelica is chopped down and thrown away, not even good for animal fodder, considered ugly, this weed instead gets torn up at the roots or poisoned; it’s a shame, all this angelica, say modern farmers, since they know nothing about herbs, just toxins and chemical powders … today you get laughed at if you eat something that grows in nature.
Back-solutions is common in toponymy, right, Bernharður, asked The Regular, and sometimes correct, but also sometimes idiotic … don’t you have the Annals in your trunk? We can just open it up and review things, that’s an excellent starting point, it’d be refreshing to look through the Annals 1400–1800 over coffee, the Annals have it, said The Regular. In 1362, Öræfajökull destroyed all the Province’s names and the Province itself, I mean its name, no volcano had ever before done that anywhere in the world, so if the place name came from after 1800, old men would know how it came about, would have learned from their grandmothers or grandfathers … the old reckonings … here it is! I think … the year 1586 saw three moons in the sky with one solar ring, that winter the strange event took place at the sacred site of Hólar in Hjaltadal: a teenager, Vigfús Jónsson, a priest’s son, who had been in school but now worked for the printer, cut his own throat over the altar in the Holy Church; the year 1611 witnessed a darkening of the sun, a sad event befell a husband in Sámsstaðir in South Iceland, Jón Simonsson, a god-fearing man, an honest, upright and well-behaved man, he laid hands on himself early in the morning on Saturday, January 19th, the next Sunday he got to his feet with the other locals and prayed as usual, after which he left home and didn’t return, people searched for him that night and found him dead in the morning near the farm, his right hand was a bloody stump, beside him lay a knife bigger than a butcher’s knife pooling in the blood and on his neck there was a big gaping wound all the way into the bone; on February 24th a man cut his own throat at Fljótshlíð, he was called Þorvarður, from the south, he was wounded with a food knife but was saved; a priest from the north, Rev. Stefán Guðmundsson, at Undirfell in Vatnsdal, stabbed his own throat with a food knife, greatly indisposed and evilly tempted, he died; the water in Reyðarfjörður turned bloody; a woman in Suðureyri gave birth to a deformed child and immediately stabbed herself with a knife, soon after, her husband drowned himself in the sea; the monster in the Hvítá was clearly seen by many, looming out of the water like a colossus, the serpent moved up and down along the riverbed but had a base camp in a thunderous whirlpool or bottomless hollow; in 1619 at Hlíðarend in Fljótshlíð a man who was alone cut his throat and died; another stabbed himself to death in Landeyja, not far away; a woman cut her throat in Laugardalshólar in October; 1620 witnessed a large bloody color in the sea around Eyjafjörður; in the year 1621 a man hanged himself, Tyrfing by name, from Vatnsholt in Staðarsveit; in Flatey one Sunday around mass after people had confessed and were going to sip from the chalice, a man rushed out from the church and drove himself into the sea; a man hanged himself in Fljótshlíð; in 1623, three weeks before Christmas, a water-serpent was seen in the Hvítá two evenings in a row after sunset; the first evening he rose up as two curves across the river, breaking up the ice, so the river flowed on land, the second night the worm rose up in a coil near the middle of Hestfjall; that year a man hanged himself at Hlíðarenda, Gísli Jónsson by name; in 1624, a woman hanged herself at Eyjafjall; 1626 at Hlíðarenda a boy was whipped and branded, he went and hanged himself; in the winter of 1630 a woman killed herself in Stærra-Árskógur, she was granted burial within the church yard because her daughter was so mournful; that year a man stabbed himself in Stokkseyri; in 1631, a woman lost her husband in Svarfaðardal, she grieved him angrily, stabbed herself in the neck with a knife until dead, returned to haunt her sister-in-law into taking care of her son, ruined everything she had, her specter caused great misery and terror; in 1634, a man hanged himself in Staðursveit, his name was Ásmundur; a boy hanged himself at Hlíðarenda; in 1636, Helgi Kráksson from Hrútafjörður hanged himself; in 1638 a man in Ströndum jumped into the sea and committed suicide; in May 1639 the farmer at Langholt in Flói, Hallur