Reykjavík Grapevine - 14.08.2009, Síða 46

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The Reykjavík Grapevine
Issue 12 — 2009 OK. So we know the letters are a tad small here. Not many pictures either. Still. These are book
reviews. If you're at all interested in reading books, then you will be familiar with the layout. So
quit complaining. And remember to visit the Nyhil poetry festival this month.
Books | Review Books | Review
On a summer day in 1627, pirates land-
ed on Heimaey, the largest of the West-
mann Islands. They swarmed over the
island’s farms and houses, killed thir-
ty-four of its residents and forced 242
men, women, and children onto their
ships. They sailed with their prisoners
to the city of Algiers, where most were
sold as slaves.
This “Turkish Raid” (Tyrkjaránið in
Icelandic) is an odd and interesting
episode in Icelandic history, and now
there is an inexpensive book on it in
English. The pirates were actually not
what we call Turks today, but rather
Arabic-speaking North Africans, and
there were also Englishmen and other
northern Europeans among the ships’
crews. Though the largest number of
captives came from Heimaey, the pi-
rates also raided farms and villages in
southeastern Iceland, around Djúpiv-
ogur and Berufjörður, as well as the vil-
lage of Grindavík.
Ólafur Egilsson, a sixty-year-old
pastor on Heimaey, was taken prisoner
along with his pregnant wife and chil-
dren. His wife gave birth on the voy-
age south. After arriving in Algeria, he
watched helplessly as his eleven-year-
old son was sold away from the family.
Soon after, he was released and allowed
to make his way to Denmark, leaving his
wife and younger children behind. He
was told to ask the king of Denmark,
then Christian IV, to pay ransom for the
captives’ freedom. Unfortunately Chris-
tian IV, who had just lost a big battle
to Catholic forces in the Thirty Years’
War, didn’t feel able to contribute to the
cause. However, some of the captives
were able to return to Iceland ten years
later.
The English translation of the report
Ólafur wrote when he came home take
up eighty pages of this small book. Óla-
fur tells of the raid, his captivity in Alge-
ria, and his trip home via Italy, France,
Holland, and Denmark. Another forty
pages translate shorter accounts of the
raid by three other captives and a local
Icelandic official. A brief foreword gives
context.
Ólafur was an educated and curi-
ous man and though the first thing that
comes through is his sorrow at losing
his family, much of his tale shows a
fascination with foreign customs. Óla-
fur tells you what kind of hats Muslims
wear and notes how the pirates didn’t
drink alcohol. He describes what cam-
els look like, how monks dress, and how
Catholic confession works (you still had
to pay to be forgiven). He marvels at
Dutch windmills. He reminds us how,
four hundred years ago, distance was
real. If you ran out of cash in a foreign
country, you couldn’t go to the ATM
machine, or even the consulate, for
help.
The book is an inexpensive yet nice-
ly produced paperback, including maps
and illustrations. It’s short, so you can
read the whole thing after dinner or on
a plane trip. The translation is well done
using contemporary language. Over-
all—thumbs up. I didn’t want my two
hours back.
Unfortunately and typically, the book
is not being sold by anyone outside of
Iceland (except perhaps on the used
market), so you can’t order a new copy
from Amazon or other online booksell-
ers and you basically have to buy it here
in Iceland. I saw it at Eymundsson for
1.480 kr. Bóksala Stúdenta (www.bok-
sala.is) lists it at 1.332 kr.
- IAN WATSON
50 Crazy Things to Taste in Iceland
lists, well, fifty crazy things to taste in
Iceland. It is obviously aimed at tour-
ists, and with me being an Icelandic
native myself, I didn’t expect to find
the foods listed here so crazy. And, of
course, the book puts forward all the
usual suspects, such as putrefied shark,
sour ram testicles, brennivín, singed
sheep heads, puffin, hangikjöt and rot-
cured skate. But the book still managed
to surprise me by also listing some of
the non-usual suspects that are, on
close inspection, just as Icelandic as the
mostly-gross-stuff listed above. They
simply have less shock-value and are
therefore not pushed in the tourists'
faces as enthusiastically as the others.
Those include scurvy grass, Malt &
Appelsín, kokteilsósa, rhubarb, Easter
eggs and Icelandic water.
Each item gets a photo or two, and a
short explanatory text where the origins
and history of the food is brief ly not-
ed. There are plenty of fun facts to be
found there, such as when Icelanders
first started producing Malt (1913), that
bread-making is the oldest industry in
the country, Iceland holding the world
record in lamb consumption and last,
but not least, Iceland being home to the
biggest banana plantation in Europe!
The author also lists practical informa-
tion about how to find the less common
foods (except for the Icelandic bananas
because I don't remember ever seeing
any in Reykjavík's grocery stores).
Most of the photos are quite nice,
except for a few where I couldn't help
but think that the intention was to
make the food look as unappealing as
possible, such in the case of the sheep
heads (which is as might be expected),
but I thought they could have done the
hangikjöt and skyr more justice. Espe-
cially the skyr, as the photo portrays a
bearded man eating skyr and he has it
all over his face so you can see the hairs
sticking out of the blobs of skyr, which,
in my opinion, makes it less than appe-
tizing.
