The Promise of Iceland

by Kári Gíslason

  The night before I left for Reykjavík, my mother and I had dinner at a café near the university. She was fifty-eight now; nearly thirty years had passed since she had first arrived in Iceland. She had returned to Iceland only once since we’d moved to Brisbane, and although she disliked the changes that had occurred while we’d been away, it remained holy ground for her; that much was clear. She handed me a list of addresses comprising the contact details of the army of secretaries and an annotated outline of all the places we’d lived—information she had kept at hand for the moment I began to make my own way back. It started with the basement apartment at Sólvallagata, where she’d arrived on that windy afternoon in December 1970.

  Naturally, she was the one who best understood what drew me back. But even between us, the feeling for Iceland seemed an almost inexpressible inner empathy, which because it was inexpressible, most often came to be communicated and commemorated in everyday lists like these. We agreed there was no escape. We agreed we would probably always be going back. What I didn’t mention to her that night was that I’d more or less decided to break the promise to Gísli.

  12

  TO HLÍÐARENDI

  Openness, when it came, took me by surprise, and unsteadied me like vertigo. I was in London for a stopover. I had put my bags in at the left luggage in Liverpool Street Station and had made an uneven line across town to Bloomsbury. I was visiting the Department of Scandinavian Studies at University College. The entrance was at the back. I creaked along the floorboards to a reception area, wondering whether there were any scholars in residence.

  ‘No, I’m afraid the teaching staff are seldom here in summer,’ the receptionist told me. She waited for me to leave. But, as I was eyeing off some books that were stacked for sale on the front counter, she added, ‘Our Icelandic doctoral student, Svanhildur, is here, though. It’s just that she’s very busy. She’s making the finishing touches to her thesis.’

  ‘Do you think she would mind if I popped my head in?’

  ‘I’ll check, but don’t keep her long.’

  The warm day, and a view of the bright trees on the other side of Gower Street, came in through a window behind Svanhildur’s desk. She was dressed for a hot London day, but all her manners were Icelandic: she stood up, shook hands, and asked me to sit down as though it were about time I’d come to visit.

  I was at the start of my doctoral research and Svanhildur at the very end of hers, making the final changes to her dissertation. To me, she had all the ease and fluency of a big name. She replied to my queries about the sagas by asking her own about my years in Iceland, and my family there. Her firm curiosity brought me yet another step closer to Reykjavík. It was the villager’s interest that is inscribed into all conversations in Iceland.

  ‘When did you leave Iceland?’ she asked.

  ‘When I was ten.’

  ‘Your mother’s Icelandic?’

  ‘No, she’s English, actually.’

  ‘I thought that, as your surname is an English one, you must have an English father.’

  ‘It’s a bit complicated.’

  ‘That’s not unusual in Iceland,’ she replied. ‘But what’s your father’s name, then?’

  ‘Gísli Ólafsson,’ I heard myself say, even before I could think to stop.

  She didn’t know him. I steered the conversation back to the sagas and left the building laden with a bag of books that I would have to leave, during my travels to Iceland, with Shane and Fiona, friends from Brisbane who lived in Norwich and were putting me up for a couple of nights. I had known them for years, but not even they knew who my father was. And here I was telling a complete stranger, and an Icelander at that, who in passing conversation could quite easily begin a chain of information that would end not only with my father but half of Iceland as well. How easy it all was. Maybe there was no need to be tossed from a horse, after all.

  This sudden openness about my father was accompanied by an overwhelming feeling of coming home before I was really ready for it. It enveloped me on the plane, when the Icelandic voices of the other passengers met me like the first sound of waves at the beginning of a holiday. Their voices washed across the aisles, searching out friends and relatives.

  ‘Nei, blessaður!’ I would hear, and that would begin a fresh round of disbelief that someone from Iceland had bumped into someone else from Iceland, here, on a plane in London, of all places.

  In the seat next to me sat James, who was bringing his mother home. She was, he said, in the cargo hold below.

