Lögberg-Heimskringla - 01.04.2012, Page 5

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Lögberg-Heimskringla • 1. apríl 2012 • 5
There are those who claim that the origins of April Fool’s Day may
be traced back to Noah who
inaugurated the first fool’s
errand when he sent the dove
out on a fruitless search for dry
land on April 1. The “fool’s
search” is a time-honoured
April 1 tradition.
Although the date varies,
most cultures have a day set
aside for pranking. It seems
to satisfy something very real
in the human psyche. Mark
Twain might have figured it
out. “The first of April is the
day we remember what we are
the other 364 days of the year,”
he wrote.
Our date, the April 1
one, celebrated across North
America and Iceland, comes
from a change in the calendar
in 1582.
About the year 431, the
Christian church named March
25 as the date of one of the
most important Feast Days, the
Feast of the Annunciation. Like
most of the civil authorities,
the church leaders began the
calendar year on March 25.
The custom in the Middle Ages
was to celebrate for an entire
week (eight days – Sunday to
Sunday – an octave) after a holy
day, so that April 1 concluded
the church octave for the Feast
of the Annunciation. Visiting
and exchanging gifts on April
1 became a popular custom,
especially in France. April 1
evolved as the Christian New
Year’s Day.
However, in medieval
times, a festival mocking
important Christian events
and personalities, held around
January 1, became so offensive
that it was banned. That left a
gap that needed filling, and
King Charles IX of France
adopted January 1 as New
Year’s Day. That day became
official with the introduction
of a reformed calendar, the
Gregorian calendar, in 1582,
which switched the beginning
of the year from April 1 to
January 1.
Now imagine the challenge
involved in getting that
information out across France
and then all of Europe before
computers, cell phones, the
Internet, telephones, telegrams,
or a literate population of
newspaper readers. Confusion
reigned.
There were those in France
who knew about the official
change of date for the exchange
of gifts, and those who did
not – or who forgot, or who
objected to the change. They
became the focus of pranks and
practical jokes perpetrated by
the knowing, on a date called
Le Poisson d’Avril. Why fish?
In the astrological calendar as
developed under the earlier
Julian calendar, on April 1
the sun departs from Pisces
(the fish) in the zodiac. Fish
are easy to bait, easily taken
in, easily caught. Fish were
flung into the houses of people
who resisted the new calendar.
Victims were called April fish.
The custom spread,
becoming wildly popular
in England by the 1600s. In
France, victims were April
fish; in England, they were
April fools, in Scotland, April
gowks (cuckoos). In Iceland
the day is known as Fyrsti
Apríl and the favoured prank is
to persuade people to hlaupa
apríl, the Icelandic version of
wild goose chase. As settlers
came to North America from
Western Europe, they brought
their April 1 traditions with
them.
Some April Fool’s pranks
reach a relatively high level of
sophistication. In Montreal, two
morning men from rival radio
networks raced back and forth
between studios by taxi, taking
over one another’s programs.
A Toronto newspaper found
ordinary people with names
that matched the names of
celebrities and ran a series of
articles featuring them. And,
on April 2, 2011, the Iceland
Review confessed that the
story they had run the day
before, the article “Killer
Whale Terrorizes Reykjavík
Residents” was an April Fools’
Day joke – a long-standing
tradition of the Icelandic media
in which Iceland Review had
first participated three years
earlier.
A good part of what we do at L-H is share information with one
another, and that’s the intrinsic
value of the travel story. We
publish several a year, all year
round, even though we do have
a specific travel issue. So, what
makes a good travel story?
There are, roughly, three
types of travel stories:
1) The travelogue, focusing
on the route taken, the scenery,
the people met along the way, a
little history, some geography,
some culture.
2) The personal essay,
describing, most often for an
L-H article, the challenges
or delights of finding living
relatives, old family farm sites,
or other connections, generally
during a visit to Iceland.
3) The informative article,
stressing the logistics of trip
planning, the advantages and
disadvantages of various types
of accommodation, places to
eat/shop/get a taste of local
culture, the rewards and the
pitfalls.
Most often, of course, we
try to combine a little of all
three types in one article –
though that isn’t always easy in
600 to 800 words.
In his fifth edition of On
Writing Well, William Zinsser,
whom I admit is my absolutely
favourite author of a guide to
writing, devotes 15 pages, 80
to 95, to writing travel stories.
“People and places are the
twin pillars on which most
nonfiction is built. Every human
event happens somewhere, and
the reader wants to know what
that somewhere was like,”
he says. To summarize 15
pages is difficult bordering on
impossible, but Zinsser advises
writers to seriously consider
what made his or her trip
different than anyone else’s and
what he or she “can tell us that
we don’t already know.”
Details, he says, must have
some specific importance.
Words must be chosen with
care. “Look for fresh words
and images.” He sums it up
this way. “Find details that
are significant. They may be
important to your narrative;
they may be (and I delight in
his choice of words for his list)
unusual, or colourful, or comic,
or entertaining.”
Where can we find examples
of the style of travel writing
that most suits our trip, our
personal writing style, and our
unique temperament? Because
of my passion for quirky bits
of information, I like this one,
from page 15 of this issue, taken
from one of W.D. Valgardson’s
blogs. The quote is from a young
artist, S.E. Waller, writing about
his journey to Iceland in 1874:
“The little house at Oddi was
exceedingly comfortable, the
food good, the bed clean, our
host kindness itself. All this
we were very grateful for; but
to make the evening complete,
I found, to my intense joy, a
Shakespeare lying in a dusty
corner. I had brought no books
with me, fearing they might
tend to idleness, so that, on
discovering this treasure, my
delight was great.”
Shakespeare in a little house
in 1874 Iceland? There is layer
upon layer of information in
that little paragraph – starting
with a hint about what Waller
expected, of Iceland, the people,
and himself.
For the mystery buffs
among our readership – good
mystery writers are experts
at describing people and
locations in very few well-
selected word pictures. One of
my favourites – because I am
reading her now – is Laurie
R. King, who writes Sherlock
Holmes stories from the point
of view of his partner and wife.
There are dozens of others,
including the Icelandic mystery
writers. Our own Allan Casey,
the Icelandic Canadian who
won the Governor General’s
Literary Award for non-fiction
for Lakeland: Ballad of a
Freshwater Country, has a gift
for engaging the reader with
the people, the land, and the
bodies of water he encounters.
Your local library should be
able to track down a copy.
Two last thoughts.
There’s more to travel than
trips to Iceland. What about a
travelogue centred around your
own area? It could feature an
annual festival, but it doesn’t
need to be so concrete. What
does your area have to offer to
other Icelanders from across
North America and Iceland?
There’s a side advantage
to doing this sort of piece
– it gives the writer a fresh
perspective on the place he or
she calls home.
Finally, photos. Now that
digital cameras have eliminated
the cost of developing 15 rolls
of film, yes, you will take hun-
dreds of pictures. Take the time
to pick out your absolute favou-
rite three or four photos and add
captions to them. This was your
trip, your very personal expe-
rience. You know better than
anyone else which photos most
speak to your physical and emo-
tional journey, so send those – in
a resolution as high as you can
muster, so that, in reproducing
on newsprint, they will contain
as much of the original beauty and
excitement as possible.
THE EDITOR’S CORNER
Sharing your travel story
Joan Eyolfson Cadham
April Fool’s Day – a history
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