The Tricking of Freya

by Christina Sunley

  Yes, mania. Or, to be more precise, hypomania. A milder form of Birdie's curse. Luckily I suffered no religious delusions, although I did briefly consider the possibility that Birdie's child had been abducted by elves. But my behavior met enough of the remaining criteria to garner the hypomanic diagnosis: a distinct period of abnormally and persistently elevated mood. Decreased need for sleep. More talkative than usual. Flights of ideas, racing thoughts. Increase in goal-directed activity. Spending sprees.

  That's what I mean about the whitewash. True, I mentioned the expensive camera. What I forgot to mention is how I spent the rest of the $3,450 in Reykjavik. Much of it went to gifts: I was feeling highly magnanimous. I bought gifts for each of the men on Ulfur's list, to thank them for their time; new tires for Johanna's bicycle; lobsters for dinner on more than one occasion; chocolates and toys for Ulfur's grandchildren; boxes of smoked salmon that I shipped back to New York for Frank and Klaus; a large order of hangikjot (smoked lamb) for Stefan; Freyja Dinpur, licorice dipped in chocolate, for Sigga; a coffee-table book of color photographs of Iceland, for Sigga; a woven blanket, for Sigga.

  Nor was I any less generous when it came to myself: a supposedly magical, sterling silver rune-charm necklace; a hand-knitted sweater from Icelandic wool just like Mama used to knit, which cost over a hundred dollars; a state-of-the-art raincoat and hat and pants, so I could cycle in Reykjavik in any kind of torrent; a first edition of Olafur's poetry; a set of advanced Icelandic language instruction tapes that I listened to in the wee hours; expensive skin lotions extracted from the Blue Lagoon; a pair of knee-high black boots with fashionably square toes. I shudder to think what they cost. And other things I'm too embarrassed to mention.

  You thought I had no money? I didn't, but I had the manic's best pal, a credit card. Thank God Birdie never got her hands on one of those.

  And another symptom: hypergraphia. In the height of my mania I filled a notebook a day. Notebook after notebook, page after scribbled page that I can't bring myself to transcribe. It is said that certain geniuses create their most inspired work during manic episodes. I guess we nongeniuses spew a lot of eagle crap.

  The doctors have gifted me with the diagnosis of cyclothyinia. It's considered a milder form of bipolar disorder, which may or may not progress to the real thing. What caused it, you wonder, to spring out of nowhere? First of all, it didn't. Some cyclothymiacs are primarily depressive. Remember my lost years in the Sub? Hypomania is the flip side, and needs only a trigger. A trigger the Icelandic summer eagerly provides: light.

  Light is a zeitgeber, German for time-giver. Zeitgebers are any environmental signals that are capable of resetting the internal brain clocks that are ticking away in our hypothalamuses. They're how we adapt to life on this spinning planet, some of us better than others. People with affective disorders are especially vulnerable to circadian disruption; it's no accident that Birdie suffered her worst manic episodes under Iceland's midnight sun, or that it was under the same sun that I succumbed to my first.

  Some people overdose on drugs, I OD'd on light. Which is not to say I never slept, but even with my windows covered in black plastic I managed only three or four hours each night. I didn't go to bed until one or two, then woke at five each morning to the sun burning an orange hole through the plastic. Strangely, after several days of this I felt not exhausted but energized. It seemed logical to me then: with less darkness, you need less sleep. Indeed, sleep seemed a waste of time. I saw a rainbow at ten p.m., kids kicking soccer balls at eleven, drunken teens spilling from after-hours clubs onto sunlit streets. A child's heaven of perpetual summer twilight. If it's not dark, then it can't be night. And if it's not night, why sleep?

  I was gleeful, light-giddy. Can elation really be a symptom? Can enthusiasm be pathological? I have yet to find the line that delineates personality from disease. Whether you call it sickness or not, there is no doubt a change overtook me. I became something other, something faster and freer than myself. And I liked it. Oh how I liked it.

  On the road.

  On the Ring Road with Saemundur.