  ‘Actually, the whole family’s on the plane. My girlfriend’s just over there.’ He pointed behind us towards the nervous smile of a girl who sat five rows back. ‘The rest are up at the back.’ After a pause, he added, ‘Mum put aside for all of us to come.’

  I told James a little of my own story, how I was also doing something for my parents on this trip. He replied that we were lucky to have the need of a return.

  Our flight split Britain length-wise, and so James and I took turns in identifying the cities of the Midlands, the Lakes District, and inlets of the west coast of Scotland as we passed over. One of those little dots down there, I thought, must be Ullapool, where Jessica had driven me, and where I had told her I would leave her for Iceland. A couple of hours later I could see the black lava rock and red mountains of Iceland.

  We descended over the cracked landscape of the south, following the headland of steam and craters until we were level with them. I wished James the best for the funeral as I saw Patricia standing in the front row of onlookers on the other side of a glass divide. She hadn’t changed at all; still a fat Sydney girl in unquantifiable middle age, with a big, chiny smile, artist’s eyes, and a large stance. She filled the drive to Reykjavík with the same exuberant telling of events—stories of her dogs and cats, and reviews of local art shows—as she had when I was a boy.

  I was more distracted by the lava field around us than I had ever been. It extended for miles to our right, while on our left, on the narrow strip of land between the road and the ocean, rocky outcrops of lava formed jagged walls around clear ponds, grass ovals, and the occasional house and abandoned farm. Keilir, one of the volcanoes responsible for all this, stood over its work on the far right of us. The sky was bright and we soon caught our first glimpse of Reykjavík, the cathedral Hallgrímskirkja. After decades of construction it was finished at last, and around it surfaced the thin line of blue-grey concrete houses and the luxurious waterside homes of the outskirts. Already, I knew that I was returning for good, and that even if this was a visit, it was the beginning of reclamation. It was so obvious: the missing piece in me was simply the feeling of being in Iceland.

  On this trip I was staying with Bergur, the old friend of my mother’s who had once drunkenly declared himself to be my father, and his wife Rut. She and her eldest daughter, Kolbrún, met me at the door of their mansion by the sea. Nervous, attractive, formal, they welcomed me with handshakes, hesitant smiles, and implorations about taking off my jacket, which by now looked like something I’d picked up off the road. And where was the rest of my luggage?

  ‘This is all I’ve brought,’ I replied. ‘I know it doesn’t look like it holds much. But carpetbags are like that, aren’t they?’

  ‘Oh dear,’ said Rut, looking sympathetically towards the bag. ‘How is Susan?’ she then asked. ‘I can see her in your eyes.’

  ‘Really? Funny. Mum’s always said I look like my father.’

  ‘Oh. But there’s a lot of your mother there.’

  Patricia and I were taking off our shoes at the front door as Bergur stepped down from upstairs. His round, boyish face wore a pensive look.

  ‘Am I late for something?’ he asked.

  ‘Bergur, you knew Kári was coming today,’ said Rut.

  ‘Did I? Very well. Welcome home, Kári minn,’ he said. ‘Rut tells me you’re g
oing to be staying with us for a couple of months. Whatever Rut thinks. Best to go along with that.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘You’ve become a saga scholar then?’ he asked, as he led me upstairs into the house.

  ‘Oh, barely. I’ve started a doctorate.’

  ‘You know our Njála, of course.’ ‘Njála’ was the affectionate nickname given to Njál’s Saga.

  ‘Njál’s Saga is probably why I’m here,’ I replied.

  ‘Yes?’ Bergur again looked apprehensive. ‘I know that part of Iceland,’ he continued, ‘around the southern farmlands near Oddi. I worked there as a boy. I still go fishing there every summer. I can afford it now. You know, when I was younger, the farmers just let us fish for nothing. But that was before we realised we liked salmon.’

  ‘I want to travel there,’ I answered, ‘especially around Hlíðarendi.’

  ‘Gunnar’s farm. I expect I could take you there. I know the way.’

  ‘Please, I would adore that.’

