Embi: Not a great deal, no, madam.
Mrs. Fína Jónsen: What are these bishops really for, when they don’t make anything by it? And these professors? It said in the Vísir newspaper the other day that washerwomen make much more than bishops and professors.
Embi: That’s probably not far off the mark.
Tumi Jónsen: Yes, it’s no joke.
Mrs. Fína Jónsen: Obviously it’s for no other reason than that they get neither hourly rates nor overtime. Get up on this chair, mother, and clear the shelves while I’m preparing the soap-water. Yes, just imagine it: the Angler’s back! Who knows, we might get the fishing lodge to do at hourly rates tonight!
Mrs. Fína Jónsen was still bending over her tub mixing the soap-water at the open door. If your emissary had not been a guest in the house he would have closed the door between kitchen and living room, since he had no desire to gaze too long at the woman’s rump and thighs as she bent over double. He got to his feet and said thank you for the welcome and made ready to take his leave. In confidence to the parish clerk: As you can see, sir, I am rather inexperienced. I don’t fathom much of all this, to be honest. Perhaps I could see you again when I’ve had a word with pastor Jón, if not tomorrow then the day after. But there was one little question on the tip of my tongue just now, perhaps two . . .
Tumi Jónsen: Go ahead, my boy, ask anything you like. There is no harm in asking questions. But many would say you could not find a more useless respondent at Glacier than Tumi Jónsen.
Embi: First question—is there any truth in the story that a mysterious casket was taken onto the glacier a few years ago?
The parish clerk scratched himself under the collar with a finger: Fína, dear, have you heard anything about that?
Mrs. Fína Jónsen: Heard about what?
Parish clerk: That something was taken onto the glacier?
Mrs. Fína Jónsen: How should I know? The nonsense one hears!
Housewife, also from the kitchen: Has pastor Jón had anything to say about it?
Parish clerk: It depends on what the bishop thinks.
Embi: In your letter to the bishop there is a reference to “queer traffic with some unspecified casket on the glacier,” without any explanation.
Parish clerk: I could not restrain myself from mentioning it in the letter as unbecoming gossip.
Embi: Before I talk to pastor Jón I would rather have something more to go on than gossip. By the way, what is gossip? Is gossip timely or untimely talk about events that have verifiably taken place? Or is it an out-and-out lie?
Housewife, mumbling in the kitchen in a rather slow, deep drawl, always on the same note: Could it not be either and both? On the other hand, as the old people used to say, truth should often be left alone. The wild horses and the snow buntings should know best the kind of man pastor Jón is; indeed, these creatures follow him around in droves. Even the ravens join company with him if they see him out in the open; and that I like less, because they have been seen to do wicked things, ravens.
Mrs. Fína Jónsen, up on the kitchen bench with her floral dress hitched up, having started to scrub the ceiling: I could well believe there are gold coins in that casket. Let’s just hope it isn’t a woman.
Embi: Is it possible that anyone here knows the name and address of anyone who knows the facts of the matter?
Mrs. Fína Jónsen: You could try asking Jódínus. That devil must have got his hoard of gold from somewhere or other.
Embi: Jódínus? Whose son is he, and where does he live?
Mrs. Fína Jónsen: Jódínus Álfberg, whose son is he? It’s never occurred to me that he had any particular father. He’s just a twelve-tonner darling. And a poet. As if I haven’t tried to get out of him what’s in the casket! If you tell him I sent you, he’ll kill me. Mother, the kettle’s boiling over. Who knows, the Angler might have an idea, if anyone had the nerve to ask him.
Embi: Who is this angler?
Mrs. Fína Jónsen stepped from her lofty perch and smoothed down her print dress: A bishop or the same as, and hasn’t heard of the Angler! It was he who hooked the forty-pound salmon in the river Bláfeldará and lost it. The fish broke the rod. What people do you bishops know?
Embi: Lost the big one, eh? The biggest fish get away at times. But it is often difficult to prove it.
