Oraefi
Page 7
We opened the trunk up and gazed out at Hafrafell. Evil rocks, for sure, said Snorri’s-Edda, impassable, up there on the mountain ridges are pillars known as the Upper Men and the Front Men because they seem like people standing there, visible far and wide, the key characteristic of Hafrafell, some people call them the Upper and Lower Men but that is not right, it’s Upper and Front Men, although the front men are below the upper men. I tried to note down everything Snorri’s-Edda said, looking at the mountain and the map and scribbling, there is also Illagil, or Evil Gully, and Einstigir, the Narrow Stair, and Stóraskarð, the Great Chasm, and Langagil, Long Gully, you need to know that when herding in the round-up, if you want to send someone somewhere quick then everyone needs to know what direction to go in, there’s Grjótdal, the Stony Valley, and in Grjótdal the extremely high cliffs are called Svarthamrar, Sheer Black, they face westward, under which is Ból, the Shaft: once, two youths of around twenty from Svínafell went hunting animals one winter, one of them plunged from the precipitous cliff, falling hundreds of meters, but he landed in a snowdrift which was piled high; he escaped with a shattered foot, but there was too little daylight left to get help from home at Svínafell and the boy was not equipped to lay out in the frost overnight so the story goes that his companion took him on his back and carried him all the way to Svínafell, what’s more the Svínafellers are as strong as giants, said Snorri’s-Edda, said Bernharður, wrote Dr. Lassi, sweaty and barely keeping up. First you think: why would animals live on this mountain where there’s nothing but scree and stones, after all, on the way to the mountain there are many grassy slopes, for example, one that’s simply called Torfur, or The Turf, on the east side of the mountain and not visible from here, then there’s Meingil, where a man once plunged to his death when his staff broke, he fell all the way down the glacier, then there are also the grassy Kviar and Rák over there, where the path goes up from Svarthamradal and over to Svarthamra, from where the boy fell, further in, the place name opposite to the west is Fauskagljúfur …What is fauskur? I asked, I don’t know the word. It’s rotten wood, said Snorri’s-Edda, sometimes they say about old men that they are fauskar if they are somewhat stiff and formal, in Fauskagljúfur they have unearthed the remains of an ancient forest. High up between the Upper and Front Men lies Fles, there are awe-inspiring views from there and you are among giant-settlements, Fles is springy turf, it’s good pasture so the sheep seek it out. Far away from Skeiðarársandur, Hafrafell seems small, a tuff protruding from Öræfajökull, but when you get nearer Hafrafell appears impossible and untouchable, all cut up by precipitous ravines which are rightly called Illuklettar, the Evil Rocks, it is impassable, starvation and a death sentence await you there, no one does go there, you can see from here that transverse from Illuklettar there’s a mysterious X, a symbol marked by a guardian land-spirit so that no one may pass; when we herders go up to Svínafellsheið and over the glacier to Hafrafell, although it’s possible to go right up the ridge between the Front and Upper Men, I would never chase sheep into Illuklettar, said Snorri’s-Edda, I’m greatly fearful of this mysterious X, what is it a symbol for? On Hafrafell, tourists are in grave danger of being swept down in a landslide from above to a death deep on the glaciers that flow either side of the mountain—once the mountain was encircled by glacier completely, but the glacier’s retreated so it’s possible to drive up to it—these glaciers have swallowed their share of tourists and experienced mountaineers; their metallic equipment comes to light 50 years later, flattened and crumpled, an indication of the ice’s power. No human remains ever come to light. It’s as though the ice wants to hold onto bodies but to spew back metal; the metal debris is all on display at the Visitor Center in Skaftafell, and people are drawn to look into the display box, to see death itself, the abyss arranged in a clinical display case: your powerlessness in the face of nature spills over you, and you just want to crawl into your tent and never come out again … the glacier gives back, or so say the Öræfings, said Snorri’s-Edda in the trunk.
