The Tricking of Freya (22 page)

"We have no movie stars," Ulfur explained, the first time a total stranger
began reciting my grandfather's poetry from memory for us outside a gas
station.

"That's because we don't make any movies." Saemundur grinned.

"True enough," his father conceded. "But I also mean we don't have
celebrities, not the way America does. The closest we come is our writers.
Our writers are our stars. And by that I mean, those who shine above this
nation most brightly."

I was beginning to understand that it was not only my odd little family
back in Gimli who revered writing and writers; it was a national trait of the
Icelanders. Everywhere you go in Iceland is a plaque or statue dedicated to
a writer. "And yet," Ulfur continued. "Writing is not reserved for the elite.
Every Icelandic family has a versifier or two, and many people write books
of their own. In fact, Iceland publishes more books per capita than any
country in the world, and has the highest literacy rate."

"But now we have television," Saemundur countered. "Maybe people
will quit reading so much."

"Maybe," Ulfur conceded. I saw no signs of it while I was there. Many
people, on learning who we were, recited Olafur's poetry to us, not only
scholarly friends of Ulfur's, but ordinary people, like the farmer on the road
to the Gullfoss waterfall. We stopped the jeep to help him lift a dead sheep
from the road, and in return, he invited us for coffee and recited from memory
several of Olafur's most well-known poems. It made me feel special, and
Birdie, of course, thrilled at the attention. Oh, she was in high spirits, lively
and energetic and full of good feeling toward everyone. Especially me. I was
speaking Icelandic all the time, and bit by bit as we rattled through the Icelandic countryside in the jeep I dropped my veneer of shyness and reserve.
Birdie approved, and I basked in her approval.

With Birdie and Ulfur and Saemundur as my guides, I was shown marvel upon marvel. I remember running with Saemundur through the spray of
the massive Gullfoss waterfall, a rainbow shimmering above our heads.

"Bifrost. The bridge to heaven," Saemundur said. "That's what the rain
bow was called in the old days."

I decided he wasn't teasing. It made too much sense. Standing on the
brink of thundering falls under a rainbow with Saemundur was surely as
close to heaven as I'd ever come.

It seemed no place in Iceland-no farm, rock, hill, stream, glacier, or
volcano-lacked its own particular legend. I was haunted by our visit to
Barnafoss-Children's Falls where two children, left home on a Sunday
morning while the family was at church, disobeyed their mother's orders
and played on the stone bridge that crossed the nearby waterfalls. When the
family returned home, the children were gone.

"Were they ever found?"

"Not alive," Ulfur answered.

Even the lava had stories to tell. One day we drove past a stretch of mosscovered lava rocks. "The Taking-of-Christianity Lava Field," Ulfur explained.
"Nearly a thousand years ago, when the Icelanders were debating whether to
adopt Christianity or not, a volcano erupted and the lava destroyed the farm
of a practicing Christian. Proof, the pagans declared, that Christianity was a
bad bet. But wasn't the pagans' own headquarters, Thingvellir itself, covered
in lava? The pagans lost the vote at the Althing."

And of course we visited Reykholt, the estate of the great Snorri Sturluson, who had been raised as a child at Oddi.

"The same Snorri who wrote down the Norse myths?"

"Good memory," Birdie answered. "But he was a politician as well."

"In cahoots with the Norwegian crown!" Saemundur added. "Was it not
because of Snorri that Iceland lost its independence for six centuries?"

"Son," Ulfur corrected him. "You know it's much more complicated than
that. Snorri alone cannot take the blame. The Icelandic Commonwealth
came to an end because the Norwegian crown was more powerful. Snorri,
if you remember, was assassinated by order of the king."

"Right here at this very spot," added Birdie. We were standing on the lip
of the hot springs where Snorri had been killed. A cool mist drifted down
on us from the sky; gentle hot steam rose up from the pool. I sucked the air
deep in my lungs and expelled it, imagining it merging with the vapors rising from Snorri's grisly murder scene.