Jónsson, wanted to burn a fire on his estate and as he set the fire it spread wide onto another man’s estate and the land burned on the next thirteen estates in a row west because the wind came from the north and as a result he was rebuked because of the damage caused, he felt that so heavily that he ran out into the Hvítá trying to commit suicide by having the serpent swallow him; a man saw and swam out after him and reached him but a few days later he cast himself almost automatically down a deep sinkhole, he drowned and was found dead; in the fall, a man became possessed in the Westman Islands, he was seized and bound on crossbeams in the air by the National Church but had so much strength in him that he burst the bonds and was annihilated; in 1644 a boy hanged himself in Steingrímsfjörður; in 1645, a man ran out of Akranes into the sea and drowned himself; the sun was observed darkening in unnatural ways, becoming red as blood and black as terror and terrifying to look at, shortly after the mood grew dark and still more omens followed; on Christmas Day a man ran out in the middle of mass into the Rangá to take his own life; a man killed himself out west in the town of Staðarsveit; in the year 1648, in the autumn, a man indulged himself in an attempt on the life of Bjarni Bjarnason at Ingunnarstaðir in Skálarnesmúlakirkjusókn and so he cut his own neck with a knife, yet recovered from the injury a winter later; in 1650 a man drowned himself in the sea in Vestfjörður; in 1651 a man harmed himself in Hrútafjörð; in the Fall, a woman harmed herself in Höfn by drowning herself in the river beside the meadow and was buried in an unmarked grave near where she was found; 1652, a girl drowned herself in the Norðurá because of temptation; 1655, a young girl flung herself from the seacliffs in the south, dying immediately, found dead on the cliffs; 1656, a man hanged himself in Álftanes, Jón Halldórsson; 1658, two women harmed themselves; one stabbed herself to death but the other cut her throat to the bone; a boy in Vestfjörður hanged himself in the lambhouse and was found dead there; in 1658, a wife committed suicide in Tálknafjörður; a boy hanged himself in Króksfjörður; 1659, a man hanged himself down below Jökull; a man hanged himself out east at Síða one holy day in December and another in Flói cut his own throat on Christmas eve; 1660, a man cut his throat out east; another hanged himself in Flói; a g
irl in Flói did away with herself; in 1664 in Vestfjörður a man hanged himself with a child’s shirt; a boy hanged himself in Steingrímsfjörður; a symbol was seen in the air that looked like pulsating jellyfish and many honest men entered the final sleep; in Þorlákshöfn, a woman drowned herself in the sea, she was known as Kossa-Dóra, her name was Halldóra Ólafsdóttir, the wife of Jón Jónsson, from Staðarhraun; right before Christmas a comet with a long tail was seen; in 1665 another comet; a boy of 14 hanged himself in Borgarfjörður, west of the Hvítá; on November 5th, a Sunday, a boy left the sermon and hanged himself; 1668 a man ended his own life in Álftanes; in 1670 a man hanged himself with a horse tail, that took place in Hruttarfjörður; in the year 1671 a man in the East Fjords had a child with his own flesh-and-blood daughter, he was called Jón Eiríksson from Skálanes at Seyðisfjörður, the girl ran away from him and exposed his compulsion, then she unwillingly went back to him, he destroyed himself a week later by undressing on a boulder and throwing himself into the water; the daughter, Margaret, was finally absolved after the matter had been referred to the district for investigation, afterward she was freed from execution at the national parliament because she was not all there; Oddný Jónsdóttir, out east in Grímsnes, had been married two weeks when she stuck into her belly a sausage knife she’d left in bed that evening, she got out of bed and took the knife out of her side and cut her throat immediately after; in 1673, a woman stabbed her own neck with a knife out east in Laugardal and soon died, she still received absolution and the sacrament before death, drifting away soon afterward, she was the mother of the man whose wife slit her throat in Grímsnes; beneath Eyjafjall, a man argued with his wife one night because she did not want to go to bed with him and in the morning he found her dead, having hanged herself; 1675, a disturbed person killed herself, Eyjólfur Björnsson’s wife in