After hearing this, all that wonderful information about Hafrafell and the mountain’s death grip attached itself to me, reeled me in, as we lay there together in an embrace in trunk, I dozed and as I did the mystical X in Illuklettar appeared to me, gleaming, butter was gushing from it, I jumped up and went out while Edda slept, the dusky night wrapped the surroundings in silence and stillness, all was still and quiet, it was just starting when I reached the glacier, I put on my crampons and went up on it, dark cracks swallowed me hook line and sinker and I breathed the cold rising from the depths, this great serpent occasionally hissed and sputtered, how coarse and uneven his scales were, he was going to snatch me, and I was ready, I was happy, I had nothing left to do in the world, I could fall into the crevasse, go into the mountain, settle down in Illuklettar and walk with the dead and with herders’ ghosts and alongside angels and monsters … I saw something glittering on the ice and went over, it was some object, an old tent peg, an old dented tent peg on a glacier, I looked up at the rough serpent-scraper as he crawled down the cliff belt on top of the breadth of ice, he’s traveled a long way, I thought of the men in the tent the glacier swallowed, those for whom this tent peg had served some role, they disappeared up there somewhere, now nothing was left of their existence save a single tent peg, old and dented; perhaps these men had climbed all the major peaks of the world, used the best equipment, here they were now, eaten out of their skin and hair, the glacier returning only this one transformed tent peg … Creeping glaciers crawl along like living creatures, I thought about the glacier, contemplating the tent peg while Edda slept in the trunk, these creatures breathe, move forward, recede, they moan and groan all of a sudden; when I came back I awoke Edda, I told her that glaciers were serpents.
Where were you? asked Edda.
I went to look at Hafrafell and Illuklettar and the mystical X, I went out looking for my mother.
To look for your mom? Is she lost there? Shall we call the rescue team? she asked sleep-addled, the Dragon, the armored tank? … huh?
She was attacked, a long time ago, when I was little, she and her sister were here on a trip and her sister was killed, my mother savagely beaten, she never recovered, in truth it destroyed our lives, my father says she was never the same again after the attack … I found this on the glacier, I said, and handed her the tent peg.
That’s horrible, she said, and took the tent peg, began to examine it distractedly, then with great awareness and intent, what did you say, your mother was murdered …
Her little sister was murdered, my mother savagely beaten, I said, and shakily cut a cake slice, my teeth chattering; I had fallen in love. You should have the tent peg, I said.
I’m not going to put it in the display case in the Visitor Center though it’s my duty to, she said, I don’t plan to send it to Þórði in Skógar either, nor the Settlement museum in Höfn, nor to the National Museum, I’m not going to show it to anyone but I’ll keep this mysterious treasure here with me instead and think of you, said Snorri’s-Edda in the trunk, Bernharður said, and the Interpreter interpreted, Dr. Lassi wrote in the report, or so Bernharður wrote to me in a letter, spring 2003.