"Me," Saemundur said, "I prefer true outlaws. Like Grettir. Surviving for years outside of civilization, in the wilds of Iceland. Doing battle with monstrous ghosts."

"Were they real?"

"The outlaws were. I don't know about the ghosts."

"How do you know?"

"I've seen evidence. There are some lava caves near here where outlaws
used to live. You can see the bones of the sheep they stole from nearby
farms littering the cave floor."

"Lava caves?"

"Long tubes of lava. Filled with stalagmites and stalactites. Some are
shining with ice."

"You've been inside?"

"Sure I have. I'll take you there."

I thought he was teasing hut he wasn't. And he did.

Our last evening at the summerhouse Ulfur sat down at the dinner table with
a cup of coffee and opened Birdie's Word Meadow. "I'm beginning my final review of Ingibjorg's manuscript," he announced. "Tomorrow morning Ingibjorg
and I will be discussing the work. Perhaps, Saemundur, you will take Freya
out touring for a few hours?"

"In other words, scram," said Birdie, in a burst of nervous laughter. "Beat
it, make yourselves scarce!"
.

Oh, she was in high spirits. You see, Cousin, your mother expected
nothing but the best from Ulfur's review of her work. Still, there was a particular edge to her energy that I hadn't seen before. I was practically as nervous as Birdie. Word Meadow, her life's work, to meet the eyes of the world
at last!

"I'm on the verge of great things," she confided to me on the way out to
the jeep. "Greatness, even." Since she couldn't bear to sit in the summerhouse while Ulfur read her manuscript, she'd decided the three of us would
venture out for another clandestine jeep driving lesson.

"Lava," Birdie said, the moment she got behind the wheel. "I want to try
a lava field."

I was surprised Saemundur agreed to it. But the evening sky had
cleared-it was blue, Cousin, bright brilliant blue-and the sun was truly,
fully shining. A blue sky at night makes anything seem possible. And Birdie had mastered all the basics, proven herself an agile driver. She could ford a
stream, maneuver up and down steep rocky slides that could hardly be
called roads. I guess Saemundur felt she was ready.

I don't know where he took us, exactly. There is no scarcity of lava fields
in the vicinity of Thingvellir Lake. Wherever it was, I do remember Saemundur explaining that the lava was thousands of years old, worn down and
smoothed over. Hardly as sharp and craggy as the sites of more recent eruptions, like Laki or Heimaey. The rock was blackened, humped, and rutted,
and driving it was akin to maneuvering an obstacle course on a foreign
planet. Saemundur insisted on demonstrating first. "If you crash this jeep,
Ingibjorg, I'll have to take the blame, and I don't know what my father
might do. Disown me, maybe. Might not be a bad thing, I suppose."

I was nearly as nervous as Saemundur when Birdie took the wheel. I had
visions of the jeep tipping over backwards, turning somersaults, spinning
off the edge of a lava hillock. But Birdie was focused, surprisingly so, given
that Ulfur was reviewing her precious Word Meadow at that very moment.
She guided the jeep slowly over the first bumps of lava, then eased it along
a slanting rut. For me as a passenger it was nerve-racking, but not nearly as
nerve-racking as being stuck in the summerhouse with Birdie while Ulfur
read her manuscript. In contrast it was nearly fun.

"Am I ready for Askja?" Birdie asked Saemundur after an hour. I thought
she was joking, but he took her seriously.

"The drive to Askja is much more difficult than this."

"Are you saying I couldn't do it?"

"Oh, I would never say that. You seem capable of anything."

"Indeed I am." Birdie laughed. And indeed she was. She turned the jeep
toward the road that led to the summerhouse, but in the end could not resist one last, sharp crevice.

"I wouldn't try it," Saemundur warned.

Birdie ignored him and eased the jeep over a rubble-strewn slope and
down into a deep gulley. I noticed everything seemed darker. Had the sun
finally set? I craned my head out the window and saw bulky clouds rapidly
filling the sky overhead. A crack of thunder, and then rain was falling in
hard sheets that clattered against the jeep's metal armor.

