Reykjavík Grapevine - 22.05.2009, Qupperneq 28

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The Reykjavík Grapevine
Issue 6 — 2009
Books | Review
Article | Continued from pg. 6
This travel book from 2008 is built
around 600 photographs by Rafn Haf-
nfjörð, a well-established Icelandic pho-
tographer known for his photographs
of Icelandic landscape and sceneries.
The text is supplied by Ari Trausti, a
poet and geophysicist, whose works con-
cern geology and volcanology, as well
as environmental science. Therefore,
he is certainly an eligible co-author for
a travel book about Iceland. The book is
composed in a very simple way. The pic-
tures – organised three to four to a page
– follow a route from just outside Reykja-
vík, north up the ring highway heading
to the Westfjords and on to Akureyri,
and, from there, due east to Egilsstaðir,
finally returning to Reykjavík. Each
picture is accompanied with a three to
five sentence explanation, providing
background information on the origin
of names and significance of the places.
On the back cover of the book the reader
can find a map of Iceland, marked with
page numbers corresponding to the im-
ages preceding it. On the front cover is a
small road map of Iceland.
The guide starts with an introduc-
tion to Þingvellir. No chapter numbers,
headlines or table of contents are pro-
vided, making it seem unorganised at
first glance. Considering that this is a
photographic travel book, the images
are slightly too small to really convey
the beauty of the places therein. Some of
them don’t even show anything special.
This could have been circumvented by
placing just one or two photos on each
page, thereby giving them more ample
space and, in the process, possibly pro-
viding even more impressive ideas of the
locations.
The information alongside the pic-
tures is clear and brief, but after having
read the short explanations the reader
is sometimes left longing for more. For
a deeper understanding of the natural
wonders and further insight into Iceland
as a country of geological amazement,
another book would be required read-
ing. Moreover, a slightly larger map on
the back cover would be helpful in order
to get a a better idea of the vicinity of the
sights to the main highway. Still, “Focus
on Iceland” is a solid, easy to use guide
for tourists seeking ideas of when and
where to stop during their circuit of the
island. — IRINA DOMURATH
Focus on Iceland
Rafn Hafnfjörð and Ari Trausti
2009
Salka
Warning: You don’t need poetry
I start with the University of Iceland’s semi-
retired Professor Emeritus of Psychology with
a penchant for the supernatural, Dr. Erlendur
Haraldsson. We meet in Perlan during the
middle of the week, as the sun shoots clear bright
light across the bluest sky on Earth; well, at least it
seems so on that day.
Was that a fairy that just whooshed by?
Dr. Haraldsson has led an unusual life to say
the least. In the 1960s he camped out with Iraqi
Kurdistani rebels. Later, he travelled to Andhra
Pradesh to witness the extraordinary Sai Baba.
Haraldsson’s book, Miracles are my Visiting
Cards, documents many of the impossible feats
attributed to this controversial mystic, and many
failed attempts to disprove them. Sai Baba is de-
scribed as a godworker and a prophet, and the
numerous manifestations that he creates out of
thin air continue to stupefy. According to official
figures, his adherents across the globe now num-
ber well over six million. Sai Baba is considered a
risk to the state by the Indian government, and is
kept under a vigilant, watchful eye.
Haraldsson has travelled to Sri Lanka and
Lebanon to investigate children who remember
past lives. He has extensively researched psy-
chics, ghostly visitations, the paranormal and
near death experiences. In short, he is quite a guy
in the scheme of the ethereal, and possibly the
only Icelander who has made any serious attempt
to explain these phenomena from a scientific
perspective. What I really wanted to find out from
Haraldsson was if Icelanders have some unique
trait that makes them more prone to visitations,
and if somehow they are more in tune with
things that go bump in the night than the rest of
us.
In 2007, Haraldsson conducted a survey
with Terry Gunnell of the University’s Folklor-
istics Department. Completed with three hun-
dred and twenty-five subjects from all walks of
life, findings indicate that an average of 30% of
Icelanders have at one time or another visited a
medium or attended a séance, 25% are convinced
that elves probably exist, and 26% believe that
contact with the dead could be established though
the channelling talents of clairvoyants. Magnús
Skarphéðinsson, President of Sálarrannsókna-
félags Reykjavik (the Reykjavik Paranormal
Investigation Society) and Dean of the Icelandic
Elf School, maintains that over 54% of Icelanders
believe in elves and, depending on whom you call
a medium, there are around 25 practicing in Ice-
land today.
