Christina's Book Tour in Iceland

A day too dazzling for words

After 12 hours of dizzying landscapes I hardly have a single word left in my brain, and I think at this point in the trip that's a good thing! 

Sadly, no photos are posting. Maybe it is too remote here in Seydisfjordur...will try in the morning. Even though it seems like morning now. Eleven pm and the birds are singing and we can see the snow capped mountains with plunging waterfalls out our hotel window....

On the road at last

After a whirlwind five days in Reykjavik, packed full of book events, media interviews, family visits with relatives I haven’t seen in nine years, meeting my Icelandic readers for the first time, and a bit of sight seeing here and there—we suddenly found ourselves on the road this morning:

 
 

Spinning out the window all around us was the vast Icelandic countryside with its utterly dizzying variety: lunar landscapes one moment, then fertile, vibrant green fields with sheep agraze, then light green moss-covered lava fields, huge mountains draped in fog, rushing glacial rivers, a sudden torrential downpour, a break of sunlight, white caps on the distant ocean. It feels like we’ve been in seven countries at least in this one day!

 
 It seems like we passed one of these dramatic waterfalls about every five minutes!

 

At the reading I did last night, a young Icelandic woman came up to me. “I think we might be related,” she said. “My mother sent me here tonight to see if you can help us find our relatives in America.” I looked at the names at the top of her genealogy and none seemed familiar—and then suddenly I saw the name of my dear American cousin Sigrid Rafael, who is related to me through both my grandmother and grandfather’s sides of the family.

 

While I was writing The Tricking of Freya, my mother kept saying, "You better finish soon, or Sigrid might die before she gets a chance to read it.” In the end, it was my mother who died before having a chance to read it. Sigrid was blind by the time I finished, but her daughter, my cousin Diana, read the entire manuscript out loud to her before she died.

 

So now I can help this young Icelandic woman who came to my reading in Reykjavik find her American relatives, including me. I just need to refer to our family Blue Book (a geanealogy tome which appears in my novel), that Sigrid researched for years, and has all the family going back to 19^th century Iceland and forwardto the end of 20^th century North America.

 

But back to today… unfortunately I fell asleep and caused us to miss the turnoff to the volcano, waking up an hour too late to go back. But the truth is, it is now slumbering and we’ve been told there’s nothing to see right now.

 
 Volcanic debris on a farm...

Yet we did drive through “ashlands,” farmlands covered in ash, a fine black silt. I wore a mask as we drove through, since I’ve only just gotten over pneumonia. 

Ash-covered landscape 

 The town of Vik, sparkling clean after its recent cleanup from the eruption.

We had lunch in the little seaside village of Vik, which we’d heard had been devastated by ashfall. Strangely, it looked clean and sparkling…? The young woman at the museum told us the government had just hired a crew of over a hundred people to shovel out all the ash and hose down all the streets and buildings.

 

In a way I regret missing the active eruption, which died down just before we left, but could wake up at any moment. But just seeing the ashfall gave me a sense of what my grandfather and his family went through when Askja erupted in the East of Iceland in 1875. The morning sky was so black with ash he couldn’t see his hand in front of his face. Last night I had dinner with a woman, a Lithuanian immigrant to Iceland, who got caught in a terrible ashstorm while trying to see the volcano. It was a complete blackout, stuck on the road unable to even turn around, returning home with ash gritting between her teeth.

 

We finally arrived at our destination, a farm guesthouse called Brunholl where I stayed once 12 years ago, only to be greeted with a message that we had left an entire suitcase in Reykjavik! At first Oliver and I blamed each other, but now we are each insisting on taking the responsibility. The truth is that our schedule was so hectic and we were so exhausted it’s amazing we managed to get out of town at all.

My dear cousin Hrefna to the rescue – she will put the suitcase (all of Oliver’s clothes) on a domestic flight tomorrow and we’ll pick it up in Egilsstadir on our way to Seydisfjordur.

At least we have a view of the largest glacier in Europe right out our window...

 

The farm’s declicious homemade licorice ice cream made everything OK again. You can visit their cows in the cowshed, or just watch them on a web cam in the lobby!

Last Day in Reykjavik

 I feel like I've hardly spent a moment outside in Reykjavik... or rather, just a few minutes, here and there. The pace has been so relentless, between book events, media interviews, and visiting relatives...I'd forgotten how grueling book touring can be. Just leaves me with a longing to come back and spend an entire week just walking around the city day and night. 

