Down to Earth

Studying the Icelandic sagas, as I noted in a previous essay, is a great way to make a life. It's not, however, easy to earn a living doing so.

For many years, I worked as a science writer and editor at a university magazine to feed my Iceland habit (and myself). Leaving that job in 2003, I found myself writing less and less about science (and getting paid less and less for the magazine articles I did write), and supporting myself more and more by editing.

By accident, I established a niche editing academic papers for scholars who wrote in English as a second (or third) language. No matter the topic, I found it to be satisfying work--it engaged the same part of my brain as the Sunday New York Times crossword puzzles. What was this person thinking, I asked, when she chose this word? this phrase? How could she present her point more succinctly?

Inevitably, Iceland encroached on my editing work. An anthropologist friend who wrote in both languages sent me a copy of his biography of the explorer Vilhjalmur Stefansson and asked what I thought. I was honest. I critiqued his voice. I told him it bothered me as a reader when he suddenly switched from academic English to colloquial speech.

He was intrigued. Do I do that? he mused.

He asked if I would help him with his then-current project, and I ended up editing and working with him to heavily revise the English edition of The Man Who Stole Himself: The Slave Odyssey of Hans Jonathan. The book was listed in the Times Literary Supplement's Books of the Year and won the Sutlive Prize for the Best Book on Historical Anthropology.

By that time I was hard at work editing Gísli Pálsson's next book, Down to Earth, which mixes his own memories of growing up next door to a volcano with his critical explorations, as an anthropologist, into the Anthropocene, the geological era defined by humans' growing impact on the earth. In many ways, this book was my perfect editing project: merging Iceland, science (volcanology, seismology, anthropology), and history. I'm sure there's a mention of the Icelandic sagas in there somewhere, too.

I'm grateful to Gísli for wanting his voice in English to be as strong as possible, and to his university (the University of Iceland) for providing him with research funds he could use to hire an editor.

Here is a little taste of Down to Earth:

"My first habitat was a small, wooden house on the isle of Heimaey in the Westman Islands, forty-nine square metres in size and built on bare rock that thousands of years ago had been hot lava, welling from deep below the earth's surface. The house had a name: It was called Bolstad. I have always thought Bolstad a fine name: Literally, it means 'habitat.' As my habitat, Bolstad was a microcosm of Heimaey, whose name means 'Home Island.' Bolstad was a place where the future was certain."

Bolstad, he tells us, "succumbed to glowing lava" when a volcano erupted on Heimaey in 1973. Gísli was not there: He was a graduate student in England, and his family had moved to Iceland's mainland.

"We were not among the five thousand refugees fleeing the eruption that night," he writes. "I did not see Bolstad destroyed. But I came across a picture, the final photo of my birthplace, around the time that I began writing this book. I was startled to see it. When I showed it to my siblings and our mother, they reacted the same way I did: shocked and silent.

"Nothing has outmatched Nature here. A light westerly breeze carries off the clouds of steam rising from the lava, giving the photographer a clear view of what once was Bolstad. The advancing lava has already buried one end wall of the house where my mother 'birthed me in the bed,' as she put it. The other end wall has been thrust forward, and the lava has set the house on fire; flames lick the roof and windows. In the heat, the sheet asbestos of the roof has exploded into white flakes, which flutter down like snow onto the black volcanic ash that has settled around the house.

"The bulky television aerial on the roof of Bolstad is still standing; it presumably still picks up a signal from the mainland, but there is no one home to receive it. I gaze at the photo for a long time, my eye drawn again and again to that aerial. Is it a metaphor for the present day?" Is it a warning?

Down to Earth by Gísli Pálsson was published in 2020 by Punctum Books. You can read the ebook for free at https://punctumbooks.com/titles/down-to-earth/. If you like it, please make a donation to this nonprofit publishing house. Their editors have to earn a living (as well as make a life), too.

For more on my latest saga-based project, The Real Valkyrie: The Hidden History of Viking Warrior Women, see the related posts on this blog (click here) or my page at Macmillan.com.

Disclosure: I am an affiliate of Bookshop.org and may earn a commission if you click through and purchase the books mentioned here.

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

The Greening of Iceland

This week at an American Geophysical Union conference in Iceland, my friend Anna Maria Agustsdottir gave a talk on the importance of planting trees in Iceland to repair the damage caused by volcanic eruptions. (See news coverage here.) It’s a project she and her husband, Magnus Johannsson, have been working on for a long time at Iceland’s Landgræðslan ríkisins, or Soil Conservation Service. In 2000, I went out in the field with Anna and Magnus, in the shadow of the volcano Hekla, to report on their work for the alumni magazine of Penn State University. 

