Gnarr (2 page)

The other day I dreamed of the future. I was at a meeting with some high-ranking politicians. The main Icelandic ministers were there, but also Hitler, Mahatma Gandhi, and Chuck Norris, and these people were apparently now going to govern our country. What happened then I don’t know, except that all at once I had supernatural powers, as in
The Matrix
, and could walk through walls. In another dream I watched while, somewhere like the Austurvöllur in the city center of Reykjavík, children were being sacrificed to appease the shareholders. And all the old established politicians came to enjoy the children’s blood. The prime minister slurped so greedily that blood ran down from the corners of her mouth and seeped into her blouse, the finance minister was gnawing on a human bone, and Idi Amin had come to join them. The bystanders wept.

That’s a bleak scenario for the future. Do we want such a future for our children? Do we want them to be swallowed wholesale? The Best Party certainly doesn’t. We have an appointment with the future, and we’re going to meet it like a new friend, at first hesitantly and timidly, then more and more confidently and expectantly. In the society of the future, as we see it, everyone is happy and contented, uses free buses and swimming pools, and talks over all the reasons why the Best Party is so good. Disease, grief, and pain are things
of the past. Nobody ever dies, they all live on, and if they need money, they just go into the nearest bank and have some printed—free of charge, of course. Anyway, money is now only of use as decoration or as a toy to play with. Because if we can turn our concept into reality, everything will be free. May we invite you to make a date with this rosy future? Then put your cross in the box marked
Best Party
.

Iceland appears on old maps as an island “beyond the habitable world.” Sailors warned you not to take a course to this Devil’s Island, because, on the old maps, the sea route to Iceland swarmed with sea monsters. When the ancient Greeks came this way, they quickly realized that there was nothing here, either for them or for anyone else.

People have tried to find a reason for the name “Iceland” for as long as anyone can remember. Some, for example, support the theory that the names “Greenland” and “Iceland” somehow got confused in hoary antiquity. Iceland is rather a green island. In no other country in the world do so many moss and lichen species grow as here, while in Greenland there’s not a single blade of grass to be seen far and wide.

But it is interesting that the prefix
ice-
in the Romance languages doesn’t have anything to do with the substance ice: it’s linked to
island
, being derived from the Latin word
insula
or
isola
. My own theory is that it might have come about this way: When the first Vikings set out on their raids into the northern seas, they must have come across a map belonging to Christian monks on which Iceland was indeed shown, but was
simply named
Insula
. But the ancient Norsemen, who weren’t too great at foreign languages, couldn’t make heads or tails of this, and so did their own number on it; they changed the letters, added the ending “-and,” and lo and behold: it made sense. I don’t find this explanation all that far-fetched.

All Icelanders go swimming. It’s one of the undisputed advantages of this country that just about anywhere you go has a marvelously well-equipped swimming pool nearby. Icelandic pools are more than just swimming pools. They are complete spas with saunas, hot tubs, massage facilities, and solaria. The swimming pools are maintained by the local councils and seen as a basic service. Town councils are even obliged to allow their citizens reasonably priced access. If actual socialism has really found a niche anywhere in Iceland, it’s in the swimming pools.

In the pools, it’s just like in the phone book, everyone’s the same. In the hot tubs, which have always been very relaxed, bank directors and harbor workers sit together in the hot water and discuss politics and current events. Extra pools for the elite just don’t exist. The rich splash about in the same tank as the common folk. Outside, you look at people and you can see what social class they come from, you can read from their clothing and appearance how much they earn. In an Icelandic hot tub you can forget all that. The stocky
bald guy next to you might be a very rich ship owner with four lovers at once, and the sensitive young man opposite, who you’d spontaneously typecast as a philosopher or poet, could equally well be a shoemaker. Everyone pulls off their clothes and works up a nice lather in the shower in front of everyone else. This makes you more modest.

To understand Iceland, you have to go to the pool. It’s the swimming pools that forge us into a nation, more than anything else I think.

