Brother in Ice

by Alicia Kopf

Black fungus between two tiles. On a human scale: hyperlandscape.

  Sheep

  It doesn’t matter how tall the mountain is: Icelandic sheep, their wool puffed up like popcorn, graze motionless at every height as if they had flown up there.

  Jökullsárlón

  On the wide deltas of black sand that lead into the sea, all the sadness of humanity.

  Glaciers

  Glaciers, like volcanoes, also awaken. When they do, they drag off everything in their path: bridges, highways … Icelanders are used to starting over.

  Ice Light

  The light inside icebergs is impossible to capture on film.

  Auroras

  According to Scandinavian folklore, an aurora borealis is the spirit of a woman who has never married. Seems like a good ending to me.

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  ‌Friday, August 28

  A visit to the Reykjavík Art Museum. There is a Richard Serra exhibition, about the site-specific piece he made in Áfangar, a small Icelandic town. In the video-interview, the artist highlights something about this country that has made an impact on me in the last few days: the predominance of geological time over historical time.

  The influence of scale is highly relevant both in works of art and in landscape. Mountains are absolutely dependent on this factor; without it, they are nothing more than a pile of sand. A sign, on the other hand, never loses its power, no matter how small. That is why I’m more interested in words than in sculptures. A yes is always a yes and doesn’t lose its value based on where it is written, or at what scale, nor when whispered or shouted.

  I spend some time at the museum bookstore. Museum bookstores are my favorite places in the world after libraries. I search for a book about Icelandic artists. What relationship do they have to this nature that surrounds them? My eye is drawn to the image of an artist’s performance in a catalogue of local art. The photograph shows a rainbow (very common on the island due to the profusion of waterfalls) made of fabric, which the artist has set aflame. This environment of infinite winters and omnipresent waterfalls, over the years, must exert some sort of despotic absolutism. The options: 1) romanticism moldered by dampness, 2) the most common: becoming a musician, 3) fire, destruction.

  After that visit I head to a public pool that the receptionist recommended. He assured me that it’s his favorite, and not many people know about it. It’s on the outskirts of the city, in a neighborhood of single-family homes. Even though it’s late August, the icy wind makes my walk through the Reykjavík suburbs feel long. I think I’m getting a sore throat. Why did I wear jeans with holes in them on the flight? Fashion is absurd but without it the world would be monotonous. The cold air enters through the holes in my pants. After walking in circles without finding the place, or a single pedestrian, I go into a bar to ask. Inside, it teems with life: young couples, children, and the scent of freshly baked cake. “Where can I find the Vesturbæjarlaug?” Across the street. And the waitress points to a gray wall with no signage. At the entrance to the pools, the receptionist, a young blond woman with elongated blue eyes and a very stiff pageboy hairdo, gives me the pertinent explanations in a monotone voice, scarcely gesticulating. I go into the changing rooms. Outside, the thermometer reads 9°C but the wind chill makes it seem like zero. The risk isn’t outside of the city, but in it; there is no indoor pool. I hurry in bikini to the busiest pool, which is 38°C. There is an area a few feet deep where people stretch out to sunbathe. Alternatively, you can sit in a pool with bubbles, or another one without bubbles. I decide that I like this activity, no need to do anything. There is no one in the swimming lanes. I can understand why. Soon the pool has completely warmed me up. Around me, tattooed Viking families play with laughing white babies. Here people have children in a relaxed way and seem to enjoy them at every age, unlike Southern Europe, where having a family when you’re part of the new hand-to-mouth middle class is an operation that requires strategy if you want certain guarantees.

  In the Jacuzzi area, a man of about sixty comes over to me out of curiosity. He asks me where I’m from and what my name is. The younger men watch out of the corner of their eyes and smile. I wonder if he does this all the time, and I play along. He tells me his name is Bragi (he pronounces the B like a P). “Praguiíi?” I repeat. “It’s the name of the Norse god of poetry,” he replies. I ask him if he’s from there. “Yes, from the pool,” he says facetiously. The pool is located on the site of ancient thermal baths, very close to the first colonists’ settlements. He says he writes poetry, that he’s published a volume.

