Iceland review - 2015, Side 40

38 ICELAND REVIEW
she tells me, as she heats a meal of mashed
potato, sweet potato and carrots, pasta and
smoked pork. The meal is served as every-
one—young and old—gathers around the
large table in the dining area. Once lunch
is finished and coffee is served, it’s back to
work.
Being located in the far northwest,
the summers are considerably shorter in
Hornstrandir than in other parts of the
country. Yet, despite the harsh conditions,
there was always food in Hornstrandir
while there was poverty in other parts
of Iceland, Oddur tells me. “Because of
the rich birdlife there were a lot of eggs.
Eggs were an important part of the diet.”
The region’s large bird cliffs are home to
guillemots, razorbills, puffins, Arctic terns,
kittiwakes and fulmars. “People also made
slátur [blood pudding and liver sausage
from the innards of sheep], and ate soured
foods. They also fished, but only 20 percent
of the catch was eaten by the community,
the rest was sold,” he adds. Trout fried in
sugar was a local specialty, and nets were
laid in the lake by the church. Facing the
Greenland Sea however meant that sea
fishing, done by open row boats at the time,
was not always possible due to the polar ice,
which also brought the threat of attacks by
polar bears which traveled, and still very
occasionally do travel, by iceberg from
Greenland. Driftwood from Siberia still
litters the coastline, providing firewood and
building materials as it did in times past.
The people also made use of the rich
plant life, Þóra tells me. Her grandmoth-
er-in-law, Helga Kristjánsdóttir, who lived
in Miðvík, located in central Aðalvík, boiled
young angelica stems, which are high in
vitamin C, in sugar, hung them out to
dry and then gave them to her children
as sweets in the winter. People also used
the herbs growing in the area and many
picked Iceland moss from the mountain-
sides, cooked it in boiling milk and drank
it. “They also made mash out of northern
dock and used seaweed. According to our
forefathers, they were never hungry here.”
There was, however, no natural hot water
source in Aðalvík, no roads or airstrip, and
no natural harbor, and the winters could be
very tough. Jónína says it can sometimes
be difficult enough in the summer to get
to Aðalvík. “We were here a few years ago.
My daughter works as a nurse, on shift
work, back in Reykjavík. She was supposed
to work the day after we were to arrive back
but the weather was so bad that we got
stuck here for a day and she didn’t make
it back in time. Luckily we were able to
get phone reception and call but we learnt
that you have to be flexible. In the winter,
it would be very, very difficult. You’d never
know when you’d be able to get back, as
the weather is often very bad… but the
difficulty in getting here is one thing that
makes this place so unique.”
END OF AN ERA
Hornstrandir is believed to have been
inhabited since settlement times, with
records indicating that the region was
part of the area settled by Geirmundur
Heljarskinn, the son of Norwegian king
Hjör Hálfsson, in the 870s. Interestingly,
according to historical sources, outlaws
traveled to Hornstrandir to board foreign
ships and leave the country.
Up to 100 people lived in each of
Aðalvík’s two main communities, Sæból and
Látrar, which are located on each side of
the 7-kilometer-wide (4.4-mile) bay, as well
as up to 100 in Hesteyri, which is located
southeast from Aðalvík, over the mountains
in Hesteyrarfjörður fjord. Other commu-
nities in Hornstrandir consisted mainly of
only a few houses with between ten and 30
inhabitants. All in all between 400 and 500
people lived in the region in the early 20th
century. During World War II, the British
built a base on Darri mountain, in the
south of Aðalvík, to keep watch for German
vessels passing to the northwest of Iceland,
and in the 1950s, during the Cold War,
the U.S. military set up a radar station on
Straumnesfjall mountain in the northern
end of the bay.
The Norwegians built a whaling station
in Hesteyri in 1894, resulting in develop-
ment of the area. In 1881 Hesteyri became
an authorized trading post and the trad-
ing company Ásgeirsverslun in Ísafjörður
opened a branch in the town. People from
Aðalvík traveled to Hesteyri to work. The
whaling station was later turned into a
herring fish-meal factory when whaling
was banned in 1915, but the herring later
disappeared and as a result the factory
was shut down in 1940, leaving the people
without work. The process of depopula-
tion happened quickly: in 1942 there were
roughly 420 people living in Hornstrandir.
Following rapid social changes during and
after World War II, by 1952, a mere ten
years later, the last remaining inhabitants
voted to leave the area for good.
The presence of the British army accel-
erated the depopulation of Aðalvík, Oddur
says. “Once the British arrived they built
houses in Aðalvík and offered the locals
to come and work for them. This meant
that they began to get money and saw how
people could live in Ísafjörður and they too
wanted to live like that. It happened really
quickly, more and more people left until
there were very few left. And you need to
be at least 20 people to sustain a commu-
nity here—to produce hay, to herd animals,
to produce meat, to fish,” Oddur explains.
Not everyone was drawn to the modern
conveniences becoming more prevalent in
the rest of the country, though. We’re told
of a woman who was so devastated at the
thought of leaving the community in 1952
that she took her own life by swallowing
rat poison. Perhaps unsurprisingly, there’s
no mention of it in the church book, which
registers births, christenings, marriages and
deaths. Whether or not the woman actually
committed suicide, the story suggests how
reluctant some people were to give up their
homes in Hornstrandir.
MAINTAINING TRADITION
Leaving the priest’s house, we pass Henry,
sitting on the quad bike he picked us up
on when we arrived by boat the day prior.
He’s been fishing with his grandchildren
in the lake and they’ve got a few trout
to show for it. We head back to Áslaug’s
grandfather’s house, moved from Hesteyri
in 1926 and now located in Þverdalur,
a valley which leads into Aðalvík, where
we’ve been staying since our arrival. The
large three-story, white corrugated iron
house, also named Þverdalur, is surrounded
by angelica and wildflowers: dandelions,
sheep sorrel, Alpine lady’s mantle, wood
crane’s bill and blueberry flowers—and to
COMMUNITY