I tried very, very hard to come up
with foods that I missed from the list,
and came up with only two items: salty
liquorice and plokkfiskur (hashed fish).
But the publishers probably saw that
coming and left the last pages of the
book blanks for the reader to fill in their
own crazy things to eat in Iceland.
On the whole, the book is a most ex-
cellent overview of the crazy (and not so
crazy) things to taste in Iceland.
50 Crazy Romantic Things To Do In
Iceland
A far cry from Icelandair’s notorious
‘Dirty Weekend in Reykjavík’ ad cam-
paign a few years back and the Bangkok
of the North label Iceland has received
in the past, this book is sweet and ro-
mantic rather than sex-oriented. It is
aimed at foreign couples visiting Ice-
land and lists a number of romantic
activities for them to try during their
stay, but can just as easily give roman-
tic-starved natives some good ideas
for a date or a weekend away from the
children. Some of the romantic things
mentioned can admittedly be done al-
most everywhere, like staying together
in bed for a whole week, running a
marathon with your loved one, or mak-
ing out at the movies, while others are
limited to Iceland, such as diving in the
rift between the Eurasian and Ameri-
can continents in Þingvellir, swinging
in the Westman Islands and getting
married Viking-style.
The book seems thoroughly re-
searched and is very informative. The
text makes for a fun read and the pho-
tographs are mostly very good, some
even spectacular. But I have to say that
in some cases the practical informa-
tion was lacking, as tourists just off
the plane are not likely to know where
to turn to book a private f light, a diving
session or who to contact to in order to
become a cabin guard in the Icelandic
highlands for the summer.
A list like this can obviously never
be finite, so the last pages of the book
are blanks for you to fill in your own ro-
mantic things to do in Iceland.
- HILDUR KNÚTSDÓTTIR
Killing Yourself
With poetry
Poetry | Eiríkur Norðdahl
‘Twas the eve of Nýhils 2nd in-
ternational poetry festival, late
autumn 2006. I was the man-
ager for the second year in a
row. For some reason I can’t remember we
didn’t have any microphones. The Norwe-
gian poet, Gunnar Wærness, had misun-
derstood his flight-information and missed
his flight. The Swedish poets Anna Hall-
berg and Jörgen Gassilewski would be ar-
riving late from Copenhagen—just before
going onstage —and they’d be accompa-
nied by their one month old son, Bruno. A
storm was ripping through Europe and the
Canadian poet Christian Bök was stuck at
the international airport in Frankfurt, wait-
ing it out. We were an hour from opening
the doors.
Two hours earlier my neighbour in
Ísafjörður had rung me up to inform me
that when I left the town ten days earlier I’d
forgotten to close the big skylight window
over my bed. It had now been storming for
three days straight in the Westfjords and
as my bed filled with melting snow water,
it had started to drip down into my neigh-
bour’s apartment.
The week prior to this I’d made some
rather harsh remarks on the radio about a
member of the Liberal Party who’d written
a fiercely racist article in the newspaper,
titled “Iceland for Icelanders?” As I was
standing there, waiting for microphones
and foreign poets and a message from
my sister who’d gone to check out my wet
apartment, the phone rang.
“Hello?” I said, trembling and sweat-
ing. “Is this the guy that was on the radio”
a husky voice asked me. I admitted that
I was indeed I. The voice on the phone
threatened to kill me. I don’t remember
exactly what he said, but I remember he
spoke in a “we”—as in “we will kill you” and
not “I will kill you”.
My apartment turned out to be wet
but not destroyed. The foreign poets all
showed up and got on stage on time and
I haven’t yet been assassinated by some
anonymous group of Icelandic racists.
But it’s probably the closest I’ve come to
having a complete and utter mental break-
down (and I’ve come pretty close). And
still, the two years I arranged the Nýhil
International Poetry Festival was some
of the best times I’ve had in my life: Neu-
rotic, beer-marinated madness on a shoe-
string-budget, to get some of the world’s
best poets to perform in a country where
(almost) nobody had ever heard of them.
But as it was all rather nerve-wrecking
and I myself, being rather susceptible to
such fear and trembling, decided to let
other people have a go at helming the
madness.
This’ll be the first year though, that I
don’t get to attend. In a week’s time (the
weekend of 21st to 23rd of August) the
festival will once again be realised in Reyk-
javík. Be on the lookout for a bugger-eyed,
sweating lunatic in the crowd. That’s the
person responsible for the whole kit and
kaboodle. Be nice to them. Give ‘em a hug
and a pat on the back. Thank them for their
work. The Nýhil International Poetry Festi-
val is no mean feat nor easy task.
100 Crazy Things (Apparently)
50 Crazy Things to Taste in Iceland / 50
Crazy Romantic Things to do in Iceland
Text by Snæfríður Ingadóttir
Photographs by Þorvaldur Örn
Kristmundsson
Translation by Kristín Birgisdóttir and
Darren Foreman.
Design and layout by Arnar Geir
Ómarsson.
Salka, Reykjavík 2009.
The Travels of Reverend Ólafur
Egilsson
Translated by Karl Smári Hreinsson
and Adam Nichols
GOOD NIGHT & GOOD MORNING
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