June 20th

Yesterday was Father´s Day, which is not on the Icelandic calendar.
I was happy to receive a few wishes from back in Canada.

Today, June 20th, is the 23rd birthday of my son, Joness.
I hear it is 25 celsius in Vancouver and that he´s taken the day off
from work to go to the beach with a few friends.

I carry him with me, as I have for 23 years. His mother, Carol, has
carried him with her even longer.

Birthday greetings, Joness, from 101 Reykjavik.

I love you.

Dad

18 Roses In The Drowning Pool

Almannagjá (translated as "All´s Gap," or "Everyone´s Gap") is a deeply-
crevassed walkway at þingvellir created centuries ago by an earthquake
estimated at 7.0 magnitude. I have added a link below about þingvellir
(the þ symbol has a "th" sound, similar to thanks, the same letter you find
in the name þórdís, Disa´s first name in Icelandic, a feminine variation of
the god, Thor, i.e. þór.)

As well as being a dramatic and powerful physical place, a national park,
and the most treasured site in the nation, þingvellir is home to the world´s
first-ever parliament. It was also the site of some events which Icelanders
never want to see repeated, namely the drowning of 18 women whose
"crimes" were as simple as becoming pregnant out of wedlock. Yesterday,
those women were remembered as part of a ceremony marking the 90th
anniversary of Icelandic women gaining theright to vote.

I went to this ceremony yesterday with Disa, her sister Anna, mother Aagot,
and father Guðmundur. The sun, which had blessed my first four days here,
was overtaken by cloudbanks and a chill rain as we proceeded to the top
reach ofAlmannagjá, up the pathway that runs between its high walls. On
each side, like stone pancakes stacked five hundred high, the cliffs of
Almannagjá are black and copper coloured and hold a haunting tilted
edginess. There are spirits here.

About 3,000 of us, women and men and children, begin the walk down
the crevassed path. Atop the cliffs are women wearing ceremonial dress
and holding spears. There is a women´s choir in one nook, singing hymns
in the pouring rain. In another, farther down, there is a five-piece female
brass band performing some of the spirited traditional Icelandic songs.
Toward the bottom of the gap, in white dresses, standing on rocks beside
the Drowning Pool, are 18 young girls each holding a white rose. One by
one, in memory of the drowned women, they drop their roses into the
deep and dark waters.

Later, at the constructed staging, there is a string quartet which plays some
of Iceland´s classical masterworks, and then Diddú, the most beloved singer
here, sings the national anthem. A few of the high notes feel as though they
have drycleaned my soaked jacket. There are speeches following, and a few
poems read by their female authors, and finally the first female president of
this nation, Vigdís Finnbogadóttir, speaks to the crowd. Lastly, a pink t-shirt
is presented to the male Minister of Equality. Later, we learn, that every last
statue in Reykjavik is adorned today with a pink sash to mark the occasion.

It is a beautiful and moving ceremony, and most of the words are translated
for me by Disa. I am also able to grasp some of the speech through the
concurrent sign language. To see these 3,000 people crowded up the hillside
above the podium, wet from the rain, commemorating women´s equality and
paying respects to earlier crimes against women, is solemn, grounding. As
Guðmundur said, when first asked to attend, "I will go today to stand up
for the women." Disa was a little surprised at first that her father would give
up a day at Guðmundarstaðir toparticipate in the ceremony, but he has his
priorities clear.

The drive back to Reykjavik is a busy one. It´s been a long weekend with
Friday being Independence Day, and there are not only lineups of cars from
þingvellir but also from other getaway sites on the island. Later on the news
we see footage of the event, and see that backstage the Minister of Equality
has donned his pink t-shirt for the cameras. As we enter Reykjavik, we also
see the statues of the nation´s heroes adorned with pink sashes.