Despite what you may have heard, our solidarity with the Norwegians, Danes, and Swedes has its limits. We don’t feel particularly close to the mainland Scandinavians, although the first settlers in Iceland came from precisely these countries. Instead, we feel in some mysterious way attracted to the Finns. Icelanders often like to emphasize how “Icelandic” the Finns are, and the Finns willingly return the compliment: they find us pretty “Finnish”—just as relaxed, awkward, and depressed. This secret bond between Finns and Icelanders must have something to do with the Finnish sauna culture. You see, the Finns are, just like us, a naked people. In Finland, it’s the most natural thing in the world to wander around stark naked in front of strangers, without feeling ashamed of your body or the bodies of others.

In Icelandic swimming pools you can regularly see foreign visitors who find this unabashed nakedness strange. The tourists wrap themselves up tightly in
their towels before coyly discarding their underwear and getting into their swimsuits. These inhibitions always amuse us Icelanders—while we, with our towels thrown casually over our shoulders, let our freshly showered breasts or dicks cheerfully dangle as we stroll around.

As long as I can remember, in Iceland it was all pretty straightforward. Here, strictly speaking, nothing happens. The country has just 320,000 people, so if someone falls off his bike, it’s worth at least a headline in the daily paper. If celebrities from abroad come to visit, they often emphasize how enjoyable and relaxing life is with us—in contrast to the grotesque media circus that springs up around them everywhere else. There are no tabloids and no paparazzi.

The most famous Icelander is Björk. Despite everything, she’s always remained herself. Abroad, she constantly has to flee from fans and journalists who pursue her into every little corner, while in Iceland you run into her in the pool, on the bus, or in the shops. In general, she’s left alone.

In Iceland I was famous by the time I was fourteen. I was a fourteen-year-old with a Mohawk and a ring through his nose, and this too was news. By the time I was thirty, and earned my living as a comedian and actor, almost every child in Iceland knew me. Whenever I was appearing in some television series, the city was
filled with huge advertising posters with a picture of me on the walls of the houses. And when I got onto a bus, it was quite likely that the bus would be running ads for me too.

It was quite a sensation if somewhere or other some elderly guy
didn’t
know who I was. Once, somebody told me about one such old timer who in all seriousness had never heard of me—this aroused laughter from those standing around. As you can see, being famous is different in Iceland from what it is elsewhere. In Iceland, everything is boringly normal. Even celebrity. People know that before you go swimming, you stand there naked in the shower just like they do.

The only practical use of celebrity is that it sometimes saves you having to queue for the clubs on the weekends. But at clubs, like everywhere else, you’ll most likely have to join the line like all the other well-behaved folk. Even Björk joins the line at the end and waits until it’s her turn, and everyone finds this normal. Sometimes a bouncer decides to show her preferential treatment, but the bystanders find this misplaced and awkward.

The Icelandic state of mind is dominated by the seasons. Summer is the best time. On the “first day of summer” (which according to the calendar is the third Thursday in April), we all wish each other “Have a great summer!” This is a nice custom. In summer, everyone
is happy. There’s hardly an Icelandic poet who hasn’t, sooner or later, sung about our summer, our wonderful summer, which is so much better than any other summer in the world. Although not all that much better, actually.

We have to use the power of positive thinking, to enjoy the half-full glass. The thermometer rarely manages more than 20 degrees Celsius (68°F), but the minute it hits ten degrees (50°F), we pull all our clothes off. Temperatures much above this are considered a heat wave. In summertime, the living is easy. And when someone indulges in pessimism, we just turn a deaf ear. Everyone’s optimistic and cheerful, we’re the happiest people under the sun—because it’s summer.

With the fall, comes fear. The days get shorter and the nights, as a result, longer. Suddenly our worries are back. We wonder whether it’s going to be a hard winter.

When winter comes, we stick our heads under the duvet. Now is the time to stay at home. There’s not much energy left for winter romances in this country. Not only do we not have any real summer, but no real winter either. If it snows one day, there’s a frost the next day and on the third day it rains. The lakes are frozen in the morning and thawed again in the evening. You never know what to expect. That’s why, unlike the other Scandinavians, we Icelanders have never made much headway in the winter sports. The only sport
we’re really good at is chess. After all, indoors you can hunker down at the chessboard all year round.