Here’s an excerpt from that story: Comparing it to the AGU report, you can see that Anna and Magnus and their colleagues have accomplished a lot in ten years. 

After an hour of bouncing us down a dusty road in his high-powered SUV, Magnus swerves over the berm and inches across the lava plain, over black sand and large rocks blasted there by the volcano Hekla, that snow-capped eminence over our left shoulders that people in the Middle Ages knew as the Mouth of Hell. I’m taking the grand tour of the research plots of Iceland’s Soil Conservation Service with Magnus, his wife Anna, and their children, five-year-old Sara and infant Snorri. The same tour, Magnus says, that he gave to Deng Xiao-Ping’s granddaughter the week before. For his Ph.D. at Penn State, Magnus spent his summers growing zucchini and testing the viability of its seeds. Anna’s dissertation was on volcanoes. Back home in Iceland, they have a much harder row to hoe: growing grass—or anything—to stop the blowing sand.

There’s nothing for miles here, it seems, but black sand and snowy peaks. Volcanoes erupt frequently. An earthquake registering 6.5 on the Richter scale struck the week before I came. According to Kristin Vogfjord, another Penn State alumna and the earthquake specialist at Iceland’s National Weather Service, the epicenter of the quake was just where Magnus is trying to grow grass. His fields lie atop a major fault, where two tectonic plates beneath the continents are pulling apart. On an average day, the area is shaken by 20 to 30 tiny quakes; today there are 3,000. One of Kristin’s colleagues, monitoring the fault, registers the movements each night. Said Kristin, “It’s almost as if you can see the tectonic plates moving in her data.” The earthquakes are often precursors to eruptions. In the last 20 years, Mount Hekla has erupted three times, coating the ground each time with six inches or more of rubbly, sandy black pumice.

Yet Magnus is undeterred. “We’re fixing the land,” he exclaims, waving a hand out the car window.

Far in the distance I see specks of color against the vast expanse of gray. It’s a small cadre of workers, among them Magnus’s 16-year-old brother. As we park and walk toward them, I begin to laugh. Each of the teens has a flat of lupine seedlings, spindly plants about four inches tall. Each also has a potato planter: like a coffee can on a stick. They’re spending the summer trudging back and forth across the black sand plain, six steps, plant a lupine, six steps, plant a lupine. Today the midges are thick. The teens wear face nets, but Magnus and I are fanning our hands like crazy. The kids and Anna have stayed in the car. Six steps, plant a lupine. It’s like the summer job from hell.

Magnus sees the humor, but he’s still miffed that I’m laughing. “In a reclamation project you want your lupine,” he insists. A spire of blue or purple or rose-colored flowers, lupine is a legume; it takes nitrogen out of the air and fixes it in the soil, making its own fertilizer. “We’re creating dunes by planting melgresi—Icelandic lyme grass—perpendicular to the direction of the drifting sand,” Magnus continues, “but we need to use fertilizer year after year for three years to get it to grow. Legumes are the answer to this. We’ve tried native Icelandic species such as white clover or sea pea, but they’re not as vigorous as lupine.”

We drive a little closer to the volcano, and now, indeed, I see that the peculiar Icelandic persistence is paying off: The sands have taken on a tinge of green. They were sown and fertilized four months before Hekla erupted last February [2000], and now the grass shoots are poking up through the new lava and ash. “Ashfall is not a problem in heavily vegetated areas,” Magnus says, “but here we get pumice blowing and drifting like snow. That’s quite a different matter.” Only the native lyme grass and a new Alaskan import, Bering hair grass, can stand having sand blown over them. “They just push up through it.”

When the first Viking settlers arrived in Iceland in 874, the medieval Icelandic sagas say, the land was green “from the mountains to the sea.” Birch woodlands blanketed at least 25 percent of the country; they now cover only 1 percent. Sites of old farmsteads, once grassy and full of sheep, are now black sand deserts. Nearly 40 percent of the country is threatened by desertification. The cause of the problem, Magnus says, is a mix of volcanic action, wind, weather, and human activity.

Icelanders can’t control the first three, so they’re working on the fourth: reducing the grazing herds and planting trees. As one Soil Conservation Service brochure puts it, “The Icelanders still owe their country more than half of the original vegetation cover.”

I like the way they put that: Icelanders owe their country. It’s a lesson other nations need to learn as well. From South Africa to northern China, desertification directly affects some 250 million people, almost four percent of the world population, according to a news release from the United Nations Environment Program last June [2000]. The Icelanders’ experiment could set an example around the world.

Join me again next Wednesday at nancymariebrown.blogspot.com for another adventure in Iceland or the medieval world.