Reykjavík Grapevine - 25.08.2017, Blaðsíða 56

The message was clear as the protesters talked to the local security. The man to the
right is Gylfi Ægisson, a well-known Icelandic musician and vocal homophobe.
56 The Reykjavík Grapevine
Issue 15 — 2017
SAGA SPOTS
SAGA SPOTS
Travel Tips from
W.H. Auden
Letters from Iceland, Seventy Years Later
Words: Eli Petzold Illustration: Lóa Hlín Hjámtýsdóttir
W it h fa sci sm a nd nat iona l-
ism beginning to take hold in a
handful of western nations, two
idealistic Oxonian
poets realise their
l ifelong dream of
t ravel i ng to Ice-
land, and publish
an interdisciplinary
t r av e l o g u e c om -
prised of poem s,
letters and archival
anecdotes. No, this
isn’t a crowdfund-
ing pitch for bougie
millennials seeking
to curate their ex-
cursion to the Land
of Ice and Fire in a
g rou nd- bre a k i n g
multimedia volume; rather, it’s
the premise of Letters from Ice-
land, a hodgepodge account of
W.H. Auden and Louis MacNiece’s
peregrinations through Iceland
in 1936. Published exactly seventy
years ago in August of 1937, the
work has hardly achieved canon-
icity amidst the rest of the poets’
celebrated oeuvres, and indeed,
although the authors inscribed
their travels in epistolary verse,
much of the poetry is nothing
to write home about. The book,
however, remains a telling docu-
ment, both of continuity and
change throughout the seven dec-
ades that have witnessed Iceland
transform from a seldom-visited
Danish colony of impecunious
farmers into a tourist-swarmed
sovereign nation of bankers and
trend-setters. Here are three of
the most salient observations.
1. Skip Reykjavík
Upon arriving in Iceland, Auden
responded to a series of ques-
tions posed by Christopher Ish-
erwood, his long-time pal and
sometime lover. Asked if there
is “any attempt to make the visi-
tor feel that he is arriving at a
capital city,” Auden offered, “Not
much.” Arriving by ship, Auden
recounted lazy dockhands and
the assortment of warehouses
and agricultural paraphernalia
scattered throughout the harbour
area. Today, visitors first arrive
in the ultra-modern airport at
Keflavík; but the ap-
proach to the capital
remains just as un-
ceremonious as in
Auden’s day; indus-
trial facilities line
the road through
the suburbs, cu l-
minating at BSÍ’s
crumbling edifice
on the outskirts of
downtown. Disem-
barking here, one
wouldn’t seem over-
dramatic in agree-
i ng w ith Auden’s
initial assessment
of Reykjavík as “Lutheran, drab
and remote.”
Auden was no more complimen-
tary about the rest of his stay in
the capital, calling it “the worst
possible sort of pro-
vincial town as far
as amusing oneself
is concerned.” Bored
by Reykjavík, Auden
wrote, “there was
nothing to do but
soak in the only ho-
tel with a license; at
ruinous expense.”
Today, of cou rse,
t here’s no shor t-
age of activities and
happenings around
town, but Auden’s
bla s é at t it ude i s
echoed by the com-
mon sentiment of contemporary
tourists and guidebooks that
Reykjavík may be “done” in an
afternoon.
2. Booze ain’t cheap
The financial strain of Auden’s
sole urban pastime remains just
as palpable today. In the sum-
mer of 1936, with the Icelandic
Prohibition recently reversed, a
whisky and soda at Hotel Borg
cost 2.25 ISK, and a glass of decent
sherry 1.45 ISK. For those wishing
to imbibe on the go, a bottle of
brown sherry cost 9.50 ISK, and
a bottle of Spanish brandy 6.50
ISK—both of which could be pro-
cured “furtively over the counter”
in government-run shops. Today,
the array of intoxicating potables
on offer is slightly broader, but
these, too, must be acquired from
state-owned Vínbúðin shops.
And although the 1936 prices
seem a pittance today, they were
extravagantly steep to Auden and
MacNiece who, by comparison,
paid 10 ISK a night for modest
accommodation in University
of Iceland dormitories. As was
the case then, a 700ml bottle of
brandy (which can’t be bought for
less than 5.500 ISK) could easily
cost more than half the price of a
night’s stay in a comparably mod-
est private room.
3. Icelandophilia is
timeless
One might be mistaken into
thinking that the current Iceland
frenzy is a twenty-first century
phenomenon, spurred on by Ins-
tagram shots, airlines’ aggressive
advertising campaigns and the
international export of quirky,
atmospheric pop music. Howev-
er, Letters from Iceland—itself a
product of the authors’ Icelando-
philia—portrays a host of others
stricken with the same bug. In
fact, Auden may well have coined
the neologism, writing of a fel-
low traveller whom
he characterized as
“a Scotch girl, an
English lecturer at
one of our provin-
cia l un iversit ies,
a nd a g reat Ice-
landophil.” Curious
academics were not
the only Icelando-
philes Auden and
MacNiece encoun-
tered; on a number
of occasions, they
crossed paths with
Nazi-sympathizing
Germans, and even
high-ranking Nazis. While in
Hólar, Auden shared accommo-
dation with Nazi ideologue Al-
fred Rosenberg and the brother of
Hermann Göring, who would be-
come the Reich’s Vice-Chancellor.
Although now, as then, white na-
tionalists still idealise Iceland as
“the cradle of Germanic culture,”
contemporar y Icelandophi l ia
affects a much broader swath
of people; it ’s far likelier that
you’d share accommodation with
an oddball queer kid who loves
krútt-pop and analogue photog-
raphy than with an adherent to
genocidal ideology.
“the worst
possible sort
of provincial
town as far
as amusing
oneself is
concerned.”
“On a number
of occasions,
they crossed
paths with
Nazi-sympa-
thizing Ger-
mans”
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