Under the Glacier (6 page)

Tumi Jónsen: We’ve never been aware that pastor Jón had any particular doctrine, and we like it that way.

Embi: What does he preach, then?

Tumi Jónsen: Large questions often get little answers, my boy. Pastor Jón did not preach much in the past and preaches even less now—fortunately, many people would say. But it’s not that we here are against doctrines, least of all if there’s no need to follow them. Doctrines are for entertainment, I’ve always felt. In a parish not far from here there’s a pastor who has preached a lot. People have started to take what he said seriously. It has not turned out well. People tend to do the opposite of what they are taught.

Embi: Many unbaptised children in the parish?

Tumi Jónsen: I haven’t counted them.

Embi: But don’t you find it tiresome, all the same?

Tumi Jónsen: Some people find it a little odd, perhaps; but the children thrive.

Embi: I want to put a question to you now as parish clerk: have you any plans in hand concerning God’s House in the parish?

Tumi Jónsen: The church? Oh, dear, so you went and had a look at that too, my boy!

Embi: The church is nailed up.

Tumi Jónsen: Well now, what a shame, the church nailed up! Yes, you are right, the hinges really do need mending. And panes needed for the windows, what’s more. That is not so good. A lot of good visitors come here in the summer to have a look around. And then it is bad if the church is nailed up.

Embi: What does the congregation itself think? Don’t they think it bad that the church cannot be opened?

Tumi Jónsen: Oh, I wouldn’t say that.

Embi: At Christmas, for example?

Tumi Jónsen: There are so many entertainments nowadays.

Embi: Perhaps there isn’t even a service at Christmas?

Tumi Jónsen: No special services at Christmas, no, one can’t really say that.

Embi: I wonder who broke the windowpanes in the church?

Tumi Jónsen: Oh, just some practical jokers, I expect; unprincipled youths from other districts. They could also have gone in a storm, the wretched panes. It can be pretty gusty here at Glacier, my boy.

9

Women Bring Soap

A jeep came roaring onto the paving outside the window: a cracked silencer, or no exhaust pipe. The women climbed out with the soap. The older woman had that drained, tolerant look that was for a long time the net profit that older country people earned from life’s struggle; the other was in good shape, at least twenty-five to thirty years younger, wearing a floral print dress. The parish clerk introduced the women from the window.

Tumi Jónsen: There is my dear wife, if I may speak so ill of any human being. The other is our stepdaughter, Jósefína. She brings us the spring from the south with her scrubbing brush. It is she who does all the cleaning for everybody.

Stepmother and stepdaughter came in by the kitchen door, and the business of introduction continued.

Tumi Jónsen: The visitor whom you for your part see here, my dear girls, well, he is not actually the bishop of Iceland, but the same as. To be the same as—that to my mind is the same as being more than the bishop. Such a man is at once what the bishop is and in addition what he himself is: a nice young man.

The housewife offered the visitor a limp, rather clammy hand, without change of expression; after all these years she had doubtless long since given up heeding the things her husband went on about. The floral stepdaughter, for her part, had a meaty palm with a firm thumb muscle, and gave her name as she greeted him, as they do in the south: Mrs. Fína Jónsen, widow, from Hafnarfjörður. The coffee will be ready at once. And plenty of Prince Polo biscuits.

Tumi Jónsen: Yes, there’s a lot in the papers about extravagance nowadays. Prince Polo biscuits are what we have indulged in here since prosperity came to the land. Perhaps those who write in the papers don’t have Prince Polo biscuits.

The undersigned declined the offer of coffee and Prince Polo biscuits even though the latter might be the Icelander’s present-day mark of prosperity. But it isn’t the custom in the country to take it seriously if people decline coffee and cakes; and Mrs. Fína Jónsen went out to put the kettle on. She didn’t close the door behind her, but carried on chatting while she busied herself.

Mrs. Fína Jónsen: Well then, I’ve heard the Angler’s back on the rivers now. There’s gold on the go! Let’s hope the sea trout’s running. Yes, what a man! But we’ll carry on scrubbing our kitchen ceiling, mother, as if nothing’s happened.

The widow started to prepare her soap-water in a tub at the kitchen door, and went on talking from out of the tub: Do you make anything by tramping round the country for bishops, young man?

Embi: Not a great deal, no, madam.

Mrs. Fína Jónsen: What are these bishops really for, when they don’t make anything by it? And these professors? It said in the Vísir newspaper the other day that washerwomen make much more than bishops and professors.

