Touring with the Sagas

When some people go to Iceland for the first time, they want to see it all. In seven days they drive the entire Ring Road, bagging all the sights.

I'm a little different. I've been to Iceland 19 times, twice staying over three months, and I have yet to see huge swaths of the country. I've never been to the East Fjords. I've only glimpsed much of the north.

Instead, I've gone deep. I've gotten to know one corner of Iceland very well: the area between Borgarnes and the island of Flatey in Breiðafjorður, out to the tip of Snæfellsnes with its evocative glacier, and in to Surtshellir cave at the edge of the highlands. It's an area with a wonderful variety of landscapes--farms, fishing villages, lava fields, glaciers, beaches, waterfalls.

I like to stay on one farm for a week, traveling only as far as I can reach on foot or horseback or the occasional half day's drive. On various trips I've found a path through the lava that had long been lost, crouched behind a rock while a sea eagle strafed me, rode a horse across a swift salmon river (careful not to let the eddies dizzy me), collected crowberries, watched fox pups play, rescued trapped sheep, frightened myself in a pitch-dark cave, drank sweet water from the well in another, soaked in a wilderness hot pool, sunned on the flank of a volcano.

I'm not a naturalist: What drew me to this part of Iceland were the sagas, with their tales of sheep-farmers and sorcerors, horse fights and feuds, love and grief and hard times and strife. Tales of a satisfying life scratched from an unforgiving land. Tales tempered with poetry and grace.

I've sat where the wily chieftain of Helgafell, Snorri goði, sat, ten centuries before, pondering his next move. On horseback, I've ridden the route he followed to collect his father-in-law's corpse--and the one his namesake, Snorri Sturluson took to confer with his nephew a few nights before he died.

The first time I visited Iceland, in 1986, I went in search of Snorri goði, a character in two of my favorite sagas, Eyrbyggja Saga and Laxdæla Saga. I was then a graduate student studying medieval literature and simultaneously working for a science magazine; I wanted to write a historical novel about Snorri. That book was never published, but ten years later much of my research--done on horseback, as well as in libraries--found its way into my first published book, A Good Horse Has No Color: Searching Iceland for the Perfect Horse (Stackpole Books, 2001).

My second book about Iceland brought me back to Snæfellsnes. The Far Traveler: Voyages of a Viking Woman (Harcourt, 2007) uses medieval literature and modern archaeology to tell the story of Guðríður Þorbjarnardóttir and the Norse expeditions to North America. Guðriður grew up on the tip of Snæfellsnes, in the shadow of the glacier some people call the third most holy spot on earth. (Seeing it rise out of the sea is certainly one of my favorite views of Iceland). I've since retold Guðríður's story as a young adult novel, The Saga of Gudrid the Far-Traveler, which will be published by Namelos in the spring of 2015.

My most recent book, Song of the Vikings: Snorri and the Making of Norse Myths (Palgrave Macmillan, 2012) required me to get to know Borgarfjörður even better. This book is a biography of another Snorri--Snorri Sturluson, who lived at Borg and then at Reykholt, and by the end of his life in 1241 ruled most of the West Quarter of Iceland. At Borg he probably wrote Egils Saga, while at Reykholt he wrote the Edda, which contains almost everything we know about Norse mythology, as well as Heimskringla, his long collection of sagas about the kings of Norway from the ancient days of Oðin the Wizard-King through King Magnus Erlingsson in 1177.

The best way to research my books, I've found, is to walk through the landscape where history happened, to live where my subjects lived and face some of the same challenges. To cross rivers on horseback, for example, or climb a volcanic crater. To experience the midnight sun in summer, when the birdsong never stills, as well as the dark days of winter (though I must admit, I've let a very few of them stand in for the rest). 

In 2012 I was approached by the trekking company America2Iceland, which had just moved its base of operations to the farm of Staðarhús in Borgarfjörður. They wondered if I'd be willing to join their tours and share my love of Iceland's history and sagas. Together, we began developing a tour called "Song of the Vikings," after my book. The first year it was a riding trek circling through Snorri's domain. The next year we combined riding lessons for beginners with more sightseeing by bus, visiting saga sites and museums, and allowing more time to learn about Iceland's history and culture.