  Three magnificent mania-fueled days.

  This is where it gets indecipherable: my notes, my mind. When I think back to it I get that dream-remembering look on my face, but at the timeat the time!-everything was crystal prism sharp refracting infinitely and precisely and exquisitely.

  My brain is an octopus, I wrote. Extruding tentacles of thought.

  My heart is filled with helium.

  I've never felt it again.

  I want to, I don't want to. Ever.

  Our departure from Reykjavik dragged on like one of those excruciating group photos where you're longing for the shutter to click but so-and-so isn't in the frame or isn't smiling or sneezed or forgot to brush her hair.

  Saemundur had driven up early that morning in a slick blue van with DEEP NATURE painted on the side. The van seated twelve, with oversize wheels that raised it off the ground like an old-fashioned coach.

  "En flott," I said. How fancy.

  "Business loan," Saemundur explained. "Debt on wheels." Saemundur was wearing a cable-knit, cream-colored sweater. Cream against black hair, green eyes. Is he deliberately handsome, I asked myself, or accidentally so?

  I climbed inside and found myself perched high off the ground. Like the goddess Freyja, I thought, in her cat-drawn chariot. It was raining, of course, but ever so lightly. Misting. Ethereal. I was ready to soar.

  But first we had to wave good-bye to Ulfur, who stood on the step and appraised us skeptically through foggy glasses. Then we had to wait for Johanna to come down with the two girls, and then the girls had to climb inside the van and bounce on the seats and ask if they could come, please please, Uncle Saemundur. Girls got shooed out, bags got loaded, waves and more waves.

  "Be careful!" Johanna called out.

  Too late for that.

  "She thinks you're crazy," Saemundur said. "Riding with me when you could just as easily fly."

  He used the word vitlaus. The same word he'd used for Birdie, long ago, on the ice cave day. A word that can mean either crazy or stupid. I took out my red-and-blue notebook and wrote: witless is to witfull.

  I can read that entry because Saemundur hadn't started the engine yet. Mostly I wrote with the vehicle in motion. Manic scrambled car sprawl. Of course it was all clear to me at the time. The only problem as I saw it was that my mind was accelerating and my pen couldn't keep up. Brain is to hand as millisecond is to eon. I started writing in a slapdash shorthand, a mix of English and Icelandic, abbreviating words that maybe weren't even words to begin with. I figured I'd explicate it all later. Transcribe it for youknow-who. But as I mentioned, that has become unnecessary. And besides, most of it I can't untangle and what I can may not bear untangling. I remember thinking that embedded in each word I wrote were countless branching thoughts and echoing emotions. Mind faster pen, I wrote. Hand dawdler. For what it's worth, here are some of the more legible entries:

  Birdie's child not only one with mysterious origins why is your hair black I ask him it's not very Icelandic of you

  I'm the contrary one the black sheep

  But where does it come from?

  3,000 Barbary pirates raided the East Fjords in 1627

  So you're the black-haired descendant of a Barbary pirate is it true

  About my hair or the pirates?

  Either both

  Teasing grin What about your hair, Freya?

  What about it

  You cut it short

  So did you cut yours I mean it's not the 70s anymore

  But it was so beautiful-

  -it's easier this way

  I want him to-

  Fluency increasing exponentially word gobbling S says I'm brilliant at Icelandic but I'm talking too much I know I can't stop look he says look instead I start taking photos out window casual roadside waterfalls sheep massive clouds rainbow more waterfalls the usual odd splendor again again again then he says quit it, quit h
iding behind the camera look with your eyes Freya I'll hide if I want to but I put the camera away superfluous gadget my brain registers images now I can file away retrieve at will

  or against my will Birdie in her salmon pink coat draped in dead mink and sealskins bearing reindeer antler aloft to Askja's snowy caldera I thought I was going to die out there I tell Saemundur sucking licorice for dear life Birdie believing she was the volva and maybe she was a prophet but me she called a traitor thoughtful birthday gift keeps on giving I'm telling him too much can't stop myself tell him everything dump secrets in Iceland return to New York hollow new orphans balk at the future if my parents weren't dead then what what then falling in love with a blackhaired Icelander

