I woke up early Sunday morning and walked around the town -- our hotel was just to the east of the main part of Reykjavík on Rauðarárstígur. (Doesn’t that just make you want to learn Icelandic?)
First a note of delight -- discovering that the thorn (þ) and eth (ð) remain as characters in the alphabet! (They also have the ash (æ) which isn’t quite as interesting, because it’s also in Latin.)
When I teach Beowulf to students I introduce them to a little bit about genuine Old English and talk about the thorn and the eth -- which roughly equate to our two different ways of pronouncing “th” -- as we do in ‘with’ (unvoiced) and as we do in ‘then’ (voiced). The ‘th’ in ‘with’ is roughly equivalent to the thorn (þ) and the ‘th’ in ‘then’ roughly equivalent to the eth (ð). See the sign below for their presence in the icelandic language:
One surprising discovery of being out at at 6:00 a.m. on a Sunday morning was that there were still people up from the night before!
Partly because of their extreme relationship to the sun, to light and darkness, and to summer and winter, Reykjavík night life does not begin to heat up until around 11:30 p.m. So at 6:00 a.m. the streets were quiet but not yet empty of revelers. Most people had gone home, but there were still a few quiet clusters of people drinking beer and smoking as the sun came up on the city -- much as you might find some people still sitting on a park bench at 2:30 or 3:00 am in a major European or American city after others had called it a night.
Wandering around, I noticed that Reykjavík is filled with street art and public art -- so much so that the two seem to blend into one another. It’s difficult to tell what might be commissioned and what has just been added to the common life of the city without, so to speak, permission.
This morning ramble was also the first time I walked up to the Hallgrímskirkja -- the somewhat controversial church that dominates any view of Reykjavík. It’s an amazing piece of modernist-expressionist architecture with it’s overall gray, minimal landscaping and stunning carven door. I didn’t have a chance to go in that morning, but did come back later to check out the interior.
I also discovered that there are a number of wonderful bookstores in Iceland, both new and used. The bookstores in Iceland are everything you would want them to be -- legitimate places to hang out and think, jumbles of ideas old and new.
Here was one sign I really liked:
After I got back to the hotel from wandering, we split up for the day, as we had done several times on this European jaunt.
Gramps, Grams, Dietrich and Anna went by bus to the spectacular Gullfoss and Geysir -- both features of the Continental Rift. I don’t have any pictures of my own, but the ones I saw made me half regret that I hadn’t made the trip! Here are a couple of pictures from the internet:
Gullfoss
Geysir
Meanwhile, Jen, Emily, Nora, Charis and I took a much shorter bus ride to Hellisgerði park in Hafnarfjordur -- home of the Elf Garden!
In order to get a sense for the Elf Garden, you have to understand that somewhere around half of the Icelanders do actually believe in elves, or the Huldufólk (“hidden people”). For reasons I don’t entirely understand and that are apparently somewhat sensitive with respect to “outsiders,” so many icelanders believe in elves that it is an issue when new construction threatens traditional elf dwellings.
The Elf Garden in Hafnarfjordur is full of volcanic rocks covered in green mosses and grasses, sparse Icelandic trees, and semi-groomed paths. It was easy to see how, if you believe in hidden people (of which more later), this is where they would live.
After walking around the Elf Garden we spent a little more time in Hafnarfjordur -- got coffee in a coffeeshop, walked around the shops and towns. Some of the pictures included in the slideshow are of the local architecture.
We took the bus back to Reykjavík, got an ice cream, and walked back towards the motel.
On our way, we discovered the Hólavallagarður cemetery -- probably one of the most naturally beautiful and powerful cemeteries I have been in, comparable to the great cemeteries of New Orleans.
We first encountered it as as what seemed to be a walled garden, with occasional gates that seemed closed, but eventually found our way in.
Each plot in the cemetery really has a distinct sense of it’s own space, with a boundary, often a tree, and some very unique headstones or standing stones. The layout is labyrinthine and idiosyncratic. It would be easy to get lost. I thought of how much my mother would probably have enjoyed it.
