as always, I was a subscriber for a bit, kept it a secret from my wife, who thought it too extravagant to subscribe to both journals, even though she buys tons of magazines, ones that are for the sake of the household, she said, useful magazines everyone could enjoy, magazines one could look at but not just ones for me alone, my magazines were magazines for eccentrics and oddbirds, my wife said, and there was little point saying I got neither pleasure nor use out of her Life, Modern Living, The Week, Betrayal & Treachery, House & Dwellings, Massage & Home Living, Drink & Luxury, Seen and Heard, Scent & Smell, Domesticity, Improvability, The Ball of Yarn & Its Fate and so on and so forth, this bloody woman’s garbage, what’s more, she wanted to subscribe to Channel 2, that’s where I had to draw a line! What about subscribing to National Geographic? I asked, isn’t it fascinating? but she indicated that it isn’t … I want to tell Sigurður from Tvísker that Skaftfellingur is an outstanding magazine and I found his articles the most interesting, most informative and best written, I would like to tell him without any posturing, without buttering him up or getting caught up in affectations, I want to tell him this sincerely because I feel this is so profound, always, one is always playing some role, no matter what one does, no matter what one says; I will absolutely be putting on a pose, to my own inconvenience, when I tell Sigurður how much his writing affects me; I need to make sure I’m understood, to get the truth across I need to play a certain role. Strangely, when I’m castrating and killing I need to be in a role, identity is nothing but a role, I’m not the same at work as when I’m home with my family, sometimes you take the embers of your work-self home, which doesn’t sit well with those playing their home roles—it’s like a character caught between plays, but these are always our roles, oh, how exhausting they are, each role altering with each repetition, becoming a distortion of itself: something existed once but repetition has distorted it. I gear myself up for the role of speaking with the Minister of Agriculture and the Minister of Agriculture gears himself up for the role of talking to me, this preparation takes place backstage. Being yourself is definitely a role. I can only castrate and kill when I’m in my work role, a government service role, a domestic service role, talking to my mother, or making love, I can only castrate and kill if I am in my work role, and believe me, I am quite trained in this, one role takes over from another, you don’t like yourself in every role, in my home I’m barely a person, my wife sucks so much energy that I can’t wait to leave home for work, the worst thing is that I’m my best self in the role of the veterinarian, castrating and killing, in those moments I’m so strong, straightforward and purposeful, no nonsense, all the world in its right order, things working logically by themselves, the universe stable … of course the world is not at all in safe order and nothing is logical and nothing stable, I do what I need to, though deep down I despise my veterinarian role above all, perhaps that’s how it is with everything, that what you most love you hate in your heart, a subject authors understand, don’t they have a love-hate relationship with their fictions? So I’ve heard, and I thought it strange at first but now I understand it, for that’s how I am these days, my friend, a person in a role, empty inside from having devoted her life to castrating and killing, all as part of her own dream … I’m not a veterinarian, I’m an executioner …
It was Hrolllaugur from Mæri, the Interpreter interrupted, Hrolllaugur from Mæri settled Skaftafell district.
What’s that!? … Hrolllaugur! Wait there, I’ll write it down immediately, said Dr. Lassi, I knew that, surely, it had just been taken from me … Hrolllaugur … with three l-s? really? Meaning “shivering-in-a-pool”? Where’s the pen and notepad, it’s sopping, covered with the tourist’s blood … Hrolllaugur from Mæri … my friend … the hot spring must have been cold in Mæri so the little guy got chills … the dick … his dick shrank, ha ha ha, that’s why he called Hrolllaugur, I’m going to put this theory in the report, but how fares the patient and where are the sandwiches? Seems like he’s doing fine, the buttery butyric acid has helped him settle his own new land … and Sigurður? … did you hear, he’s shivering, fetch a blanket! The right thing would be to fill Flosalaug full of chlorine and alcohol and throw him in the deep end with a barrel and a life preserver, as I speak his leg and buttock are being incinerated so the pool should be warm and cozy, that would take the chilll out of the settlller … might we not say that the penis is addicted to colonization? … well, what’s the deal with that … no dicks in my life, fortunately, when they come my way I tend to cut them off and throw them in the trash, interpreter, you queen of language, are there many words in Icelandic, or any other languages, with three l-s in a row? I can think of one: loyalty points, no no no, there’s only one l at a time, where did that come from? I don’t even know what loyalty points are or how they’re relevant, I’m falling into a trance … it is best to have a pen and notepad handy, yes, I know that loyalty points are what people get when they leave the country by plane, which makes them doubly contrary to Hrolllaugur from Mæri, since Hrolllaugur reached land by ship … with his three ellls …
Ballless, said the Interpreter.
What about being ballless? Dr. Lassi asked, is the patient saying something about being ballless? Maybe he wants to know where his balls are?
There are three ells in ballless, said the Interpreter, like in Hrolllaugur from Mæri. Though I think it’s spelled with just two ells, Hrollaugur …
Shiver-eyes! cried Dr. Lassi, by which I infer that his eyes experienced tremoring, perhaps from light-sensitivity or suffering from chronic myoclonic twitches? …Anyway, you were saying?
I was just going to say that Hrollaugur was the brother of Hrólf, Duke of Normandy, the one known as Hrólf the Expeditionary, the subject of many stories in the ancient Nordic legendary sagas.
Oh yes, they’re so entertaining! You have them here?
This fellow Göngu-Hrólf, or Rolf the Walker, the brother of the Hrollaugur who settled in the Skaftafell district, Dr. Lassi’s report explained, is one of France’s national heroes, known as Rollon—he was called Hrólf and he spoke Icelandic but the French could not say Hrólf in a normal fashion, and called him Rollon, likely because he always smelled clean and fresh. Hrólf the Expeditionary was a great viking and outlaw; with his army he gained control of part of Russia, as told in Heimskringla by Snorri Sturluson and the Sagas, and he toured various lands, accruing gold, marrying princesses, fighting for England, storming into France, waging war in Paris, becoming Earl of what is now called Normandy, owing to the fact that the area was settled by Norwegians. Hrólf the Walker was Rúðu-Earl, the Earl based in Rúðu, which the French call Rouen; he defended France against an invasion of Danish Vikings, and from Hrólf the Expeditionary descend Norman earls and all the English kings—so Hrollaugur’s brother is a French national hero, the ancestor of the British royal family …
Hold on, what’s that the little punk is muttering, interrupting our scholarship? It’s about that horny hussy he met in Skaftafell? Horny-Edda, the park ranger, I think she’s hanging about down here still in the dining room, feeling like it’s her duty to watch over him—but I will not allow people to press on in here, teeming with bacteria and filth, who knows where their fingers have been, visits must be controlled, remember Dr. Semmelweis! But the little hornbud will get to meet her eunuch, we don’t stand in the way of love, isn’t that so, my Interpreter? … no matter how trashy she is … oh, what glory to be a lesbian!
I arrived in Skaftafell by bus from Reykjavík on Friday 11th April, Bernharður said, Dr. Lassi wrote in her report, the air was relatively cool and a warm sun shone that day in Öræfi. I wheeled my trunk to one edge of the campsite, which was largely empty; I had plenty of space. I was having a very impressionable day, and when she came by to charge me for the night on the campsite, I was immediately brought outside myself, transported by the uncontrollable beauty confronting me, and I don’t know if I’ve yet fully returned to myself, I feel like I’m still out in the other world into which that beauty cast me, where I want to be, unleaving: there is love, everything there transcends explanation, everything becomes feeling, everything is muteness, deafness, sightless, I hardly knew whether I was in this world or another, I was intoxicated, absolutely beside myself and yet right up