II
TREASURES
You’re not the first person whose leg has had to be sawn off, Dr. Lassi said by way of comforting me, Bernharður wrote in his letter, though you are the first one I have had to dismember, and in impressive style, even if I say so myself. Sigurður from Tvísker told me that amputations were common in this area in bygone times: men would frequently get frostbite on their winter journeys, in rivers or from a heavy frost, in the mountains or on the sands or at the shore; their limbs would be damaged by the frostbite, blackened and burned by the hoar. These days, we know that was caused by rotting flesh in the limb, dead or decaying flesh, sometimes called coldburn—and people are still always needing amputation, but less can be lopped off, and it’s no longer remarkable, there’s a whole community of amputees, you’re going to do very
well as an amputated person, Bernharður, you’ll get to have fun choosing a prosthetic limb from Össur, these days they’re custom-made—but what dull times we live in as far as language goes, custom-made, such an odd way to put it—I think it’s actually best to get a wooden leg, my dear fellow, you can ask old Muggur from Bölti to construct it for you, he’s a carpenter highly-esteemed throughout Öræfi, I recommend wooden legs made from birch, which is lightweight wood, durable, it is used for pointed staffs, you could even ask Muggur to put a point on your wooden leg, you’d be really agile in a landslide, stable out on the glacier, fashionable on the city sidewalks. Sigurður told me that on the eve of January 20th, 1903, a German ship got stranded on the shore at Svínafell, a ship called Friedrich Albert, a bottom trawler, a kind of vessel very unpopular with Icelanders because they scraped the sea bottom, destroying fishing grounds, although Icelanders changed their tune on such bottom trawlers as soon as they succeeded with the very same ships themselves, and most people have scraped the bottom ever since. This icy and black January night in 1903, the ship stranded on Svínafell shore and the twelve-member crew made it onto the land with great difficulty, and they loitered there, stuck on the beach until light began to appear late in the morning and the stranded men were at last able to see around them: when the Germans saw Öræfajökull they were terrified by the threat of this colossus appearing before them on the shore, Öræfi, they could not imagine any settlement existed here, only desolation and death, and they decided to stay in the west on the shore furthest from Öræfajökull and try to build a shelter; that seemed to them the easier and smoother plan, but it was a big mistake, Sigurður said, they did not know the beach lay on a great estuary and the whole of Skeiðarársandur lay before them; if they had kept on in the direction of the glacier they would have reached a settlement within a day, that’s what the heroic Kári Sölmundarson did when he broke his ship to pieces on the promontory at Ingólfshöfdi and walked to Svínafell in a snowstorm, as Burnt-Njal’s Saga tells us, reconciling there with Flosi and marrying his first cousin; Kári settled in Öræfi, and from him extends a large, beautiful family tree with many stately men. This was the first registered shipwreck in Skaftafell district since the division of the country into administrative hundreds, but the shipwrecked Germans on the Friedrich Albert were not familiar with Öræfi the way Kári was: they continued west along the coast, an entirely impassable route along which the quicksand sucked the men’s strength so that they grew exhausted after just a short distance, hungry, cold, and despairing, walking on quicksand is miserable, mortally dangerous, and there are many quagmires here—so they returned to the ship, from which they managed to rescue an inconsequential amount of food; they made a fresh attempt the next day to head west; day after day they made attempts to go west across the sand away from their wreck, but each time they had to return to the ship because the route was blocked. The First Mate went crazy, tearing himself away from the group, taking three crew members with him, rushing out into the sands. One day as the shipwrecked men were trying their hand at the estuary they saw two crew members wandering about, confused and perplexed; a third sailor was stuck in the mud, delirious, and he died shortly afterward, the same day as the chief engineer succumbed to cold and weakness; the First Mate was never seen again. After a week at the spot where they’d wrecked, a week of unsuccessful attempts to get past the sand, the shipwrecked men hauled material off the trawler with great difficulty and built a raft; they dragged the raft across the shore and went past the glacial estuary and the sea marshes. On 30th January, after three days straining on the sand with the raft, ten days after the stranding, the men reached a small farm, Orrustustað; by then, they had surmounted over forty kilometers. At Orrustustað lived a solitary farmer with only one leg; he was very happy to welcome them, as they’d hoped, and afforded them all the kindness and food available, because Skaftfellings are hospitable people. The district doctor, who was an excellent surgeon and courteous to all men, came the same day at full speed; some of the shipwrecked men had frostbite and gangrene and the district doctor was kept busy through the day sawing off their limbs to save their lives: he put the men to sleep with chloroform, cut, flayed, sawed and sewed the stubs with patches of flesh, as many feet as fingers lay about the living space, which was becoming more of an abattoir; from the five men who had frostbite he took eight feet plus all the toes from two other feet; thanks to his methods, the shipwrecked men returned to full health and happiness in a short time. They were grateful and fortunate and hospitable themselves, humble and polite like Skaftfellings, because such behavior is highly contagious. At the same time, a corpse was found, driven in from the sea near the coast; people believed it was the First Mate but the skin on his face was so damaged by frostbite that he was unrecognizable. Another body washed up on the shore at Tvísker. When the strandees returned to Germany, the most talented Continental doctors hurried to examine how the amputations had been carried out by the primitive northern people, suspecting they might need to fix things, and the event was written up in the newspapers, becoming exceedingly famous throughout the continent, because the German doctors were amazed to see how neatly everything had been done, and how well the wounds had healed; it was said in the press that the amputations had been performed as if by the most skilled European physicians, and so the district doctor from Skaftafell was honored with the Prussian Medal of the Red Eagle Order.
