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Further adventures in space and time
Jul. 14th, 2009 09:35 pmAs with geography, so with history: I keep misreading Iceland.
It's easy to slip into thinking of Iceland as 'an old country' - as if this expression means anything. The presentation of Ieland to tourists - and that includes internal tourists - relies heavily on the sagas, and before them, on tales of the Age of Settlement. You are constantly invited to think of Iceland's history as starting with a First Settler in the ninth century, and recounted in the sagas of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries; everything reminds you of the middle ages, which means: old.
Only, of course, not. The mere fact of being able to identify a First Settler (and for the purposes of this argument, it doesn't really matter whether Ingólfr Arnarson was really the first settler, or whether Iceland was actually settled by the Irish) indicates that the history of the country is all pretty recent.
There's an abandoned settlement called Sandfell just to the east of Skaftafell: turf banks which mark the site of a farm, a white fence enclosing the old graveyard, and a tree (you can't miss it, it's the only tree for miles). A noticeboard explains the history of the place, with reference to the sagas, which I would reproduce here if I could only remember which guide book I read it in. It's a peaceful, evocative place. But the farm was not actually abandoned until the 1940s - those memories of the remote past are actually overlaying the changes of a much more recent period, the time at which Iceland was at last and rather self-consciously becoming a modern independent nation.
Far from being an old country, Iceland is a very new one. Old buildings don't survive, but are constantly rebuilt. I am writing this tonight in the oldest hotel in Iceland: it dates back to 1884. It's like being in the US, where a house built in 1900 can be historic.
Something else which keeps misleading me: the elements of the Icelandic language which I recognise are often analogous to older English terms. All the place names, the Dales and the Wicks and the Burys: the wording on the map which reads
"Þú ert hérna" - thou art here.
Even the geology of Iceland is new: most places do geology first, then history, but not here - in Iceland, geology just keeps on happening.
It's easy to slip into thinking of Iceland as 'an old country' - as if this expression means anything. The presentation of Ieland to tourists - and that includes internal tourists - relies heavily on the sagas, and before them, on tales of the Age of Settlement. You are constantly invited to think of Iceland's history as starting with a First Settler in the ninth century, and recounted in the sagas of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries; everything reminds you of the middle ages, which means: old.
Only, of course, not. The mere fact of being able to identify a First Settler (and for the purposes of this argument, it doesn't really matter whether Ingólfr Arnarson was really the first settler, or whether Iceland was actually settled by the Irish) indicates that the history of the country is all pretty recent.
There's an abandoned settlement called Sandfell just to the east of Skaftafell: turf banks which mark the site of a farm, a white fence enclosing the old graveyard, and a tree (you can't miss it, it's the only tree for miles). A noticeboard explains the history of the place, with reference to the sagas, which I would reproduce here if I could only remember which guide book I read it in. It's a peaceful, evocative place. But the farm was not actually abandoned until the 1940s - those memories of the remote past are actually overlaying the changes of a much more recent period, the time at which Iceland was at last and rather self-consciously becoming a modern independent nation.
Far from being an old country, Iceland is a very new one. Old buildings don't survive, but are constantly rebuilt. I am writing this tonight in the oldest hotel in Iceland: it dates back to 1884. It's like being in the US, where a house built in 1900 can be historic.
Something else which keeps misleading me: the elements of the Icelandic language which I recognise are often analogous to older English terms. All the place names, the Dales and the Wicks and the Burys: the wording on the map which reads
"Þú ert hérna" - thou art here.
Even the geology of Iceland is new: most places do geology first, then history, but not here - in Iceland, geology just keeps on happening.
