by Tory Bilski
Frieda again rides next to Eve and watches the horse for a while. “I think it’s okay. You seem nervous though.”
“I’m afraid my horse hasn’t recuperated,” Eve says.
“No, she is fine,” Frieda says. “We would not put you on horses that aren’t well. It would not be good for our horses.” Though she is young and reserved, her German-accented, Icelandic-inflected English makes her sound authoritative and definitive. I am hoping it will put the matter to rest.
“I feel like they are still sick,” Eve insists. Her obstinacy ruffles Frieda, who must feel as if her reputation as a horse trainer is being questioned. And unlike Disa, she doesn’t bring a flask of cognac in her pocket to soothe us when we need it.
Frieda says something to Helga in Icelandic and they mumble back and forth.
“Maybe I’d rather not ride,” Eve admits. “The horses tripping and coughing is not good. It’s an omen. I think we should turn back.”
Helga shrugs. “We can turn back, I guess. Does everyone want to turn back?”
Sylvie eagerly backs up Eve with a harrumph. “Fine with me, I’ve had enough!”
Allie says, “Sure, I’ll do whatever anyone else wants to do.” I was hoping she’d want to keep riding, but she is the ultimate sunny-faced conciliator.
And Pippa, as if picking up on and ready to counter my silent protest, throws in: “I think if one of us is uncomfortable and doesn’t feel safe, then we should all support that and we should all turn back.”
I am the only one who doesn’t agree to this plan. This makes me the outlier who wants to go against the unsubstantiated omens and Eve’s wishes, or worse, push sickly horses to their breaking point. I look longingly at the trail in front of us: the lupine fields, the dry areas, the muddy areas, the riverbanks that lead to the Greenland Sea. I do not want to turn back. What am I doing here if I can’t ride? I wait all year for this trip. And because of the horse flu, it took us three days to get in the saddle; we only have another three days left before we leave.
But what do I do? They are my herd. I follow the herd back to the barn, going against my better judgment and strong desire to keep riding.
After unsaddling and letting the horses out in the pasture, Sylvie comes up to me. “Did you see how she was? So full of fear. I’ve never seen her like that on a ride here.”
I agree with Sylvie—Eve, who had always been a fearless rider in Iceland, was scared for no reason. It’s hard to believe this is the same woman who saw bulls in our path and took it as a sign of an uptick in the stock market. But it isn’t only Eve that has lost her spirit; the rest of the group quickly gave up, too.
And it bothers me. This is our chance to let go of the world, to let go of the irritants of home, to let go of illnesses and complaints, money worries, and even, or especially, to let go of the petty grievances we have with each other, and all the larger numerous varied problems of the human condition. This is our time to ride fully, to kick up dust literally, to be with the horses, to think like the horses, to bring out the wild horse in us. Our only focus should be the rocks, the grass, the wind, the rain, the crossing. Our only concerns should be our seat, our balance, and the sound of our horse’s footfall.
Frieda approaches me in the barn. “I am going out this afternoon to train some horses. Do you want to come with me?”
I am always pleasantly surprised when someone, especially someone as young as Frieda and someone I hardly know, gives me the courtesy of noticing. I was not as vocal with my needs as Sylvie and Eve were on the trail, but Frieda noticed and read me correctly. I did not want to turn around.
While the rest of the group leaves for Blönduós for another dose of coffee and cake at the Blue Cafe, I head to the barn. Frieda has me saddle up Loki to ride. Icelanders give a lot of thought to naming a young colt when they first see it in the field. Sometimes they are named for their personality: Kappi means brave; Galsi playful. Or they are named for their color: Skjoni is a pinto; Nos, a white spot on the nose. Or they are named after a bird, usually predatory: Orn means eagle, Krummi means raven.
And sometimes they are given a name from the sagas that are descriptive of their character: Loki is a Norse god, a trickster, a shapeshifter. I am wondering why he has been named this. He is big for an Icelandic, more the size of a Morgan, and is dark bay, almost black, with a large noble head. He is five, so not quite fully trained. “But he scored high on evaluations,” Frieda says. In other words, he’s a potential powerhouse and is way out of my league. But I can’t say no. I want to ride. I came to Iceland to ride, not to be stuck in the back seat of a car all day.