Possibly the very first internationally re-
nowned Icelandic psychic was the country lad
Indriði Indriðason. At the time, Spiritualism
was all the rage. In the 1890’s, Madame Helena
Blavatsky channelled new visions from her bohe-
mian pad in the British Raj where she formed a
new spiritual movement: Theosophy. Her book,
The Secret Doctrine, became an instantaneous
cult bestseller. Many of the great thinkers of the
day adopted this new spiritualism. W.B. Yeats, Al-
dous Huxley, T.S. Elliot and Wallace Stevens were
all avid Theosophists.
Soon enough, miracle workers, mystics, ma-
gicians and séance parlours were creeping up all
over Europe and the US. Crowds flocked to Drury
Lane in London and Niblo’s Garden in New York
to witness spectacles like the marvellous Chung
Ling Soo, the magnificent Harry Houdini, and
the savage Nana Sahib. Sceptics and occult de-
tectives also started oozing out of the woodwork,
doing their utmost to debunk Spiritualist char-
latans. One of these was Dr. Guðmundur Han-
nesson, a well-respected medical professional,
scientist and founder of the Icelandic Scientific
Society. He arrived expecting to catch Indriði
red-handed, but came away gaping incredulously
himself.
In one session, Indriði levitated all the way up
to the ceiling like a helium filled balloon, despite
the doctor trying his damndest to hold him down.
In another session, he literally vanished into thin
air, only to re-materialise on the other side of the
building minutes later. No one ever succeeded in
debunking Indriði’s ghostly manifestations.
When I ask Haraldsson why Icelanders are
particularly fond of the mystical side of life, he
says: ‘Iceland is by no means the most spiritualist
country in the world. According to our research
we are below the United States, on a par with Italy,
but certainly among the highest in Europe.’
This dampens my spirits. Naturally, I was
hoping Iceland would be at the very top of the list.
I was always sure ghosts, contact with the dead
and mediums was something that everyone in
Iceland takes on board like going to shop at Bó-
nus and eating skata once a year. It was part of the
national heritage like Þorrabót and Megas.
Before the doctor and I part company, I ask
him: ‘Iceland and elves? What’s with the elves?’
He smiles, sips his hot chocolate almost scien-
tifically, and says, ‘Well, other countries believe in
flying angels, bodhisattvas, ancestor spirits; elves
have been in the Icelandic imagination since be-
fore the sagas. They came over with the first set-
tlers when they arrived from Norway.’
In 1923, the British theosophist Edward
Gardner received two photos anonymously in the
post. They were grainy celluloids of two little girls
and five sugarplum fairies. Enthusiastic, Gard-
ner rushed off to the printing presses. The Cot-
tingley Fairy Photos had all London raving. Even
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, creator of the guileless
Sherlock Holmes, was convinced beyond a shad-
ow of a doubt. Sir Arthur emblazoned his convic-
tions in his first work of non-fiction, The Coming
of the Fairies. The girls, Elsie Wright and Fran-
ces Griffiths, had played a prank at the expense
of Spiritualist-mad London; Sir Arthur became
the laughingstock of the establishment and, to
his dismay, discovered that he had written fiction
again after all. Faeries quickly became relegated
to children’s books shelves. As a cohort to Never-
land’s Peter Pan, Tinkerbell was never quite taken
seriously—at least not by us adults. As far as J.M.
Barrie was concerned, that was pretty much the
point: you can only see the truly magical through
the eyes of a child.
I hear from another Icelander that aside from
elves and the hidden people (huldufólk), that
there are fairies in Iceland too (blómálfar). My
friend tells me that her grandmother has some
in her conservatory. They prefer swirling around
the begonias, which her Amma has been nursing
faithfully for years.
Terry Gunnell is more forthright about su-
pernatural Iceland: ‘Imagine what it was like
to the early settlers arriving here just off the
cramped boats; you’re exhausted, you’ve battled
torrential waters for the past weeks. There’s not
a soul in sight, no human habitation, and yet
whispers of steam are rising from the land; in the
right light, even now you could mistake them for
spirits. Remember, they were pagans, bound to
the nature, worshipped Óðinn, Þór, Freya.
‘Of course there were mythical creatures liv-
ing in this wild, icy place. What else could they
be? To top it all off, you had cloud formations un-
like any ever seen, you had the northern lights,
hot water bubbling from the earth. This was a
land unlike any other, a land of Gods.’
Perhaps the fairies and elves were just along
for the ride?
Scattered here and there throughout the Ice-
landic countryside, if you are looking carefully,
you will see little houses painted on the sides of
rocks—possibly the fancies of children. If you
consider Gunnell’s explanation that fanciful
landscape and weather married with pagan myth
leads to fanciful imaginings, some things start to
make sense.
Then tell me, why do I still have goosebumps?
