Glossi and Vinda are slow to navigate the black steaming mud pots. Sulphur suffuses the air. Stefán’s mind wanders to the English again. Each year they make an effort to push up the prices. Their ships will be near the coast now; they may have already arrived if the winds have allowed it. Last year the foreigners complained about rotten stockfish. They whined that there was black sand in the wool; the mittens and socks were badly knitted, they’d said. In turn, the tenants accused the British of trading tainted grain laced with mites, and they railed against seawater in the wine.
These headaches, cultivated by a pack of bickering traders and constant negotiation, are one of the reasons he will soon relinquish his position. Surely, he thinks, it is not the best use of his law degree.
The tenants of one of his three farms welcome him this evening. He requests a simple meal of a little cheese and dried fish. He sleeps and rises early, eager to be on his way to the coast.
When he has ridden for thirty minutes and the rhythm of the pace is well set, the earth begins to tremble. The horses stop short, and for what seems like minutes instead of seconds, Stefán and the horses are suspended in fear, standing perfectly still while the whole of the ground undulates beneath them. He’s experienced it many times and yet it is still disorienting. The helpless feeling of the earth moving underfoot and the terrifying abrupt way it takes them unaware, with no warning whatsoever. It is not the first time in his life he feels this complete helplessness. It will not be the last.
It is the first week of June and despite a few ground trembling moments, it is with a light heart, and a feeling of happy anticipation that Stefán and his horses proceed ever closer to the sea. His only son is due back soon from Copenhagen where he has been at his studies. Stefán has been counting the months, eager to see Pétur again. The whole family yearns to be surrounded once more in his jovial presence. The void he left when he departed was never filled, because there is no person, no place, nothing at all that can equal Pétur.
A soft wind blows the scent of fresh, fragrant herbs, and the beards of green pastures shimmer, dressed as they are in wild flowers. The mild winter has blessed them with healthy livestock, a welcome change. June’s breeze brings the news from Skálholt that even the bishop’s cattle are reported to be sleek and strong. The hand of fate seemed for once to point towards a fruitful summer and an abundant harvest.
Stefán breathes in deeply, relishing the faintest whiff of salt that infuses the air. His favourite part of the journey lies just ahead. To the east the dirty, ancient ice of a glacier is juxtaposed against the verdant green fields. The pale blue ice formations are sculpted by nature, that greatest of artists, and sink down a hundred feet to form dangerous crevasses.
As vast as the eastern glacier is, several miles north from where Stefán rides there is another. No other glacier in the world is as large, or as beautiful. Its majestic white body descends to black sands; hot streams erupt from banks of ice. The massive glacier has many tongues, each with their own names and characteristics. Today one of these tongues struggles more than the others within its contrasting complexion, a forceful interplay of volcanoes beneath the ice.
Stefán stops to admire the glacier and the largest mountain in the country that presides over the deepest lake. He continues at a comfortable pace between these two wonders thinking about the possibility of a happier Christmas this year.
But the trading season will not begin this summer. The inhabitants of this demanding land stand on the back of a giant, slumbering beast. The monstrous beast under the ice cap is beginning to wake. For just as Glossi and Vinda’s hooves plod into the path of the next farm, another violent shake of the earth brings Glossi down and Stefán with him, his legs still hugging the horse’s ribs as he hits the ground hard.
Afraid to move, and not sure if he can, Stefán lies watching his hands rise and fall with Glossi’s breath. Vinda is frozen like one of the glacial ice sculptures. The earth is still and the air is quiet, too quiet; only Glossi’s whimper disturbs it. The horse is frightened but manages to stand, offering up a groan and a grunt. He nudges his owner.
The monster below the ice returns to its fretful slumber.
Stefán rolls slowly onto his back. His right side is sore and throbbing. Disorientated, he turns his head and gasps from this perspective.
‘What in hell?’
A blue skein of mist floats just above the ground.
Everyone from elder to toddler is familiar with the queer, coloured lights in the skies and the blues and greens that hover over their glacial mountains, but this pale blue fog that skims the ground is something entirely different.
Carefully he rises to discover he is able to stand and walk, and is grateful for it. Anxious to determine how Glossi and Vinda fare, the fog swallows them into a shadowy blur. The air is death-like. As suddenly as the earth had shaken them, the eerie stillness that follows forces him to halt in a speechless and untrusting pause.
Despite his attempts to ignore it, a feeling of dread has dogged Stefán’s journey and it washes over him now in a cold sweat. He knows that these increasingly violent series of earthquakes precede the possibility of something much, much worse.
* * *
It is Whit Sunday, June the 8th.
The clear sky and calm weather is a hateful tease. Pillars of smoke rise to the sky from the hills north of the coast, and a thick, black cloud rolls south against the wind. The cloud begins its swift