Embi: That’s probably not far off the mark.

Tumi Jónsen: Yes, it’s no joke.

Mrs. Fína Jónsen: Obviously it’s for no other reason than that they get neither hourly rates nor overtime. Get up on this chair, mother, and clear the shelves while I’m preparing the soap-water. Yes, just imagine it: the Angler’s back! Who knows, we might get the fishing lodge to do at hourly rates tonight!

Mrs. Fína Jónsen was still bending over her tub mixing the soap-water at the open door. If your emissary had not been a guest in the house he would have closed the door between kitchen and living room, since he had no desire to gaze too long at the woman’s rump and thighs as she bent over double. He got to his feet and said thank you for the welcome and made ready to take his leave. In confidence to the parish clerk: As you can see, sir, I am rather inexperienced. I don’t fathom much of all this, to be honest. Perhaps I could see you again when I’ve had a word with pastor Jón, if not tomorrow then the day after. But there was one little question on the tip of my tongue just now, perhaps two . . .

Tumi Jónsen: Go ahead, my boy, ask anything you like. There is no harm in asking questions. But many would say you could not find a more useless respondent at Glacier than Tumi Jónsen.

Embi: First question—is there any truth in the story that a mysterious casket was taken onto the glacier a few years ago?

The parish clerk scratched himself under the collar with a finger: Fína, dear, have you heard anything about that?

Mrs. Fína Jónsen: Heard about what?

Parish clerk: That something was taken onto the glacier?

Mrs. Fína Jónsen: How should I know? The nonsense one hears!

Housewife, also from the kitchen: Has pastor Jón had anything to say about it?

Parish clerk: It depends on what the bishop thinks.

Embi: In your letter to the bishop there is a reference to “queer traffic with some unspecified casket on the glacier,” without any explanation.

Parish clerk: I could not restrain myself from mentioning it in the letter as unbecoming gossip.

Embi: Before I talk to pastor Jón I would rather have something more to go on than gossip. By the way, what is gossip? Is gossip timely or untimely talk about events that have verifiably taken place? Or is it an out-and-out lie?

Housewife, mumbling in the kitchen in a rather slow, deep drawl, always on the same note: Could it not be either and both? On the other hand, as the old people used to say, truth should often be left alone. The wild horses and the snow buntings should know best the kind of man pastor Jón is; indeed, these creatures follow him around in droves. Even the ravens join company with him if they see him out in the open; and that I like less, because they have been seen to do wicked things, ravens.

Mrs. Fína Jónsen, up on the kitchen bench with her floral dress hitched up, having started to scrub the ceiling: I could well believe there are gold coins in that casket. Let’s just hope it isn’t a woman.

Embi: Is it possible that anyone here knows the name and address of anyone who knows the facts of the matter?

Mrs. Fína Jónsen: You could try asking Jódínus. That devil must have got his hoard of gold from somewhere or other.

Embi: Jódínus? Whose son is he, and where does he live?

Mrs. Fína Jónsen: Jódínus Álfberg, whose son is he? It’s never occurred to me that he had any particular father. He’s just a twelve-tonner darling. And a poet. As if I haven’t tried to get out of him what’s in the casket! If you tell him I sent you, he’ll kill me. Mother, the kettle’s boiling over. Who knows, the Angler might have an idea, if anyone had the nerve to ask him.

Embi: Who is this angler?

Mrs. Fína Jónsen stepped from her lofty perch and smoothed down her print dress: A bishop or the same as, and hasn’t heard of the Angler! It was he who hooked the forty-pound salmon in the river Bláfeldará and lost it. The fish broke the rod. What people do you bishops know?

Embi: Lost the big one, eh? The biggest fish get away at times. But it is often difficult to prove it.

Mrs. Fína Jónsen: But the Angler hooked his fish again the same day. No one believed he had lost such a big salmon. But that evening the fish manifested itself. They found it again at the mouth of the river with the rod and everything in its jaws. Forty pounds. There has never been another man like him in Iceland. Nor such a fish. Or the women he has around him, imagine it! It’s said he’s got a wife in I don’t remember how many capital cities. But the most fantastic was the one he hooked here at Glacier.

Embi: What female was that?

Mrs. Fína Jónsen: It was one of those with exceptional flesh hereabouts.

Embi: And what happened?

