Land of Love and Ruins Read online

  Contents

  Land of Love and Ruins

  Glossary: Festivals and Holidays in Land of Love and Ruins

  About the Author

  About the Translator

  ‌Land of love and ruins

  The illustrations on this page and toward the end of the book are archaeological plans, drawn by Uggi Ævarsson, of the ruins of farm sites at Hólsfjöll, northern Iceland

  For ornithologists and archaeologists

  He thought that it would be as sweet thus to lie so in the grave, to hear the peaceful sounds of the earth and just to know that one’s dear friends were near.

  Dorothy Wordsworth

  Grasmere Journals

  Those were fun times in the attic.

  I remember how we always plucked twenty or so ptarmigans.

  We sang and told stories and laughed our heads off.

  But it was most fun after we’d finished and cleaned everything up,

  when, covered in feathers, we’d go out and roll around in the snow.

  Oddný Ólafsdóttir

  Seasonal Memories

  Reykjavík, Feast of St. Lucy

  (whose eyes were gouged out and put on display. She’s the patron saint of the blind.)

  It’s strange being home. I’m relieved, though I still feel a bit homesick. I’ve got to try to create a home of my own. Probably alone. Could maybe get a dog. Shame how much trouble it is to travel overseas with dogs. Are they put in the baggage compartment?

  Love is blind, and it’s not the only one. I feel like I’m blindfolded. I’m going to untie the blindfold, write on it in the gleam of dawn. The sun is being reborn.

  Reykjavík,

  winter solstice

  Mom and I went for a drive this afternoon, took a look at houses.

  Drove past one that she said was probably good for nurturing your spirit. It reminded me of the countless drives in and around the city in search of a house when we felt it was getting too crowded in our own, which Mom called a dirt hut at bad moments. Then we went home, where my dad and brother were hanging up ptarmigans. It might not be under the best of circumstances, but we’ll spend Christmas together, the old family, my brother and I both in our late thirties and newly single, seeking refuge in our childhood nest. Nowadays, it’s quite festive when the four of us get together, despite our various wounds, or maybe because of them. It gives me grounding, strength.

  A tree that’s been struck by lightning but still has its needles. Poisonous red berries can be made medicinal if they’re handled properly and distilled.

  Reykjavík,

  in an attic, Feast of the Epiphany

  He came up to the attic last night, wearing black, tightly woven woolen clothes, fragrant with green cologne. I caught a whiff of his sweet sweat, and sensed straightaway that his ballsack had blossomed. The ornithologist whom I met at the clinic last year has come to town, even more beautiful than when I saw him when he was ill; now he simply shines.

  Do you live here? His clear, blue eyes awaited a reply. No, this is my workspace, I said, finding it funny that he thought I lived in such a cubbyhole. He glanced around, and I got the feeling it was to see if we could make love in this lair. The place was far from soundproof, I pointed out, and surrounded by scholars trying to concentrate. I offered him a seat on my little cot. I asked him where he lived and he described a small basement apartment: right nearby, beautiful patterns in the cement, he said, but full of ghosts, even rats; he wanted to find another place as soon as possible, was in a kind of limbo.

  I lent him a walkie-talkie; the channel is open so we have to develop our own code. Before he left, he took an ivy leaf from a book that was in his pocket and handed it to me, with greetings from Pentagonia, the kingdom of dark green pentangles. Should we get ourselves a place there? I said of course.

  He left just before midnight. I wanted to keep working for a while and challenge my fear of the dark to a duel. But he called me on the walkie-talkie as soon as he got home and I ran over to his place and stayed until morning. I didn’t smell any rats, but had bad dreams. You can’t enter another person’s world too quickly; you’ve got to sift through. I’ve often set out rather carelessly, say no more, over and out.

  When I saw him, I found him so grown-up and mature that I imagined he’d cleaned out all his old junk and rubbish. Disappointing to discover the infantile fluff still in his navel. But you never fully cleanse yourself of primordial shame and dirt. As soon as your heart opens, its waste pours out along with the love. But then it’s a good idea to keep pumping and pumping, replace your septic tanks and your connection with the sea, so that you can enjoy peace and quiet in your own house, your own privy place.

