The Icelandic Canadian - 01.09.2003, Qupperneq 28

26
THE ICELANDIC CANADIAN
Vol. 58 #1
violently. And that Oli himself will wake
one morning to a sky so thick with ash he
can’t see his own hand in front of his face.
Askja’s lava, she’d predict, will never reach
his family’s farm, but the ash - so volumi-
nous it will drift halfway around the world
- is to fall so thickly that it will block the
sun for weeks and destroy much of the
farmland in East Iceland. The sheep will
have nothing to graze on, and die in droves.
Oli’s family, she would continue, will flee
amongst hundreds of others not only their
own poisoned farm but Iceland itself, fol-
lowing in the path of Leif the Lucky and
Karlsefni to the New World, where they
will settle on the marshy shore of Lake
Winnipeg in a place they’ll name New
Iceland. Oli himself, the volva would fore-
see, will successfully avoid seminary and
instead become his people’s beloved Nyja
Island Skald - but never will he lay eyes on
Brekka or his people again.
And then, the volva would conclude,
more than a hundred years later his grand-
daughter Freya will find her way back to
Iceland. She will stand on the bank of the
milky blue glacial river where Oli himself
once played, and wander among the mossy
stones of Brekka’s crumbled remains.
But there were of course no volvas in
Iceland to tell Oli this or anything. They’d
been banished for nearly a thousand years,
since the coming of Christianity. And so
Oli lay in bed that night, shaken by the
earthquake yet unaware of his future.
Around him slept his family members in
their tiny wooden beds, his mother and
father in one, his Amma and Afi in anoth-
er, Magnus and Stefan in a third. Oli alone
in the fourth. He lay awake rubbing the
lump on the top of his head - could he have
been killed? - and thinking about the trick-
ster god Loki. According to Oli’s Afi, who
told many stories from the old myths, it
was by one of Loki’s most artful tricks that
he brought about the tragic death of the
shining and beautiful god Baldur. After a
long hunt during which Loki hid himself as
a salmon in a waterfall, the other gods
finally captured and punished him for the
evil deed. They forced Loki into a cave,
bound him to three rocks, and strung a live
snake above his head. Forever after, Loki’s
wife Sigyn remains by his side, holding a
bucket to catch the snake’s dripping poi-
son. But whenever she rises to empty the
pail the venom drips onto Loki’s face, and
Loki jerks to avoid the poison. It is this
movement that people call earthquakes.
But if Loki, as Oli knew, was nothing
but myth, then what was it that caused the
earth to shake? God stamping his feet in
anger? Oli’s father said God wishes no
harm on His people, that earthquakes are a
force of nature. But who controls nature if
not God? And if God were so kind why
did He banish people to hell for their sins?
There was no one to ask. In the midst
of an unusually long and earnest prayer Oli
too slipped into dream.
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