Lögberg-Heimskringla - 05.12.2003, Blaðsíða 11

Lögberg-Heimskringla • 5 Desember 2003 • page 11
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FRETTIR • NEWS
Continued on Page 12
Vestur íslendingur Visits Iceland - Martha Brooks on the INL/NA Cultural Exchange
Hanna provided familial
grounding for Runólfur’s side of
the family while we were in
Reykjavík, and she and Jón not
only took in my public readings
and appearance at the Reykjavík
Jazz Festival but fed us many
wonderful meals. They intro-
duced us to Hanna’s brother
Sigurður Pálsson a well-known
Icelandic novelist and his equal-
ly famous wife, the filmmaker
Kristín Jóhannsdóttir. They took
us to art galleries, treated us to a
concert at Salurinn with the
Icelandic opera singer, Sigrún
Hjálmtýsdóttir, and to an art
show opening of woven tapes-
tries. At this latter function, we
not only met the artists, Sigríður
Jóhannsdóttir and Leifur
Breiðfjörð, but also Vigdís
Finnbogadóttir the former
President of Iceland, Sigurbjöm
Einaisson, the former Bishop of
Iceland, and, as well, bumped
into their deai' friends, late of
Winnipeg’s Icelandic communi-
ty, Pastor Ingthor Isfeld and his
wife, Gunnur. “So now,” Jón
quipped gently as we left, “you
have met all the famous people
of Iceland!”
One moming, with Hanna
ably at the wheel we headed off
in the driving snow to see
Þingvellir. We got as far as
Halldór Laxness’s old home,
passing two beautiful and pas-
sive Icelandic horses and an
accident where a wheel had
come off a police jeep, blue
lights still swirling in the flying
white. We tumed around with
regret but soon embraced our
new country’s motto: In Iceland
a change of plans is regarded as
an opportunity. My research,
lately, is taking me into old
tuberculosis sanatoriums and
within a half an hour I was
standing inside Reykjalundur, a
rehabilitation centre built circa
1944 by recovering tuberculosis
patients. Our tour guide was
another newly found cpusin,
Margrét Sigurðardóttir. Her gen-
erous smile thumped my heail
with recognition, capturing as it
did the essence of a long-gone
beloved aunt. We stood by one
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Martha discovering the beauty of Akureyri on a sunny morning
of Reykjalundur’s massive win-
dows, looking out at the snow-
covered rocks, cheerfully
admiring the weather. “I was in
Florida, once,” Margrét told me.
“For three months. The weather
never changed. It was so bor-
ing!”
Markús Örn Antonsson,
President of the INL in Iceland
and Director General of
Broadcasting for RÚV, The
Icelandic National Broadcasting
Service, had helped organize
my visit, the reading at the Main
Library where I spoke to a small
but delightful audience on
Sunday, and at Gunnar’s House.
He had also provided, in pait, a
liaison between ourselves and
Friðrik Theódórsson, who mns
the Reykjavík Jazz Festival. In
Markús’s office at RÚV, over-
looking the city of Reykjavík,
the mountains, the dai'k blue
North Atlantic, we talked about
the courage of fishemien. I told
him about seeing the works of
the great Icelandic painter,
Kjarval. About standing beside
Jón Bjarman at Kjarvalsstaðir as
he explained to me that the more
Kjarval painted landscape the
less he included sky on his can-
vas — just the massive sacred
presence of landforms and
water. “There was a painting of
a ship,” I told Markús.
“Ethereal. Tossing on the water.
Jón told me it was supematural.
All Icelandic ships are ghost
ships. You can’t be out in the
water and not feel it.”
Mai'kús nodded and smiled.
“It takes courage to be even a
modem fisherman, in a boat, out
in that ocean. So you have to
believe that you aren’t alone.”
“I know that feeling of not
being alone — that there is
something out there,” I told him.
“I’ve felt it, many tirnes, on the
prairies. But obviously praiiie
people didn’t invent this feel-
ing.”
On Tuesday evening,
November 4, three days after
our arrival in Iceland, we flew
up to Akureyri, a city ringed
with low mountains, and were
greeted wamily at the airport by
another cousin, this time on my
grandmother’s side, Jón
Hlöðver Áskelsson. A person of
vision, like so many Icelanders
who see something that needs
doing and then just go ahead
and do it, Jón Hlöðver is a com-
poser and arranger and the driv-
ing force behind Hot Thursdays
at Deiglan. When he heard that I
was bringing a trio from Canada
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to back me at the Reykjavík
Jazz Festival, he thought, what a
perfect way to open our winter
season at Deiglanl Then he
promptly set in motion a plan to
get us to the Northland.
My musicians, Dave
Restivo, piano, Mike Downes,
bass, Ted Warren, drums,
weren’t scheduled to arrive
from their homes in eastem
Canada until the following day.
Jón Hlöðver set up Brian and
me at the Hótel KEA and stayed
around long enough to introduce
us to Þórgnýr Dýrfjörð,
Akureyri’s cultural attaché,
before he disappeaied down the
snowy street. We were left to
talk at dinner with Þórgnýr and
Jón Erlendsson (a cousin) from
the Committee of Cultural
Affairs about rnany things
including their srnall city’s
ambitious plans to build a con-
cert hall down by the fjord.
Next moming Jón Hlöðver
picked us up in the company of
Gunnar Ragnars and Svanhildur
Hemiannsdóttir (a cross cousin
— related to both sides of the
family) and we set off for
Svartárkot in Bárðardalur to
visit my grandmother’s old
farmstead. None of them had
seen the valley so completely
shrouded in snow and it was a
brilliant day, the sun gracing
every peak and dip of landscape.
A watercolour of the farmstead,
set in an unusual frame of gilt
and raised rounded glass, hangs
over the piano at our lake in
Manitoba. I have gazed at this
ghost of the past ever since I was
seven years old. I was so sur-
prised to find things relatively
unchanged, cupped in a wide
mountain valley,, the trout steam
still traversed by Icelandic sheep
over a small wooden bridge.
One of the sod huts is used as a
smokehouse. At the farmhouse
we were embraced, once again,
by Icelandic hospitality.
Tryggvi Harðarson and Elín
Baldvinsdóttir, who own the
land, greeted us, served us a
bountiful lunch of baked trout,
potatoes with onion butter
sauce, salad, chewy sweet
Icelandic rye bread, and thin
slices of smoked trout. This was
followed by strong fragrant
drafts of coffee. We stood in the
sun-filled living room looking
past the windows at a group of
sheep that were tearing across
the bridge. Jón Hlöðver sighed
deeply and announced, “When-
ever I am here I feel deeply
quiet and blessed right down
inside my soul.”
Continued on Page 12
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