þingvellir website : http://www.thingvellir.is/english/

DL

Climbing Esja

Yesterday produced the warmest-ever weather on Iceland´s
Independence Day, and all over the island people migrated
to the town squares and community halls for music and
festivities. It´s a humble yet proud country, Iceland. We were
in the town next to Reykjavik to begin with, Mosfellsbær,
where Disa´s folks live. We heard her nephew Gummi play
in his band. It was cool as they even romped through a Ray
Charles medley - I Can´t Stop Loving You, Hallelujah I Love
Her So, What´d I Say, Georgia On My Mind - before playing a
beautiful melody that substitutes as the national anthem
sometimes. The official anthem,which I have yet to hear, is
apparently reserved for those with a multi-octave vocal range.

Afterwards, we came into Reyjavik and headed for the old town
where cars were parked at all angles on lawns and upon sidewalks.
Squeezing into a spot, we headed to the big bandshell beneath the
statue of the Viking discoverer, Ingolfur Arnason, who stands atop
the green hill in warrior pose. A few boys had scaled the statue of
the spear-wielding Viking, and were wrapped legs-akimbo around
his arms and head. When I aimed my camera upward at them, one
of the boys raised his arm in the air and let out a roar. Click. I look
forward toseeing that photo when it´s developed. The music was fun,
mainly family fare, and at one point there were many dads dancing
with young children on their shoulders. The more serious drinking,
the teenagers and loud music would come later into the evening.

We had a drink at a wine bar the other night with Disa´s brother Sverrir
and his lovely partner Guðbjörg. Her first name isloosely pronounced
Guh-vooth-be-erk. Very loosely in my case, but I tell you, once you´ve
got a few drinks in you, the Icelandic comes easier! Guðbjörg informs
me that when they were travelling in the U.S., she told people to call her
Root Beer. I related to Sverrir that when I´d seen his fisherman father
the other day and seen that he was wearing his pocket knife I´d said to
him in Icelandic, "Hniflaus er liflaus." It´s one of those old fisherman
sayings, meaning "Knifeless is lifeless." I was trying to impress him.
Guðmundur is never without a comeback. This time, as I related over
a Stella Artois to Sverrir, his father had outdone himself. He had said
to me, "A fisherman without a knife is like a prostitue without..."
Sverrir laughed and blushed a littlewhen I told him, but muttered,
"That would be my father..."

I am learning to sleep a little better now that I´ve been here a few days.
The midnight sun is confusing to me, though, as I´ve never witnessed
it before. We´re at the Arctic Circle, so it never gets dark at all. From
about eleven at night to two in the morning it´s like a slowly-shifting
sunset, the red and orange of the sky sliding sideways from where the
sun disappeared to the place where it will reappear. You just pull the
blinds closed and bury your head in the pillows, but part of me - the
child in me - wonders why we should ever go to bed while it´s still light.
I´m not alone, I guess, as the streets remain lively long past midnight.
Well, it was the tail end of Independence Day... but I´ve noticed it on
other nights, too. Revelry!

Today, Saturday, Disa had the brilliant idea to climb the heights of
Mount Esja, the snow-adorned mountain we can see from her third-storey
apartment window. We put on our climbing shoes and headed out, a
beautiful 20-minute drive around the coastline to the base of Esja.
The climbing path is anything but smooth, and the volcanic rocks often
give way underfoot. It gets very steep in places, too, and my heart was
soon pounding. We stopped to bathe our feet in the cold running stream,
surrounded by blue- and cream-coloured flowers which I don´t recall
seeing before. Of course, Disa knows the names of them and says them,
but for now I am happy to be resting in the bright sun, just listening to her.

We made it about halfway up the mountain, quite a hike due in parts to its
steepness, the unsteady ground, and my level of fitness. Another time, we
will climb to the very top, about 8,000 meters. Disa appears intent to raise
my health to a better level, and I´m more than willing. She´s having her
second bicycle tweaked a little, too, so that I can go riding off at any time
into the farther reaches of Reykjavik. For now, halfway up Esja, we rest
among the flora. She has her top off, laying back in her brassiere enjoying
the beloved northern sun. Below, far across the valley floor, we can see her
city, the spire ofthe poet Hallgrim´s church rising above old Reykjavik.