  -touch me

  S shows me view after breathtaking view S takes me to Vik dark storm clouds brew offshore tall pointed rocks like witches' hats rise from roiling surf sand is black volcanic dust S takes me to the original Oddi I tell him Sigga's house in Gimli was called Oddi Saemundur's namesake lived here at Oddi in the old days, Saemundur the Learned a wizard who attend Black Arts school in Paris who had no shadow who returned to Iceland on the back of the devil disguised as a seal S took me on a boat on the glacial lagoon weaving among icebergs floating in pure turquoise water so cold you die nearly instantly upon plunging in up there is the glacier underneath it a volcano erupted two years ago strewed chunks of glacier and a torrential muddy icemelt mess that washed out the bridge and sections of the Ring Road I drove out here to see it Saemundur said of course you did Saemundur says he can make inc fall in love with Iceland he has a shadow I know but at the moment I can't see it molten glacier indeed

  He took my hand on the beach at Vik that roiling coven

  He says I remind him of her

  Can that be good she had her good days and her bad days her moods turned on a dime shifted like lake weather she said I strode the lakeshore like an egret she made the sun rise from an ember she called it a day-star I called her a star I had no name for

  White fox on riverbank swiping duck eggs

  Ain I getting talky

  Mama!

  Ratio of dead to living? I fear there are more of them than us

  Moss here there and everywhere Cetreria icelandica Icelandic moss according to Saemundur up to 70 percent starch and can be eaten as food in emergency situations Saemundur says Saemundur says this Saemundur says that Simon says Simon didn't say

  Night one we sleep at his friend's fishing cabin near the harbor town of Hofn

  There's only one bed

  and fox-pelt soft kisses

  ice cave meltdown

  After I don't sleep can't blasted light is this all diversion a Saemundur-shaped tangent from you from finding you you think maybe I've forgotten you maybe I have or are you him and Fin consorting with my cousin? the goddess Freyja it was rumored consorted with her brother, Freyr and what if Ulfur's list is nothing but a dozen red ha-ha-herrings I'd rather spin a cartwheel into the glacial lagoon than return to New York knowing nothing more of you than when I left ant I returning to New York maybe I'll just circle Iceland on the Ring Road endlessly round and round and round and round

  5 a. in. sun hot in sky

  Saemundur silent this morning wondering what he's gotten himself into

  Nothing

  What?

  Nothing

  Dare I trust him Son of the Wolf or Birdie's Child or both?

  Loki said the goddess Freyja was her brother's lover am I a cousin-lover?

  Saernundur says he used to dream about me after I left Iceland

  I said I tried not to dream after I left Iceland

  If this is sex I don't think I've ever had it before if this is sex I can see what all the fuss is about if this is sex why does anybody ever get out of bed Saemundur is in the shower we're staying at yet another summerhouse of yet another friend of his somewhere between the port of Seydisfjordur and Egilsstadir we're getting close to the end we'll reach Thorunn's in a couple of hours he says once we leave here I don't want to leave here please let's never

  It's noon now Saemundur came back to bed and we still haven't left here his eyes his long arms how he lopes

  So you think this Thorunn may know something about Birdie's child?

  I shake my head maybe yes maybe no it doesn't matter Birdie's child led me here took me by the hand and brought me to this ice land this green land this elf and ghost land this molten lava land this moss-encrusted sun-drenched avalancheprone ancestor-worshiping rain-drenched wind-whipped earthquake-ripped island

  thank you Birdie's child

  35

  Saemundur dropped me off at Thorunn's farm and it began to snow. Thorunn and I stood in the doorway waving at the back of Saemundur's van as it bounced along the dirt track back to the Ring Road, when the first flakes fluttered down on us.