  “Can I find it in the bookstores?” “No, only in the library, it’s out of print. But if you want we can meet up one day and I’ll bring you a copy.” Getting together with an older guy to talk about anthroposophy on a Friday night isn’t terribly appealing. I dodge the offer. I emerge from the pool radiant. The next day there is no trace of my sore throat. I tend to think that Bragi wasn’t lying to me in the slightest: he’s lived there, in the thermal waters, since the first colonists brought their pagan gods.

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  ‌Saturday, August 29

  Snæfellsnes Peninsula

  Organized excursion. We leave the capital in a small bus. It seems there won’t be a guide, rather that the driver will explain a few things to us. He raises his tone of voice to give us the first bit of information: “Sixty percent of the island’s surface is glacial.” The people in the back can’t hear him. When he drives off he leaves the bus door open. He switches speakers. It still doesn’t work. Discouraged, he stops explaining and submerges under a deep silence. My eyes follow the mossy waves of the lava fields. We reach the coastal highway that edges the peninsula. Gradually the peak of Snæfellsjökull comes into focus, with its white tip illuminated by the sun. It is one of the tallest on the island, its crater crowned by the glacier that can be seen from a distance on a clear day. The peak split when, 1,750 years ago, the volcano beneath the glacier erupted and it melted inside the magma chamber itself, creating a huge cauldron that is now filled with ice. I find the mix of fire and ice involved in the formation of that still active volcano fascinating. On the ground near the streams, like something out of a dream, white swans appear amid the black lava. The swans will soon constitute a plague on the island. According to the guidebook I end up consulting to find out more, there are those who believe that this area is one of the Earth’s seven energy points or chakras. We stop at the Djúpalónssandur beach, about four kilometers from the volcano’s slope, which offers magnificent views of the peak. Once we are out of the bus, Oskar, the driver/guide, explains that the round pebbles found on this beach hold the energy of the place. He whispers to me that I should take a few. There are still the metal remains of the wreck of the Epine, a British trawler that went down in 1948, drowning fourteen of its crew of nineteen. On the beach, the sea, black and calm, has internal currents that can quickly pull you away from the shore. The mountainous formations on the horizon, not very tall and covered in splotches of snow, make me think of orcas moving through the Arctic.

  The bus stops near the summit and we are taken to a cave entrance where we’re introduced to the guide for the next stretch of our journey, this time vertical, into the bowels of the volcano. I think of the description of Hans Bjelke in Journey to the Center of the Earth: “a tall man, of robust build. This fine fellow must have been possessed of great strength. His eyes, set in a large and ingenuous face, seemed to me very intelligent; they were of a dreamy sea-blue.”17 The young man gives us helmets and a torch and our small group starts a descent into the lava cave. The black hole is covered in stalagmites and dripping stalactites, brown layers of rust overlap with the lava and mineral formations. Lilac iridescence from magnesium, yellow layers of sulfur.

  17 Translation by Frederick Amadeus Malleson.

  Above us, tiny shining spots illuminate the darkness. They are bacteria that feed on the dripping water. A vast city seen from an airplane is now the ceiling. Near a spiral staircase that leads to dark, invisible
depths, a sign points downward: Stromboli, 8,500 km >. We descend another thirty meters. Absolute blackness and silence. I remember the enigmatic quote from Arne Saknussemm: “Descend, bold traveler, into the crater of the jökull of Sneffels, which the shadow of Scartaris touches before the calends of July, and you will attain the center of the earth; which I have done.” Here we stop our descent. We turn off the torches. Total silence. Complete blackness. Cold and damp. The guide starts singing a happy song, one of the ones shepherds sing as they return home through the frozen, dark Icelandic winter. He asks us to clap along.