Like the cemeteries in New Orleans, the place really does feel like a city of the dead. Only here at Hólavallagarður, it is more like a partially kept-up ghost town where the trees and other flora are given free reign. There’s a connection between this approach to cemeteries and the belief in elves. I’m almost certain. The two sites felt absolutely akin to one another.
In fact, there is an Icelandic legend that the first person buried in a cemetery does not rot, but becomes the guardian of the cemetery. In this case, that is Guðrún Oddsdóttir.
If we would have stayed longer in Iceland, I would have certainly spent more time photographing this spot.
One interesting sidenote from this excursion, we discovered the self-cleaning public toilet. The ones in Iceland are not much larger than a portable outhouse here, but when you exit, the door closes and it does some sort of legitimate wet cleaning cycle!
Really a great idea.
Public toilets are so gross in the United States.
Day 25 Reflection One
I really appreciated the sense that Icelanders have for the place of art in their civic life.
In spirit, it reminded me a little bit of some of the “artsy” corners of American and European cities I’ve been in (Lowertown St. Paul, Uptown Minneapolis, the Southbank of London) but on a much more all pervasive scale -- as if the “arts” were not a corner of the civic life, or a destination, but essential to the fabric of civic life. This was one of the more impressive aspects of Iceland.
The same could be said of the bookstore and fashion cultures of Iceland. They are not segregated into subcultures or corners of the city, but are simply a part of a widely shared way of life.
Of course, all of these are in part made possible by Iceland’s intensely cautious immigration policies and consequent homogeneity.
Day 25 Reflection Two
It’s time I confess.
I too believe in elves.
But before you write me off entirely as a nutcase, hear me out.
“The fate of our times is characterized by rationalization and intellectualization and, above all, by the 'disenchantment of the world.' Precisely the ultimate and most sublime values have retreated from public life either into the transcendental realm of mystic life or into the brotherliness of direct and personal human relations.”
It is no longer considered credible or respectable to believe in supernatural causes -- or at least not to talk about them publicly. We have entered, in Charles Taylor’s language, a “secular age.”
But I think that orthodox Christians have responsibility to reject the thinking of a thoroughly secular age and to embrace, to a significant extent, a pre-Enlightenment openness to causes and realities that cannot be proven or demonstrated scientifically, accepting along with this the consequence of being thought “unenlightened” by secular peers.
Let me illustrate.
As an orthodox Christian, I believe in “angels.”
In the Jewish scriptures, these beings went by several names including mal'āk̠ 'ĕlōhîm (messenger of God), mal'āk̠ YHWH (messenger of the Lord), bənē 'ĕlōhîm (sons of God), haqqôd̠əšîm (the holy ones), ’ir (watcher) and hā'elyônîm (the upper ones).
I believe these beings are possessed of personality, will and power.
I believe they can have a range of actual effects in the natural world.
I believe they can appear as to human beings in a sensible form.
I also believe that some angels, like some humans, turned away from God. They became what we call ‘demons’ or ‘false gods.’
I believe these fallen angels have all the same metaphysical qualities of the angels, but have lost their status as messengers of God.
I believe that they too have personality, will and power, can affect the natural world, and can appear to human beings in a sensible form.
I also believe that these demons desire to possess or inhabit this world rather than be cast out of it. The story of Jesus casting the demons into pigs (Matthew 8:28-34) is noteworthy.
I believe they are capable of masquerading successfully as benevolent.
I also believe that they, mixed in with man-made superstition, are the true origin of pagan gods.
Taking this all together, it is absolutely no stretch at all for me to think that among these beings I believe in as an orthodox Biblically informed Christian are some that would be encountered as the Icelandic Huldufólk.
Metaphysically, I can see absolutely no distinction between the Huldufolk (or other European versions of the elves) and what I would call lesser demons, mixed with some local superstition regarding their habits and behavior.
So there you have it.
No comments:
Post a Comment