We are shaped through and through by nature and the elements. We have a tremendous ability to adapt—and you need plenty of that if you want to survive in this country. You can never rely on everything staying the way it was here. The earth might quake or a volcano could erupt. Your garden might get buried under a lava flow, and there are snow storms in June. But we’ve learned to live with it—perhaps because we’ve maintained a certain degree of humility towards nature and her moods.

Nature we cannot change, but we
can
change ourselves and our way of thinking. To nature we can only adapt. We go fishing when the sun shines and we make hay when the sun shines. This adaptability has always been our strength, as it’s the only way to survive here. If you don’t make an effort, don’t store provisions, and don’t use the opportunities that present themselves to you, then when winter comes you’ll simply starve.

I was born into a working-class family in Iceland. We lived in a Reykjavík suburb on a street called Kurland, named after a Norwegian village. My parents were ordinary folk. My mother worked in a hospital canteen and my father was a policeman, but he never got very far in his career because of his Communist views.

By the time I happened along, my parents were no longer spring chickens. According to a frequently cited family anecdote, I was supposedly the result of a drunken, day-bright May night in the West Fjords, maybe even the night of the First of May—for my father, one of the holiest days of the year. The late pregnancy was a huge shock for my parents, not least for Mom, who was terribly ashamed to be producing me at the age of forty-five. Dad was fifty.

When I finally arrived in the world, I turned out to be a redhead, which raised all sorts of questions. Dad’s hair was raven black. My grandmother, who lived with us, was convinced that the father of the baby just
had
to be our next-door neighbor …

My brothers and sisters were all much older than
me, and in my childhood I had little or nothing to do with them. It was my parents, my two grandmothers, and my aunts and uncles who brought me up. My parents’ siblings were older than them, and every year an uncle or aunt died. Someone was always dying. Most of them got cancer and slowly wasted away, and at some point in the midst of all this death, both grandmothers died too.

I was considered to be difficult. Wild and impetuous, with a short attention span, I put up resistance to everything and everyone. I did, however, learn to talk extremely early and by the time I was just two I was chattering freely. I tended to hide myself away instead of playing with other children, but then again I was untamable, climbed trees and house roofs, ran out into the street, and put my safety at risk in all sorts of independent ways. I also liked throwing bad language around, the more indecent the better. I was a permanent provocation, and never predictable.

So right from the start I was seen as the black sheep of the family. I was a precocious child in a deadlocked world. My allegedly abnormal behavior was the normal reaction to abnormal circumstances. As is so often the case. The neighbors pretty much all thought there was something seriously wrong with me and doubted that I would ever cope in a normal school. After my umpteenth trip to the emergency room, they sent my mother and me to a child and adolescent psychiatrist, who, after thoroughly examining and evaluating me
for over a year, diagnosed me as
maladaptio
. To many, it was just a fancy word for “retarded.”

By chance, there was in our district a school where a kind of pilot project was being tested out: lessons without the usual classes and awarding of grades. They worked on the so-called “open education” system, then a very revolutionary concept. In this school, I felt comfortable. In class, I behaved as conspicuously as possible, getting up to all sorts of mischief and raising a rumpus whenever I could. But that was okay. They took me as I was and treated me with respect, consideration, and patience. To begin with, I even performed exceptionally well with the curriculum. Reading in particular fascinated me, and soon I was reading everything I could lay my hands on, whether for children or adults, comics or non-fiction.

In reading, general knowledge, and telling stories I was one of the best, but when it came to writing and arithmetic, I was worse than mediocre. My letters were either upside down or back to front, my spelling was haphazard, and it was impossible for me to fit the words neatly on a line. The letters I wrote home on summer vacation were often passed around at family gatherings, where they were a reliable source of amusement. I was fifteen before I could really write.