"We better get home," Saemundur urged.

But there was no way forward. Birdie had dumped the jeep into a dead
end. Sheer rock wall loomed in front of us, with no room to turn around.

"Disaster," Saemundur said. "Let me take the wheel."

"Let me try," Birdie pleaded. "Please. I have to learn." I was surprised by
how desperate she sounded.

"Take it slow then."

Birdie shifted into reverse, then pushed steadily on the accelerator, but
the jeep resisted going upslope.

"Harder."

Now the wheels began to spin. The engine made a grinding sound.

"Cut it."

She gunned harder.

"I said cut it now."

The jeep sputtered still and we sat for a moment listening to the rain.
There was no way out. I envisioned us abandoning the jeep, tramping
through the sodden lava field at midnight, announcing to Ulfur we'd
dumped his precious jeep in a lava pit.

"I'll check into things." Saemundur opened his door, but Birdie put a
hand on his shoulder and pulled him back in.

"Let Freya do it," Birdie said.

"Freya?" Saemundur was incredulous.

"Yes, Freya," Birdie insisted. "She has to learn how to do these things."

Let me tell you, Cousin, I had no inclination to climb out of the jeep and
go poking around the wheels in the pouring rain. That had always been Saemundur's role when the jeep got stuck, and I'd been happy to let him do it.
Now, for some reason, Birdie was determined to put me to the test. Afraid of
looking like an American princess in front of Saemundur, I complied. Even
in the rain it was easy enough to see what had gone wrong. Our drive down
the slope had loosened a mini landslide, and rubble had piled up thick behind the wheels. I felt important as I reported this information to Birdie.

"Then clear it," was all she said.

"I'll do it," Saemundur offered.

"Freya," Birdie insisted. She wanted to see what I was capable of, and
I was as driven as ever to try to please her. Back in Connecticut I was known as being strong for a girl. Why shouldn't I be able to clear some
rubble?

It's one of my sharpest memories from the trip: crouched behind the
jeep, picking up stones and throwing them to the side, kick-pushing with my
foot the heavy ones, soaked through but triumphant when Birdie finally maneuvered the jeep back up to solid ground again. I scrambled up the slope
and climbed in.

"That's my girl," Birdie said.

My teeth chattered wildly the whole drive home.

Who slept well that night?

Not Birdie, awaiting Ulfur's morning verdict on her life's work. Not Ulfur, dreading the delivery, as I now know he must have been. And certainly
not me, for reasons unrelated to Word Meadow. For reasons known as Saemundur. I had not forgotten that in the morning he and I would be on our
own. It was Birdie's big moment; she wanted no teenagers, sulking or otherwise, to sully it. So we would make ourselves scarce. We would scram.
And then? I had never been alone with a boy before. What exactly I expected I don't remember, if I even knew at the time. Something. I expected
Something. And that something made it impossible to sleep. Below me on
the bottom bunk Birdie sat, journal propped on her knees, scribbling the interminable night into dawn.

Saemundur seemed unusually hress that morning, as Birdie commented,
lively and in good spirits.

"I need to be hress," Saemundur replied. "Today I am going to be the leid-
sogumadur."

"What's a leidsogumadur?" I asked.

"Road-story-man. A tour guide for the American Princess."

He was making fun of me again. Was that how the day would be? I
swirled cream into my bowl of skyr, slowly and not once looking up.

Birdie laughed. "And where will you take our princess?"

"Yes," Ulfur prompted. "What is your itinerary, Son?"

"Hveragerdi. To see the thermal greenhouses."

I sucked a spoonful of skyr into my mouth with a sour burst. I'd forgotten to sugar it. Hveragerdi. I felt vaguely disappointed. Greenhouses, thermal
or otherwise, did not appeal to my teenage imagination.

"Be back by noon," Ulfur warned. "One o'clock at the latest. We need to
pack up."

It was our last Summerhouse Day. We would spend a day or so back in
Reykjavik, then head east with Ulfur to try to track down Olafur's lost letters.