Hallfríðurstaðir out in the north near Myrkársókn, she got out of bed in secret at night, leaving her husband, and proceeded to drown herself in the Hörgá below the farm, she was found dead there in the morning, as a result she was buried outside the church yard on the bank where she was pulled from the river; in the year 1676 a man cut his throat, he was called Bjarni Snorrason, he lived in Hjalla and was buried in open country; in 1679, a resplendent man on a fiery horse with a drawn sword was seen in the sky; 1680, a laborer at Tjörn in Svarfaðardal was found dead in an outbuilding with a cord around his neck; the cord was bound around his neck and knotted so tight people thought another person had been involved; a man cut his throat in Kjós and died the following day, he was called Gísli; another man slit his throat at Rangárvellir, living for two days; 1688, this year many follies occurred, according to the Fitja Chronicle, said The Regular, despair and doubtful temptations, a woman drowned herself in the spring at Miðfirð; 1690, a man cut his throat because of his troubled conscience, Ari Magnússon, from Fellströnd in the west; 1692, an impoverished man out east in a rural district got sick from rancid lard, he got an ax and hobbled into a single-room house, he was found dead there with his foot cut off; 1699, a farmer ran naked out of his bed during the night and was found dead in the morning in a lake near the town; 1701, during the spring, it rained worms all over Austurland, the worms ate flora and grass and were the most damaging and destructive visitor, at first the worms were small but quickly grew because they ate everything they came across and were soon the size of a stubby finger; in Austurfjörður a man hanged himself, a woman in Loðmundarfjörður ran out into the sea; also, a man ran into the sea at Reyðarfjorður; also a magistrate at Eyjafjörður; that same year, the farmer at Moldbrekka ran out of bed away from his wife and drowned himself in a stream, in 1702; Solomon Jónsson was the man’s name and he was the hospital chief in the Westfjords, he came to Rif under Jökull and asked for accommodation, he said he was mad from insomnia and wanted to sleep in a one-room house so he could be free of all the noise and uproar that night, in the morning when they checked on him Solomon had hanged himself in the fishing gear which hung about the house, and he was buried outside the church grounds; another man hanged himself out east in the fjords; in 1703 in Breiðafjörður a man cut his throat from folly, yet he still died; the same year a councilor in Viðey left his bed one night barely dressed and was found dead on the shore after walking into the sea; in 1705, a man hanged himself in the river at Önundarfjörður; another cut his neck with a knife at Rauðamel and died a quick death; the assistant cook on the ship Stapa threw himself out of the window during the voyage and died; the farmer Guðmundur Magnússon hanged himself at age 51 in Álfadal in Ingjaldssandur in Ísafjörð district; a man whom age had bent double hanged himself in Eyrarsveit; in the year 1706 at Leysingstaðir in Húnavatnþingi a man cut his own throat, though didn’t kill himself, after being urged to by a devil, he healed and got back on his feet; in 1708, a man killed himself with a knife in Hörðadalur; during 1709 the country experienced a plague and a third of the population died, said The Regular, it was as if the plague chose people based on esteem and took only women, children and distinguished folk and good people but left alive the poor vagabonds, the needy, the wretched and feckless people, a decent man, Jón Tómasson, a resident of Dvergastein in Álftafjord, lay close to death from the disease, he told his wife before he died how to put his body into the ground, he wanted to be dressed in his finest clothes, shoes on his feet and a cap with its hood folded back on his head, the way one should set a cap, a black-sheathed knife in his right hand and white gloves on his hands, don’t use a coffin, my dear woman, Jón told his wife, this wasn’t all effected as he’d asked and after Jón died and was buried his wife fell ill, many people believed he had gone back and visited her, she went to his region, though he had forbidden her to go there, and when she arrived at the farm, she walked into the farmhouse and hanged herself; a small boy hanged himself in Laxholt in Borgarhrepp; in 1713, in the middle of summer, a