DL

Guðmundarstaðir

Yesterday (the 16th), we traveled to Mosfellsbær, fifteen minutes
from 101 Reykjavik, where Disa´s parents have their self-made
mountainside woodland. The old joke is reprised, Disa telling it.
"If you are lost in the Icelandic woods, what do you do to be rescued?"
The answer: "Stand up." It´s true, the trees are not tall here, nor are
they plentiful. So it is with a kind of pioneering spirit that her father
and mother, Guðmundur and Aagot, have been working on this
once-naked mountainside since their retirement some years ago,
planting varieties of trees, shrubs and flowers. It is a pastoral place
with a long view below of the valley and of Mount Esja.

Aagot named the park, Guðmundarstaðir, after her fisherman husband.
She relates to me that she had a motive for doing so, as Guðmundur,
in the first weeks of his retirement, was listless, uninspired, perhaps
a bit depressed. So the name was to call him to the mountain, to get
his passion involved again. It worked. Here, on a 35-degree volcanic
slope, they have created a woods, a garden, a family place for picnics.

There are varieties of birch, Alaska willows, larch, spruce, Norway pine,
and the first bamboo in Iceland. There are scattered clusters of blue lupin
flowers. In boxed planters, they have planted garden vegetables. It is land
they have been given to develop and use, an exchange program by which
citizens are able to enjoy sections of the countryside while at the same
time improving the land. On this particular Thursday, the day before
Iceland´s Independence Day, there is a celebrative mood. After having to
carry buckets of water from their home to Guðmundarstaðir for years,
today marks the first day of running water at the site. Through a friend
of a friend, Guðmundur has been able to arrange to run 100 meters of
yellow hose from a farmer´s barn, across the bumpy dirt road, up to the
family´s mountainside park. Today there is water flowing into the plant,
flower and vegetable gardens. Though he is a tireless, non-stop worker,
Gudmundur may now save his 72-year old back a little strain.

Aagot leads us up past the gardens to a small tree, recently planted. Under
its boughs there is a nest with a mother thrush sitting atop it. She appears
calm as we tiptoe within ten feet. "She knows and trusts us," Aagot says,
matter of factly. Disa´s mother is 70, wiry, well-read and very much alive.
You look in her eyes and see light. Her English is excellent, to the point
where she will pause at times in mid-sentence, not satisfied with the rote
word, looking instead for the one which more aptly reveals the colour she
wishes to communicate. Later, across clumps of untracked ground, she leads
her daughter and me to the site of an old sheep shed. The shed is gone, but
the depression in the ground remains. Life has been here before.

There is a picnic bench where we all sit. Disa´s sister, the concert pianist Anna,
arrives with her son, Gummi. Guðmundur stops work and sits with us to
have a nibble of food and puff on one of his long super-slim cigarettes. Aagot
points up the cliff face to where three evergreens have grown to a height of
maybe four feet. Guðmundur and his grandson scaled the mountain a few
summers ago to plant them. They are the only trees to be seen at that altitude
for miles around. Aagot is proud of those trees, and of the trees and shrubs
and flowers surrounding us. On this volcanic island in the North Atlantic,
such things are victories, the result of hard work. During our walk to the site
of the sheep shed, Disa walks ahead for a while. In this time I am alone with
her mother. I tell Aagot that I am quite impressed with Guðmundarstaðir.
She nods. "It is our idea that in 25 years, the children of our children will
enjoy this place, when the trees have grown." There are no tears in her eyes
or catch in her voice when she says this. She is simply describing her and her
husband´s vision to me, the passion and inspiration which is at the heart of
their daily labours here, at Guðmundarstaðir.

DL