Lögberg-Heimskringla - 15.12.2007, Side 7

Lögberg-Heimskringla - 15.12.2007, Side 7
 Lögberg-Heimskringla • 15. desember 2007 • 7 Visit us on the web at http://www.lh-inc.ca Finding Icelandic ties on a mountain climb Adrienne Selbie I came back from the Snorri Program in July this year with something that I hadn’t expected: a genuine feeling of connection to the country and my relatives — and also a bottle of brennivín in my lug- gage... I was skeptical of the idea of “fi nding my roots” — it seemed a bit artifi cial, and I went to Iceland expecting that the program would provide an exceptional cultural and edu- cational experience. But, as it turned out, the people and the land itself made my stay much more signifi cant than that. There are many stories I could tell about my six weeks in Iceland, but what really crystallizes the experience for me are the mountains of the West Fjords, so I am going to try to describe them and their effect on me. The mountains are big. They have been here for a long time. And they don’t need or care about me at all. I don’t quite know how to respond to them. And they challenge me too. I do dumb things like clam- ber up shifting slopes of rock without stopping or thinking until I reach a big boulder and then I have to stop. And when I do, I realize that the rocks are sliding under the weight of my wet feet. So I gather my breath for a burst of scrambling up, around and over. I sit on the boulder, panting, and vow not to do that again — until the next time I fi nd my- self, fi ngers and toes digging into rocky crevices, realizing that these are not crevices in a single rock, but loosening spac- es between many small rocks that are held together only by a rather thin layer of moss. Again, as I pause I begin to feel the sliding rocks under me. And I shift. And the rocks shift. It’s only by a scramble up, not resting on any one precarious collection of shifting shards, that I burst out onto a moun- taintop fi eld of sun and wind. And I can see really far. Sit- ting on the thickest, spongiest, highest grass, I try to come up with a word or a phrase or a quote to say now — and also to use later to describe this see- ing. But everything is a cliché, or at least I know it will seem so later. So I take a million pictures and then rebuke myself for ru- ining the moment by taking a million pictures. I wander over along the ridge, watching the jagged shadows and the dark shaped rocks and look at the next town, which takes a while to drive to but which, from up here, I can see just as well as Bergistanga, my frænka’s house. It’s 10 o’clock at night but the sun is so bright. I pace a bit and realize that what had looked like the hard way up here from the road is actually the easy way up and even has posts marking a path. I want to stay longer, but not knowing how to respond is unsettling me. I’m full of something, some feeling, so I can’t sit still with the wind and sun and the grass. I look at the glacier again, and at the dragon-teeth rocks in the next fjord again, and the mountains as far as I can see, and the North Pole out from the fjord across the ocean (okay, so I can’t actually see it), and my eyes rest on each mountain point along the fjord, whose names I have been told repeat- edly but still can’t remember, trying to burn it all into one im- age. I fi nally start to head down, and immediately regret not dangerously persevering out to the very tip of the overhang- ing top of the mountain. I feel pretty sure that if I could just sit there, right over the aching- ly blue water, I would fi nally be able to name whatever it is I’ve been feeling. I hesitate, but then the rocks start sliding un- der my feet again (the path has escaped me once more) and so I jump from rock tuft to rock tuft, hoping I don’t step in a hole. Or in mud. Suddenly, as I follow the mountain down, fi nding my roots isn’t so much a critical effort of digging up bits of an- cestors and holding on with a tightly gripping willpower. In- stead, it’s about me climbing, and drinking tea with my rela- tives Maddy and Gunnsteinn, and baking bread, and going fi shing, and being clueless in the store, and digging down my own roots here. After all, these are the same mountains my ancestors saw, and they were old and big then, too. The deadline for applica- tion for the 2008 Snorri Pro- gram is 15 JANUARY 2008. For more information or to ap- ply, visit www.snorri.is. PHOTO: ADRIENNE SELBIE Originally from Toronto, ON, Adrienne took the opportunity to climb a mountain in the West Fjords of Iceland and snap a self-portrait while on the Snorri Program. Brent Stefanson, C.A. 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