middle-aged man by the name of Guðmundur Þorsteinsson from Rauðamel, out west, cut his throat with a scythe; in 1714 a man killed himself in Miðfjörður; in 1715 Jón Magnússon from Víðidalur, the brother of the professor Árni Magnússon antiqvitatis, hanged himself in a hay barn; the next winter Magnús Sigurðsson slit his throat with a hay-scythe at Skegghaldsstaðir in Miðfjordur valley and died soon after, sixty-five years old; in the late winter of 1716 a girl intentionally stabbed herself with a needle, lonely and despairing, she lived for two nights and repented, she received the priest’s blessing and died well; at Rútsstaðir a woman slit her throat, lived for three days, then died; a man from the south who had sworn at a priest in a pulpit and been severely reprimanded by the priest afterward asked forgiveness from the priest, but the priest did not want to forgive the man so he went out to sea and drowned himself; in 1717, a twenty-year-old boy hanged himself from a hay barn in Víðidal, he was called Guðmundur; in 1720 Þorleif Bessason came to Möðruvellir to buy himself a girl, he got out of bed during the night in his underwear and drowned himself in a brook a little way away, he’d been anxious about being able to afford a wife; a man in Vatnsdal drowned himself in the river; in the winter of 1721, two men in the Westman Islands committed suicide, one ran off a cliff, the other drowned in the sea; 1723, the district magistrate for Árnes, Grímur Magnússon, walked out of his house and threw himself down a well and drowned, a church priest had taken his blood and found nothing wrong with him although the magistrate had been very ill for a period of time, the magistrate had invited the priest and some others to dinner that day and when everyone was seated at the table the magistrate tried to leave and sent his servant to wait table, he ran as fast as he could and threw himself into the well, he was found right away standing on his head dead in the well; Jón Snorrason the book-binder was sick, he fled his bed in the night and was found dead in the Þjórsá; in the year 1724, in the spring, at Arnarstapi, a woman, Margrét by name, harmed herself when she jumped down into Kerið, the Cauldron, which lies below the cliffs, though she’d always been a cautious person; 1725, a housewife hanged herself at Stapa because of s
trife and anger, Guðrún Guðmundsdóttir, she took the key to her room and locked herself inside, she set one chest on top of another to lay the snare, pushed the upper one away from her feet and was found hanging there when the room was broken into; 1726, in the winter, February 5th, a girl drowned herself in the sea in Fúlavík in Gullbring district, Steinunn Jónsdóttir by name; a young man ran out of the sea-shelter and drowned himself, his name was Leif Jónsson and he lived near the Bakkaá in Tjörnes, that happened on the first Tuesday of the month by the old calendar, 26th March by the new, he wasn’t found although there was a search, he had been told the morning before that he was to be a father, although blameless, and in late spring bones washed up on the shore that people thought were Leif’s and which they buried outside the cemetery; at Miðnes, a girl disappeared from her bed one night, she ran into the sea and committed suicide; in 1728, a merchant ran out onto Skutulsfjorðureyri, Birk was his name, he threw off his blanket during the night and cast himself into the sea from the cliffs, he had quarreled with the magistrate; a woman hanged herself in Vesturhóp, Bergljót Bjarnadóttir, between 20th and 21st January, she had previously cut her throat but then been healed by monsieur Jón Magnússon; in 1729, a merchant drowned himself at sea at Skutulsfjörður, he was in dispute with a magistrate about the scales that had weighted forty kilos of fish, the load was sealed away and a pound taken off the merchant and the magistrate sailed off by ship, after this the merchant experienced great insomnia, on the morning he was meant to settle the payment he disappeared from the door of the administrative building and was found in the sea close to death; in the year 1731, on the 26th day of Decembris, Runolfur Þorvarðsson harmed himself at Höskuldsstaðir in Laxárdalur, he cut his neck with a knife, he was found alive there in the small house, Reverend Þórarin from Hjarðarholt was called, he came quickly and pardoned Runólf in confession, there was some awareness but no speech, he could write yes