  Privy is certainly a peculiar word. Where’s my etymological dictionary? Is it a corruption? “A privy place to rest and think,” like a chapel, quiet and peaceful, perfect for contemplation—can chapels and toilets have so much in common? Is it a place where a real connection is made between the lowest chakra, the anus, and the highest, the divinity in our head? Or is it a place of quietude for the watchful eye of high heaven, just as you ground your waste in a radical transformation? In the homes of the European aristocracy, the most fruitful conversations of the day took place in the privy, as the householders were expelling yesterday’s excess in preparation for the new day. There in the privy, they tidied themselves, spritzed on the newest perfumes in the province, and expounded their latest theories.

  I’m finishing writing up the memoirs of my grandmother, my namesake, and rhymes and verses from her childhood. I’m going to print them out and bring them to her today—it’s her birthday and she’ll be serving crepes with whipped cream, maybe even bring out her pink tableware. Her memoirs begin on Epiphany, when it was customary to make crepes, as was also customary when a child was born—the maid must have been so glad to get out of baking for one day when Grandma was born.

  Then there are the rhymes that she recites with such a rollicking lilt that putting them on paper does them little justice:

  To the Alþing they came

  a carl and beldame

  returned with a bird

  in a mitten, I’ve heard

  And when they came home

  they were given a bone

  cracked by a stone

  The man then spoke up:

  “It’s time that we sup!”

  and in came a dish

  bearing wet fish

  a trout fine to eat

  and four grilled pig’s feet

  The carl took his pick

  grabbed a foot quick

  and a man it became

  Grettir by name

  This Grettir is skilled in many a thing

  crossed the deep, put maidens to sleep

  cows and calves and even the king

  Selsund near Mt. Hekla,

  Cream-Puff Day

  Strolled around the lavafield this morning, found a secluded spot amid the bearberry bushes and pumice. I felt exposed when a ptarmigan flew over as I was squatting there; it came so close to the crown of my head, circling and croaking. I feel a bit tense, having just come from the commotion of the city and hardly knowing what anything means. Why again do they circle like that?

  I went back to the tent and he was still sleeping, so I smacked him with a twig and howled cream puff, cream puff! He barely stirred, turned onto his other side. So I undressed and slipped into his down sleeping bag, clamped my thighs around his legs, sniffed his neck, and ran my hand over his warm scrotum.

  We woke at the same time and told each other how badly we’d dreamed—unpleasant memories from old relationships. We could barely look at each other. Maybe a person’s head clears faster near volcanoes. Hekla could erupt at any moment, but right
now I fear so much more than its fire.

  The unfilled cream puffs that I brought with me have all been squashed to pieces beneath the jam jar.

  We took a long walk through the lava, saying nothing at first. It feels comfortable keeping silent, even though it’s strange to walk with someone you don’t know very well without exchanging a single word. It took me time to trust the silence between us, to feel that it wasn’t just a lack of connection. I tried to be independent and not think about how he felt or how our relationship really was, why we might be at odds. But when I forgot both myself and him and started looking down between my feet at the winter flowers here and there amid the traces of snow, some cocky fox kits yelped in a crevice, startling me so much that I lost my footing and plunked down onto the moss. I was terrified, remembering a story that my brother Owlie had just told me about a fox that attacked an archaeologist, clamping its sharp, savage teeth around her calf.

  Laughing, he pulled me to my feet, and, with a furtive look, led me into a small, deep lava cave, covered with damp moss. I got the gist of his intentions, found a nice, soft spot, lay on my back and took him in my arms, and he found his way in through our woolen clothing. We moved in rhythm to the joyful sounds of a snow bunting, which lets itself be blown through the sky, unafraid of volcanic eruptions.