With a lot of help from a lot of people, we've gotten some great media coverage, and hence really good attendance at events. I've talked to so many people at the events: people who have read the book, people who think that we might be related (and usually we are), people who have stories to tell... I've made so many great new contacts, with writers and scholars and readers and frændfolk (relatives). 

Oliver has totally mastered navigating Reykjavik, along with suddenly having an amazing Icelandic accent that is making me quite jealous! Plus he's taking tons of photos, but we're on the move all the time and there's hardly time to download them. 

  
    Our hosts in Reykjavik have been my cousin Hrefna, her husband Eirikur, and their 20 year old daughter Hallveig, who just graduated from Mentaskol. They had a big graduation party the day after we arrived, and held a dinner party for us a couple of days later. Endless Icelandic hospitality! 

Hrefna is a historian and works at the National Archives. Happy graduation Hallveig! Eirikur carves lamb roast smothered in blueberries.

Tomorrow we leave for the East and plan to see what we can of the volcanic area. Hopefully there won't be too much ash blowing around. Even though the eruption has died down, the ash-blow can be fierce on some days... I'm hoping to get a sense of what it was like for my grandfather Olafur when the ash came down and obliterated so much of the East back in 1875...

A sudden intense rainstorm to wash the ash away

Today we woke with our car covered in ash. And now out of nowhere a sudden intense rainstorm which hopefully will wash it away; the ash seems to be covering everything in a fine layer of brown sand. 

Wonderful breakfast party at the home of one of my relatives, Anna Thora. She hosted me here in this home for a month while I was attempting to learn Icelandic in 2000. Bread, cheeses, and luckous cake made of Icelandic Skyr and cherries.

Being interviewed for Icelandic television this morning in front of the Leifur Eiriksson statue at Hallgrimskirkja. (The show will air in the fall.)

1st book event in Iceland!

Ecstatically happy about my first public appearance in Iceland today, even if the R´s weren't exactly rolling off my tongue...

 Speaking to a good-sized crowd at Þjóðmenningarhús (National Culture House) in Reykjavik

 Reunited with my dear cousin Jóhanna after nine years

 

Exterior of Þjóðmenningarhús (National Culture House) in Reykjavik

Utterly Overwrought Under the Midnight Sun

It is 3 a.m. and despite utter exhaustion my brain refuses sleep. I can attest to the fact that it has not gotten dark, not for an instant. The birds are singing all night long and I fear they must be as overwrought as I am. 

Tomorrow, i.e., today, is a big day, the first official day of the book tour. Radio interview in the morning, book event in the afternoon, dinner party for whichmy cousin and host Hrefna has prepared a ham marinated in blueberries and some kind of red Icelandic berries from her garden. Then a TV interview the following morning, another book event in the afternoon, dinner out with friends I have yet to meet in person. And then the next morning we head for the volcano, which seems to be slumbering still, and the glacial lagoon. 

But tomorrow, meaning today, feels like the biggest day, somehow. At the book even this afternoon I will read out loud from my novel in Icelandic. My greatest fear is that I will somehow make the beautiful Icelandic language discordant to my listeners, but really I'll be thrilled if they simply understand me. Hrefna helped me make my f's sound more like v's and my t's sound more like d's and we removed one word from the piece that is just too horrifyingly difficult to prounounce. 

Then I finished my Powerpoint presentation and Hrefna proofread the slide titles, which are all in Icelandic in case some people in the audience aren't completely following my English. These would be mainly older people, who are sometimes not as astoundingly fluent in English as so many Icelanders are.

Earlier in the day I had a 2 hour interview with Eyglo from The Iceland Review at a cafe in Reykjavik, which was just lovely and stimulating. She helped me to understand a dream I had in 1985 about the Icelandic grandmother I never met pushing words out through my fingers in a stream of light. This while Oliver was playing golf at the lava-ringed course in Hafnafjordur. 

And this evening a dearly romantic dinner with Oliver by the lake, unbelievable fish soup, divine shrimp, mussels, lobster tails, smoked beef tongue, lamb medallions, finished with flan and, for Oliver only, the dreaded Harkarl (fermented shark meat), which he seemed to thoroughly enjoy chased down with Brennavin.

