The Road To Siglufjörður
We borrowed Steini´s car for the trip to the north, a harbinger
that we´d be travelling some unusual roads. We packed up the
bigger vehicle with hiking gear, coffee thermos, lots of food,
and headed north bright and early along the west coast of Iceland.
I´d say we left at daybreak, but it´s light all the time.
The expression "counting sheep" has taken on a new meaning
for me. You can add "counting horses" to that, too. By the time
we got home late last night, I´d seen well over 4,500 sheep and
4,000 horses roaming the valleys and hillsides of northern
Icleand. I never saw a single computer; I guess they can´t
survive in the wilds.
I´ve been submerged in the Icelandic language and culture long
enough now that English sounds strange. Travelling up north,
where fewer foreigners travel, the locals don´t speak a lot
of English. When you do hear it you´re stunned for a moment.
What was that? It´s kind of embarrassing to have to ask
an Icelander to repeat something in your own native tongue,
for them and for you. Another thing I´ve noticed is that my
own halting Icelandic improves in direct proportion to how many
schnapps I´ve thrown back. Disa says it has something to do
with the tongue relaxing; it is like being at a dance, she says:
The music sounds better and you dance more freely once you have
a drink or two.
Once we pass Borgarnes, the town we heard KK´s concert in, we
enter a wild, barely-populated country. The road is paved,
but the two lanes were measured to suit Renault Twingos, not
the 4x4´s that seem determined to force us off the steep cliffs.
I saw one guard rail in 500 km, and saw quite a few vehicular
skeletons rising from the mossy grasses below. Those are the
Canadians who came before you, Disa chuckles. Funny girl.
This mountainous, volcanic landscape is something to behold.
There are trickling rivers coming down from the slopes, and
every now and then a farmhouse. Fences? Not many. The sheep
have their ears marked and, once fattened, they are rounded
up on horseback in the fall. You can see sheep sheds up the
mountainsides. Also, in the remote and uppopulated stretches
there are tiny shelters for stranded travelers. They have
food and blankets in them, Disa tells me, for times in the
winter when the snow makes travel impossible. What got into
me, choosing to come in summer? No sense of adventure!
Disa says we will stop for a picnic in Hot Sauce. What an odd
name for a village, I think to myself. It´s actually Hofsos,
I later learn. And here I was thinking there was some kind of
salsa bar out here. Hofsos has a museum which traces the time
when 20% of the population immigrated to America, mainly to
the Canadian prairies and parts of Dakota. The winters, back
then, had grown too fierce in Iceland, and the government of
Canada was offering free land to settlers. Once again, there
are monuments to poets. It is endearing to be in a country
where writers of a people´s soul are held in such esteem.
We´re winding along a 30 km stretch where the narrow road
hangs precipitously on a high cliff´s edge. There are places
where a crew has packed red sand on the edge and you have to
slow down. This is where the road has given out, Disa says,
so they have rebuilt it. Boy, does that inspire confidence.
It doesn´t seem to matter how dicey the road, Icelanders still
delight in passing each other. A truck towing a trailer goes
rippling past us on this deadly and scenic stretch. I see a
few rocks rolling across the road when I check the rearview.
We enter a one-lane tunnel for two-way traffic - there are
little pull-off places for when you meet an oncoming car -
and once out the other side we can see Siglufjördur. This is
the farthest north you have ever been, Baseboy, she says,
and is correct. It´s a herring town, home to about 2,000
hearty souls. The herring business isn´t what it once was,
and some of the houses are empty now, but this weekend is
the annual festival of traditional music and the town has a
little jump in its step. There are tent towns of visitors,
and we later learn that last night´s wind knocked a majority
of the tents over, inspiring an emergency response from the
villagers, i.e. making floors available.
The music we hear is a mixture of professional and amateur,
drawing from old and sometimes ancient music forms. Rimur
is the old nomadic singing style first created by songmakers
who traveled farm to farm during the winters to entertain.
There is a choir singing old Icelandic hymns and ballads.
Folk bands perform songs of hardship and storms on the sea.
The concerts are in three different buildings - the church,
an old school, and in the boathouse. The boathouse is now a
museum, and the stage is set up on the deck of a large herring
boat which rocks slightly with the music on the dance tunes.
The youngest performers we see are five and six years old,
doing dances, and the oldest are men and women whose faces
are as worn and crevassed as the mountainsides we passed en
route to Siglufjörður, their eyes the clear streams.
We stay at a farm twenty minutes from the town, back along
the dangerous and beautiful coast road on the other side of
the one-lane tunnel. It is the home of Trausti and Sigurbjörg,
an older couple who convert their home to a bed & breakfast
for the summers. Sippa is the wife´s nickname, and when she
learns I´m a musician she brings out the guestbook and shows
me the messages left by KK and Sigur Ros, among other noted
Icelandic musicians who´ve stayed there. One of the other
guests is þórarinn Eldjárn, a celebrated Icelandic poet and
author. Some of his work is being included in the festival,
chanted text by a female violin choir. I give him one of my
cds and þórarinn is going to bring me an English translation
of one of his novels when he gets back to Reykjavik.
There were so many guests staying at the farm that Trausti
and Sippa sleep in the barn. Communal meals - including
more rural delicacies, I might add, such as black pudding
and some other sheep parts made into sausage, along with a
delicious sweet ´n´ sour herring dish - with musicians and
singers a-plenty, including þórarinn´s son, Halldor, who is
a 14-year old genius who tells me in good English, "I have
a state-of-the-art recording set-up in Reykjavik with Pro Tools,
you should visit and record some of your songs." I may be
doing just that before I leave town. I am asked to sing a few
songs, and when I´m done Trausti tells Disa, "He is better
than KK!" Haha. The Icelanders sing a few of the old songs,
18 schnapps-mellowed voices rising to the tune. When the last
song is over and we all wander off to our rooms, the valley
outside is glowing pink and orange with the low sun of the
late night. The wind shivers through the birches.
In the morning when we leave, I give Trausti a disc of my set
from Austin 2004. He asks Disa a question in Icelandic, wants
to know if the first song I sang last night is on the disc.
Yes, it is. It´s the first one, I tell him through Disa. It´s called
Road You Call Me Now. And with that it´s hugs and kisses,
bless bless, and we´re back on the wild road south...as long
as the angels allow.
Siglufjörður Photo http://www.skip.is/media/hafnaskrain/H093.jpg |
