Oraefi. Ófeigur Sigurðsson

from Mávabyggðir through Hermannskarð went on rather too long; I was crushed by gnashing hoarfog on the glacier, by fierce gusts; I did not want to believe that I was lost and walked for many days on my skis going short distances in adverse conditions; most of the time I hunkered down inside my trunk, which suited me fine, until the storms and blizzards worsened and one by one I lost my horses, a disaster, I was morose at having taken them with me out on the glacier, I became estranged to myself—this was a travail I had dreamed about for such a long time, the idea of the expedition had become the idea of myself, my identity, but as soon as my dream was coming true, I was a stranger. The last horse, the one that drew the trunk, disappeared, the trunk along with him, with it all the data for my thesis. Unless the data reappears in fifty years’ time somewhere, at glacial speed. Probably, I took a wrong turn on Hermannskarð and went a long way out onto the glacier, thinking myself safely and correctly almost arrived at a settlement. I reached instead a luxuriant valley surrounded by cliffs that I clambered down; I could not find this valley on a map and there were no external landmarks visible from within it, neither peaks nor elevations—it was as if the land had suddenly slipped apart and up sprang a luxuriant valley full of forest, heather-moss and grasses inside the glacier. A rollicking sense of joy seized me, both at having gotten off the glacier alive and at possibly being in an unknown valley, one which would be named for me, Bernharðsdalur, it would be a real boon for my dissertation, would bowl over the professors in the toponymy department at the University of Vienna, I would become a toponymist and explorer … these days, it’s rare to get a place named after you.

      In the valley my compass got completely confused, utterly unable to function, the arrow turning circles at lightning speed, then the compass stopped and pointed resolutely right at me, no matter how I twisted myself about and tried to wrestle myself ahead of the arrow. I attempted that for a while. After the compass stilled, I marveled at all the rich vegetation, the valley’s fragrance, its weather, here in the middle of powerful Vatnajökull. I sat beside a little spring and washed my feet. From there I saw where sheep, long-legged and almost like steinbocks, grazed on the slope; they seemed to glisten. There were rams so obese and rotund that they resembled wethers more than sheep, heavy and sluggish; when the herd became aware of me it startled; the animals began to stamp their feet and the mountains resounded with the noise; it was like darkness crashing into the valley, amazingly intense in contrast to the twenty-four-hour sun that shines this time of year in this latitude. And then a hundred glowing eyes were approaching in darkness. I became so horrified that I lost my faculties and lay prone beside the spring, my whole body going to sleep. I did not lose consciousness; on the contrary, I was too alert, hyper-aware yet paralyzed physically, I felt able to engage everything in the whole world, to hear everything, to see everything, to feel everything; I saw the black sky and the sun enormously large behind the darkness, all a burning fire, I felt myself flying through space as though sallying on in a dream, suddenly a piercingly bright light appeared and the sun was directly over me, stifling hot, I had the notion to remove my clothes and immerse myself in the spring, but then I saw a single fearsome ram standing over me, bleating loud and cruel and biting my leg, but he vanished just as suddenly as he appeared. I was slow to re-orient myself and struggled to shift. I first tried crawling, then hopped a while on one leg, supporting myself with a staff; a blizzard struck and the lush valley immediately became submerged in snow and slush, such that I had great difficulty keeping myself upright in the snow and not being submerged in slush; I sweated buckets causing a thick armor of ice to fasten itself to my clothes, leaving me board-stiff. My leg was numb, lead-heavy, useless; I felt like a weighted-down sled was tied around me, or a horse and carriage, or that my leg was terribly long, unmanageable, and in this fashion I climbed up the rocks and scree out from the valley, like this I crawled along the ice for a long time, like this I crawled over the hills, like this I crawled across rivers and streams, like this I crawled through forests—and like this I crawled back to civilization.

