Iceland review - 2014, Qupperneq 52

50 ICELAND REVIEW
once, auður used to go to bed with a knife. With three
young girls in the house and a husband working at sea,
the thin piece of timber that served as the front door
was a temporary feature. She often felt nervous and fearful at
night. Looking back on this, she laughs.
Yet this is a woman who’s known to queens and presidents.
She’s on a first-name basis with a host of icelandic ambassadors
across the world, and some politicians and bureaucrats perhaps
refer to her as “that woman again.” Some might even compare
her to a lioness for her steely resolve and commitment to those
she loves. “mothers are fighters,” she says, “and a mother’s love
is the strongest love.” She speaks these words sitting with her
fists clenched.
FateFul day
as a champion swimmer in her youth, auður was an active
youngster. Some thought she’d become a priest and others
thought she’d become a teacher. But following a dream she had
when she was 14, she decided that nursing was for her. “i was
meant to be a nurse. it was the only job for me.”
marriage and three daughters followed, as did a career as
an orthopedic operating room nurse, and her life consisted of
juggling work and family commitments. “my life was just like
everybody else’s,” she says.
However, that changed one day in June, 25 years ago.
Hrafnhildur thoroddsen, auður’s then 16-year-old daughter,
set off that morning with her friend to start a summer job.
during the drive, the girls’ car was hit by a bus. Her friend was
thrown from the vehicle and died instantly. Hrafnhildur sus-
tained critical injuries.
She bled profusely, half of her abdominal wall was destroyed,
and her intestines hung from her body. after auður received a
visit from a priest and policeman who told her about the accident,
she rushed to the hospital. She didn’t recognize her daughter, so
extensive were her injuries.
in the taxi on her way home from the hospital, auður asked the
driver to turn off the radio. “i asked him to turn it down because
i couldn’t have it,” she says. “i didn’t understand why others’ lives
had not stopped because my life had stopped. time just stood
still.” at home, she recalls the water hitting her in the shower,
crying constantly, and her mother taking her for a walk, leading
her around the neighborhood by the hand, like a little child.
Following a six-week induced coma, numerous surgeries and
skin transplants, Hrafnhildur woke up. She was paralyzed below
the waist, deaf and dumb and her hands were spastic. She had a
stoma, her body was covered in sores, her back was broken, her
hips had been smashed, she had lost one of her ovaries, a large
part of her intestines, a number of toes on one foot, and one
of her legs had necrosis. despite these horrific injuries, auður
remembers that “it was clear she still had her wits about her. i
gave her a crossword puzzle, and she was able to do that. i was
at the hospital the whole year. my oldest daughter stopped work,
and she took care of her little sister, who was seven years old, and
my husband was mostly at sea. then we had to change homes
because our house was unsuitable for wheelchairs.”
In 1989 Auður Guðjónsdóttir’s life changed forever. Her then 16-year-old
daughter was left paraplegic after her car collided with a bus. For the 25
years since that fateful day, Auður has fought passionately for an
Icelandic-led international effort to improve spinal cord injury
treatment. In 2007 she founded the Institute
of Spinal Cord Injury.
By MiCA AllAn. PHOTOS By Páll StefánSSon.
the
lioness