  It was the longest day of the year when that blizzard struck. Freakish even for Iceland. Happy solstice! In my mania I failed to recognize a bad omen when it snowed me in the face. Foreshadowing of the most obvious kind. Instead I interpreted it as one more sign of magic, snow falling in late June on the farm and the river and even the distant mountains, what you could see of them. Everything rapidly disappearing in white flurry. I ran from the doorway and began spinning like a two-year-old on a lawn with my tongue extended for flakes, laughing. Thorunn stood in the doorway watching me, smiling.

  "It's unusual," she agreed, once we were seated in her living room. "In fact, it's the latest snow I can remember."

  But she didn't seem fazed by it. After a lifetime of living in the Icelandic countryside, even the weather must cease to amaze.

  I was struck by how much Thorunn reminded me of Sigga, just as she had when I'd run into her in the Gimli bakery. She had Sigga's keen grayblue eyes and small thin lips. A spare woman who lived in a spare manner, occupying only three rooms of the old farmhouse. The rest was blocked off. "Why heat rooms for people who are dead or gone?"

  I could think of no reason. I knew about shutting off one's life to the dead and gone, or trying to.

  The living room was small with a low ceiling, crowded with books and family photographs. The first thing Thorunn did after serving me coffee was to take out a family tree and show me how she was the oldest child of Sigga's sister, and how she and Sigga were both related to Pall the farmerpoet and, more distantly and circuitously, to Olafur, Skald Nyja Islands, by marriage.

  "Now that's settled," she said, "we can begin our visit. I'm so glad you're here, Freya! When I met you in Winnipeg last year, it was only a dream to me that you would come. Birdie came here several times, you know. And now you!" She took my hand and squeezed it. I squeezed back. I felt a tremor of excitement at the mention of Birdie's name. Sigga had told me Thorunn was very fond of Birdie, and I couldn't stop a glimmer of hope from rising up in me: maybe Thorunn knows something. I would have to be careful though. I could see that. No jumping the gun. I willed myself to take it slow. I asked her to tell me about her farm.

  It was called Gislastadir, and was situated near the edge of the Lagarfljot River. "Not too near, though!" She laughed. Water rises. At the moment, she explained, the river was only filled with snowmelt, but by the end of the summer it would have glacial melt as well. The old bridge had been washed out several times, but this one, she told me, this one seemed solid. I asked how long she had lived there.

  "Fifty-one years," she answered, a bit indignantly. I found out she was the oldest of fifteen children, which is why she had only had one child herself, a boy, grown now and living in Reykjavik. "I had two at the breast at once," she said. "My own baby and my youngest brother. My mother's milk had finally given out, after fifteen children." She took out some photographs. An old black-and-white of a scattering of dusty kids in ragged clothes by the fence of a farm. And then a color portrait of those same kids, all fifteen of them, grown up and standing on the deck of a restaurant in Akureyri. Older, well dressed, looking prosperous.

  "Iceland's changed a lot," Thorunn said. "It's
easier now, that's certain. Everyone's gone to Reykjavik, abandoned the farms. Like my son, Kjartan. They say there's no making a living here. I say it's just hard. You can manage, but it's hard. Who said life wouldn't be hard? Kjartan wants to move me to Reykjavik, into one of those old-age homes made of concrete. I'd rather die here. Even though I have nothing left."

  "You've got this farm."

  "It's nothing."

  "But I saw sheep, driving in."

  "I lease the land. I have to keep something coming in. Arni wouldn't have wanted me to sell it." Arni was her husband, who had died over a decade earlier. We sat in silence for a moment, and I looked around the room. Most of the wall space was taken by bookshelves. On top of the bookshelves were photographs of Thorunn and Arni, of their son, Kjartan, and his wife, and other relatives whose names I didn't know and didn't want to know. Over the mantel two more photographs, both of which I recognized: Pall the farmer-poet and Olafur, Skald Nyja Islands. It was the one of Olafur smoking his pipe that had been displayed on my own mantel back in Connecticut. Out the window the snow continued its silent descent, a thin layering of white through which blades of green grass poked through.