Yes, 1903 was an eventful year in Öræfi, said Sigurður, Dr. Lassi said, and I had to write it all down, the wreck in January, the Skeiðará flooding in May, the greatest jökulhlaup the oldest residents had ever seen, known since then as the Stórahlaup, the Great Flood, the subject of numerous reports. The Skeiðará had been dry for several months’ time so the Öræfings knew a flood was coming, but no one had any idea how big the flood would be: the water gushed out from cracks which had opened in the glacier and jets poured down in high pillars as everything moved in angry tremors, the region quivering, the houses shaking, window panes shattering as icebergs rolled about the sand; heavy thuds were heard all about Suðurland, heard many hundreds of kilometers away, and the flooding caused a tidal wave along the whole coastline so that ships enjoying a smooth sea suddenly found themselves in the greatest danger. Next, fire burst out from the glacier and the flames shot high into the air; a dark, gray-black, thick cloud formed, dominating the sky, an alarming mushroom rapidly growing, and lightning flashed and lit up the night, a cold, metallic light striking the ground and water, while the ash plume clung to the slopes, causing ash to fall onto the settlements. After the flood, giant blocks of ice littered the sand, taking many years to melt, and creating in their wake dangerous kettle deperessions in the sand. The fire burnt in the glacier until the following year and killed much of the livestock due to the dust steaming off the fire—especially horses, far and wide across the country.
Sigurður got the story about the wreck of the Friedrich Albert from a report written by a lieutenant in the land surveying division of the military General Staff, one Captain J. P. Koch; he alone noted it down at the time, although something was mentioned in the newspapers in the south. At the time, Captain Koch was in Öræfi surveying and drafting, and he interviewed the shipwrecked men and fit the shipwreck story together into a geodetic report for the Danish General Staff and the Royal Scientific Company. The report was called About the Activities of the Land Surveying Department of the Military General Staff in Iceland, by J. P. Koch, Lieutenant, Surveying & Preparing Maps on Skeiðarársand & Öræfajökull, summer, 1903. I know Captain Koch well, Bernharður said, Dr. Lassi recorded in her report, I read about him in an old National Geographic, so I felt at home in his book Durch die Weiße Wüste, that is, Across the White Wilderness: the expedition over the high glaciers of North Greenland with Icelandic horses in 1912–1913. It had a tremendous influence on me; the scientists’ mission was to investigate a snowless landmass inside the glacier and go where no one had gone before. With them went one Doctor Wegener, a mete
orologist, which was then a new scientific field: he had the year before articulated a theory of tectonic plates which did not become widely accepted until much later; he went on to become one of the most famous scientists of the 20th century. Wegener discovered the existence of tectonic plates while he stood at Þingvellir chit-chatting with Koch and looking at the Almannagjá Rift; they were talking about the adoption of Christianity in the year 1000, or so the story goes, and the division between the pagans and Christians, which caused the idea of tectonic divisions to rise up for Wegener, and the basis of tectonic plate theory surfaced in his mind. All modern earth sciences are based on this idea. The Icelander Vigfús Sigurðsson was also with them, a mail carrier and carpenter; ten years later, when they went out onto Grænlandsjökull, Captain Koch and Dr. Wegener and Vigfús brought along Icelandic horses to use on the Greenland ice instead of sled dogs like everybody else did. Captain Koch was fascinated by the Icelandic horse and had proven its excellence transporting heavy scientific equipment across a glacier on large sleds; he practiced for his Greenland expedition on Vatnajökull, crossing over it and back with horses, no small achievement. When Captain Koch and Dr. Wegener and Vigfús the carpenter and mail carrier arrived in North Greenland in mid-summer the horses had a funny feeling about all this and ran off; Captain Koch sent Vigfús after them and Vigfús only retrieved five of the sixteen horses. Those five were greatly exhausted because the trio had tremendous baggage with them: materials for building and food for 16 horses. Koch had always taken a lot of luggage but this time he took 20,000 