Mrs. Fína Jónsen: But the Angler hooked his fish again the same day. No one believed he had lost such a big salmon. But that evening the fish manifested itself. They found it again at the mouth of the river with the rod and everything in its jaws. Forty pounds. There has never been another man like him in Iceland. Nor such a fish. Or the women he has around him, imagine it! It’s said he’s got a wife in I don’t remember how many capital cities. But the most fantastic was the one he hooked here at Glacier.
Embi: What female was that?
Mrs. Fína Jónsen: It was one of those with exceptional flesh hereabouts.
Embi: And what happened?
Mrs. Fína Jónsen: One could try asking pastor Jón.
Parish clerk: I fear you have not got the story absolutely right there, Fína dear. On the other hand it is quite true that a famous man built a fishing lodge practically under pastor Jón’s nose.
Mrs. Fína Jónsen: I was married in Hafnarfjörður for ten years, daddy. In Hafnarfjörður one can tell the truth to anyone at all. It’s not like here. For whom do you think the Angler built a fishing lodge almost on top of pastor Jón? No sooner had it been built than the woman disappeared—but that’s another story. Dead. Everyone knows that. But the salmon came back, all right.
Embi: You mentioned exceptional flesh earlier, madam. I’m sorry, I wasn’t quite clear whether you were referring to a human being or a salmon. It needs explaining. One talks of exceptional fish or exceptional meat, but I’ve never heard tell of exceptional flesh. What’s the yardstick?
Mrs. Fína Jónsen: Well, for example, take my flesh—that’s inferior and coarse flesh. No one wants that sort of flesh, any more than carrion. Nor indeed has anyone ever built a fishing lodge for it. I suppose it would be that wretch Jódínus, if anyone ever did.
Embi: You were nonetheless married to a man in Hafnarfjördur for ten years, according to your own account.
Mrs. Fína Jónsen: Yes, my late husband, he was a lovely, darling man, God knows. But he wasn’t the world’s greatest angler.
The mother, from the kitchen: No need to overdo it!
Mrs. Fína Jónsen: Not even a twelve-tonner man like Jódínus. On the other hand, I was good enough for my man even though I’ve always had rather poor flesh and my hide isn’t very good, and I’m not flawless inside.
Embi: Was he a whaler?
Mrs. Fína Jónsen: He wasn’t even a shark fisherman. But though he didn’t catch much he had a lively interest in fish. He was the only person in the whole country who listened to the herring news on the radio and kept up with the bankruptcies of the quick-freezing plants. And he took a pinch of snuff occasionally. Went out and bought Vísir. And so on. But it was I who owned the scrubbing brush.
10
Doughty Women at Glacier
It’s appropriate here to make a long story short.
Your emissary, however, doesn’t wish to delay giving a summary of the tales that have lived here in this part of the land since time immemorial about a mysterious woman: sometimes one, sometimes a multitude. Sometimes this woman has taken the form of some rather disagreeable luggage.2 Tumi Jónsen has now started to tell the Icelandic sagas in a style that consists principally of casting doubt on the story being told, making no effort to describe things, skating past the main points, excusing the main characters for performing deeds that will live as long as the world endures, erasing their faces if possible—but wiping them clean, just in case. Therefore it never becomes a story, at best just a subject for a poem. The women carry on with their scrubbing. This was a long morning.
The first woman of the district, that Þórgunna who came here from Dublin in days of yore, w
as a mystery woman who was the origin of the Fróðá Marvels in the days of Eyrbyggja Saga. Þórgunna was tall in stature and magnificently buxom, always sumptuously attired, says Tumi, and the most doughty of women though she was nearly fifty; in those days, women were called doughty who nowadays would be called exceptional. It is not quite clear from the old books what nationality Þórgunna was, whether Scottish, Cimbrian, Celtic, or Irish, except that she wasn’t Nordic. It is therefore not likely that her name was Þórgunna. What her real name was we do not know, on the other hand, says Tumi Jónsen. One thing is certain, though— she caused more uncanny happenings at Glacier than most other women.