and no in chalk in response to the priest’s questions, he received absolution and the sacrament, Runki died the following day; 1732, a man ended his life in Herdísarvík; 1737, a woman who lost her husband in a bitter storm drowned herself in the river where he disappeared; 1740, 5th of June, Pentecost night, at Arnarstapa, a man did himself in by running into the sea by the landing, he floated up, sank again, and died, he was later hooked by pole from a ship, he was allegedly in debt for small hand-knitted garments which he’d traded for ½ pound of tobacco, it was said he’d stolen the knitting and so he ran into the sea and did away with himself; on the morning of August 5, 1741, Oddur Sigurðsson the respected lawyer was found dead in his bed, he had gone to bed the night before and no one had heard him during the night, his neck-scarf had been tightened until he choked, he had repeatedly tried to commit suicide; 1742, in Rangárþing, melancholy thoughts led a magistrate, Nikulás Magnússon, to drown himself in a ravine, Nikulás left his bed one night and waded east in the Öxará at the Heathen Law Rock, a teenage boy saw him and wanted to help him but the magistrate drove the boy away, the boy, frightened, went in confusion back to Þingvellir and called for men to help but by then the magistrate had disappeared, three days before Nikulás had sent a message to the lawyer Magnús Gíslason, along with some documents and money, asking him to take care of his son, Þorleif, because within three days his life would be over; they first searched his tent, then looked for a body, and at the ravine’s edge north of Þingvellir meadow they found his silver flask, several papers, and his handkerchief, all dripping wet, this led one man to look in the ravine, Nicholas was fished out and his body taken to church the next morning, some foolish men thought he had been conducting magic or spells, but things were utterly different, all his life Nikulás had been insane, never violent or evil-minded, on the contrary he suffered from too much gaiety, which especially went together with drinking, but now and then he would become reserved and sometimes morose, this happened during that year’s parliament gathering, he was constantly joyful and excited both night and day until his mood changed while he slept one night, he got to his feet and drew his blade, a hirschfænger, it was long and sharp and he wanted to do himself some damage, his servant boy woke and was able to obstruct him so he didn’t kill himself, but for the following days he was beside himself and hardly spoke to anybody and things ended badly, as previously explained, he was buried in a cemetery at Þingvellir (even though he had walked or thrown himself into a water-cleft out of folly or mala conscientia) out of kindness to his impoverished heirs, or else his estate and money would have been forfeit to the king, men thought he was fearful a case he had with the land registrar would affect his reputation, ever since this cleft has been called Nikulásargjá, a rough place in winter, a common spot for horses to die; a man from Skaftafell district who lost all his money one severe winter was so sorry about his loss that he slit his throat; Hrómundur Jónsson the smith was found after his place was searched, he had a strap with one end around his neck and the other tied to a stone which the dead man had kicked away, he was buried outside the cemetery by his master, a magistrate came to the site and exhumed him and saw from the mark on his throat that the death was caused by strangling with a leather belt and that there were stab marks on the body, his nose had bled, so he was taken from the cairn and his master was sought, being suspected of the murder and allegedly a criminal; east in Múlasýsla a man harmed himself, cutting his neck, he had suffered the loss of a lot of money, which led him to a very troubled death; in 1745 at Þingeyrir a man harmed himself on New Year’s Day, he had previously been preoccupied; in 1746, a man hanged himself in Melasveit; 1747, a man killed himself alone in a lake in Stokkseyrarhreppur, he had been in custody for a time because of his deranged spirit; during the year 1757 the attorney Einar Jónsson Thorlacius cut his throat in Berufjörður as people were kneeling in church for Mass, the person next to him saw what he was doing and his knife was taken away, he lived half a month, repented and died; a man in Múlasýsla deliberately