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Deep Vellum Publishing
3000 Commerce St., Dallas, Texas 75226
Deep Vellum Publishing is a 501c3
nonprofit literary arts organization founded in 2013.
Copyright © Ófeigur Sigurðsson, 2014
Title of the original Icelandic edition: Öræfi
Published by agreement with Forlagið, www.forlagid.is
English translation copyright © Lytton Smith, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-941920-68-8 (ebook)
Library of Congress Control Number: 2017938738
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This book has been translated with financial support from:
Cover design by Anna Zylicz · annazylicz.com
Text set in Bembo, a typeface modeled on typefaces cut by Francesco Griffo for Aldo
Manuzio’s printing of De Aetna in 1495 in Venice.
Distributed by Consortium Book Sales & Distribution.
CONTENTS
The glacier gives back what it takes, they say, eventually brings it to light. Not long ago, pieces of mountaineering gear started appearing from under the glacial ice of Vatnajökull: crampons, a piolet, tent pegs, anchors, a pocket knife, glasses frames, a thermos, a lantern, a corkscrew, a cake slice, sundry other little things—crushed, broken, badly worn down. They were found scattered around a small area, like after a shooting. The objects were brought to the Skaftafell Visitor Center for examination. Some of the items, being monogrammed, were soon identified as the possessions of an Austrian, one Bernharður Fingurbjörg, a man who had gone far out onto Vatnajökull, all alone, undertaking a research expedition, investigating an iceless mountain belt rising from the glacier. It was chiefly the cake slice that identified him as the items’ owner: there were still folk alive who remembered the man with the Viennese cream cakes, even though many things had been going on in Öræfi—the Wasteland—around the time Bernharður was traveling. I met him in 2003 during his trip to Iceland; we were fellow passengers on a bus east to Öræfi. He went up to the mountains and onto the glacier while I stayed in the lowlands; we never met again. An extensive search by farmers and a rescue team at the time came up empty-handed. One of the objects the glacier coughed up was a strongbox, more or less intact; the park ranger broke into it and saw it was filled with papers and writings. Glancing quickly inside, she didn’t look further than to see the box contained a long letter written by Bernharður Fingurbjörg. The park ranger sent me the box; the letter was addressed to me.
Auth.
Ingolf landed at the place which is now called Ingolf’s Head (Ingólfshöfði).
Landnámabók (The Book of Settlements)
I was past exhaustion, the Austrian toponymist Bernharður Fingurbjörg wrote in his letter to me, spring 2003. I crawled, Bernharður went on, into the Skaftafell Visitor Center, where I promptly lost consciousness. When I came to, a crowd of people was staring at me, but no one came over to help; my head was swimming; there was a large, open wound in my thigh, reminiscent of a caldera, and I thought I saw glowing lava well from it, a burning current pouring itself out like a serpent writhing up my spinal cord toward my head, which was becoming a seething magma chamber. I was delirious. For a long time, no one did anything, then, finally, after much staring and gesturing, a doctor was called; she happened to be on a camping trip with her family in Skaftafell at the time and came running full tilt to attend to me. I cannot find my mother, I told the doctor in my delirium, I cannot find my mother, I remember saying. I started to cry.
The doctor asked for clean linens and towels, a dishcloth, some organic soap, ethanol, toothpaste, whey, sugar, Brennivín, and an interpreter. The staff jumped to their feet and bounded in all directions at her requests. I heard it all at the periphery of my senses, from deep within my coma, and I saw it all before me, I saw the rich flora of the valley opening up for me, dripping butter from every blade of grass, and I said: Butter drips from every blade! … People flocked around me in the Visitor Center, I could hear myself talking a soup of nonsense, the doctor again calling for an interpreter so she could understand what I had to say.
I later learned that this doctor was, in fact, a veterinarian, one of national reputation: Dr. Lassi, the district veterinarian from Suðurland, a superheroine in thick wax coat and cape, wearing high leather boots and with a bottle-green felt hat on her head. Dr. Lassi said that it was beyond real that I’d emerged alive from the mountains without the rest of my party, given how badly my thigh was injured. I will help you find your mother, she said, stroking me, rubbing me like a newborn calf—all this Bernharður wrote in his letter to me that spring.
When