Then a very deep and intensive half hour conversation with our Turkish waiter, who speaks English with an Icelandic accent and is about to become an Icelandic citizen. "Iceland is not for everyone," he said. But, we agreed, it is certainly for some of us.

After dinner we stood by the lake at midnight listening to the church bells ring and watching hundreds of birds twittering and diving under a blue sky tinged with pink. I saw the bridge that Freya once watched Saemundur walk across with longing. And the house of books on the other shore. (Like yesterday at Thingvellir, these seemed like actual memories and not fictional scenes invented for my book.)

And then I fell into bed in the deepest exhaustion, sure that finally I would sleep after nights of sleeplessness but no, here I am, after three hours of uselessly lying in bed I have gotten up and eaten a banana and written this blog.

I wish could post photos of the lobster and hakarl and especially the lake and birds but we haven't even begun to sort through all the photos from yesterday. Plus we forgot the camera and maybe that was for the best. 

The strange thing is that I have a black eye mask and a black curtain to block out the light and earplugs to block out the birds and even sleeping pills. But my brain is somehow stodgy and insistent: if it isn't dark, then it isn't night. 

And by now it really is day, if it ever wasn't. May sleep be with me. 

Day 2: Revisiting Thingvellir: Actual Locations & Fictional Memories from The Tricking of Freya

   Christina at Almannagjá

As soon as we reached Thingvellir and began walking along the narrow chasm of Almannagjá, emotion-charged memories surged through me:   not memories of my own visits to Thingvellir, but the memories of the characters in my book.

   

Drowning Pool

Happy memories, of Freya and Saemundur walking along the top of the chasm, flirting by the Drowning Pool where witches were summarily dispatched in centuries past.

   

Lögberg (Law Rock) 

Ulfur explicating Icelandic history at the Law Rock, where the first Viking settlers held their outdoor parliament in the 10^th century.

  

 Bus at Thingvellir

And feelings of turmoil, as I saw the spot where Birdie turns against her friend Ulfur, insisting he drop her and Freya off at Thingvellir to wait for a bus back to Reykjavik. And the bus comes and Freya tries to get on and Birdie stops her. And the desolation Freya feels as the bus drives off, stranded with Birdie, and their wretched hours-long trek around the lake. A turning point in the book, the point where Freya realizes that she is now hopelessly entangled in Birdie’s madness.

 

I remember too my actual memories of visiting Thingvellir several times over the years, yet memories of my actual visits were not as strong as my fictional memories, memories of the fictional scenes I created for my book. These were scenes are in some ways more real to me than life, I inhabited them for such long periods of time in my mind, writing and rewriting, feeling and refeeling, seeing and reseeing each place, each exchange of conversation, the feel of the wind blowing ceaselessly against Freya’s face.

   

 Seven Swans at Thingvellir

Today at Thingvellir: seven giant swans, rising up, puffing out their chests, beating their massive wings in the air, then taking off in a white ruffle across the still green water. 

We've Landed!

6-hour stopover in Seattle with our 4 suitcases & 2 carry-ons

After being awake for 24 hours in a row, we landed in Reykjavik at 6:30 a.m. this morning on a flight where the sun never set. It just kept glaring brightly through our window for the whole 8 hours.

 

It was the strangest landing I’ve ever had into Keflavik. There was no rain, sideways or otherwise. There was no fog. There was no May snowstorm. There was just… bright sun and blue sky!

 

We found our rental car by wandering through parking lots of Hertz and Avis and Budget, each separated from the others by walls of lava rocks.

 

Oliver navigated us straight to my cousin Hrefna’s house (not a single wrong turn), where we had a wonderful breakfast of breads with cheese and homemade, local berry jelly and salmon and smoked lamb (no shark meat). We talked about crazy Icelandic politics: according to the latest polls, Reykjavik looks set to elect a mock political party tomorrow, called Besti Flokurinn (the Best Party) led by a stand-up comedian who may just become Reykjavik’s next mayor.

 

 Movie star & stand up comic Jón Gnarr: Reyjavík´s next mayor?

“With its special brand of absurdist nihilism, and under a slogan that loosely translates to "Whatever Works!" Mr. Gnarr's Best Party is tapping into the national protest mood.” WSJ, May 28

 

According to Hrefna, the main platform of the party, if there is one, is (1) a polar bear for Reykjavik and (2) to build a prison to house all the bank criminals who caused the economic collapse.

