How Iceland Changed the World (eBook)

The Big History of a Small Island

Egill Bjarnason (Autor)

eBook Download: EPUB

2021 | 1. Auflage
288 Seiten
Icon Books Ltd (Verlag)
978-1-78578-766-9 (ISBN)

Infos

'A joyously peculiar book' - The New York Times 'A fascinating insight into Icelandic culture and a fresh perspective on her global influence. Warning: may well make readers wish they were Icelandic, too.' - Helen Russell, author of The Year of Living Danishly The untold story of how one tiny island in the middle of the Atlantic has shaped the world for centuries. The history of Iceland began 1,200 years ago, when a frustrated Viking captain and his useless navigator ran aground in the middle of the North Atlantic. Suddenly, the island was no longer just a layover for the Arctic tern. Instead, it became a nation whose diplomats and musicians, sailors and soldiers, volcanoes and flowers, quietly altered the globe forever. How Iceland Changed the World takes readers on a tour of history, showing them how Iceland played a pivotal role in events as diverse as the French Revolution, the Moon Landing, and the foundation of Israel. Again and again, one humble nation has found itself at the frontline of historic events, shaping the world as we know it - How Iceland Changed the World paints a lively picture of just how it all happened. 'Egill Bjarnason has written a delightful reminder that, when it comes to countries, size doesn't always matter. His writing is a pleasure to read, reminiscent of Bill Bryson or Louis Theroux. He has made sure we will never take Iceland for granted again.' A.J. Jacobs, New York Times bestselling author of Thanks a Thousand and The Year of Living Biblically 'Bjarnason's intriguing book might be about a cold place, but it's tailor-made to be read on the beach.' - New Statesman 'Egill Bjarnason places Iceland at the center of everything, and his narrative not only entertains but enlightens, uncovering unexpected connections.' Andri Snær, author of On Time and Water 'Icelander Egill Bjarnason takes us on a high-speed, rough-and-tumble ride through 1,000-plus years of history-from the discovery of America to Tolkien's muse, from the French Revolution to the NASA moonwalk, from Israel's birth to the first woman president-all to display his home island's mind-opening legacy.' Nancy Marie Brown, author of The Real Valkyrie and The Far Traveller 'I always assumed the history of Iceland had, by law or fate, to match the tone of an October morning: dark, gray, and uninviting to most mankind. This book challenges that assumption, and about time. Our past, much like the present, can be a little fun.' Jón Gnarr, former mayor of Reykjavík and author of The Pirate and The Outlaw 'How Iceland Changed the World is not only surprising and informative. It is amusing and evocatively animates a place that I have been fascinated with for most of my life. Well worth the read!' - Jane Smiley, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of A Thousand Acres 'An entertaining, offbeat (and pleasingly concise) history of the remote North Atlantic nation ... perfect for a summer getaway read' - The Critic

EGILL BJARNASON is an Icelandic journalist, based in Reykjavík. His work has appeared in New York Times, National Geographic, Associated Press, Al Jazeera Online and Lonely Planet. As a Fulbright Foreign Student grantee, he earned a Master's degree in social documentation at the University of California, Santa Cruz, where he also worked as a teaching assistant in photography and statistics for two years.

Textauszug

INTRODUCTION

The town of Selfoss is a rare find. Nearly all of the sixty-three towns and cities in Iceland were first established out of nautical convenience, in sight of approaching ships, but Selfoss sits inland, away from the stony coast. I grew up there, landlocked.

The town is on the eastern banks of the Ölfusá River, the country’s largest, streaming from a glacier 105 miles inland. For the first nine hundred years of Selfoss’s settlement, the area saw few travelers because crossing the river on horseback or rowboat was a life-threatening endeavor and, let’s be honest, not worth it. Finally, in a symbolic gesture, Icelandic and Danish authorities joined forces on the construction of a suspension bridge. Completed in 1891, thirteen years before the arrival of the first automobile, the bridge connected western and southern Iceland. Selfoss became a rest stop for long-distance travel—the place to dry your clothes and catch up on weather conditions from travelers heading in the opposite direction. Today, people stop for a hot dog.