This woman was particularly skilled at using runes, and stories of her supernatural power are still an important subject for research by historians, although many find it rather a sensitive matter. The woman caused the death of nineteen men on land and sea, and raised them all from the dead to attend their own funeral feasts. Those who had been drowned at sea sat down by the fire dripping wet and started wringing themselves dry, but those who had been buried in cairns shook out their clothes and spattered everyone with earth. It could be, of course, says Tumi Jónsen, that they were simply practical jokers, youths from another district, perhaps, who had disguised themselves in order to play a trick on people. When the woman died she was laid in a travel-trunk she owned, as portmanteaux used to be called in the old days. She had been a Christian, and this happened in the year 1000. At her own request she was transported for burial to Skálholt, because then there was no other churchyard in the land except that one alone. Þórgunna was buried there, the first person in consecrated ground of whom stories tell. But some scholars reckon that this churchyard was not established until a good fifty years later, says Tumi Jónsen.
From Glacier it takes five days to travel to Skálholt. The pallbearers had a strenuous journey with their burden over mountain ranges and fast-flowing rivers, and were often in a bad way. Icelanders are not particularly hospitable in the sagas, and that reputation persisted for a long time, although things have improved since coffee was discovered; the farmers made no effort to ease the journey for those who were carrying a Christian corpse about the country. At Neðranes in Stafholtstungur they were even refused food, but were allowed to sleep in the spare room and keep the corpse in an outhouse. But during the night the woman’s huge corpse rose to its feet stark naked, went to the pantry and fetched flour, and then went to the kitchen and baked for her pallbearers bread in the Irish style and gave them thick slices from the loaf.
In explanation of this phenomenon the storyteller, Tumi Jónsen, has this to say: It could be, however, that it was actually flatbread. Flatbread is thought to have been more common in those days than bread in loaves. Some have argued that the foregoing incident happened to the pallbearers in their dreams. Others reckon that the men were deluded and that some other woman than Þórgunna was involved. My ancestors, the Jónsens, believed everything in the Icelandic sagas and I go along with them sort of more or less, though I am not the man my father and my forefathers were.
11
The Story of Úrsalei
The bishop’s emissary now put question number two to the parish clerk as follows:
Question No. 2: Is there any truth in the story that pastor Jón Prímus got married in his younger days, but that his wife ran away from him and that the pastor has since then taken no steps to obtain a lawful divorce from her?
Tumi Jónsen’s reply according to the emissary’s shorthand (unnecessary wordiness omitted):
The story goes that a woman came to Iceland, some say from England, others from Ireland or even Spain, who was called Úrsúla the English, or Úrsa, known as Úrsalei-at-Glacier. This happened in the days of the merchant Þorleifur ríki (the Powerful) of Stapi, the son of Árni, farmer and sheriff of Reykjavík, the son of Ingibjörg, the daughter of Narfi of Narfeyri. Some say that on one of his business trips to Scotland, the said Þorleifur had seduced this highborn maiden of noble English and Spanish lineage and brought her to Iceland with him, to Glacier. I would not dare to vouch for the truth of this story, but I do not dispute the accepted view that Úrsalei was certainly an Irish-Spanish noblewoman of carefully selected stock on both sides for many generations in the matter of flesh, and that she was therefore a thoroughbred. On the male side, all but a select few were said to have been castrated, and the story goes on to say that female children of this clan were suckled by wet nurses until they reached marriageable age. I’m only passing on what I’ve been told. But reliable scholars have asserted on their conscience that the fleshly conditions in Úrsalei’s family were such that those ladies can best be likened to the women the newspapers nowadays call “bombs,” named after powder-filled canisters designed to cause an explosion.
Another “tradition” in which Tumi Jónsen says he has as much faith as the first one: Úrsalei early got an urge, considered by scholars to be quite rare among the aristocracy, in that she had a burning desire to become a ship’s stewardess. This was granted her. On one of her journeys she landed in Iceland, at Glacier. Some might find this a little strange. Not to make a long story of it—no sooner had Úrsalei stepped ashore at Stapi than the Glacier men set to with all their celebrated broadmindedness and, saving your presence, gave the girl a baby. None can escape from destiny. For that reason Úrsúla the English settled here in these parts, according to this version of the story. The Annals say she later married the merchant Þorleifur ríki of Stapi. Her name, unfortunately, has never been found in the parish registers, but there was a needy anchoress of that name living in a hovel near Búðir in the seventeenth century. The world’s unsure and the earth is dung, as it says in the verse. And though I counsel people to believe the Annals only in moderation, there is no doubt that a strange woman has propagated her breed in these parts; her descendants are alive to this day. A host of place-names in the district are associated with her, and always the loveliest places.