      This happened on Holy Thursday. On Good Friday, 18th April 2003, Bernharður Fingurbjörg crawled into the Skaftafell Visitor Center, Dr. Lassi writes in her report, telling the interpreter: I have no option but to believe you what you’re saying, or else the ground beneath my feet will open up, but I am going to make it my immediate mission once I reach Reykjavík to sign up for German language courses in the Continuing Education Department at the University of Iceland in order to read Goethe in the original and talk to all these tourists.

      The farmers who owned land and had pastures in the wasteland, Öræfi, took offence when the evening radio news reported wild animals up in the mountains; an emergency farmers’ council took place in the dining room of the hotel at Freysnes early Saturday morning. This disgrace needs to be wiped out, Dr. Lassi writes in her report. The meeting was attended by the District Magistrate of East Skaftafell; he stood up first and spoke, not needing to ask for quiet because there was absolute silence in the room before he said: A herd is on the loose in the National Park. And so his speech ended. Well, said Runólfur from Mýr, that’s not good. No, it’s not, said Flosi from Svínafell. Well …Tempers flared, the report says, they went absolutely crazy by Öræfi standards, although an unfamiliar visitor could have mistaken it for meditation class. The animals are probably on the Skaftafell slopes, didn’t the lad come down that way? He came down the glacier at Morsárdalur, said Jakob from Jökulfell, falling asleep in mid-sentence … Didn’t this little punk head to Mávabyggðir without letting anyone know about his trip and without a sure sense of his route, said old Muggur from Bölti; he deserved to die. He must have gone directly from Mávabyggðir straight across the glacier to descend at Morsárdalur. But where did he get himself bitten? Or is it something other than a bite, Dr. Lassi? asked the magistrate. Perhaps this wild sheep is from Núpsstaður, having wandered from Eystrafjall over the glacier and into the National Park, said Odd from Gröf. Oh-oh, this is all just speculation, the magistrate said. Some were convinced the sheep belonged to Jakob from Jökulfell, it’s your sheep, Jakob, said the farmers from Mýr, or at least it’s on your land. This is not my land, Jakob said, this is State land. From one perspective that’s not really so, Bjarni from Nes chimed in, this is the land of the Lord our Creator and it’s the duty of all of us, Jakob, to herd together …These are State sheep, said someone, and where is the State shepherd? (laughter) Well, well, said the magistrate … wouldn’t it be best to saunter up there in the morning and see what we can find. Has anyone heard the forecast? Of course everyone had listened to the weather report; they knew the weather by heart going back decades.

      It is a humanitarian duty of farmers to retrieve sheep from the mountains, I said in a maternal manner at the meeting in the dining room of the hotel in Freysnes, wrote Dr. Lassi in her report, just as the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals requires all farmers to do, it’s horfellislögin, an old and just law meaning farmers must ensure sheep have shelter and winter fodder: what is there for sheep to eat up on the glacier? They cannot simply eat up the whole of Skaftafell forest and Bæjarstaðar forest and Núpsstaðar forest, or why would tourists want to come to see the National Park then? The black desert sands? … Besides, grazing is prohibited in the area. You must retrieve the livestock and prevent it from suffering; it must not go wild over winter, for it will be cold, it will be hungry, it will suffer because of your negligence and lack of culture; such a thing cannot be tolerated, it is inhumane, I said at the meeting, so says the law of the land and so agreed the farmers, more or less, with much mumbling and muttering, resolving to go out on a well-manned mission to the countryside to fetch the sheep from off the slopes, to save it and bring it into human hands … that is, to the slaughterhouse.

      I knew several of the people present at the meeting thanks to my work in the region, the report continues. Flosi from Svínafell is not a tall man, but strong and powerful, big-boned, reasonable, quiet, reminiscent of Japanese ancient emperors; Flosi never feels pain even though he has repeatedly been badly hurt working on the farm, merely a scratch is what he called a bloody dent in his shin the time a horse kicked him—someone asked at the dinner table why his pants were wet with blood, why there was a big puddle under the table that the children were sliding about in … I saw steaming coffee poured over his hand when the cup overflowed, but he did not notice the difference, and once I witnessed the trunk of the old Volvo he used for saddle storage get slammed