  There was coffee, pancakes, Icelandic doughnuts, and three or four types of cake. The full Icelandic welcome: total coffee time. Their house was very large. On the ocean side, it was split-levelled, with a living room enclosed by glass windows and, downstairs, an apartment on its own, with a line of bedrooms that faced out to the fjord. Mine would be Kolbrún’s old room, which she had now left for an apartment of her own. It was furnished with a single bed, a writing desk, and a stereo; everything you needed.

  The tide was coming in. Walkers, bike riders, and roller-bladers passed by at different speeds. Patricia was much taken with a large, bronze bird that stood twenty metres from the ocean wall, one of a number of sculptures along the path.

  ‘Oh, that bird,’ she kept saying. ‘What a wonderful work.’

  ‘They are extinct now,’ said Bergur, addressing me. ‘We killed those ones off.’ Then, ‘The path runs all the way to Seltjarnarnes,’ pointing his fingers behind him. ‘I try never to use it.’

  It was a joke, presented with the same bleak countenance as he had used to welcome me. The bike path was a very lovely one, and I guessed from Rut’s sigh that they went out on it often.

  ‘Is it a long way to walk?’ I asked. I knew Seltjarnarnes was where Gísli had lost his house and so, of course, I was curious.

  ‘A little way,’ Rut replied. ‘You can use the car when it’s free,’ she then offered.

  For the next hour, we spoke about my stay and how I’d fill in my time. Soon, their other children, my namesake, Kári, who was a few years older than me, and their youngest daughter, Rakel, would be back from holidays abroad. Kári, they said, would want to take me into the country—he was the outdoors type. And there were other visitors expected, too, a family of five Icelandic descendants from Vancouver. The grandmother of that group was called Mildred, just like my grandmother, and she was returning to Iceland for the first time in decades.

  I asked how far it was to the local swimming pool. I’d been so looking forward to swimming again in Iceland.

  ‘Vesturbæjarlaug is walking distance from here,’ said Rut, ‘about twenty minutes.’

  ‘Would it be rude if I go now?’ I asked.

  ‘Not at all,’ she replied, but perhaps a little too hesitantly, I thought. But I took the opening and thanked them for the welcome and rushed out, over a grass mound that was used as a fence for the back of their yard, and onto the path.

  It was already eight o’clock, but still busy on the path. Roller-blading children were collapsing onto the ground like folding chairs. Light aircraft was approaching from the northwest, chugging breathlessly towards the landing strips of the domestic airport. On the balcony of one of the white houses along Ægisíða, a seafront street running beside the path, a family watched over all the outdoor activity. The ocean played lightly against the black rocks, and an old fishing shed standing next to a small, dry-docked fishing tug and drying lines was silhouetted by the reflected sun. Near to it was another of the public sculptures, a stone haddock that looked as though it was thrown out of a bucket onto the ground.

  I was joined on my walk by the uplifting feeling of good solitude that I remembered from when I was a child and had rowed into the quiet cove out of sight of Molly and Steini’s summerhouse, or when I’d walked along the frozen track between our place and Molly’s—a contented aloneness that I hadn’t known since I was last here. It intensified my awareness of the volcanic landscape to the south, and the outline of peninsulas to the north. How could I leave this?

  At the pool, the receptionist flicked a blue, rubber key band on the counter and the automatic swinging door opened.

  ‘Daginn,’ I said.

  ‘Góðan daginn,’ she replied, looking over her glasses as though she were expecting me to get on with a point. I had forgotten just how severe that look could be, the Icelandic frown. Her gaze narrowed. It said that she had stopped expecting a point.

  I left her for the showers downstairs. On the change-room wall was a line drawing of a human figure with five areas of special concern that had been shaded in: the two armpits, the groin, and the two feet. These, said the poster, were to be washed with care. I obeyed and washed my shaded-in areas before dashing across the cold cement outside to the pool.

