The Icelandic Canadian - 01.08.2006, Síða 31

Vol. 60 #2
THE ICELANDIC CANADIAN
73
aged Norwegian couple who have been
here before, a mysterious solemn pair of
men, possibly father and son, whose
nationality is not clear, and my husband
and I, two gracefully (I hope) aging roman-
tics, I forever searching deeper for my
Nordic roots.
Leaving the stillness of the harbour,
the Gudny begins her long journey down
the fjord while we all rush to the back of
the boat exclaiming at the stark beauty of
the mountains which line our passage. We
feel blessed, delighting in the late June sun-
shine, when suddenly, just as we are about
to head into open water, there it is, like a
gift from the tiny fishing village of
Bolungarvik at the base of three mountains.
Just for a moment, as if to soften the harsh
contours of this land, one of the mountains
wears a halo of snow white cloud.
Meanwhile, all around us the waters of the
fjord shimmer serenely - almost like glass.
Recalling that scene, perhaps it makes
sense that I really don’t remember noticing
when things changed, a subtle or perhaps
not so subtle, shift in sea and sky. I can
only say that one minute we were all out-
side laughing and taking pictures from the
back deck and the next, the captain was
politely but firmly ushering us back inside
and closing the door. Even with a detailed
map, I would be hard-pressed to pinpoint
just where everything started to go wrong.
I do know I saw Adalvik through my
binoculars and that even a low-lying fog
obscuring some parts of the bay could not
extinguish the excitement I felt in being
there.
Next, with a swiftness that is breath-
taking, I am in the midst of every poem,
story or song about storms at sea that I
have ever known. We are either in the
trough of a mammoth wave or it is washing
over us. The captain keeps saying this is all
normal though the stern is rising out of the
water, the propeller spinning in the air.
Once, the cargo above us shifts and,
momentarily the captain is out on a line to
secure it. Oddly, I am not afraid, and when
the Norwegian firmly declares that the
Gudny is a good boat, he couldn’t be more
convincing than if he had built her himself.
Maybe what I feel is nothing more than a
blind faith in the prowess of my seafaring
forebears.
So on we sail, if you can call it that, and
the captain assures us we are almost there,
that the worst will soon be over. By now I
am suffering, however, from a surfeit of
hardfisk, ‘coins’ of dried fish, a regional
delicacy I had earlier been honoured to
accept from him. Maybe if I weren’t just
half Icelandic, I decide, my digestion could
deal better with dried cod in heavy seas..
As it is, the malaise lingers until thankfully
I become aware that the four metre waves
of the ocean are behind us and we are at last
traversing the considerably calmer waters
of a bay. We are here - Hornvik - our
scheduled destination.
But before I can contemplate the joys
of terra firma, just as I am getting cautious-
ly to my feet, unexpectedly, I am being
thrown a life jacket. Just for an instant I
find myself thinking, “ This is crazy. What
am I doing here?” I had come to the West
Fjords with the specific purpose of seeing a
film site, but today a dense atmosphere of
unreality keeps challenging my clarity of
purpose. And, as I am lowering myself into
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