The bridge still brings plenty of traffic through town and serves as the central landmark around which everything else is oriented, just as a harbor would in a seaside town. Where other towns have a fish factory, we have a dairy plant. And instead of watching ships sail in and out of port, we can watch our cars drive around and around and around—the main roundabout is impressively big. “Big city” big—after all, with about eight thousand people, Selfoss is one of Iceland’s largest towns. So don’t be intimidated by its size if you walk around; and don’t be alarmed if you find yourself alone out there—walking in Selfoss is practiced solely by children and the odd drunk driver with a suspended license.

Along Selfoss’s Main Street are, among others, five hair salons, three bank branches, a bookstore owned by my parents, a store for yarn, a store with only Christmas items, and a supermarket named Krónan. At the entrance of that store, I began my career as a reporter, holding a notebook and the cheapest camera I could borrow from Sunnlenska, a local newspaper. Every day I waited to snag passersby for “The Question of the Day,” a column in which innocent pedestrians were prompted to articulate, for the record, a view on a contemporary issue they usually knew next to nothing about and—after guaranteed intellectual embarrassment—have a portrait taken to accompany the answer.

Over time, I worked my way up to the news desk. these masks are not for swimming: a bag of sex toys found at the swimming pool, read an early headline. Another was a crime story about a tomato farmer who turned to growing marijuana in an abandoned slaughterhouse. Being a secret drug kingpin in a small community was very stressful, he confessed. So he consumed most of the weed himself.

Sunnlenska stayed in business through my early twenties, thanks to its very resourceful owner. Among his fine ideas for survival was a reliance on the barter system: he liked to pay people in things rather than money, the kind of stuff local businesses might trade for advertising. Christmas bonuses, for instance, consisted of fireworks and a stack of books given to the paper for review. For one payday in spring, he came riding to work on a twenty-seven-gear Mongoose bicycle, a touring bike with fat tires and a rear rack. “It’s yours,” he said with enthusiasm, prompted more by this apparent advertising deal. Zero paper money this month.

To properly enjoy my salary, I was obliged to take it for a spin. And one of the very best things about Selfoss, as one guidebook is quick to note, is how easy it is to leave. Route 1, the famous Ring Road, plows right through town.

Loaded up with a tent and an impressive amount of couscous, I cycled past the dairy plant and around the roundabout, headed east.

Officially, the Ring Road is an 821-mile loop that connects most towns and villages in the country. Done in one stretch, that’s a little more than fifteen hours of driving. Cycling takes a bit longer. The landscape of Iceland is famously uneven, and along the coast the wind blows hard. On top of that, statistics and meteorological patterns simply cannot explain how often the wind blows directly against you while bicycling. Always, I tell you. Always.

My bartered bicycle held up admirably, but between the fickle headwinds and the long uphill climbs, by the time I got halfway around the country, I was exhausted. I decided to rest for a bit in the town of Húsavík.

Húsavík sits on the north coast, overlooking the wide Skjálfandi Bay. The bay’s mouth gapes toward high north, toward the Iceland Sea, the Greenland Sea, the Arctic Ocean, and, beyond that, the North Pole.

While strolling around the harbor on a sore knee, I struck up a conversation with the captain of a wooden schooner whose crew was one person short. Soon I learned that “one person short” meant that the crew was just one man: him, Captain Hordur Sigurbjarnarson, a cartoonish version of an old skipper, the classic image minus the wooden pipe (he was vehemently opposed to smoking). Raspy voice, gray hair, grim face, strong handshake. Warm smile.

I told him about my theory on wind direction, how it magically never works in your favor. He did not seem to follow.

“So, do you get seasick?” he asked, his opening question in a sudden job interview.