Next summer, by request, the tour will have no mandatory horseback riding (though, since we will be based at a horse farm with a resident riding teacher, optional lessons and trail riding can be added). From July 27 to August 2, we'll follow in Snorri Sturluson's footsteps, taking the chieftain's trail from Thingvellir, where he took part in the yearly assembly, to Reykholt, his main estate--now a research institute with an exhibition about his life.

We'll see the highest-volume hot spring in the world, discussing the value of hot springs in medieval Iceland--and how a fight over this one may have caused the sagas to be written. We'll meet the Icelandic horse and learn why the horse, not the dog, is "man's best friend" in Iceland. We'll visit the Settlement Center in Borgarnes and compare new theories about Iceland's settlement. We'll see the Egil's Saga exhibition there as well, and discuss how that saga reflects Snorri Sturluson's own life. We'll drive into the highlands to see the cave Surtshellir, named for the Fire Giant who will destroy the world at Ragnarök, and discuss the connections between Icelandic nature and Norse mythology. And we'll see how those myths are still vital in modern popular culture, by sharing some of the literature and art Snorri Sturluson inspired, from Wagner to Tolkien to Neil Gaiman.

This tour is limited to 12 people, so each will get my personal attention. For more information, or to sign up, see America2Iceland.com or contact Rebecca at America2Iceland by email at info@america2iceland.com or phone at 1-828-348-4257. I think this is the perfect tour for first-time visitors to Iceland. Even if you've been to Iceland before, you'll see it in a completely new light.

(A version of this essay was published in the December 15 edition of the Icelandic-Canadian newspaper, Lögberg-Heimskringla.)

Snorri and the Volcanoes

There’s a volcano erupting in Iceland again. They happen quite often—I saw one in 2010, when I took these photos, just before it shut down European airspace with clouds of ash.

Eruptions are a fact of life for Icelanders. A big one happened in 871 (plus or minus two years): The dark layer of ash it sprinkled over much of the country now helps archaeologists date the time of the first settlement of Iceland to just about that time, using a technique called tephrachronology. Another big eruption in 1104 laid down a layer of ash in a conveniently lighter color, which helps archaeologists bracket the Viking Age.

Geologists estimate ten volcanic eruptions per century took place between Iceland’s founding in the 870s and when the Icelandic sagas began to be written in the early 1200s. Then the frequency increased to about fifteen per century.

So why are eruptions essentially missing from the sagas?

Only once, in Kristnisaga, the Saga of Christianity, is an eruption a plot point. The chieftains were meeting in the year 1000 to debate whether Iceland should become Christian, as the king of Norway insisted. A rider broke into the proceedings to shout, “Earth fire! In Olfus!” A volcano had erupted on one of the chieftains’ farms.

“It is no wonder. The gods are angry at such talk,” people muttered.

“And what were the gods angry about,” said one chieftain, gesturing to the black, ropy lava all around, “when they burned the wasteland we’re standing on now?”

The great Icelandic writer Snorri Sturluson, subject of my book, Song of the Vikings, grew up in the shadow of a volcano. Hekla, the cloud-hooded mountain known in the Middle Ages as the Mouth of Hell, erupted twice during Snorri’s lifetime. Possibly three times, for the church annals record “darkness across the south” the year he turned five.

The annalist knew what caused that darkness. The Saga of Bishop Gudmund, written in the mid-1200s, contains this explanation (translated here by my friend Oren Falk of Cornell University):

“There are mountains in this land, which emit awful fire with the most violent hurling of stones, so that the crack and crash are heard throughout the country.… Such great darkness can follow downwind from this terror that, on midsummer at midday, one cannot make out one’s own hand.”

To the east of Snorri’s childhood home rose the ice cap of Eyjafjallajokull--from under which erupted the volcano I visited in 2010. Snorri would have seen only tier upon tier of vast blank whiteness, a glimmering dome mingling with the clouds so that on some days the horizon disappeared.