kilograms of luggage to accompany him for the 1,200 kilometers across Greenland, a journey that took an entire year; nobody can top that, no other traveler. It took the expeditionaries nearly three months to ferry luggage from the port up to the glacier’s snout, where they built a cabin on the advancing glacier, naming it The City and placing two chimneys on it—The City had a paraffin stove that heated almost too well, it was often 20-degree weather in the hut when it was 50 degrees below zero outside. They settled in and stayed there for the winter. They all got to know one another well, becoming close to their comrades: the Icelandic sheepdog Glói, who was along with them, a joyful and grateful dog but something of a prankster; the remaining horses Gráni, Brúnka, Fucksrauður, Kavalíer, and Pólaris. Little Glói held up their morale although he was often scolded. One time, he shit in Wegener’s hat. They had playing cards, but never played them, instead using the time to read scientific books and novels and educate themselves and nurture their souls; Koch and Wegener played chess on Sunday evenings, Koch tells us in his travel book Across the White Wilderness, said Bernharður, Dr. Lassi wrote. In autumn, when it got light briefly around midday, they took advantage of the time for measurements outdoors and Wegener took photographs, but otherwise they were mostly in the cabin during the winter, while storms raged outside, 50 degrees below zero, frostbite threatening. At Christmas, they gave each other gifts and drank champagne and smoked cigars they had brought along as a festive treat; they ate chocolate, strawberry jam, and apricots. There was one window in the cabin and they had potted plants Koch’s wife had sent along with them, artificial, of course, but they gave the cabin a homely feel, which mattered: they hung up pictures that gave them heart through the winter conditions, an image of the king, of a flowering apple tree, of their wives. All this helped to make the long winter on the glacier in this eternal darkness and hoar-frost more bearable. Wegener photographed the Northern Lights, Koch used shadows to measure the Earth’s circumference and examined the zodiacal light, or swordlight, as it’s known. They would head out and make large holes, seven meters deep, and examine the snow strata, seeing how the snow became ice, an old riddle people had tried to solve ever since Sveinn Pálsson and de Saussure in the eighteenth century. They made observations about mirages and photographs; Wegener had to take off his gloves in 50 degrees below zero when he photographed these phenomena, Koch recounts in his book, phenomena like the reflection of light from the snow, the forms of snow crystals and ice crystals, various twilight phenomena. They suffered frostbite and burns alternately; they were fortunate not to lose fingers or toes, or entire limbs. During the winter Koch fell into a crevasse and landed on a ledge twelve meters down, breaking a leg in the fall; for much of that winter he lay in the cabin like in a lair, unsure about making the trip over the glacier. In the spring of the following year, when it finally got light, Koch was healthy again and they went out on to the glacier. Koch and Wegener did not tire of wondering at and admiring the life forms on the coast of the Arctic region: there were walruses, polar bears, musk ox, foxes, lemmings, and snow hares, in which Glói showed great interest, running after them wherever he saw them, amusing the men. When they reached the upper glacier, life was rather scarce; a lone snow bunting followed them through the storms all the way across the white wilderness, much to their delight. Vigfús shot several foxes at the beginning of journey and Koch got two fleas from one of the foxes, storing them in his luggage so the fleas came with him right across the glacial north of Greenland; anything for science, he thought to himself. This white desert, Captain Koch said to Dr. Wegener up on the high glacier, Bernharður said, reminds me of Skeiðarásandur when I was measuring it ten years ago, spring, 1903. I withstood heavy sandstorms on Skeiðarásandur to take measurements; I made an attempt to travel the glacier by horse when I was surveying Öræfajökull and had to proceed precariously, but man learns little by little. We are going to prove to the world the superior qualities of the Icelandic horse, Wegener. Captain Koch collected all the place names in Öræfi from the most knowledgeable people in the region so they could be set on the maps that were made