The Icelandic Canadian - 01.09.2003, Qupperneq 23

Vol. 58 #1
THE ICELANDIC CANADIAN
21
Askja’s Tremors
by Christine Sunley
In the winter of 1864, the infant who
would one day become known as the
revered Nyja Island Skald - Poet of New
Iceland - was born in a turf-roofed farm-
house in the east of Iceland with two teeth
cutting through his gums.
“Skaldgemla!” cried the baby's grand-
mother, who was also the midwife. She
held the squalling newborn close to her
daughter’s face and bared his upper lip so
the mother could witness the tiny nubs.
Outside the wind rose up, adding its high-
pitched squeal to the baby’s lusty howling.
The lamp, lit by the oil of a whale that had
beached in the East Fjords that summer,
flickered but remained lit. And the mother,
pale and limp and barely conscious, smiled:
a skaldgemla, a child born with teeth, was
destined to become a poet.
Later, as the baby suckled, nascent
teeth grinding his mother’s breast, the two
women decided to name him Bragi, after
the god of poetry and also, more impor-
tantly, in honour of his maternal grandfa-
ther, who was not only a skald himself but
descended from a long line of poets, some
distinguished, others not.
But Petur, the baby’s father, forbid the
name Bragi. Not, he insisted, because there
was anything wrong with the name itself,
but because of the superstitious basis on
which the name was chosen.
“This boy is a child of God,” he
intoned - as if from the pulpit, though his
audience consisted only of wife, mother-
in-law, and a day-old infant - “and God
has no tolerance for superstition.”
The baby’s mother acquiesced, but his
grandmother said nothing. Everyone knew
that children born with teeth became poets,
just as a woman who stared at the northern
lights while pregnant would give birth to a
cross-eyed child. But why give that
pompous Petur the satisfaction of an argu-
ment? There was nothing he loved more.
Petur named the boy (Mafur - called
(Mi - and as if to ward off future supersti-
tious influences he moved his new family
to a farm far from Brekka, the homestead
of his wife’s family where the birth had
taken place. The first farm they inhabited
was Jorvik, in the East Fjords. (Mi had no
memory of Jorvik - they abandoned it
when he was two - which is just as well,
since they nearly starved there. Over the
next nine years Petur attempted three more
farms - Surtsstadir, Klypsstadir, and
Gunnarsstadir - all of them failures. True,
times were bad all over Iceland. Also true,
Petur made a miserable farmer. He had set
out to be a minister and attended seminary
in Reykjavik, but at the end of his first year
he’d joined in with a group of students who
rebelled against the Danish masters. The
school was briefly closed, and Petur
returned to the East, having abandonned
his calling. Eleven years and four farms
after (Mi’s birth, Petur accepted the humil-
iating offer to return to Brekka, now run
by his wife’s brother Pall. For Petur, the
move was a step down, an admission of
failure. For his wife it was a glorious home-
coming to her elderly parents and beloved
brother. For (Mi, now a gangly boy of
eleven with two younger brothers trailing
behind him, life at Brekka was nothing less
than a glorious dream.
Brekka was built in close proximity to
several forces of nature that in other lands
might seem extreme but which were and
are merely commonplace in Iceland: the
farm clung to the base of a monstrously
sheer cliff wall, faced the bank of a fierce
glacial river, and was not far from the vol-
cano Askja. The cliff was steep but easy
enough to climb if you were nimble in your
sharkskin shoes and followed the sheep
trails and were careful not to trip in the