At the moment I’m in the land of ice and fire with my wife for our honeymoon. We rented a car for the trip and we’ve been making our way along the southern coast. I’m writing this from our guesthouse for the night in southeastern Iceland, which is called “The Potato Storage.”
Yesterday we went on a private guided hike that took us through the first five miles of Fimmvörðuháls (“five cairn pass”), the 14-mile trail in between two glacier tongues which begins at Skógafoss. Our guide’s name was Jón. We met him in the parking lot: he was standing by the trailhead with his waterproof jacket zipped all the way up to his chin and even though he was wearing a beanie I knew immediately he was bald.
We set out and I managed to establish some rapport with him early on by telling him how I share his name—my middle name is Jon—and discussing patronymics: Iceland is the only Nordic country to still use them. For instance, Denmark, the heritage of my dad’s side, switched to fixed surnames in 1826. Jón said he knew an Eliasen in Denmark and I said he could be my cousin and he said that is how it goes.
The end of the hike gave us a panorama of the canyon including several waterfalls. There was a manmade stone column standing on an outcropping on the ridge, about waist-high and a foot squared in cross section. The top bore an inscription in the familiar runic lettering of Icelandic. I looked at Jón and I realized he was considering it as well as if he was surprised to see it.
What’s this, I asked him.
He locked eyes with me and for a moment I was scared.
Then, staring at the writing again, he said this is a fragment of the Heimsmyndarljóð.
I was amazed, because in all my researching of the literary history of Iceland I had never come across this, and I asked him if he could translate it into English for me.
Oh, I don’t think so, he said, smiling, nervous.
It doesn’t have to be perfect, I said, I just want to get the idea.
I know enough English to talk to tourists, but I’m not sure I know enough to translate a poem.
I found this hard to believe. He spoke English so perfectly I forgot he wasn’t a native speaker. I pressed him. I said, just try your best, I’m really curious.
He sighed. It is forbidden, he finally said.
When we got back to the parking lot I asked Jón if he would come have a drink on us—we wanted to stop at a gritty pub we had spotted sitting lonely off the highway. He obliged. When we arrived at the pub around five, the sun was setting in the slow way it does at northern latitudes.
We had a round and then another and we talked about our trip and he told us about growing up in Isafjoerdur. Jón kept making the bartender laugh with whatever he was saying in Icelandic. The bartender was the only other person in the pub and he kept stepping out to smoke and I kept thinking how is he not freezing to death?—we could hear the wind violently rattling the sheet metal roof from inside.
After the fourth round I asked Jón about the stone again. I had no control over it, it just slipped out. Tell us about the stone.
He didn’t react. But then after a moment he started talking about the Icelandic language in a low voice.
(Even though I have been able to count on your discretion in the past, it occurs to me now that it should be said that you must not share this with any Icelanders you happen to know.)
“The language I speak has not changed since Medieval times, when Icelanders first started to develop their own national identity, and the language split from Old Norse. Our ancestors cleaved it from their ancestors and they named it and they were quite intentional about it: Icelandic. In the consciousness that they were birthing their heritage there with their chisels at the foot of the volcano or the waterfall or the glacier.
“It is very difficult for English speakers to learn, and when our schoolchildren are taught English they are disgusted and horrified by it. It is not uncommon for the poor young ones to vomit in the classroom once the teacher begins explaining the grammar. I myself remember being distinctly nauseous for a whole month of instruction. My parents started speaking English at home to help me learn—I begged them to stop.
“Icelandic is a synthetic language. We are not so analytic like you English-speakers, we do not see why you would want to break things up as you do, to shatter the world. It’s dangerous, I tell you. No, in fact, we are quite aware of the imperative to synthesize, to hold this world together.” He tapped the table forcefully as he said this.
“Our language is pure. We have an official regulator—much like the French—the Icelandic Language Institute. They codify the laws of our grammar and our syntax and our lexicon. We keep our language from becoming so bastardized as English has. You with your, your ‘goblin mode,’ your ‘selfie,’ your ‘😂.’ That nonsense. And the way your appropriate words from the rest of the world? It’s embarrassing. It’s a filthy language.
“For a word to enter our lexicon a rigorous argument must be presented to the Institute, demonstrating its roots in the original Icelandic of our ancestors. We keep the language modern, of course—we do not let the rush of the ages diminish its power. When the marvel of the telephone was invented we exhumed a dead word, sími, which means, literally, ‘long thread.’ When the World Wars were raging we had to come up with a name for the new hulking machines of steel that shot fireballs across the battlefield. We named them skriðdreki, ‘crawling dragon.’ When AIDS was gripping the world in terror we named it eyðni, ‘my destroyer.’
“We revere our language as we do ancient glacial ice in the bergs that sometimes washes up on the beach. Pure and perfectly transparent. You can look into a chunk and see the aeons of world refracted recursively as if you yourself were the insect in amber. You would scarcely comprehend Shakespeare as it was originally written, but our schoolchildren read the Sagas in primary school. Next week, November 16, we celebrate Dagur Íslenskrar Tungu, the holiday celebrating the Icelandic language. Is that funny to you? It’s not funny here. It is incredibly serious.
“Let me tell you something that you must never repeat. When Jules Verne wrote that Snæfellsjökull was the entrance to the center of the world, he was not fucking around. He visited Iceland and somehow learned of the Heimsmyndarljóð, probably some drunk idiot told him about it, and he asked to read it. Well, The Institute, still operating in secret at the time, got involved, and they denied him, of course, citing the same law with which I deterred you. Well. Then he said what if I stay here and study the Icelandic language? Strictly speaking, this also would have been forbidden, but the director of the Institute at the time, Magnus, was a fan of Verne and so he permitted it on the condition that Verne would commit to five years of study. So he did. Five years later, he was permitted to read the Heimsmyndarljóð in the traditional pilgrimage, which circles the country on foot and must be completed within a year, or the pilgrim is supposed to throw himself from Dyrhólaey. Well, Verne, the bastard, completed the pilgrimage and then returned to his home country and published a novel that presented some of the details—but twisted, bastardized, sensationalized. Betraying the stupid and profane manner with which he read the Heimsmyndarljóð. Verne was banned from returning to Iceland and from speaking or writing in the language. There is a rumor here that the Institute placed a curse on him and one night in his old age he uttered some word in Icelandic to convey some dark emotion that has no name in any other language and he promptly suffered the stroke that killed him. This end was foreseen, of course, by our ancestors who created the law, and everyone at the Institute must have known that the simple temporal structure of the French language, with the emphasis always at the place that you arrive, that limits the Francophone’s awareness to the current now, would have prevented him from understanding the nature of time conveyed by the poems. In Icelandic, with every utterance, we are placed at the beginning of things. And the language is such that a single word could be itself an entire poem; then, the poets rearrange these words into a chaotic order, and a metaphysical truth flows in an around all the lines of each stanza. This is the well of power from which the Edda and the Heimsmyndarljóð draw—no rhymes, no long flowery sentences, just the bare impression of the world itself, unfiltered by language, and the unity of everything conveyed by alliteration when necessary. All of this is lost in translation, to English or any other language.”
I couldn’t speak. I noticed my heart was beating painfully and I felt that rather than being at sea level we were sitting in the frigid, thin, thunderous air of one of the 14,000-foot peaks back home. I realized my wife was gripping my hand hard under the table.
Jón looked over his shoulder and then sipped his beer. I sat looking at him, dared not look at my wife, dared not sip my beer. We sat this way for several minutes until the bartender stepped out for another smoke break. Jón inhaled, pursed his lips, and, in a hush, began reciting an English translation of the the stone at Fimmvörðuháls. I’ve attempted to transcribe it from my memory here.
Conceived the center have many men, Foolishly fought the stillness they, Misty and gaseous a truth, Of such their village unawares, That recedes from the search, Forever distant from subjects Profane pitiful and eager, Smaller than the world seers, Of their own will skull bound, By bone and blood moving, Worthless, come they towards Not they become of, The shade of walls ever receding, Unto itself backwards endlessly, Running up the water the falls, Seeping up whence the ground, Underneath and throughout all, Surrounding and permeating, Covering and swallowing, Sparkling and bestowing, In the center, there, opens a mouth speaking words wider, In that un-place where voyaged men have stood never, For no thing knowledge permits the of a voyager there, By the sun shade and stream consumed or erased or Unbegotten, a thing all things which disappears because, And stills the waters and the sun the voyager vanquished.