But Snorri’s contemporaries were aware that active volcanoes lurked beneath the ice. A thirteenth-century poet told how “glaciers blaze,” “coal-black crags burst,” “fire unleashes storms,” and “a marvelous mud begins to flow from the ground.” (Again, in Oren’s translation.)

Lava also spouted from the sea in Snorri’s lifetime, forming rugged black islands that rose above the waves only long enough for a few intrepid souls to row out and give them a name, the Fire Islands.

It is not surprising, then, that volcanoes also informed Snorri’s version of the creation of the world.

In the beginning, Snorri wrote in his Edda, there was nothing. No sand, no sea, no cooling wave. No earth, no heaven above. Nothing but the yawning empty gap, Ginnungagap. All was cold and grim.

Then came the giant Surt with a crashing noise, bright and burning. He bore a flaming sword. Rivers of fire flowed till they turned hard as slag from an iron-maker’s forge, then froze to ice.

The ice-rime grew, layer upon layer, till it bridged the mighty, magical gap.

Where the ice met sparks of flame and still-flowing lava from Surt’s home in the south, it thawed and dripped. Like an icicle it formed the first frost-giant, Ymir, and his cow.

Ymir drank the cow’s abundant milk. The cow licked the ice-rime, which was salty. It licked free a handsome man and his wife. They had three sons, one of whom was Odin, the ruler of heaven and earth, the greatest and most glorious of the gods: the All-father.

Odin and his brothers killed Ymir. From his giant body they fashioned the world: His flesh was the soil, his blood the sea. His bones and teeth became stones and scree. His hair were trees, his skull was the sky, his brain, clouds.

From his eyebrows they made Middle Earth, which they peopled with men, crafting the first man and woman from an ash tree and an elm they found on the seashore.

So Snorri explains the creation of the world in the beginning of his Edda. Partly he is quoting an older poem, the “Song of the Sibyl,” whose author he does not name. Partly he seems to be making it up—especially the bit about the world forming in a kind of volcanic eruption, and then freezing to ice.

This part of the myth cannot be ancient. The Scandinavian homelands--Norway, Sweden, and Denmark--are not volcanic. But there is nothing so characteristic of Iceland as the clash between fire and ice.

At the Foot of a Volcano

Four years ago I had the adventure of a lifetime when a volcano erupted in Iceland and a friend and I took a jeep right to the crater's feet. I wrote about it in one of my first blog posts: "It sighed and breathed like a magical being, sending up mesmerizing red fountains of molten rock." It made me dream of dragons. 

Two weeks later a bigger eruption, of the famously hard-to-pronounce Eyjafjallajökull, shut down air traffic all over Europe.

Since then, I've been hearing at regular intervals that Hekla, or another one of Iceland's big volcanoes, is going to blow its top.  Here's the latest one, as reported in the Reykjavik Grapevine: "UK Govt: Icelandic Volcano As Great A Threat As Nuclear Terrorism."

It's true that Hekla is overdue for an eruption. Scientists can tell that the magma chamber is full. Warning signs are posted at all the roads and hiking trails in the vicinity of the mountain, with a QR-code you can use to access the latest safety warnings. Last time Hekla erupted, there was only 30 minutes' warning. (Read about the QR codes at Iceland Review.)

Iceland's volcanoes are already heavily monitored, and Icelandic scientists, including my good friend Kristín Vogfjörð, have organized a huge EU-funded research effort, FutureVolc, to try to improve their eruption predictions. (See http://futurevolc.hi.is for more on that project.) 

But sitting where it is, right over a hot spot where the European and American tectonic plates are spreading apart, Iceland is guaranteed to have another big eruption sooner or later. It might be an inconvenience, like the eruption in 2010. Or it might be a disaster.

One eruption of Hekla in 1104 wiped out the medieval farm called Stöng. Archaeologists call it Iceland's Pompei--though they found no preserved bodies. There's a beautiful reconstruction of the medieval longhouse near where the original farm stood.