  If you’re happy and you know it clap your hands … If you’re happy and you know it clap your hands … If you’re happy and you know it, then your face will surely show it, if you’re happy and you know it, clap your hands.

  Singing in the dark is my lesson from the abyss.

  Hans accompanies us out into the light again, and we climb the spiral staircase that leads us to the mouth of the cave. Traveling nowadays requires very little bravery. Oskar is waiting for us in the bus. He turns over the motor and we head off again with the door open. (Laughter in the background.) This time he tells us, in a louder tone of voice: “If the world was twenty-four hours old, Iceland would have appeared in the last five seconds! That’s why there is no hard rock! Volcanic rock is soft! They say that the name Iceland was some sort of anti-marketing scheme to discourage possible non-Danish colonists from coming here! Greenland is actually a land of ice! They gave it that name to encourage people to go there!”

  The tourists in the back can’t hear a thing. A Swedish man with only one eye finally sits up beside the driver and plugs in the speaker. With British diction so good he could do voice-overs, he begins a dissertation on the origin of the name of the Snæfellsnes Peninsula. (More laughter.) The driver seems to have sunk into his seat. The Swede continues: “Snæ comes from ‘snow,’ fells from ‘fall.’ So the peninsula is called ‘Place where snow falls’ … ” Resigned, Oskar takes us back to the capital. In the pocket of my coat, I fondle the little black pebbles from the Djúpalónssandur beach. They exude warmth.

  Back at the hotel, they tell me that my luggage has arrived.

  Concert in the common space at the hostel. Apparat Organ Quartet, a local group that promises to get us dancing. I go down with one of my roommates. She’s from Alaska, about twenty years old with long blond hair. The Icelanders are lined up at the door. It is sold out, even for those of us who are guests at the hostel. We think to try the back door, which leads to the courtyard, and we manage to get in. While the musicians play, the Alaskan takes selfies with her iPad and makes a face as if she were looking at a very cute baby. She retransmits the evening to her eight hundred Snapchat “friends” and pays no attention to me. In the end I decide to ignore her too. The concert is really fun.

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  ‌Sunday, August 30

  After five days in Reykjavík waiting for my suitcase, I decide to take a shortcut and go straight to Akureyri, the largest city in the north, on a domestic flight. The city’s airport is one of the smallest I’ve ever seen. The tiny plane is definitely a “light” aircraft. The flight takes forty minutes and saves me six hours on the bus that, after the luggage delay, I can’t afford to waste. We take off over the coast of Reykjavík. The black color of the water fades into a bright, Caribbean blue in some strips. Is there a tropical paradise beneath the icy water of the fjords?

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  ‌Monday, August 31

  The tiny island of Grímsey is the northernmost point in Iceland. Forty-one kilometers from the coast of Akureyri, it’s the only part of the country located inside the Arctic Circle. Despite the warnings against tourists visiting the place, I head to the small coastal town of Dreyvik to catch the ferry. The three-hour trip has a bad reputation because of the groundswell; some ships have had to turn back halfway with all of the crew nauseous. Once we leave the port, in the passengers’ cabin they show an ethnographic documentary about the island … Puffin egg hunters on the cliffs … Before there was machinery to do so, the entire town helped pull the climbers from the abyss onto terra firma with their valuable treasure … “The abysses contain treasures … others help us out of them,” I write down … The last polar bear came to the island floating on an iceberg from the Arctic in 1969 … They usually ended up attacking people’s pets and had to be shot … Some winters they could walk to Iceland from the island on the layer of ice that formed on the sea … While I’m writing I start to feel poorly and run out onto the deck. I laboriously vomit my breakfast overboard while the few tourists who withstood the cold wind on the prow are photographing the backs of distant whales. After a couple of the worst hours of my life, Grímsey emerges on the horizon. Miraculously, the sky above it is clear. The piece of flat land atop the cliffs that are coming into view has a surface area of some five square kilometers. When we arrive we are greeted by a few fishermen’s houses, a small grocery, and a single hostel. On the arctic tundra surface, nothing else stands out. The sky, populated by thousands of different species of birds, is the only part of the island that’s truly inhabited. Glaucous gulls and arctic terns are the main species. I get off the ferry with the rest of the tourists, a smallish group: six young American nuns, four women in their sixties who seem to be celebrating something, a couple of French guys with big cameras, and an Icelandic mother and son. After leaving the port the group disperses calmly.

