The Icelandic Canadian - 01.10.2002, Page 27

Drangey, a flat-topped mass of compact-
ed volcanic ash tuff towering two hundred
metres above the water has offered its cliffs
to these seabird colonies probably for mil-
lennia. And residents of Skagafjordur have
come in their boats every year for centuries
to hunt and trap puffins, to gather eggs, to
hang their ropes from above, to dangle and
swing with their bags or pails along the
rock face. Those eggs, in earlier years a sta-
ple of life for struggling and starving
Icelanders, have now become a delicacy.
Farmer Jon from Fagranes on the far side
of the fjord came with his Drangey scrap-
book and his 30-foot boat to pick us up and
ferry us across the water. Northern fulmars
blew along behind us, their tubenose nos-
trils and their easy flight. And black-legged
shining kittiwakes. Some thirty minutes
journey under a blue sky. Wind. And
spray. Common murres began to gather
round, and thick-billed murres, and razor-
bills floating on the water. A few black
guillemot, white wing patches and their
orange legs. Atlantic puffins interrupted
their feeding and popped like toast out of
the sea.
Our boat slowed and chugged up next to
its mooring on the island. Birds every-
where. Birds above. Birds alongside. And
below. Birds in large flocks on the waves,
in long lines and crowded side by side
along the shelves on the island walls.
Grunting. And groaning. Sighing.
Screaming. Birds. Such a clamour of birds,
a babel of birds. Thousands and thousands
of birds. A whirlwind of birds. One of a
paltry human minority, I felt suddenly we
had entered their world, a world populated
and governed by birds.
We sidled up cliffs of shale and loose
clay. Over rocks. Along ledges. We crept
from one stone face to another. We found
ladders and ropes to guide us, a few bolted
and rusted climbing irons. A breathtaking
climb for a prairie boy my thirty years on
the prairies, Canadian city slicker, a flat-
head. I thought our adventure a bit fool-
hardy. I felt disoriented, perhaps some lin-
gering jetlag, perhaps because of the con-
stant call and turmoil of birds, the anarchy
of birds. But Farmer Jon I noticed, despite
his eighty long years, followed easily close
behind.
Some of the other climbers struggled
above me with their footing and Farmer
Jon’s son, a teenager, a mountain goat of a
boy, and friendly, sprinted back and forth
along the trail to help them. Fie turned and
beckoned to me at a certain stage in a nar-
row crossing. “Come.” Fie took me aside
to a careful pile of boulders and crossed
himself and began to pray. A long prayer,
and rhythmic. Our Father, which art in
heaven, hallowed be thy name. And forgive
us our debts... He told me in his broken
English that it was the tradition to pray
here, to ward off the island evil.
And so we came to the top of the head-
land, to the green meadows at the top of the
headland where the old man Jon found us
and told us stories of Grettir the bandit,
Grettir the outlaw, Grettir the villain
turned human and hero.
Grettir, who swam from the mainland to
hide on the island of Drangey. Grettir, the
strongest man in the history of Iceland; he
could lift rocks the size of houses. Grettir,
who lived here one thousand years ago; this
hollow in the ground where he fashioned a
hut, that bit of soil where he planted a gar-
den. Grettir, who always felt lonely.
Grettir who was betrayed by his friends
and murdered on Drangey. This spot here
marking his grave on the island of
Drangey.
Nancy came and sat beside me again in
the grass on the northern slopes of the
headland with the birds just below and said
she needed to ask me a favour. “I wonder if
I could ask a favour.” She’d heard me talk
about the two or three hour excursions I
planned every day from the village and she
wondered if she could come along. She said
walking alone she’d surely get lost, she had
no sense of direction. She loved walking
she said, and she wasn’t interested in stay-
ing inside with the others, in writing or
working on manuscripts.
A difficult question for me, her request.
I meant to hike with my microcassette, to
gather notes for my writing, notes that
these paragraphs might later be built on. A
human presence would distract and inhibit
me.
So we made an agreement. We would