The Icelandic Canadian - 01.12.2003, Qupperneq 51

Vol. 58 #2
THE ICELANDIC CANADIAN
93
Waiting for the South Wind
By Valgardur Egilsson
Rekjavik: Leifur Eirfksson, 2001
Reviewed by Nina Lee Colwill
This is the story of Valli, living on a
farm in Eyjafjordur in the 1950s, waiting for
the south wind, waiting for the golden
plover, waiting for spring.
This was his kindergarten, it was forty
square miles of landscape. The kindergarten
was open twenty four hours a day and a
thousand years back in time; ahead was the
future as unforeseeable as always.
Valli lives with his parents and five
brothers and a sister, in a world in which
Jesus and God intermingle with the old
gods. His father is a devoted reader of the
sagas, his mother a devout Christian who
abhors the pagan content of these ancient
tales. Thus is formed Valli’s evening ritual:
listening intently as his father brings life to
the old gods from the pages of the sagas,
then addressing his bedtime prayer to “Our
Father Who Art in Heaven.” Even the farm
names are a theological paradox. Valli’s
forebear, Helgi the Lean, called the farm
itself Kristnes (Christness) a millennium
earlier; but the sea-bound northern bound-
ary of the property he called Reynisnes,
from reynir, the holy rowan tree of the
pagan religion. And overarching these con-
tradictions are beliefs about the elves and
the huldufolk. The site for their home was
chosen for its protection by the Elf Knoll,
a protection that was given freely when the
avalanche came. And in return a shovel is
never taken to the knoll, and hay is never
cut there.
Valli also lives in the paradox created
by his two very different families. His
father is one of the Stonechurchers - a tall,
strong, and silent people who never give or
take advice, but are always ready to help.
His mother is one of the Lake Folk, an
attractive, fair-haired, joyful people known
for their love of song and their quick recov-
ery from sadness and anger. Only when the
situation requires it, is Valli’s father driven
to speech; and only in the depth of misery
does Valli’s mother fail to sing at her work.
Life on an Eyjafjordur farm in the
middle of the twentieth century was a dif-
ficult life. Valli’s parents had moved the
family out of town and into the country-
side to teach them love and respect for the
land, its plants, and its animals. But that
choice means that Valli must learn his
lessons from his older brothers and go to
school only to write his exams. And that
choice means hard work for Valli: breaking
down snow bridges over the freezing
spring river to protect the ever-curious