  I need some time to recover from my seasickness and I have a hot soup at the hostel bar. When I’m feeling up to going out everyone has disappeared on the clear horizon—as with Iceland’s mainland, there’s not a single tree. Looking at the sea, the Icelandic fjords in the background are imposing. Described as rugged and windy, Grímsey today seems friendly and spring-like, perhaps to compensate for the hardships you endure on the trip there. I take the path through the tundra toward the point marking the polar circle. A few arctic terns fly over me, closer and closer, threatening me in their language. I start to feel like Tippi Hedren in the Hitchcock film. As I find out later, the arctic tern is one of the most aggressive and territorial types of tern. They are the true masters of the place.

  I wonder if the legend of Hyperborea, the northernmost land in all of Greek mythology, prompted us to visit Grímsey. According to René Guénon, Hyperborea is where various esoteric systems believe the earthly and celestial planes converge. Located within the Arctic Circle, it would be the supreme country according to the original meaning of the pole: the pole as the point around which everything revolves, the axis. The Vedic texts call it Avesta, and at different moments in the history of humanity it has been located in different places, all of them close to the North Pole. Often this axis of the world is represented as a sacred mountain. As I mentally review that mythology my eyes follow the nuns as they head toward the post marking where the Arctic Circle passes. Of course everyone knows it doesn’t really mark the correct spot; the circle moves about fifteen meters a year and now must be about twenty meters away. Like the post indicating the North Pole, which is mobile because of the ice drift, this post has to be moved periodically. We need points of reference, but reality often doesn’t let itself be measured. The need for these references when we are in unknown territory is what, despite how absurd tourism seems in our own hometowns, makes it so easy for us to shift into that role when we are away. By the post there is a small set of stairs with a platform to take a photo of yourself, and various signs indicating the distance in kilometers from the main world capitals. The group of nuns ahead of me are already there. They kindly offer to take my portrait to commemorate the feat. The Icelandic mother and son watch us thoughtfully. They observe us a long time in silence. The French guys arrive later, place a stuffed toy on the commemorative platform, take a photo of it and head off laughing.

  Once around the field of tundra and cliffs and I can confirm that, apart from that secular pilgrimage, photographing birds is the only possible activity. I decide to go back to the bar to finish writing the postcards I
planned to send from there to prove I’d made it. They collect the mail at the grocery store. While I write postcards at the bar, a man who looks like an Icelander and was on the boat asks me if I saw “the whale” from the ferry.

  “I was busy.”

  “Yes, I saw that,” he says smiling.

  He explains that he’s an anthropologist, doing a thesis on the women of Grímsey Island.

  “You see that woman?” he points to the waitress. “She’s not from here, she’s from Reykjavík. She fell in love with a fisherman and came here to live with him. I met her last year when I arrived. She was very pregnant and was waiting at the port with a big smile on her face. This year the baby is already big and she still has the same smile.”

  I think about Ingrid Bergman in Stromboli, marrying a fisherman to get out of a refugee camp. The couple settles in a town constantly threatened by the volcano—the volcano where Otto Lidenbrock and his nephew Axel appear at the end of Journey to the Center of the Earth. Oppressed by a town that rejects her, Bergman (Karin) flees, crossing Stromboli as it erupts. In the end, near the crater, Karin asks God for help. Tired of waiting for a reply, in my story the protagonist enters the bowels of the magma chamber. She navigates seas of lava for days and nights until she emerges from the mouth of Snæfellsjökull. The final image of the film is her hitchhiking amid Icelandic lava fields.