  The tourist brochures call Iceland a country of fire and ice. It is a cliché, but here it seemed true, as I suppose it was in the highland interior, where the volcanoes and glaciers meet. Like the country around them, the people at first seem severe, but occasionally they reveal the typically molten, inner life of the Scandinavians. The pools bring it out of you, and the old people in particular move quite quickly from exchanging greetings to discussing their personal lives. It is a process that seems unbroken from the drunken confessions of farm dances and summer celebrations. Perhaps it is the hot water: it releases emotions into the cold air. Or the proximity created by the shape of the hot pots, which are small, round and most often crowded. They line the main lap pools, which is slightly cooler, and form the first port of call once you’ve done your exercise. You are only really home again in Iceland after you’ve had your first swim.

  When I got back, Bergur said we should take a drive downtown to look at all the changes since I’d last visited.

  ‘You know Laugarnes?’ he asked. ‘From Njála.’ He looked at me, but I couldn’t remember. ‘Hallgerð died there. There is a plaque in her memory.’ She had moved to the area after Gunnar’s death, her refuge during the ignominy that followed from not helping her husband in his final moments. I said something about it being unusual to commemorate such a famous villain in this way.

  ‘No, she is just a good Icelandic woman,’ replied Bergur. ‘It’s wrong to read her as a villain. They do very well without us. And they are proud. Gunnar should have known that.’

  ‘But she let him be killed.’

  ‘Yes, of course she did. But she also loved him.’

  We joined a procession of cars. In front of us, someone stopped to chat to a friend they’d spotted on the pavement. The traffic slowed to walking pace, a Saturday night driving circle. A beautiful girl dressed in a short skirt walked past a small group of tourists heavily clad in jeans, boots and bright raincoats.

  ‘They think Reykjavík is a whaling station,’ said Bergur, speaking of the tourists. He kept asking me what I thought of all the changes. In fact, nothing had changed. The smells, the sounds, the feeling in the air, entire streets of association that made the drive seem like not only a return to Reykjavík but to a different time—I felt like I was aged nine again, and back on my paper run.

  The descent of the street steepened as we entered an area of café bars, and then wound through the pretty, narrow streets that skirted Austurstræti near to Grjótagata, where Mum had worked when she first arrived. Each street was still an uninterrupted row of contorted, coloured houses, the style of homes that had bee
n imported from Norway in the nineteenth century. As we came out at the harbour, there in front of us stood the unflinching black ocean and Mount Esja, still as imperious and sunlit as ever.

  ‘Esja okkar,’ said Bergur warmly, ‘our Esja.’

  Auden said on one of his visits that the sun might have settled on Iceland, but it was still visible on the mountains. So it was tonight at Laugarnes, with Esja seemingly illuminated from a hidden point. The sun also somehow discovered in the tips of the tall grass that now grew where Hallgerð had farmed, another woman stranded by the misfortune of having chosen the wrong man to love. Or, rather, of having not had a choice about love.

  María, a fresh-faced girl in black clogs, bounded out of the office and led me to the reading room.

  ‘Will this do?’ she asked, pointing to where I should sit.

  ‘This is fantastic. Could I spend the afternoon here?’ I was in Árnastofnun, the manuscript research institute, to begin my research.

  ‘Have all month here, if you like. Just one thing,’ she said, tapping her clogs against the door, ‘the Norwegian president is visiting this afternoon. You’ll have to stay in the reading room until he’s gone.’ I thought she was joking, and smiled. But she went on, ‘Yes, I’m sorry. Perhaps if you want a coffee or need to go to the toilet you could do that in the next few minutes.’

  Half an hour later, two heavily armed policemen with German shepherd dogs at their sides checked the reading room for bombs. After the policemen left, I settled down to a solitary afternoon amid the sagas, the slowly descending sun painting the book ends and the pale, wooden shelves. At five, María came in to say she was leaving for the day, and could I please let myself out. To me, this was heaven. I spent nearly every day of the next two months at the same desk.

  I worked very hard on my thesis. For a break, I would spend the early evenings walking to the same swimming pool I’d visited on my first night back, where I joined the regulars for a swim and a long stew in the hot pots. I was getting to know a few of them and, now and then, they’d pull me aside and demand an explanation of who I was and when I’d be coming back to Iceland to stay.