Next time: I interview a deep-trance medium
and come in contact with a collective unconscious
life-form. Seriously!
Marc Vincenz was born in Hong Kong. His
book, Animal Soul, a wild adventure based on
indigenous mythologies, will be forthcoming in
China later this year by Shanghai Wen Hui. He is
presently working on a non-fiction book on mod-
ern mysticism, and a collection of poetry, A Pock-
etful of Crickets. He has been coming to Iceland
for near to fifteen years, and travels frequently
between Reykjavik, Zurich, Barcelona and Hong
Kong. He speaks many languages, but still hasn’t
quite mastered the enigma that is Icelandic.
Poetry | Eiríkur Örn Norðdahl
Eiríkur Örn Norðdahl writes our
regular poetry column. He is an
awesome writer/poet in his own
right.
Anyone that gets a rudi-
mentary education in
the Western world, or
at least in the places I
know anything about,
is taught that poetry is
like vitamins – it’s good
for you. It’ll enlighten
your mind, make you more
aware of your emotions, your
sensibilities, the entire scope of
your inner life. It is the “highest of art
forms” – so sublime that it can hardly
be viewed with human eyes, read with
human brains. It’s extremely difficult
to understand and just to grasp the
littlest bits of it requires a life-long
commitment.
While none of this is necessar-
ily untrue, the same argument could
as easily be applied to rock’n’roll, to
movies – to the whole boatload of
“popular culture” that we (as a society)
simultaneously love and loathe. Many
of the so-called simple songs of the
Eurovision Song Contest are in fact
complex constructions that meld
super-produced pop-genres with eth-
nic music, the history of which reaches
thousands of years into the past of
participating countries. And yet you’ll
never hear anyone say they didn’t quite
“understand” the Armenian song – that
its use of musical intricacies simply
left you baffled. Very few people ask of
pop-music that it should be simpler, or
that movies should not have so many
jump-cuts, should not be shot from
weird angles or with unnatural camera
movements. Quite the contrary, we’ve
completely embraced all of popular-
culture’s complexities, so much so
that they’ve become utterly mundane
– we don’t even notice them without a
conscious effort to do so.
And yet, when it comes to literature
in general, and poetry in particular,
most people’s first reaction is to not
“understand” it – giving up before
you’ve tried is the name of the game –
no matter how often poets and writers
try to emphasise that you are in fact
not meant to “understand” it. This is
one of the problems of making art
with and through language, a medium
we first and foremost see as a vehicle
for information – it’s what we use to
communicate our thoughts. It’s how I
tell you that I’m hungry, how you give
me directions, and so forth. But poetry
doesn’t work like that. Ludwig Witt-
genstein (a practitioner
of that other “difficult”
art: philosophy) once
said: “Do not forget
that a poem, although
it is composed in the
language of informa-
tion, is not used in the
language-game of giving
information.”
This misunderstanding is also why
so many poems of poets that don’t
read much poetry have more to do
with anecdote or lineated prose, than
they have to do with poetry – I feel
like this [insert metaphor-cliché]
and then I feel like that [insert
metaphor-cliché] – and even more
experienced poets often don’t seem
able (or willing) to ever stray from the
realm of the metaphor, the most basic
of poetic tools (metaphor is to poetry,
as 4/4 is to rock’n’roll).
In this manner, a lot of the poetry
that people find “difficult” can seem to
be very simple ditties to anyone who
spends time reading it. The juxtapo-
sition of one pretty image with the
next, jumping between the lilies of
the ponds – it’s not rocket science,
and it’s not cross-word puzzles (i.e.
you’re NOT supposed to “solve” it – it
doesn’t “mean”, it is “mean”). It’s Layla,
A Hard Day’s Night – but it’s also Das
Wohltemperierte Clavier, Atari Teenage
Riot, African tribal music and Mack the
Knife. You can have your pick of the
litter.
Imagine for a minute that your
experience of poetry was the same
as your experience with music, that it
was everywhere – that there was no
way of escaping it. Literacy of poetry,
like literacy of pop-music, movies etc.
is an acquired skill and “complex” is
a very relative term. It’s of note that
the more anyone listens to music, the
more complex their taste becomes; the
less anyone listens to music, the more
mainstream their taste. The same goes
for poetry.
The bottom-line is this: poetry is
not vitamins, and you’re not going
to shrivel up and die if you don’t get
regular doses of it. It’s not (necessar-
ily) any more difficult than pop-music.
And you don’t need it. You can, I’m
sure, live a very decent life without it.
I’ve seen it done. And although you’ll
miss out on the fun, and that never
killed anyone.
Radio to the other
side.
In Search of the Real McCoy