Mrs. Fína Jónsen sings:
Úrsúlabrow and Úrsúlalock
Úrsúlatoe and Úrsúlasock
Úrsúlagully and Úrsúladock
Everything under the sun’s in hock.
Embi: What poetry is that, madam?
Mrs. Fína Jónsen: It’s a nursery rhyme from Glacier. All to do with Úrsúla the English. This is her realm, although no one in Hafnarfjörður knows of her.
Embi: Nor in the bishop’s office, either. And I’m afraid there’s not much chance that this intelligence will be of much use to us there in the immediate future.
I glance through my notes and summarise: Inquired about the church and parish life; answer—about the feeding of snow buntings and the shoeing of horses. Inquired about suspicious journeys, possibly funerals, up on the glacier; answer—about a corpse that rose up naked and baked bread for its pallbearers. Regarding the parish pastor’s marital status, I get news of a Spanish noblewoman who was suckled all her life until the Glacier men gave her a baby. Instructive replies, but rather tangential to the questions I was trying to raise. Could be a little difficult for the people in the Ministry of Ecclesiastical Affairs to make head or tail of information of this kind.
Tumi Jónsen: On the whole, there are various things at Glacier that people would find difficult to understand if understanding of the womenfolk is lacking.
Embi: If these women have no human characteristics, there’s a risk they will not throw much light on things in my report.
Mrs. Fína Jónsen: It’s said of Úrsúla the English and these women, and no doubt applies to Þórgunna as well, that they never wash.
Embi begins to get bored with all this: Haven’t they got smelly armpits, then?
Mrs. Fína Jónsen: Always clean. The cleanest women at Glacier. Never seen to eat, but always plump. No one’s seen them sleep, but ready for anything, even at three in the morning. Never known to read a book, but never stumped by anyone, however learned. Oddest of all, though, they never age. They disappear one fine day like birds, but never dec
line; always as doughty as Þórgunna; even come back from the grave as ghosts.
Tumi Jónsen: They’ve been known to make rather poor wives; not easy to cope with, despite that good flesh. Could be that their husbands did not always have the qualities that suited such women.
Mrs. Fína Jónsen: Everyone in the know is agreed that they have exceedingly beautiful navels.
Postscript: It’s a dangerous mission for Lapps, said Ingimundur the Old’s Finns in Vatnsdœla Saga, when he sent them on a magic journey to explore Iceland. One poor little part-time tutor from the south has no motorway to guide him when he finds himself in the footsteps of the extraordinary Otto Lidenbrock, who years ago went looking for the Icelander Árni Saknússemm. Professor Lidenbrock followed the trail of this philosopher and alchemist down the crater on Snæfellsjökull all the way to the centre of the earth; there he found Saknússemm’s rusty old knife lying on the bare ground. I seem to recall that Professor Lidenbrock came out again through Stromboli. Perhaps the poor part-time tutor who writes this has yet to go through the centre of the earth before Christianity at Glacier is fully explored. But where shall I come up?
12
Farriers
The sun shone on the glacier and the door of the primus repair shop was wide open. Horses were shod here, too. On the 18th of June, 1857, when professor Dr. Otto Lidenbrock came here, the parish pastor had been busy shoeing a horse; and it’s the same today, but this time with a helper. The horse was tethered to the staple on the door of the shed. The farrier took after his predecessor and finished shoeing the horse before greeting any visitors. The horse was a big rawboned beast, not properly moulted yet and not in good condition after the winter. A farm-owner stood with his back under the horse with its hock in his arms, holding up the hoof for the shoe; the farrier was fastening it, wearing smithy clothes, his hair grey-streaked and dishevelled. He had the shoe-nails in his mouth. This big horse would certainly have had no difficulty in wrenching the staple from the door-frame or even yanking the shed from its base.
Under the Glacier Page 5