The Little Book of the Icelanders in the Old Days
Table of Contents
A brief historical timeline of Iceland
Introduction
1 Turf
2 Bath parlour
3 Stayin’ awake
4 Read on
5 Pecking order
6 Waking sticks
7 Let there be light
8 Ceremony of light-time
9 Let there be daylight
10 The high risk of pregnancy
11 A child makes it into the world!
12 Naming jinx
13 Battle over the young soul
14 A brief lecture about elves
15 Those crafty hidden folk and their opulent lives
16 Mountain dairy
17 Spring
18 Making hay
19 And of course, those ubiquitous superstitions
20 Kiddie workers
21 Whipped into love
22 The farmers who rowed
23 Foremen’s intuition
24 Seafaring superstitions
25 Bounty
26 Indebted to the district
27 Lamb in a barrel
28 What the sheep gave
29 Leadership. I mean sheep.
30 Food glorious food
31 Ration
32 Grains and subs
33 The absent food group
34 Annihilation of the pearly whites
35 Precious salt
36 Beggars and vagabonds
37 Aliens in Iceland
38 A visitor comes to the farm
39 Godding on the window
40 Come happy, go happy, eat happy
41 Offensive sex
42 Blue verses
43 Fun fun fun
44 Going to town
45 Grunge scene
46 Grim reaper
47 Grief box
48 Death superstitions
49 Last rites
50 The role of hope
In closing
Acknowledgements
A very special thank you …
Sources
About the author
A BRIEF HISTORICAL TIMELINE OF ICELAND
873-930 Settlement
930 Alþingi, Iceland’s parliament, is established at Þingvellir
1000 Christianity is imposed
1262-1264 Iceland comes under Norwegian rule
1262 The Little Ice Age begins
1380 Iceland becomes part of the Kalmar Union
1550 The Reformation. Lutheranism is imposed.
1602-1786 Denmark imposes a trade monopoly on Iceland
1660 Iceland comes fully under Danish rule
1783 Lakagígar eruption
1874 Denmark grants Iceland a constitution and home rule
1918 Iceland becomes a sovereign state
1944 Icelanders vote to terminate union with Denmark. Iceland becomes an independent republic.
Introduction
Years ago, way back in 2010 to be precise, I wound up self-publishing an eBook that I called The Little Book of the Icelanders. I had been writing a blog for a few years called “The Iceland Weather Report”, which chronicled what it was like to live on the piece of rock in the North Atlantic known as Iceland, and the Little Book was intended for readers of that blog. In the book I wrote about the quirks and foibles of the Icelandic people as they appeared to me, a “pseudo-Icelander” who had grown up in another country and returned “home” as a foreign person more than twenty years later. To my surprise and delight, the Little Book was well received, and eventually it was released as a traditional hard-cover publication. It has since been translated into French and German, and a Spanish version is due out as I write this.
Right around that time I decided to return to university to finish my undergraduate degree. I took English as a major, and Ethnology/Folkloristics (that’s what the University of Iceland calls it) as a minor. The latter included a course with the enticing name “Lice Combs, Chamber Pots and Sex - Customs, Traditions and Daily Life in the Earlier Rural Society of Iceland”. The course described life in the Icelandic rural societies of old, and I came to see that, if the Icelanders have quirks today, they had some serious quirks back then.
But these weren’t merely weird. They were also hilarious. And ingenious. And amazing. In fact I began to gain a new respect and awe for my ancestors, who had found ways to survive under conditions that could cause even the most intrepid adventurer to cower in fear. Moreover, they survived not only physically, but also spiritually and emotionally - soldering bravely on, if not with dignity, then at least with an irrepressible urge to keep on living.
I decided I wanted to write about this. The trouble was, how to get across the remarkable reality of the Icelanders of yore in a comprehensive or linear way? I pondered that for about five minutes, and decided to not even try. I’m not a historian, and there are others who have done a far better job of that than I possibly could. I bow down to them. I also include some of their work in a sources list at the end of this book. Though I must say that I am indebted to one text above all others: the excellent Íslenzkir þjóðhættir (Icelandic Folkways), first published in 1934, which is the definitive text on Icelandic customs and traditions in centuries past.
In the end I decided to stick to what I do reasonably well - writing text that is light and fun and easy to read (I hope).
My next conundrum was the time span. Iceland was officially settled in 874, and we’re basically looking at the period stretching from then until, oh, about the end of the 19th century. As you can imagine, many things changed during that time ... and yet many things stayed the same. For most of that time Iceland was a colony. For all of that time, it was abjectly poor. I have tried to specify the time in which things happened when I feel that it matters; otherwise I’ve left it out. For an overview of Iceland’s history, please see the timeline I’ve provided at the beginning of the book.
A parallel issue was how much detail to include. For example, when writing about the types of light sources used, should I get into the different types of fish oil lamps, the evolution of candle making and the intricacies of candle stick holders throughout the centuries? In cases like those, I chose the option that was likely to keep you, the reader, awake. I may have left out a whole bunch of stuff, but I’d rather have your continued attention than your collective snoring.