Even closer to the volcano lies the modern farm of Leirubakki. Driving the long way around from Stöng last year, I went an hour without meeting any other cars. The mountain of Burfell looked like a sugar cube. The greenish glacial river Thjorsá rushed by. Across it, Hekla sat with her head wrapped in black clouds--as usual. "Hekla" means "Hooded One." 

Over the bridge and heading back south, I passed tumbled heaps of cold lava lying picturesquely along the roadside, interspersed with patches of black sand. Here and there grasses and spindly birch were reclaiming the desert. 

Finally, I turned down a lane, passed a hedge of trees, and found an endless meadow filled with horses. A half hour later, after checking into the Leirubakki Hotel, I was on a horse taking an hour's ride through a lava field. Then I treated myself to a long soak in the hot-tub and a delicious fish dinner, complimented by a local beer, in the restaurant of the Hekla Center, the volcano museum on the grounds.

Initially Leirubakki looked to me like a village, a jumble of buildings in vastly different styles. But when I saw it from a different angle, the strange combination of rooflines matched the foothills of the mountain behind them and it all made sense: the main house, the museum and restaurant, and the hotel all fit into the landscape. 

The windows of the restaurant look out onto the volcano, Hekla. The only complaint I had about dinner was the constant noise, like someone idling a big diesel rig outside the room--then I realized it was the soundtrack of the museum next door. A fake eruption was in progress. That put a different spin on things and I began thinking how vulnerable this farm was, sitting at Hekla's feet.

The farmers think about it all the time--which is why they built the museum (with professional help). The next morning I took the tour. It's a wonderful display, very scientific and with lots of educational content presented in an entertaining way. 

Big TV screens show loops of various kinds: aerial shots, eruptions, seismometer readings, a simulation of a magma chamber, paintings and photos of the volcano in action. The walls are filled with quotes about the volcano, including one that names it "the mouth of Hell." A timeline describes the 23 known eruptions since the settlement of Iceland, the first being the big one in 1104. The longest eruption lasted two years. The most recent was in 2000. The next one? It could be tomorrow.

If you want to learn more about Iceland's volcanoes, I recommend Island of Fire: The extraordinary story of Laki, the volcano that turned Europe dark, by Alexandra Witze and Jeff Kanipe (Profile Books, 2014). Read about it here: http://lakithebook.wordpress.com

William Morris's Muse

Here's an essay I wrote for a contest (didn't win) about riding horses in Iceland:

"There's no bad weather, only poor clothing." That's one of my favorite Icelandic sayings, as I was reminded, daily, for a week in the summer of 1990, when I took a horse trek in southern Iceland. It was billed as "a trip for people who have a taste for uninhabited areas far from any luxury." It was run by the company Hekla Horses, named for the nearby volcano long known as the Mouth of Hell.

We rode five hours a day in drizzle or worse, with only a few spells of misty calm to tempt a lowering of our hoods. My rainpants proved leaky. Though warm enough, I grew sticky behind and uncomfortable in the saddle. My hands, wet through three layers of gloves, were claws.

We rode along a leaping river and down farmers' lanes, encountering loose sheep and cows, horses and herd-dogs. Ducks filled the river's rare calm pools. Snipe whirred and tittered overhead. From the fenceposts whimbrels sighed (Icelanders liken the sound to porridge bubbling). Redshanks flew shrieking off the sandflats. We passed a meadow yellow with buttercups. I shut my eyes often -- for cold, rain, dirt, fatigue, fun -- as we rode across an interminable black sand waste, past a booming waterfall called Troll Woman's Leap, a mesa-shaped hill now on our right, now on our left. The Mouth of Hell remained hidden in clouds. In spite of the flurry of my horse's hooves, I felt strangely motionless, strangely light, balanced between the mountains, floating between sand and sky.

We were on our way to a national park deep in the deserted highlands. The park is renowned for the fanciful colors of its geology -- a pea-green chasm, a blue hill, tawny ridges, a lemon-yellow sulfur pit, a cliff-face with candy-pink stripes. From the top of the blue hill, a far-off cluster of lakes mirrors the sky, while on every horizon glaciers lift like white turreted castles.