  On the way back, he told me that his great-grandfather had bought this land and that he could build a cottage here if he wanted to, whenever he was able. Could you imagine living here with me for part of the year? he asked. Yes, I definitely thought I could. It’s my dream to live close to the wilderness, in perfect peace and quiet. You don’t need complete solitude, then? he asked. No, I don’t think so, I said.

  The winter wren’s so swollen-headed that it’s on the verge of bursting. I injected cream into the remains of the choux puffs and we chowed them down.

  The stress seeps from you gradually. The city’s soot. I’ve been writing lists of words that end in two “s’s” in Icelandic: fúss, rass, hoss, spíss, koss, fliss, kross, piss, fuss, suss, tráss, góss, hnoss, hress, bless… I found forty words.

  I have no idea how to go about creating a clues-in-squares crossword puzzle, but we decided to try it together. The answer should be one particular word, isn’t that right? Or one sentence? I thought of the word næði (peace, quiet, privacy, leisure) or náð (rest, quiet, grace) or jarðnæði (piece of land, farm tenancy). He said it might be better to have the word náðhús (privy, restroom) or náhús (tomb), even gröf (ditch, grave), and added that there I would find perfect peace and quiet. We bickered a bit and I feel as if I still need to explain to him my dream of privacy. He headed down to the heath to check on a nest and try to find a path that he saw on an old map.

  We were hit by something of a storm and took shelter in his great-grandfather’s little house, which had previously been a workshed in Reykjavík. This great-grandpa was prescient, being a foreigner, and foresaw the value of the land, stipulating in his will that it couldn’t be sold off from the family. We found a full gas cylinder and some excellent cider. With our first sip, this verse sprang into his mind:

  Concealed by lava in our own secret lair

  to the depths of our souls sheer joy we share,

  may God, dearest darling, pay heed to my prayer

  that he grant you rich earth,

  quietude and mirth

  in a sun-blessed bower,

  there to reflect on this blissful hour

  of refuge, delight,

  ’neath Hekla’s great height.

  We’re sitting at a cloth-covered oaken table; he’s reading and I’m writing. I have to deliver a manuscript shortly, but still haven’t found the right tone. He’s excited to finish a book by Thomas Bernhard, about a man who has an entire novel in his head and is always waiting to find enough peace and quiet to start writing it. Does he succeed? No, the years pass, as his wife incessantly knits a wool mitten and unravels it as soon as she’s finished, until finally her husband murders her.

  At the foot of Mt. Hekla,

  Bursting Day

  We decided to sleep in the cottage that evening, after the wind picked up quite a bit. Got our sleeping bags and laid them on the beds, where there were little down pillows embroidered with the words Sleep tight. He came to my bed and cuddled with me. We felt warm and fuzzy from the cider. Then he lay down again in his own bunk and began wondering aloud where he should build his hut in the future, our hut. He pointed out that there was no single spot that possessed all the land’s virtues, and asked me to prioritize: Mt. Hekla in sight, shelter from the weather, sunshine from the south, a panoramic view, a ready water supply, peace and quiet. Then we heard a thud. He went out, bare-bottomed, with a flashlight, and returned with the news that the deck table had blown over, but everything was all right. I admired his courage: to wade naked into the darkness. In a short time, he fell asleep and started snoring manfully.

  I couldn’t relax; my nerves were taut and my mind raced. I thought I’d outgrown my fear of the dark. I tried to find a scientific explanation: the southerly had shifted to a northerly, as he said. I wondered if the traces of body odor mingled with perfume on the pillow would be enough to call old ghosts to mind. I’d assumed I would be welcome in this cute little house, yet I didn’t feel at home here. Ever since I was little, homesickness has hit me like hail from a clear blue sky. I lay there stiffly for a long time, until the day began to dawn, when I dressed and went out to the tent, feeling like it was more my own. I wrapped myself in woolen shawls and sweaters from my grandmothers.

  It isn’t particularly easy to be a guest in other people’s homes. On farms in the old days, hospitality was measured by how guests were made welcome in the home, whether invited or not—the latter including those who hadn’t made plans ahead of time, as well as those who just dropped by in search of food and shelter.