Mrs. Fína Jónsen: One could try asking pastor Jón.

Parish clerk: I fear you have not got the story absolutely right there, Fína dear. On the other hand it is quite true that a famous man built a fishing lodge practically under pastor Jón’s nose.

Mrs. Fína Jónsen: I was married in Hafnarfjörður for ten years, daddy. In Hafnarfjörður one can tell the truth to anyone at all. It’s not like here. For whom do you think the Angler built a fishing lodge almost on top of pastor Jón? No sooner had it been built than the woman disappeared—but that’s another story. Dead. Everyone knows that. But the salmon came back, all right.

Embi: You mentioned exceptional flesh earlier, madam. I’m sorry, I wasn’t quite clear whether you were referring to a human being or a salmon. It needs explaining. One talks of exceptional fish or exceptional meat, but I’ve never heard tell of exceptional flesh. What’s the yardstick?

Mrs. Fína Jónsen: Well, for example, take my flesh—that’s inferior and coarse flesh. No one wants that sort of flesh, any more than carrion. Nor indeed has anyone ever built a fishing lodge for it. I suppose it would be that wretch Jódínus, if anyone ever did.

Embi: You were nonetheless married to a man in Hafnarfjördur for ten years, according to your own account.

Mrs. Fína Jónsen: Yes, my late husband, he was a lovely, darling man, God knows. But he wasn’t the world’s greatest angler.

The mother, from the kitchen: No need to overdo it!

Mrs. Fína Jónsen: Not even a twelve-tonner man like Jódínus. On the other hand, I was good enough for my man even though I’ve always had rather poor flesh and my hide isn’t very good, and I’m not flawless inside.

Embi: Was he a whaler?

Mrs. Fína Jónsen: He wasn’t even a shark fisherman. But though he didn’t catch much he had a lively interest in fish. He was the only person in the whole country who listened to the herring news on the radio and kept up with the bankruptcies of the quick-freezing plants. And he took a pinch of snuff occasionally. Went out and bought Vísir. And so on. But it was I who owned the scrubbing brush.

10

Doughty Women
at Glacier

It’s appropriate here to make a long story short.

Your emissary, however, doesn’t wish to delay giving a summary of the tales that have lived here in this part of the land since time immemorial about a mysterious woman: sometimes one, sometimes a multitude. Sometimes this woman has taken the form of some rather disagreeable luggage.
²
Tumi Jónsen has now started to tell the Icelandic sagas in a style that consists principally of casting doubt on the story being told, making no effort to describe things, skating past the main points, excusing the main characters for performing deeds that will live as long as the world endures, erasing their faces if possible—but wiping them clean, just in case. Therefore it never becomes a story, at best just a subject for a poem. The women carry on with their scrubbing. This was a long morning.

The first woman of the district, that Þórgunna who came here from Dublin in days of yore, was a mystery woman who was the origin of the Fróðá Marvels in the days of
Eyrbyggja
Saga
. Þórgunna was tall in stature and magnificently buxom, always sumptuously attired, says Tumi, and the most doughty of women though she was nearly fifty; in those days, women were called doughty who nowadays would be called exceptional. It is not quite clear from the old books what nationality Þórgunna was, whether Scottish, Cimbrian, Celtic, or Irish, except that she wasn’t Nordic. It is therefore not likely that her name was Þórgunna. What her real name was we do not know, on the other hand, says Tumi Jónsen. One thing is certain, though— she caused more uncanny happenings at Glacier than most other women.

This woman was particularly skilled at using runes, and stories of her supernatural power are still an important subject for research by historians, although many find it rather a sensitive matter. The woman caused the death of nineteen men on land and sea, and raised them all from the dead to attend their own funeral feasts. Those who had been drowned at sea sat down by the fire dripping wet and started wringing themselves dry, but those who had been buried in cairns shook out their clothes and spattered everyone with earth. It could be, of course, says Tumi Jónsen, that they were simply practical jokers, youths from another district, perhaps, who had disguised themselves in order to play a trick on people. When the woman died she was laid in a travel-trunk she owned, as portmanteaux used to be called in the old days. She had been a Christian, and this happened in the year 1000. At her own request she was transported for burial to Skálholt, because then there was no other churchyard in the land except that one alone. Þórgunna was buried there, the first person in consecrated ground of whom stories tell. But some scholars reckon that this churchyard was not established until a good fifty years later, says Tumi Jónsen.