 

We then took sleeping pills, slept through the midday with a black blanket hanging over our window, and woke up after 6 hours to head for dinner at my publisher’s house.

 
 

Tonight was my first time meeting my Icelandic publisher, Jakob Ásgeirsson, who had The Tricking of Freya translated into Freyjuginning. I met his lovely wife Margrét once many years ago because, like most Icelanders, she happens to be related to me.

 

It seems I am in good company, as Jakob´s line up includes Icelandic translations of F. Scott Fitzgeral, George Elliot, plus one of my very favorite writers, Paul Austur.

 
 

Dinner was rack of lamb, eagerly devoured by Oliver, myself and their two year old daughter, who kept merrily crying out “Kjöt! Kjöt!” (“Meat! Meat!”) as she snatched up jibs of lamb with her tiny fingers.

 

  Icelandic sheepdog at work!

We left my publisher's house with two boxes of Freyjuginning books to take on the road with us. I’ve always had a fantasy about being one of those writers who drives across county selling her books out of the trunk of her car. I never considered it might be Iceland.

 

And everyone we’ve met so far is completely floored by Oliver´s ability to pronounce Eyjafjallajökull.

 

PS Check out this wonderful new review of The Tricking of Freya at one of my most favorite blogs, The Iceland Weather Report. 

Off to Iceland for a Book Tour!

 

It’s not something I ever considered back when I was writing The Tricking of Freya. I was just hoping to maybe find a publisher. Mainly, I was just praying I would finish the manuscript someday… A book tour in Iceland was far beyond my imaginings.

 

On my first trip to Iceland in 1998, I went by myself and didn’t know a soul. I traveled the island in a daze of wonder, meeting relatives for the first time, visiting my grandfather’s farm, exploring lava fields…

 

Now, embarking on my fourth trip, I’m accompanied by my dashing fiancé and official book tour photographer, Oliver. I’m looking forward to reunions with relatives, seeing the amazing volcanoes and glaciers and waterfalls again, soaking in hot pools, and hopefully surviving the terrifying Icelandic roads.

 

And the book tour itself! I’m so thrilled – and a bit nervous – for the  chance to engage with Icelandic audiences, some of whom will already have read the Icelandic translation of my book, Freyjuginning.

 

For my book events, I will actually be reading out loud a section of the book in Icelandic. I’ve been practicing madly for weeks trying to get my accent right. I’m much more nervous about whether I’ll be able to pronounce “hrjóstrugum” in front of a live audience than about whether the volcano will disrupt our flight. My ability to roll my R’s is maddeningly inconsistent. Sometimes I emit a perfect trrrrrrrrill, other times a flat old American R pops out.

 

Our itinerary is becoming more packed by the minute; media interviews are getting scheduled and distant cousins are popping out of the woodwork. This will be my first trip back in nine years. One thing I’m very curious about is what changes I will see related to the economic collapse. It will certainly not be the same Iceland it was before.

 

Our trip will be just over two weeks long, with four book events around the island. First stop is Reykjavik, with two book events, some family dinners, an excursion to Thingvellir, and an afternoon for Oliver on the lava-edged golf course of Hafnarfjordur, a town famous for its large population of Huldu Folk (elves). And lots more.  Then we’ll start our journey East, hoping for a view of the volcano en route.

 

So please join us, dear readers and friends. Lean back and enjoy some armchair travel, Icelandic style…

 

Christina & Oliver

 

Elation

Book launch week 1 has been an elated whirlwind... three incredible events, a fabulous review in the San Francisco Chronicle... hearing from readers from everywhere and nowhere...this is so much more than I ever imagined it could be. I am grateful and glowing all the time... when I'm not utterly exhausted. Worked full time through the book launch week, now have a week off from work as we head for Seattle and readings at Elliot Bay Book Company and the Nordic Heritage Museum. And what are sure to be a few lovely recuperative days on Vashon Island.

Life has never moved this fast for me before. There hasn't been a moment to reflect much less post to my blog. Hopefully more soon. Time to get on the plane. In the meantime, some photos..

Signing my first books at Diesel bookstore launch party, March 4

We had a great crowd at Diesel!

More photos to come... thanks to everyone who is sending good wishes and reading my book...