I would like to take my time grooming Loki. I would like to pick his feet clean and brush him and talk to him until I feel at ease with him. But Frieda is in a hurry to get out on the trail; she has lots of horses to train in a day and can’t wait for me and my nervous fussing. So I saddle him up as quickly as I can, and have Frieda check the girth and the snaffle because I never trust myself when it comes to tack. For good reason, too: Frieda moves the saddle forward and tightens the girth and loosens the nose band a bit.
“He is very sensitive in the mouth, you know, because he is young. So be very light with your hands,” she says. “And you must let him go fast in the beginning. If you hold him back when you first get on him, he gets nervous,” Frieda says.
He gets nervous? Does that mean I should be nervous? Does “the horse is a mirror” work the other way around?
But I don’t have time to overthink this. I am up and moving. I do what Frieda tells me to do: I keep my hands light and the reins loose so he stretches out his neck. I let him go fast over the deeply rutted tracks as we head away from the farm. His first gait is a trot, probably because his reins are loose, but it is a big loping trot, evenly strong from his hind and front, from side to side, and his back is supple and swingy. I don’t need to post or find my half seat. It is comfortable enough to sit to. I see why this horse scored high in evaluations and why he will be a competition horse. There is a perceptible difference, a change of attitude, an inner hum to him. The competition horses are more sensitive, and because they are more finely attuned, you have to be very careful with your cues. They also tend to be better formed and better balanced, so they score higher on conformation. And Frieda is right—after I let Loki go at his own pace for about a mile, he gets his jitters out and is willing to listen to me.
When I want to bring him into a tölt, I keep my hands as quiet as possible but inch up on my reins so that he brings his head up, and I shift my weight back a notch (from the center of my sitz bones to the back), so his shoulders can move freely. His tölt is not perfect, it still has some trot to it, but it is the fastest tölt I’ve ever ridden.
After my afternoon with Loki, I spend my remaining afternoons with Frieda, riding out on the trails with her. I try to convince Eve to come with us, that there are horses for her to ride. They’re not all sick. But she says she’s fine not riding this year, she’s okay just walking and driving around. It’s all she needs. I disagree.
Lifestyle Envy
On our last evening, Helga takes us out for a drive, off-road, in a borrowed Jeep. “I know it’s not the Escalade you girls are used to,” she says, ribbing Sylvie.
Sylvie plays along and says, airily, “We’ll live, I guess.”
“I figure you know so much about Ólof’s farm, I thought you need to really see more of this farm. I want to show you how big Thingeyrar is.”
She drives us to the banks of the Hunavatn, where she tells us the best salmon in Iceland run. We follow the banks of the river to the bay’s headland, an area we have never trekked to. Then she drives due east to another point we have never trekked to, where the beach has gray sand, windblown heather, and the remains of a washed-up seal. We have a clear view of the Hvítserkur landmark, a wave-eroded rock formation. Helga tells us that in Icelandic folklore, the rock used to be a troll, but it was caught by the sun trying to destroy the monastery of Thingeyrar (apparently a th
ing trolls do) and turned into stone.
“I don’t know if you know this, but Thingeyrar was once the sight of a major monastery in early Iceland. It was a very famous learning center,” Helga says. “Many of the sagas were written here.”
Though I have a general grasp of Iceland’s history, I have not done my homework on the Vatnsdalur valley, the part of Iceland I like to think of as my second home. Helga is filling in the vast blanks of my knowledge, continuing the lesson she started out on the trail the other day, imprinting in us the history of this place.
“They say there was a miracle that happened and that’s why the monastery was built here, but, you know . . .” Helga doesn’t give this explanation any weight. “They probably chose the area because of the fertile valleys and abundance of salmon.
“All this land, from this point here to the headland over there, is 8,000 acres.” She raises her eyebrows at Sylvie. “Bigger than Ólof’s, I believe.”
