although it’s possible to go right up the ridge between the Front and Upper Men, I would never chase sheep into Illuklettar, said Snorri’s-Edda, I’m greatly fearful of this mysterious X, what is it a symbol for? On Hafrafell, tourists are in grave danger of being swept down in a landslide from above to a death deep on the glaciers that flow either side of the mountain—once the mountain was encircled by glacier completely, but the glacier’s retreated so it’s possible to drive up to it—these glaciers have swallowed their share of tourists and experienced mountaineers; their metallic equipment comes to light 50 years later, flattened and crumpled, an indication of the ice’s power. No human remains ever come to light. It’s as though the ice wants to hold onto bodies but to spew back metal; the metal debris is all on display at the Visitor Center in Skaftafell, and people are drawn to look into the display box, to see death itself, the abyss arranged in a clinical display case: your powerlessness in the face of nature spills over you, and you just want to crawl into your tent and never come out again … the glacier gives back, or so say the Öræfings, said Snorri’s-Edda in the trunk.
After hearing this, all that wonderful information about Hafrafell and the mountain’s death grip attached itself to me, reeled me in, as we lay there together in an embrace in trunk, I dozed and as I did the mystical X in Illuklettar appeared to me, gleaming, butter was gushing from it, I jumped up and went out while Edda slept, the dusky night wrapped the surroundings in silence and stillness, all was still and quiet, it was just starting when I reached the glacier, I put on my crampons and went up on it, dark cracks swallowed me hook line and sinker and I breathed the cold rising from the depths, this great serpent occasionally hissed and sputtered, how coarse and uneven his scales were, he was going to snatch me, and I was ready, I was happy, I had nothing left to do in the world, I could fall into the crevasse, go into the mountain, settle down in Illuklettar and walk with the dead and with herders’ ghosts and alongside angels and monsters … I saw something glittering on the ice and went over, it was some object, an old tent peg, an old dented tent peg on a glacier, I looked up at the rough serpent-scraper as he crawled down the cliff belt on top of the breadth of ice, he’s traveled a long way, I thought of the men in the tent the glacier swallowed, those for whom this tent peg had served some role, they disappeared up there somewhere, now nothing was left of their existence save a single tent peg, old and dented; perhaps these men had climbed all the major peaks of the world, used the best equipment, here they were now, eaten out of their skin and hair, the glacier returning only this one transformed tent peg … Creeping glaciers crawl along like living creatures, I thought about the glacier, contemplating the tent peg while Edda slept in the trunk, these creatures breathe, move forward, recede, they moan and groan all of a sudden; when I came back I awoke Edda, I told her that glaciers were serpents.
Where were you? asked Edda.
I went to look at Hafrafell and Illuklettar and the mystical X, I went out looking for my mother.
To look for your mom? Is she lost there? Shall we call the rescue team? she asked sleep-addled, the Dragon, the armored tank? … huh?
She was attacked, a long time ago, when I was little, she and her sister were here on a trip and her sister was killed, my mother savagely beaten, she never recovered, in truth it destroyed our lives, my father says she was never the same again after the attack … I found this on the glacier, I said, and handed her the tent peg.
That’s horrible, she said, and took the tent peg, began to examine it distractedly, then with great awareness and intent, what did you say, your mother was murdered …
Her little sister was murdered, my mother savagely beaten, I said, and shakily cut a cake slice, my teeth chattering; I had fallen in love. You should have the tent peg, I said.
I’m not going to put it in the display case in the Visitor Center though it’s my duty to, she said, I don’t plan to send it to Þórði in Skógar either, nor the Settlement museum in Höfn, nor to the National Museum, I’m not going to show it to anyone but I’ll keep this mysterious treasure here with me instead and think of you, said Snorri’s-Edda in the trunk, Bernharður said, and the Interpreter interpreted, Dr. Lassi wrote in the report, or so Bernharður wrote to me in a letter, spring 2003.
You’re not the first person whose leg has had to be sawn off, Dr. Lassi said by way of comforting me, Bernharður wrote in his letter, though you are the first one I have had to dismember, and in impressive style, even if I say so myself. Sigurður from Tvísker told me that amputations were common in this area in bygone times: men would frequently get frostbite on their winter journeys, in rivers or from a heavy frost, in the mountains or on the sands or at the shore; their limbs would be damaged by the frostbite, blackened and burned by the hoar. These days, we know that was caused by rotting flesh in the limb, dead or decaying flesh, sometimes called coldburn—and people are still always needing amputation, but less can be lopped off, and it’s no longer remarkable, there’s a whole community of amputees, you’re going to do very well as an amputated person, Bernharður, you’ll get to have fun choosing a prosthetic limb from Össur, these days they’re custom-made—but what dull times we live in as far as language goes, custom-made, such an odd way to put it—I think it’s actually best to get a wooden leg, my dear fellow, you can ask old Muggur from Bölti to construct it for you, he’s a carpenter highly-esteemed throughout Öræfi, I recommend wooden legs made from birch, which is lightweight wood, durable, it is used for pointed staffs, you could even ask Muggur to put a point on your wooden leg, you’d be really agile in a landslide, stable out on the glacier, fashionable on the city sidewalks. Sigurður told me that on the eve of January 20th, 1903, a German ship got stranded on the shore at Svínafell, a ship called Friedrich Albert, a bottom trawler, a kind of vessel very unpopular with Icelanders because they scraped the sea bottom, destroying fishing grounds, although Icelanders changed their tune on such bottom trawlers as soon as they succeeded with the very same ships themselves, and most people have scraped the bottom ever since. This icy and black January night in 1903, the ship stranded on Svínafell shore and the twelve-member crew made it onto the land with great difficulty, and they loitered there, stuck on the beach until light began to appear late in the morning and the stranded men were at last able to see around them: when the Germans saw Öræfajökull they were terrified by the threat of this colossus appearing before them on the shore, Öræfi, they could not imagine any settlement existed here, only desolation and death, and they decided to stay in the west on the shore furthest from Öræfajökull and try to build a shelter; that seemed to them the easier and smoother plan, but it was a big mistake, Sigurður said, they did not know the beach lay on a great estuary and the whole of Skeiðarársandur lay before them; if they had kept on in the direction of the glacier they would have reached a settlement within a day, that’s what the heroic Kári Sölmundarson did when he broke his ship to pieces on the promontory at Ingólfshöfdi and walked to Svínafell in a snowstorm, as Burnt-Njal’s Saga tells us, reconciling there with Flosi and marrying his first cousin; Kári settled in Öræfi, and from him extends a large, beautiful family tree with many stately men. This was the first registered shipwreck in Skaftafell district since the division of the country into administrative hundreds, but the shipwrecked Germans on the Friedrich Albert were not familiar with Öræfi the way Kári was: they continued west along the coast, an entirely impassable route along which the quicksand sucked the men’s strength so that they grew exhausted after just a short distance, hungry, cold, and despairing, walking on quicksand is miserable, mortally dangerous, and there are many quagmires here—so they returned to the ship, from which they managed to rescue an inconsequential amount of food; they made a fresh attempt the next day to head west; day after day they made attempts to go west across the sand away from their wreck, but each time they had to return to the ship because the route was blocked. The First Mate went crazy, tearing himself away from the group, taking three crew members with him, rushing out into the sands. One day as the shipwrecked men were trying their hand at the estuary they saw two crew members wandering about, confused and perplexed; a third sailor was stuck in the mud, delirious, and