Prologue to An Icelandic Saga

Everywhere I go, on plane, train or auto, a story goes with me, playing as a backdrop to my senses, giving an enhanced meaning to the lay of the land before my eyes. So, after plans were finalized for an adventure* to Iceland, I made a trip to the library.

“That’s what you read to get ready for a trip to Iceland?” B asked, looking at the tome of ancient tales I had opened on the table. 

“Well, it’s kinda like history, it gets me familiar with names, helps me understand where I will be,” I defended my choice. I had checked out The Sagas of Icelanders , along with an over-stuffed, tiny-print travel guide. Sagas are a collection of Norse and Icelandic sagas written around 1000AD, when Norwegian Vikings moved to Iceland, fleeing an over-domineering King Harald. 

“I checked out a guide book, too,” I said, holding up the diminutive book. 

A few pages into each, I abandoned the guidebook and devoted more time and attention to the sagas. 

Leif Erickson

The first saga in the book, "Egil's Saga" was supposedly written by the ferocious Egil's ancestor, Snorri Sturluson. After a little research, I was disappointed to discover that the sagas are fiction, (I thought they were based on historical fact), though they illustrate life in Iceland and Norway at the time. All the sagas are written in a markedly curious way, more like a modern novel,as opposed to the way Greek tragedies or other ancient texts were written. 

When the time for the actual trip came, I was glad I chose Sagas over the travel guide book (there was updated info online, and it was more accessible). As my week in Iceland progressed, bits and pieces of the sagas flashed before me in town names, historical sites and museums, adding a fascinating aspect to the trip.

We took three carry on-sized suitcases to Iceland, one green, one with four wheels, and another smallish one that expanded significantly and had a very bad habit of tipping forward when put down, which led me to name it “Tippy.” And if one of the suitcases had a name, they all had to be named, which led to “Greeny” and “Rolly”. 

“When we get back, we should consider replacing Tippy if we see a good deal. It is really inconvenient to have this suitcase falling over constantly ... as if it were drunk or something,” I said to B at one point. Then I felt a tinge of guilt. Wait, get rid of Tippy? Tippy, the functional sight-gag, the fun loving, fumbling, clumsy suitcase we took on who-knows-how-many adventures, pulling him tripping and tipping after us wherever we went? 

That’s what happens when you name something; it becomes more personal, there is the tiniest bit of affection that grows and connects you to the named object, which increases every time you use the moniker. Put googgly eyes and a smile on it, then it becomes one of the family with a seat at the dinner table.

At one point as I scribbled in my notebook riding around the dramatic, magnificent landscape that is Iceland, B suggested that the monikers AJ, B, OneSon and TwoSon, as used in my travel blog up to this point, were distracting. So, when considering the form of the travel blog to write for this trip, I strangled my writer’s pride, took B’s critique into consideration and decided that the characters in this Icelandic Saga needed names. It would bring more depth to the their personalities, and present them as more relatable, a little like naming suitcases. But for this blog, they must have Icelandic Viking names. Viking names, besides their rarely used patronymics, often included a descriptive moniker. Therefore, the cast of characters for An Icelandic Saga, my account of our Iceland adventure, is: Astrid the Red (AJ), Bjorn the Light Catcher (B), Snorri the Fair-Haired  (TwoSon) and Olaf the White (OneSon). 

Best Hike Ever

At this point, I have only read a few of the sagas (the book is 2.25” thick), but will try to emulate the ancient stories’ style sometimes, but I can’t guarantee it will be as interesting as the original Sagas of the Icelanders, since the family encountered no  cattle theft, very little intrigue, no pillaging, no knife, sword or cudgel fighting, no treacherous ocean excursions in Viking longboats, and thankfully, no murders.   

*These trips are not vacations. The word "vacation" denotes rest, relaxation and recuperation, which these trips rarely include. Our adventures are full of edifying challenges (mental and physical), fatigue, lots of thoughtful planning, preparation and almost non-stop "going" (though, admittedly this trip included a lot of car travel time). We hit the ground running and rarely stop until we get back on the plane to leave.