“Oh, maybe just a little,” Sylvie says, defending her man.
On the spit of land where the river and lake converge, we get out of the car. Helga points out that last summer she threw herself a big fiftieth birthday party here. Everyone came by horse. It was an eight-hour trek each way. Gunnar had driven out the day before and pitched a big tent, put down a temporary dance floor, and lugged out coolers of beer. He built a temporary paddock for the horses to stay in. They grilled salmon on the campfire. Everyone camped overnight under the large tent.
This, of all things, throws me into a state of despair. I thought I was at a point in my life where I was done with the wished-for alternative lifestyles (despite my recent flirtation with buying Eve’s farm—that was within reason). I have done all the envying of friends and acquaintances, for their alma mater, their brilliant careers, their inherited money, or their lucrative earnings. I have made myself morose coveting the lifestyle of winemakers in Napa and writers in Cape Cod. But I know that these are petty externalities, that we’ve all got our own shit to deal with, and I wouldn’t want to trade my shit for anyone else’s.
So it alarms me to confess this: I want to be Helga. I want her looks, her horse skills, her uncomplicated identity. I want to live on an Icelandic horse farm. I want to have been born Icelandic, to speak the language and be a part of a culture where my ancestors have lived for a thousand years. I want the surety of my place in this world. I want my bones buried here, to dry up and break apart and forever be a part of this land. And I want to be able to throw myself a birthday party on this remote beach and provide a tent, a dance floor, and a paddock for my neighbors and friends who will take an eight-hour ride out to be with me, as easily as I throw myself a backyard cookout in Connecticut.
This remote spit of land on the tip of northern Iceland, where the river meets the bay that meets the Greenland Sea, windswept, barren, gray, tossed with sea foam and sea mammal detritus, has produced my worst case ever of lifestyle envy.
Sylvie has a running joke: “In my next life I want to come back as Helga.”
Fuck that. I want it now.
I am quiet and sullen as we drive back to the farm, realizing this life will never be mine. Helga pulls over before we get home and takes us into one of the fields of young horses, the two-and three-year-olds that have not yet begun their training. We are looking for Sylvie’s horse, Sonneta, Stulka’s filly, that Sylvie plans to ship back home. Sonneta is hard to find in the herd: she has a pretty face and a white blaze on her nose, but there are a lot of palominos in this herd. Helga unlatches the gate and we enter the pasture to get a better look. Once we are in their territory, the young horses rush toward us, curious and friendly, greeting us with head-on stares and soft guileless eyes.
About fifty horses crowd around us, closing in until we are completely engulfed by them, shoulder to shoulder, part of the herd. One of them nibbles the back of my jacket. I feel their velvety mossy noses on my neck. They have the grassy, grainy smell of horsehair in sunshine. Though I love the smell of all horses, I particularly love the smell of Icelandics. I put my face on their backs and sniff deeply. If I had high blood pressure or suffered from anxiety, this would be my medicine—the smell of horses. When I’m around horses all day, their earthy, musky oil rubs off on me, and I don’t want to wash it off. It’s my horse bath. I like to sniff it on myself as I go to sleep and wake up with that horse smell on my skin.
Helga shoos the horses a little bit to give us room. She points out which horses are beautiful to her: a tall and leggy chestnut, a dark dappled mare with a silver mane, and a dark bay gelding with a full mane and strong face. She tells us these horses already have buyers from the States. I am aware that Helga’s horses from Thingeyrar are becoming well-known for their breeding and training and are routinely sold to North American clients. I look at these young horses, though, foaled in these fields and raised in these mountains, and imagine their destiny, shipped to the gentrified, groomed paddocks of Westchester County, hemmed in for the rest of their lives.
Finally, Helga points to a delicate palomino with a white star under her blonde mane, Sonneta.
“There she is,” Sylvie squeaks out the sentence, in love with her two-year-old filly. “Here she is.” She runs her hand through the mane, which is short and sparse, but will grow in thicker as she ages. She touches the blaze on her nose.