stabbed himself in his abdomen, lived for two days, repented and died; the year 1760, an old woman at Háeyri at Eyrarbakka threw herself down a well and killed herself, having long had a mental illness; in 1771, in an unfortunate event under Jökull, a man cut himself or stabbed himself in his neck and bled to death, a man named Bjarni Jónsson; a woman under Jökull cut herself to death in a similar way; 1772, a man hanged himself in the district of the Bishop of Skálholt; just before the winter nights arrived, a laborer named Guðmundur from Hvammur in Svartárdal disappeared one night from his bed, he was alleged to be somewhat sick, he was finally found by sheep-herders in the valley in the so-called Þjófagil, he had jabbed himself to death in the neck and was buried outside the cemetery; a lone farmer in Rangárvellir criticized his son’s work in the cowshed, though not overly, he went back to his farm but it turned out the son hung himself in the cowshed; up north, a fire burned in the ocean; in 1774 the deputy lawman Magnús Olafsson, who was often near death from blood loss, stabbed himself with a knife; Bachmann, the surgeon from his land quarter, spent a long time healing him during the spring, he lay there over midsummer, then recovered; out west on Vatnseyri a Danish sub-merchant named Hauchsheim hanged himself with his neck scarf, no one knew why, a destitute father of many children from Vatnsnes, Tómas, hanged himself midweek, the Sunday before Tómas had received the sacrament after requesting it from a priest, Tómas was Þórðarson and lived in Ásbjarnarstaðir, he was deranged and hanged himself from a nail driven into an outbuilding at Sauðdalsá; 1775, Guðmundur Einarsson, district administrative officer at Akranesi and a decent man, cut his own throat, then he had a fit of conscience and because his jaw had borne some of the wound he clung to life by God’s grace and the assistance of Mr. Bjarni Pálsson landphysicus, who had immediately been sought, he pieced together the windpipe and mended the wound swiftly, the neck felt even better than before; a woman from the south slit her throat; 1776, in Hólárgil in Skíðadal a poor, pious man named Sigurður Jónsson hanged himself from a small tree; on the 11th of April, 1778, the Saturday after Palm
Sunday, a workwoman named Solveig, from Miklabæ in Blönduhlíð near Rev. Oddi Gíslason, fatally cut her throat, her mind tormented, the workwoman and the priest had fallen in love but then she learned that the priest was going to marry and she lost her wits, the Rev. Oddi was told about Solveig and she was still alive when he came and as he saw this horrific sight he fell into a swoon, but when he came round she was dead, she was buried outside the cemetery, left to lay out north to south as is the custom for a suicide, those dead lie unregistered in church books, Miklabæjar-Solveig did not lie still in her grave, The Regular said, but walked the region with blood spewing from her neck, 8 years after Solveig’s death, Rev. Oddur drowned himself, that year another woman killed herself the same way at Möðrufell in Eyjafjörður; in the year 1781 an exceptional event occurred, a single man up north at Tjörnes, Torfi by name, conscientiously drowned himself in the sea, having scruples that his innocent son would be bound to an oath because of what the merchant had himself lost in Húsavík; in 1782, in the summer, a man in Barðaströnd, Magnús, suffered an outrageous death, he stabbed a hole through himself with a scythe, he laid himself down entirely willingly on the scythe so that it went into his shoulder blade and out of his chest, he came home from this gutting and sighed these words, God be merciful to my sins, then died; in the Fall, a man called Oddur from Kasthús on Álftanes harmed himself, he was walking back home from another farm where he had gone to sharpen his knives, which he carried in a bag, he was later found dead between the farms having stabbed three knives between his rib-bones; a woman north of Svalbard drowned herself out of madness, she was called Kristín, she found her husband’s extravagance unbearable; 1783, a mishap occurred when a married woman disappeared from her bed and her husband in Eyjafjörður and was later found dead there in the river, she had done away with herself because of her conscience; another woman, the wife of the farmer Guðmundur in Eyjafjörður, wanted to drown herself, she was found before she could and brought home