Or so the tour books say. We saw little of it. It rained for six days straight. Misty rain, wind-driven rain, chilling rain, rain that cut visibility back to the ears of my horse. Once the horses turned tail and refused to go forward into the gusts.

Our guide, Jon, taught us songs. "Ride on, ride on, ride over the sands. The elf-queen is bridling her steed." Jon had a high, strong bellow of a voice, nasal but tuneful, piercing and sad. "Lord lead my horse, this last part is hard."

In 1871, the writer and Arts-and-Crafts designer William Morris toured Iceland. He, like I, was enamored of the medieval Icelandic sagas, Iceland's claim to literary fame. He, like I, thrilled to see the farms, the dales, the mountains mentioned in those tales from a thousand years ago. Tales of sheep-farmers and sorcerors, horse fights and feuds, love and grief and strife. Tales of a hard life scratched from an unforgiving land. Tales tempered with poetry and grace. He, like I, rode a long way in the rain, over rugged terrain on a trusty horse, happy to come at last to a house and begin to feel his hands and feet again. He wrote of cresting a hill and receiving "that momentary insight into what the whole thing means that blesses us sometimes and is gone again."

Once while we rested our horses at a crossroads, Jon shared out bars of chocolate. Each other rider broke off a square or two, but I refused. I didn't want to strip off my layers of soggy gloves. Jon nodded. He bared his own hand, broke off a square, and brought it to my lips.

Twenty years on, I can still smell the wet wool of his sleeve-end, see the manure grime in the heart-line of his palm, his squint of a smile as I opened my lips to this outlaw priest and his bitter wafer.

Hekla Horses is still in business. I highly recommend the six-day Landmannalaugar trip (I've taken it twice). See http://hekluhestar.is/. For a great website on Icelandic horses in general, visit The Icelandic Horse Congress at www.icelandics.org. You can also take a virtual trek on my friend Stan Hirson's video blog, Hestakaup.kom. Finally, to learn more about Iceland and Icelandic horses, don't forget my book, A Good Horse Has No Color: Searching Iceland for the Perfect Horse!

Iceland's Volcano Show

The New York Post called it "The Volcano that Shut Down the World." The ash cloud from Iceland's Eyjafjallajokull eruption in April 2010 caused more than $1 billion in losses to the airline industry and grounded thousands of travelers for days. In Iceland, it wiped out roads and water lines and covered farms with four inches of cement-like ash.

But when I was there that Easter weekend, it was just a "tourist eruption." I was one of 15,000 people who hiked, rode snowmobiles or jeeps, or flew helicopters or planes to the site.

Why did we go? 

"Volcanoes are sublime," said one person I asked. "It's terrorizing and beautiful -- and beautiful because it's terrorizing."

Said another, "I was depressed because I'd lost my job, and this woke me right up. Mother Nature was playing a role in my life." He added, "You must experience this with your own eyes."

I booked a jeep tour. Three hours from Reykjavik, we let some air out of our tires and climbed onto a glacier. We drove an hour on the icecap, guided by GPS, and parked in a long line of jeeps. 

A half-mile away loomed a black caldron, with gray-blue arms of lava stretching out over the snow. It sighed and breathed like a magical being, sending up mesmerizing red fountains of molten rock. Some bombs arced so high they looked like shooting stars. Others bounced on the crater rim and rolled like gold coins. At the cooling face, the lava bulged and broke, tinkling like bits of glass. As the sun set, the colors grew more vivid. A fluorescent yellow tongue oozed over the crater side. Lines of orange lights twinkled on the dark ridges of rock. The lava fountains turned hot pink.

Ten days later, the volcano forced a new channel straight up. Hot lava hit the ice our jeep had been parked on and blasted it 35,000 feet in the air. No tourists were there that day -- it was snowing too hard.

You can read a different version of this story in the August/September 2010 issue of The Penn Stater magazine and an interview I did with an Icelandic scientist, and Penn State alum, on the Penn Stater blog. A third, very different take on it will appear in the May 2012 issue of Highlights for Children.