How would I know? This was like asking if I’d be prone to space sickness (motion sickness for astronauts). The high seas were beyond my experience, so my body had never been put to the test. I had no idea that knowing how to tie a bowline was an essential life skill.

He scratched his head and rolled it to the side as if he were attempting to pour water out of his ears. “Come this afternoon and we’ll see what happens.”

As it turned out, I do not belong to the 35 percent of people highly susceptible to seasickness. I locked the bike and called the newspaper to say I would not be back that summer. The owner was about to land a big advertising deal with a new Jacuzzi distributor. After weeks of cold days out at sea, I did sometimes question my choice: owning a hot tub would have been nice.

I got a crash course in knots and halyards, worked twelve hours at a stretch in freezing conditions, and wore the bright-yellow fleece hat the captain had given me. “It’s the first color the eye detects, in case you fall overboard,” he explained reassuringly.

The captain was a seafarer through and through. His five favorite pizza toppings were five different things from the ocean—essentially, a fish buffet served on bread—and he could always point in the direction of north, even when standing on land in a hardware store. My own lack of orientation puzzled him. He’d been sailing the Hildur out of Húsavík for twenty-five years, taking passengers on whale-watching voyages and pleasure cruises.

After that first serendipitous summer, the ship’s cabin became my annual summer home. Each year I would travel out to Húsavík in early May, and we’d sail in and out of the harbor with passengers who were eager to watch whales and puffins from beneath nearly 2,700 square feet of taut sails. Each day we told the same stories, the same jokes, and watched the same horizon, from spring to fall, until the whales swam out of the bay, from Iceland to all corners of the globe.

It was my first time at sea, but it was my first time, too, witnessing Iceland’s strange position as both a marginalized curiosity and a global hub. Well-meaning tourists asked questions that ranged from baffling to mildly insulting, like whether the country had enough educated people to run a functioning government. Each visitor seemed to have a preconceived narrative of what Iceland was. Iceland the alien planet. Iceland the frozen wasteland. Iceland the expensive playground. Iceland the Viking fortress. The captain and I, while we scouted the sea for whales, sometimes tried to untangle these myths or figure out which felt most true.

“Whales capture people’s imagination,” the captain once told me. “All it takes is a tiny glimpse and people feel like they’ve seen an entire whale, mouth to fluke.” That’s Iceland too.

This book tells the story of Iceland by taking a second look at the canon of Western history. At first sight, it may seem bold to position Iceland as a central player on the global stage. After all, Iceland has never had a military. Never shot at another country. Never plotted against a foreign leader, nor fought proxy wars, nor laid claim to being a hegemonic power of any kind. But how, then, to explain its fingerprints all over Western history? Without Icelanders, no one would have recorded Norse mythology and the medieval history of Nordic kings. Without Iceland, the world from England to Egypt would not have suffered a major famine, cultivating a fragile political climate that culminated in the French Revolution. The anti-imperialist struggle would have been one hero short. Neil Armstrong would never have practiced the moon landing on earth. A Cold War–defining chess game would have had nowhere to take place. The...

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 3.6.2021
• Verlagsort: London
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Geschichte ► Allgemeine Geschichte ► Mittelalter
• Themenwelt: Geisteswissenschaften ► Geschichte ► Regional- / Ländergeschichte
• Schlagworte: Edda • Greeland • Gudrid Thorbjarnardottir • Husavik • Iceland • Iceland, Viking history, Scandinavian history, Husavik, Reykjavik, Greeland, Norse settlers, Norse mythology, Sagas, Edda, Vinland Sagas, Gudrid Thorbjarnardottir, Tolkien, Snorri Sturluson • Norse mythology • Norse settlers • Reykjavik • Sagas • Scandinavian History • Snorri Sturluson • Tolkien • viking history • vinland sagas
• ISBN-10: 1-78578-766-7 / 1785787667
• ISBN-13: 978-1-78578-766-9 / 9781785787669