scarcely aware; a recently married farmer at Jökuldal did himself a great injury by sticking a knife below his chest into his stomach after his wife had nursed a child for a few days, that happened around Christmas; a man cut his throat in Múlasysla; 1786, a man killed himself out of insanity; the winter of 1787, Jón Eiríksson, council member and chief ambassador of Iceland in Copenhagen, our greatest patriot and patron, a champion of the land, a reformer and society-builder, would spend long periods confined to his bed and room, afflicted by an ongoing melancholic sickness, all the while he still wrote and engaged in debates and fought against the oppression of the businessman and inequality in our land and resource exploitation and corruption but he had to endure obscenities from the king’s men, including that he was an unremarkable man who had betrayed the king out of about 8000 riksdaler, one day Jón Eiríksson the councilor was driving home from a parliamentary debate when he asked his driver to drive down to Langebro, as if he wanted to go there to shake off his somber mood and breathe fresh air, at the bridge he rushed out of the cart, leaving behind his fur coat and watch, asked the driver to wait, walked onto the bridge, and in an instant he had thrown himself into the sea, the driver shouted to a nearby boat and they hauled the councilor out of the sea alive but senseless and brought him to land where doctors examined him, his head was smashed to smithereens and he had a gaping wound from having crashed into the bridge’s stone pillars, he was considered incurable and lived only until evening, he was buried honorably in the Church of Our Lady, he was a scholarly man who particularly focused on ancient studies, unflagging in his studies, the causes of his death never became fully known, the annals say, The Regular said, maybe it was his war against Danish rule, and especially her secretariat, mixed with an uneasy conscience as to the shameful truth, his melancholic illness which had long afflicted him, together with other dispositions and the unrelenting and troubling contradictions in his domestic situation, such as that his wife’s drinking was more than moderate, his rejection by his disrespectful sons, perhaps his daughter’s conceited behavior, or it seems truest that he was burdened by all of this together and by the suspicion that he had been appointed to the chamber due to his great intimacy with Skúli the Chief Magistrate as much as his extensive work in Icelandic industry and his fierce fight for Icelanders’ freedom from the powerful Danish trading monopoly, Skúli wasted the king’s money, which the aforementioned secretariat, their nemesis, wanted brought to light, and the demise of councilor Jón Eiríkson, the high-profile and high-ranking Icelandic aristocrat, a steadfast lover and a merchant, was a magnificent loss for Iceland, regret poured over all the well-to-do Icelanders whom he had devoted his life so earnestly to furthering and the royal Icelandic Scholarly Society lost its president, he was missed with great mourning, the esteemed Jón was 59 years old; that year, in the Fall, a woman in Suðurnes hanged herself after being intimidated by another man who, out of fear, removed her head before she was buried outside the cemetery, Skúli exhumed her and saw how the head had been taken off the body and set by her ass with its nose to the crack, the man said he’d done this in fear so she did not come back like she had threatened to, Skúli caught this man and his son and sentenced them to time in jail; in 1788, a farmer in Svarfaðardal hanged himself, he slung his rope to the trelliswork and was found lifeless there in the snow in the morning, having killed himself in psychosis; 1789, some widow who lived beneath Jökull, Guðrún Steindórsdóttir by name, threw herself off 40-meter-high cliffs and was found below unharmed and conscious, she then lay bedridden and a girl watched over her, she fled her bed and the farm when the girl went away, she was found in the morning naked and entirely lifeless under a ship’s side; 1790, an insane woman committed suicide in Jökuldal; 1793, a man threw himself into the sea—but let’s end this tally here, said The Regular at Hálsasker, and may God bless all these suicides and self-harmers in Iceland, allow them their good names, but you should note that no Öræfing is named in this account, though all other regions of the country are.
Oraefi Page 19