“Can Ólof give you that, my friend?” Helga asks.
Next Year, Iceland?
We always leave Thingeyrar at 8:00 in the morning. It’s a five-hour drive to Keflavík and we like to give ourselves plenty of time before our evening flight to stop along the way. We say our goodbyes to Helga and drive away, but Eve is glum, Sylvie fretful, and I am unsettled.
“What if I can’t come next year? What if Jack and I don’t have an income? What if I can’t afford to come next year?” Eve asks, before we even pass through the gate of the farm.
Sylvie says, “If you can’t go, I can’t go.”
Allie says, “Luke is graduating high school next June, so I may not be able to go.”
Pippa says, “Maybe I’ll go to India next year instead.”
If the domino that is Eve falls down, we all fall down.
It was a bad year in so many ways, but is this how we end? I’m not sure how “we” became a thing, but I don’t want “us” to end. I feel it is unfinished, the experience with this group that has nothing to do with my life back home. I am the woman who rides horses in Iceland. I depend on us coming here each year. It’s become part of who I am, and though I keep up ties with Eve, Sylvie, and Viv throughout the year, we exist primarily in Iceland, specifically in Thingeyrar. We have our own house, our own rituals, our own ghosts.
We have been a herd, a clique, a clan, with all the attendant problems. Sometimes I regrettably succumb to the social insecurities of my pre-teen self, wondering if am I part of the in group or if I am on the outs. Sylvie is the queen bee; Eve is the relentlessly upbeat cheerleader; Pippa is the girl who will always snub me; Allie is the can-do, dependable girl; Viv is the vulnerable one, who will always have my back and vice versa. Even the extras, Dora and Mel and Lisa, making their cameo appearances, add new blood, new stories to the group. But who am I to this herd? What do I bring to the group? These are the things I had worried about, but now the group itself is poised on the edge of an existential crisis. Will we exist after this year? Is our time together done?
Thingeyrar fades behind us as I plot out alternatives for my trip next year. There are several other outfitters, well-known people in the Icelandic horse world who lead riding tours now. It won’t be the same. I won’t be part of this group, but I’ve done it before, gone by myself, thrown myself in with strangers. I won’t be at Thingeyrar, but I will be riding in Iceland.
It is six kilometers on a dirt road from Helga’s farm to the Ring Road. We have to slow down and stop for a lamb in the road. “Mama, get your babies off the road,” Eve says, but the lamb can’t get back under the fence and the mama is bleating for it on the other side of t
he fence. Eve gets out and helps it reunite with its mother.
“Those sheep are from the farm that mistreats their dogs,” Sylvie says.
“I don’t like them because of that,” Eve says.
“Oh, will you look at all the babies in the fields.” Sylvie’s talking about the foals, not the lambs. “All their skinny little legs!” she squeals. Allie slows down and takes out her camera.
When we pass the Steinnes farm, Eve says, “Remember when we stopped there and they brought out coffee and cookies for us?”
“Dora fell off her horse there. And it was standing still.”
“Right, she just slipped off.” Eve laughs. “Boy, I had no idea how drunk she was. Was I dumb.”
“No, you always see the best in people,” Allie says.
We are silent for thirty seconds.
“The boy who liked Britt was from that farm,” I add.
“Our little Britt.”
Another thirty seconds of silence and Sylvie asks, “How can we give this up?”
“How can we,” Eve says, with no question in her voice.
Another kilometer of silence.
“I’d like to see the area where the volcano went off. Maybe we could spend a couple of days in the south before heading to Helga’s next year,” Eve says.
“We could come in a few days early and be at Helga’s by solstice.”
“There’s no better place in the world than Thingeyrar when the sun stands still.”
“Do you think we could ride to that place where Helga had her birthday party?” I ask.
Allie says, “I’d be up for that.”
“It’s a long ride, eight hours each way,” Sylvie says. “I might skip that one.”
Eve says, “But maybe we could do half the trip. We could ride out and Gunnar could pick us up in the truck and take us back. I’ll send Helga an email when I get home about dates.”