I should be very clear on one thing before going further: this book is about the proletariat. The plebs. Granted, “proletariat” referred to just about everybody in Iceland back in the day. There was not much in the way of an upper class. The closest to it would have been the king’s cohorts or representatives in Iceland, and the district magistrates and ecclesiastical authorities (bishops and the like), who held a fair amount of sway. Yet even those folks lived in turf houses until well into the 19th century, like everyone else.
I have gone to great lengths to ensure the accuracy of this book, but if there are any errors or omissions, please don’t shoot me (or drown me, or make me drink nothing but Brennivín for the rest of my days). Again, I am just a humble layperson trying to tackle a wide and complex subject, and trying to convey my enthusiasm and fascination as best I can in 50 short essays. And hopefully to take you for an enjoyable ride.
1 Turf
So I guess since I’m not going for “comprehensive” or “linear” it’s a question of starting somewhere. Anywhere. And since I’ve just mentioned housing I may as well start with that.
Unlike almost every nation in Europe, Icelanders do not possess proud architecture from their past. Our buildings were made of turf, and unless a farmhouse was kept up with diligent, regular
maintenance, within a few years it had inevitably dissolved back into the landscape. On your wanderings in Iceland you may occasionally chance upon some rocks arranged in a semi-organised fashion, overgrown with grass and other vegetation that may or may not have decayed bits of wood somewhere nearby. That would probably be an abandoned turf farm.
The first abodes, in the settlement age, were longhouses anywhere from fifteen to eighty metres long (between sixteen and ninety yards), and five to seven metres wide (five and a half to seven and a half yards). They had one or two entrances, and a long fire in the middle. These houses were apparently pretty common in northern Europe at that time. Gradually this longhouse tradition began to expand as little annexes were added, such as storerooms, a kitchen, a workshop, a room for receiving guests, a WC (!) and - significantly - a room for bathing. By which I mean, a room with hot coals onto which people would throw water to make steam. A sauna, basically.
These annexes were often separate from the main house, until someone figured it would be kind of rad to connect them with a tunnel. This caught on, and those kinds of farms, called gangnabæir, “tunnel farms”, became all the rage. The tunnel was for the sake of comfort, obviously, since the weather in winter could be a little, um, intense. And folks didn’t really relish fighting their way to the sauna wearing nothing but a towel and flip-flops.
Now, being not much more than hillocks in the ground, though with a ceiling height of approximately four metres, these turf farmhouses were a little, shall we say, challenged in the daylight department. So at some point someone (maybe the same person who came up with the tunnel idea) figured out that if you had, say, the front of the house made of wood, you could insert a window and get some light in the place.
Stellar though this piece of innovation was, it did have its drawbacks. Mainly that wood paneling at the front of the house meant no insulation (yes, turf did have its advantages, though they were not many) and lack of insulation meant bloody damn cold. Consequently the front-panelled farmhouses were far more common in the south than in the north ... on account of the sweltering temperatures, you understand. The tunnel farms tended to be more common in the north, where it was always freezing. (I say this with tongue firmly in cheek, mind. There isn’t a vast discrepancy in temperatures between the north and the south of Iceland … though clearly there was enough to warrant this difference.)
Today the only such farms in existence are those that have been painstakingly reconstructed by the National Museum of Iceland, or similar institutions. And even that only began relatively recently. The reason? When Iceland gained its independence from Denmark, the turf farms came to be seen as symbols of its oppression and poverty. Icelanders were ashamed of them, and therefore they were generally left to rot, or even outright destroyed. They were certainly never thought of with any sort of nostalgia, until the latter part of the 20th century, when people began to accept these abodes as something with intrinsic historical value.
2 Bath parlour
The Icelanders called their sauna room baðstofa, or “bath parlour”. And lest you’re wondering where they got all those coals from ... well, believe it or not, Iceland was reportedly covered in forest back then, and forest meant they quite literally had wood to burn. So those chieftains and their kin could lounge in the sauna all day long if they so desired, without having to worry about freezing to death later (that problem would be passed on to their descendants).
But lo! Just as the Icelanders were getting used to steaming their cares away, the world entered the Little Ice Age and temperatures across the globe took a downturn. Suddenly it was a helluva lot colder in Iceland than it had been. And, most alarmingly, all the wood that had previously been in such vast abundance was gone. Spent. Whittled away in the sauna.
But of course all this didn’t happen overnight. When temps first began to drop there were still coals available, and the fire burned happily away in the baðstofa, which was probably pretty well insulated. So people started gravitating over there, not just to have a sauna, but also to warm their toes and fingers by the embers. Gradually it became so cold in other parts of the house that they started sleeping in there, and over time everyone on the farm moved into the baðstofa. It became the centre of the home - the communal living area. It was where people ate, slept, worked, entertained, learned, fucked, peed, shat (at least at night), had babies, died ... where they played out their entire lives, basically.
Oh, and by this time they’d stopped having saunas. That party was over. Done.
The baðstofa was tiny. (Well, as living quarters it was - it probably would have done reasonably well as a sauna.) It was approximately four metres wide and seven metres long (four by seven and a half yards). