Great Icelandic Quotes

Who has ever wandered through such forests, in a length of many miles, in a boundless expanse, without a path, without a goal, amid their monstrous shadows, their sacred gloom, without being filled with deep reverence for the sublime greatness of Nature above all human agency, without feeling the grandeur of the idea which forms the basis of Vidar’s essence?

The Greek word for "return" is nostos. Algos means "suffering." So nostalgia is the suffering caused by an unappeased yearning to return. To express that fundamental notion most Europeans can utilize a word derived from the Greek (nostalgia, nostalgie) as well as other words with roots in their national languages: añoranza, say the Spaniards; saudade, say the Portuguese. In each language these words have a different semantic nuance. Often they mean only the sadness caused by the impossibility of returning to one's country: a longing for country, for home. What in English is called "homesickness." Or in German: Heimweh. In Dutch: heimwee. But this reduces that great notion to just its spatial element. One of the oldest European languages, Icelandic (like English) makes a distinction between two terms: söknuour: nostalgia in its general sense; and heimprá: longing for the homeland. Czechs have the Greek-derived nostalgie as well as their own noun, stesk, and their own verb; the most moving, Czech expression of love: styska se mi po tobe ("I yearn for you," "I'm nostalgic for you"; "I cannot bear the pain of your absence"). In Spanish añoranza comes from the verb añorar (to feel nostalgia), which comes from the Catalan enyorar, itself derived from the Latin word ignorare (to be unaware of, not know, not experience; to lack or miss), In that etymological light nostalgia seems something like the pain of ignorance, of not knowing. You are far away, and I don't know what has become of you. My country is far away, and I don't know what is happening there. Certain languages have problems with nostalgia: the French can only express it by the noun from the Greek root, and have no verb for it; they can say Je m'ennuie de toi (I miss you), but the word s'ennuyer is weak, cold -- anyhow too light for so grave a feeling. The Germans rarely use the Greek-derived term Nostalgie, and tend to say Sehnsucht in speaking of the desire for an absent thing. But Sehnsucht can refer both to something that has existed and to something that has never existed (a new adventure), and therefore it does not necessarily imply the nostos idea; to include in Sehnsucht the obsession with returning would require adding a complementary phrase: Sehnsucht nach der Vergangenheit, nach der verlorenen Kindheit, nach der ersten Liebe (longing for the past, for lost childhood, for a first love).

A fat servant is not much of a man. A beaten servant is a great man, because in his breast freedom has its home.

Once the Funk Island birds had been salted, plucked, and deep-fried into oblivion, there was only one sizable colony of great auks left in the world, on an island called the Geirfuglasker, or great auk skerry, which lay about fifty kilometres off southwestern Iceland’s Reykjanes Peninsula. Much to the auk’s misfortune, a volcanic eruption destroyed the Geirfuglasker in 1830. This left the birds one solitary refuge, a speck of an island known as Eldey. By this point, the great auk was facing a new threat: its own rarity. Skins and eggs were avidly sought by gentlemen, like Count Raben, who wanted to fill out their collections. It was in the service of such enthusiasts that the very last known pair of auks was killed on Eldey in 1844.

All illustrate the “theory of courage,” which Tolkien called “the great contribution of early Northern literature,” meaning both Icelandic and Old English literature. It is a “creed of unyielding will”: The heroes refuse to give up even when they know the monsters—evil—will win. For that is the big difference between Snorri’s Ragnarok and the Christian Doomsday. Odin and the human army of Valhalla do not win.

this only helps dispute the belief that the Black Death was caused by rats. A plague outbreak is always preceded by the presence of a great many dead rats, since they are also susceptible to the disease. Now, unlike in Asia, in Europe there are no plague-resistant rodents that could act as a breeding ground for the disease and a distinct lack of accounts mentioning dead rats in any medieval literature. Also, despite two outbreaks of plague in Iceland in the fifteenth century rats did not settle on the island until much later.

ultimately, most of us would choose a rich and meaningful life over an empty, happy one, if such a thing is even possible. “Misery serves a purpose,” says psychologist David Myers. He’s right. Misery alerts us to dangers. It’s what spurs our imagination. As Iceland proves, misery has its own tasty appeal. A headline on the BBC’s website caught my eye the other day. It read: “Dirt Exposure Boosts Happiness.” Researchers at Bristol University in Britain treated lung-cancer patients with “friendly” bacteria found in soil, otherwise known as dirt. The patients reported feeling happier and had an improved quality of life. The research, while far from conclusive, points to an essential truth: We thrive on messiness. “The good life . . . cannot be mere indulgence. It must contain a measure of grit and truth,” observed geographer Yi-Fu Tuan. Tuan is the great unheralded geographer of our time and a man whose writing has accompanied me throughout my journeys. He called one chapter of his autobiography “Salvation by Geography.” The title is tongue-in-cheek, but only slightly, for geography can be our salvation. We are shaped by our environment and, if you take this Taoist belief one step further, you might say we are our environment. Out there. In here. No difference. Viewed that way, life seems a lot less lonely. The word “utopia” has two meanings. It means both “good place” and “nowhere.” That’s the way it should be. The happiest places, I think, are the ones that reside just this side of paradise. The perfect person would be insufferable to live with; likewise, we wouldn’t want to live in the perfect place, either. “A lifetime of happiness! No man could bear it: It would be hell on Earth,” wrote George Bernard Shaw, in his play Man and Superman. Ruut Veenhoven, keeper of the database, got it right when he said: “Happiness requires livable conditions, but not paradise.” We humans are imminently adaptable. We survived an Ice Age. We can survive anything. We find happiness in a variety of places and, as the residents of frumpy Slough demonstrated, places can change. Any atlas of bliss must be etched in pencil. My passport is tucked into my desk drawer again. I am relearning the pleasures of home. The simple joys of waking up in the same bed each morning. The pleasant realization that familiarity breeds contentment and not only contempt. Every now and then, though, my travels resurface and in unexpected ways. My iPod crashed the other day. I lost my entire music collection, nearly two thousand songs. In the past, I would have gone through the roof with rage. This time, though, my anger dissipated like a summer thunderstorm and, to my surprise, I found the Thai words mai pen lai on my lips. Never mind. Let it go. I am more aware of the corrosive nature of envy and try my best to squelch it before it grows. I don’t take my failures quite so hard anymore. I see beauty in a dark winter sky. I can recognize a genuine smile from twenty yards. I have a newfound appreciation for fresh fruits and vegetables. Of all the places I visited, of all the people I met, one keeps coming back to me again and again: Karma Ura,

Darwin’s Bestiary PROLOGUE Animals tame and animals feral prowled the Dark Ages in search of a moral: the canine was Loyal, the lion was Virile, rabbits were Potent and gryphons were Sterile. Sloth, Envy, Gluttony, Pride—every peril was fleshed into something phantasmic and rural, while Courage, Devotion, Thrift—every bright laurel crowned a creature in some mythological mural. Scientists think there is something immoral in singular brutes having meat that is plural: beasts are mere beasts, just as flowers are floral. Yet between the lines there’s an implicit demurral; the habit stays with us, albeit it’s puerile: when Darwin saw squirrels, he saw more than Squirrel. 1. THE ANT The ant, Darwin reminded us, defies all simple-mindedness: Take nothing (says the ant) on faith, and never trust a simple truth. The PR men of bestiaries eulogized for centuries this busy little paragon, nature’s proletarian— but look here, Darwin said: some ants make slaves of smaller ants, and end exploiting in their peonages the sweating brows of their tiny drudges. Thus the ant speaks out of both sides of its mealy little mouth: its example is extolled to the workers of the world, but its habits also preach the virtues of the idle rich. 2. THE WORM Eyeless in Gaza, earless in Britain, lower than a rattlesnake’s belly-button, deaf as a judge and dumb as an audit: nobody gave the worm much credit till Darwin looked a little closer at this spaghetti-torsoed loser. Look, he said, a worm can feel and taste and touch and learn and smell; and ounce for ounce, they’re tough as wrestlers, and love can turn them into hustlers, and as to work, their labors are mythic, small devotees of the Protestant Ethic: they’ll go anywhere, to mountains or grassland, south to the rain forests, north to Iceland, fifty thousand to every acre guzzling earth like a drunk on liquor, churning the soil and making it fertile, earning the thanks of every mortal: proud Homo sapiens, with legs and arms— his whole existence depends on worms. So, History, no longer let the worm’s be an ignoble lot unwept, unhonored, and unsung. Moral: even a worm can turn. 3. THE RABBIT a. Except in distress, the rabbit is silent, but social as teacups: no hare is an island. (Moral: silence is golden—or anyway harmless; rabbits may run, but never for Congress.) b. When a rabbit gets miffed, he bounds in an orbit, kicking and scratching like—well, like a rabbit. (Moral: to thine own self be true—or as true as you can; a wolf in sheep’s clothing fleeces his skin.) c. He populates prairies and mountains and moors, but in Sweden the rabbit can’t live out of doors. (Moral: to know your own strength, take a tug at your shackles; to understand purity, ponder your freckles.) d. Survival developed these small furry tutors; the morals of rabbits outnumber their litters. (Conclusion: you needn’t be brainy, benign, or bizarre to be thought a great prophet. Endure. Just endure.) 4. THE GOSSAMER Sixty miles from land the gentle trades that silk the Yankee clippers to Cathay sift a million gossamers, like tides of fluff above the menace of the sea. These tiny spiders spin their bits of webbing and ride the air as schooners ride the ocean; the Beagle trapped a thousand in its rigging, small aeronauts on some elusive mission. The Megatherium, done to extinction by its own bigness, makes a counterpoint to gossamers, who breathe us this small lesson: for survival, it’s the little things that count.

Norway’s first Christian king was Hákon Aðalsteinsfostri. He grew up and was baptized in England and remained a Christian after he became king of his native pagan country c. 935. According to the scalds, he did not destroy sanctuaries, but he brought priests from England and churches were built in the coastal area of western Norway. Further north and in Tröndelag Christianity did not take root. When Hákon was killed c. 960 he was interred in a mound in traditional pagan fashion; the scald Eyvind described his last great battle, his death and his reception in Valhalla in the poem Hákonarmál. Ironically, this poem about a Christian king gives some of the best information about Odin’s realm of the dead. Olaf Tryggvason became the next Christian king of Norway when he returned home c. 995 with much silver after many years abroad. He had also been baptized in England and brought clerics back with him. A systematic and ruthless process of conversion was initiated in conjunction with efforts to unify the realm. The greatest success was in western and southern Norway and around the year 1000 Olaf was responsible for the conversion of Iceland, probably under threat of reprisals. Shortly after this he was killed in the battle of Svöld. The conversion of Norway was completed during the reign of Olaf Haraldsson. He had also become a Christian on expeditions abroad and his baptism is said to have taken place in Rouen in Normandy. On his return to Norway in 1015 clerics were again in the royal retinue, among them the bishop Grimkel, who helped Olaf mercilessly impose Christianity on the people.

Our principal sources of knowledge of this great Pagan religious system are the two Eddas of Iceland. These Eddas are collections of mythical and heroic poems and stories. One is called the Elder or Poetic Edda; the other, Snorri’s or the Prose Edda. The latter was discovered first; it came into the possession of appreciative scholars in the seventeenth century, by whom it was studied and carefully preserved. The

The saga teems with life and action, with memorable and complex characters from the heroic Gunnar of Hlidarendi, a warrior without equal who dislikes killing, to the villainous, insinuating Mord Valgardsson, who turns out to be less dastardly than we first expect. Unforgettable events include Skarphedin’s head-splitting axe blow as he glides past his opponent on an icy river bank, or Hildigunn’s provoking of her uncle to seek blood revenge by placing on his shoulders the blood-clotted cloak in which her husband was slain... Just as in the Norse poem Völuspá (‘The Seeress’s Prophecy’) the gods met their doom (no mere twilight) at the hands of brute giants and monsters, after which a new and peaceful earth arose, so do the terrible events of Njal’s Saga lead finally and at great cost to a dignified resolution bearing the promise of a better time. (Robert Cook(

Consider this data on the distribution of wealth: • Since 2015, the richest 1 percent has owned more wealth than the rest of the planet owns.11 • Eight men own the same amount of wealth as do the poorest half of the world. • The incomes of the poorest 10 percent of people increased by less than three dollars a year between 1988 and 2011, while the incomes of the richest 1 percent increased 182 times as much. • In Bloomberg’s daily ranking of the world’s five hundred richest people, the world’s wealthiest three (Bill Gates, Warren Buffet, and Jeff Bezos), all white American men, have total net worths of $85 billion, $79 billion, and $73 billion, respectively.12 By comparison, the 2015 gross domestic product of Sri Lanka was $82 billion; Luxembourg $58 billion; and Iceland, $16 billion.13 • Of the world’s ten richest people, nine are white men.14 • In 2015–2016, the world’s ten biggest corporations together had revenue greater than that of the government revenues of 180 countries combined. • In the US, over the last thirty years, the growth in the incomes of the bottom 50 percent has been zero, whereas incomes of the top 1 percent have grown by 300 percent. The call to Make America Great Again worked powerfully in service of the racial manipulation of white people, diverting blame away from the white elite and toward various peoples of color—for example, undocumented workers, immigrants, and the Chinese—for the current conditions of the white working class.

This insight led ultimately to the recognition of what is known as the Indo-European language family, a group of hundreds of historically related languages, both living and dead, covering a geographic range that stretches from the Indian subcontinent to Iceland. It had, of course, long been understood that there were relationships among languages. Latin and Greek show many similarities; the Romance languages are obviously a group; Dutch, German, and the Scandinavian languages are all clearly related. But the idea that linguistic relationships might go far beyond this and include languages that seem, on the surface, to have no family resemblance whatsoever—Bengali, Manx, and Armenian, for example—was truly electrifying, as was the idea of a single protolanguage from which this great diversity might have sprung. In Europe, this hypothetical ancestral language, known as Proto-Indo-European, was reconstructed during a period of intense linguistic activity in the nineteenth century by scholars in England, Denmark, France, and Germany (among the field’s early pioneers was one of the fairy-tale-collecting Brothers Grimm), using a methodology that is still practiced today.

No one called them Vikings at the time; that word simply means raider44 and only became common when the Icelandic sagas of the eleventh century were popularized in Victorian times. To the Saxons they were called Danes, even if they were often Norwegian; both nationalities tended to rape and pillage, so it didn’t really make much difference which freezing hellhole they came from. More

Consider this data on the distribution of wealth: • Since 2015, the richest 1 percent has owned more wealth than the rest of the planet owns.11 • Eight men own the same amount of wealth as do the poorest half of the world. • The incomes of the poorest 10 percent of people increased by less than three dollars a year between 1988 and 2011, while the incomes of the richest 1 percent increased 182 times as much. • In Bloomberg’s daily ranking of the world’s five hundred richest people, the world’s wealthiest three (Bill Gates, Warren Buffet, and Jeff Bezos), all white American men, have total net worths of $85 billion, $79 billion, and $73 billion, respectively.12 By comparison, the 2015 gross domestic product of Sri Lanka was $82 billion; Luxembourg $58 billion; and Iceland, $16 billion.13 • Of the world’s ten richest people, nine are white men.14 • In 2015–2016, the world’s ten biggest corporations together had revenue greater than that of the government revenues of 180 countries combined. • In the US, over the last thirty years, the growth in the incomes of the bottom 50 percent has been zero, whereas incomes of the top 1 percent have grown by 300 percent. The call to Make America Great Again worked powerfully in service of the racial manipulation of white people, diverting blame away from the white elite and toward various peoples of color—for example, undocumented workers, immigrants, and the Chinese—for the current conditions of the white working class. The

In one of our conversations, she told me about Finland’s development of sisu, a rough cognate for grit. Etymologically, sisu denotes a person’s viscera, their “intestines (sisucunda).” It is defined as “having guts,” intentional, stoic, constant bravery in the face of adversity. 21 For Finns, sisu is a part of national culture, forged through their history of war with Russia and required by the harsh climate. 22 In this Nordic country, pride is equated with endurance. When Finnish mountain climber Veikka Gustafsson ascended a peak in Antarctica, it was named Mount Sisu. The fortitude to withstand war and foreign occupations is lyrically heralded in the Finnish epic poem, The Kalevala. 23 Even the saunas—two million, one for every three Finns in a country of approximately five and a half million—involve fortitude: A sauna roast is often followed by a nude plunge into the ice-cold Baltic Sea. If Iceland is happier than it has any right to be considering the hours the country spends plunged in darkness each year, Finland’s past circumstances, climate, and developed culture have turned it into one of the grittiest. Finland’s educational system is also currently ranked first, ahead of South Korea, now at number two. 24 The United States is midway down the list. 25 In Finland, there is no after-school tutoring or training, no “miracle pedagogy” in the classrooms, where students are on a first-name basis with their teachers, all of whom have master’s degrees. There is also more “creative play.” 26 Perhaps the tradition of sisu and play, I suspect, are part of the larger, unstated reason for its success. 27 “Wouldn’t it be great if you heard people talking about how they were going to do something to build their grit?” Duckworth asked.

To express that fundamental notion most Europeans can utilize a word derived from the Greek (nostalgia, nostalgie) as well as other words with roots in their national languages: añoranza, say the Spaniards; saudade, say the Portuguese. In each language these words have a different semantic nuance. Often they mean only the sadness caused by the impossibility of returning to one’s country: a longing for country, for home. What in English is called “homesickness.” Or in German: Heimweh. In Dutch: heimwee. But this reduces that great notion to just its spatial element. One of the oldest European languages, Icelandic (like English) makes a distinction between two terms: söknuður: nostalgia in its general sense; and heimprá: longing for the homeland.

Besides not tasting good, the dodo had one or two fateful weaknesses. It laid its eggs upon the open ground, instead of concealing them. And it could not fly. As to why it could not fly—It seems inevitable for it to be said that this was because there were no predators on Mauritius. Indeed there were none either, in Australia, where lived the emu, which could not fly. There were none in New Zealand, where the flightless moa dwelt, in awful ignorance of the awful fact that some day its chief fame would be as an adjunct to the composers of cross-word puzzles. There were no predators in Iceland, to the great comfort of the great auk. Nor were there any on the frozen shelves of Antarctica, land of the flightless penguin.3 However, does this really explain anything?

A high-born, high-minded man must show his nobility, not only in the way he deals with an injury, and in care for his behaviour, but also by taking up the affairs of others. A man in difficulties would turn confidently for help to the great man of his district. An Icelander who had lost his son, and 'could not see his way to take vengeance, or win his case at law, by himself, went to the headman of his district and said: "l want your help to gain my right in this matter", and he gave grounds for his demands as follows: "It touches your honour also, that men of violence should not have their will in these parts." The headman had then to take up the matter himself. If there was wizardry abroad, then the chieftain must "see to the matter", otherwise he could ill "hold his honour'. Nay more, apart from having to deal with living miscreants, a man who aspired to leadership over his fellows might be called upon to exorcise a ghost, on the ground that here was a task his honour required him to undertake. The man would be obliged to meet any claim so made on him, and that out of regard to his own weal or woe. An applicant for aid could, if needed, threaten to let himself be cut down where he stood, with consequent dishonour to the man whose door was closed against him.

Raspberry could be used to reduce a fever, and coffee raised blood pressure, especially if it was strong. Aloe juice could clear up a runny nose and reduce inflammation in the throat, making it a great cold remedy instead of store-bought nasal spray. Aloe wouldn’t dry the nasal passages or have any other side effects. Sage and Iceland moss were both good for a cough.

Then spoke Gangleri: 'There is a very large number of people in Val-hall. I declare by my salvation that Odin is a very great lord when he commands such a great troop. But what entertainment do the Einheriar have when they are not drinking?' High said: 'Each day after they have got dressed they put on war-gear and go out into the courtyard and fight each other and they fall each upon the other. This is their sport. And when dinner-time approaches they ride back to Val-hall and sit down to drink, as it says here: All Einheriar in Odin's courts fight one another each day. They select their victims and from battle ride, sit the more at peace together.

The authority in such a clan-society is of a peculiar sort, it is here, it is there, it is everywhere, and it never sleeps. But there is no absolutely dominant power. The circle may perhaps have its leader in chief, but he cannot force anyone to his will. In Iceland, this lack of subordination appears in the crudest light. Iceland had men who gladly paid out of their own purse for the extravagances of their restless kinsmen, if only they could maintain peace and prevent futile bloodshed; but their peacemaking was an everlasting patchwork. There was no power over those who did not seek the right. To take firm action against them was a thing even the most resolute of their kin could never do, for it was out of the question for the clan to disown its unruly members and leave them to the mercy of their enemies. When Chrodin, a man of noble stock, was chosen, for his cleverness and god-fearing ways, to be majordomo in Austria, he declined with these significant words: “I cannot bring about peace in Austria, chiefly because all the great men in the country are my kinsmen. I cannot overawe them and cannot have any one executed. Nay, because of their very kinship they will rise up and act in defiance.

He dreamed of this day as he'd listened to his foster mother, Sesselja, and grandmother Ingibjörg tell of their sea adventures with the great Captain Thuridur. Their stories he knew were true because, unlike the men, they weren't drunk when they told them.

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