based on his observations, the so-called General Staff Maps, the first accurate maps of the land and certainly the most beautiful ever drawn, still very useful even though the glaciers have retreated and new areas been identified. I have the article about Captain Koch in National Geographic to thank for the fact that I wanted to become a toponymist and explorer; in reality, I had my mother to thank for giving me a subscription to National Geographic for my birthday when I was 6 years old, though in reality it was a consolation because she was going on a long journey with her sister, leaving me behind with my father, or rather a nanny, because he was never at home; perhaps I was just alone with National Geographic, a yellow spine glowing on the nightstand, and there I began to develop my strongest desires and fantasies. I read the retelling of Captain Koch’s journey a hundred times and I always had Across the White Wilderness to hand. The Greenland expedition of Captain Koch and Dr. Wegener with their twenty metric tons of luggage for scientific research proved more difficult than they had expected, like any real expedition: they proceeded in a line, Vigfús going first, then the horse Gráni with the compass sled; Gráni was a good riding horse, a gæðing, a unique horse in many respects, versatile and wise; next came Koch with his horse Pólaris and the lightest sled; then Brúnka with his sled; then Wegener with Fucksrauður; Kavalíer brought up the rear. The drive was difficult and the horses became exhausted and fell in turn, each at the others’ feet; I cried while reading, I cried at school when I thought about the horses, I cried time out of mind, I was sure that the horses who fled upon landing in Greenland had seen the time to come and that’s why they ran off. Pólaris gave up first, after a month-long hike, on May 15th; he was shot; the Kavalíer fell on May 20th and was shot; Brúnka was shot June 4th; finally Fucksrauður on June 11th. Gráni had to make it all the way west across the glacier because he was the best horse, the apple of Vigfús’ eye, a magnificent horse, the best water horse, the best glacier horse, the most cherished, Captain Koch writes in Across the White Wilderness, he grew seriously ill and struck the men as almost deranged from hunger and exertion; Gráni was set on the sled which the men pulled in despair, the whole world turned upside down; they wanted to find him a pasture where he would rebound and the merit of an Icelandic horse for a glacier adventure would be proven, but unfortunately that was not to be: he was shot July 4th, and was soon lying down
on the empty ground. They had to leave Gráni back on the glacier ridge when they crossed it, fashioning for him there an unadorned resting place for eternity. Over the next day they suffered great disorientation and many obstacles; they created a cairn and stocked it with all the scientific data and logbooks and tools, leaving them there—they would have to search for it later if they were spared, or others arriving in future would find the data and process it. Out of food now, they sought for some, any settlement in West Greenland, but were faced with an endless, hopeless wide expanse …There was only one thing to do to survive: they killed their dear friend Glói the dog and ate him. Just as Koch popped the first bite of dog soup into his mouth, a terrible sadness in his heart because he was a great animal lover and was tired of this dirty work of always having to shoot animals and sacrifice them to science, just as Koch stuck into his mouth the first bite of little Glói—Glói who had been so kind and entertaining and who had walked with them over the upper glaciers of Greenland along the 77th latitude at 50 degrees below zero through many storms and endless difficulties, poor little Glói who had shit in Wegener’s wool hat, Glói who would gad about restlessly at night, in and out of the tent on the middle of the glacier so we were all kept awake—Captain Koch thinks of all this as he takes his first bite of dog soup, of poor little Glói who got locked outside out in the middle of the night during a storm when he went to piss and couldn’t wake Koch so gnawed a big hole in the tent to get back in and everyone got so angry with him but Glói just slept soundly as the men slaved away repairing the tent in the middle of the night, and Koch slipped the first bite into his mouth, surprised and ashamed at how tasty the meat was, how delicious the soup was, and just then he saw a boat on the fjord: the men and the expedition were saved.