  It might be easy to be an invited guest, but to be uninvited and reliant on others must be hard for anyone.

  I could imagine becoming a gypsy, if they weren’t dependent on others so much of the time. If they were self-reliant and dancing free, as in my dreams.

  I remember when I met a swarthy gypsy clan-leader and followed him into a big white tent on the outskirts of the forest. He warned that his extended family had been harassed and refused shelter so often that it had grown suspicious and less hospitable than it would have liked to be. And I didn’t like the look of things inside the sweaty tent; it seemed their solidarity hinged on desperation, like at a family reunion in the remotest part of a fjord in bad weather. The instruments out of tune.

  A woman wearing a beautiful headpiece offered to read my palm, which I accepted, reaching into my pockets for anything I had, and she said that I would be wandering a long time; it was as if there were a curse that would prevent me from finding a place to be for the time being. Her eyes filled with compassion and she said that I was clearly some kind of gypsy, a ruddy gypsy, but that I had to clear off—I didn’t belong with them. Spoke to me like a dog, as the gypsies have so often been spoken to: Get out of here, scram, go on, git!

  I must have dozed a bit; woke to find him attempting to zip our sleeping bags together, then giving up. The wind reverberates in the mountains and the storm whips the tent flap. Impossible to take a nap in this. What hellish currents are these? Would you rather be Eggert or Bjarni? he asked me with a laugh, just before he fell asleep. He told me that the explorers Eggert and Bjarni had in fact camped here the night before they hiked up Hekla and became the first people to discover that it isn’t a gateway to Hell. I once dreamed about Bjarni in a lustful love-game with a loon on the wooden floor of his apothecary. And the only thing I know about Eggert is his Georgic, although I noticed the two men’s travel journal in the box of books in the car.

  I’m going to try to put myself to sleep by finding new “s”-words: túss, skass, hlass, krass, hass, hoss, fliss, flass, trass, kross, gloss. Did I already have kross and fliss? And pluss? What is pluss, anyway? Is it a genuine Icelan
dic word? I wish I’d brought my dictionary with me. Not that it’s a perfect account of Icelandic. But it’s a decent attempt. Those who put it together must have really needed peace and quiet.

  Then there are the mm-words: gúmm, skamm, djamm, gjamm, vamm, skömm… and búmm, in honor of Bursting Day today. Salted lamb and split-pea soup. I’m happy not to have to redo the dictionary, update it. It would drive me mad. Now I hear bleating. It certainly is nice that there are still sheep grazing and farmers sleeping soundly in their farmhouses amidst all the summer cottages. Few fear the old fox roving through the lava, russet and independent.

  Reykjavík,

  Ash Wednesday

  I went to visit Grandma around noon. Asked her what she thought of the summer cottages, whether she would have enjoyed staying in one over the years. She replied with an unequivocal no. She’d never felt comfortable in summer cottages; they weren’t her style. Nor would she have wanted to live in the suburbs. Even if they’re supposedly a nice place for children and dogs. She would rather shoot herself than have to walk a dog!

  Once a week, a very charming man brings a gray dog to the retirement home and goes from room to room to allow the residents to pet it. She said that she told the man the dog was incredibly cute and probably fun, but that she didn’t like dogs, and he hasn’t come to her room since. Then came the story of the summer cottage.

  Grandpa had just returned from a sea voyage. He reserved a little cottage. And good weather was predicted that summer. But he needed to spend more time in town than he’d thought, so Grandma was there alone with her three daughters and a very young babysitter.

  By the end of summer, the girls had grown tired of the little home of their own that they’d created outside and were waiting to go and pick berries. They nagged their mother and asked: When do the berries come, when is Daddy coming? They wanted him to pick berries with them and teach them about plants, as he usually did, about which ones could be used for dyeing and healing, and they wanted their mother to recite verses and teach them poems. That’s the way it was supposed to be.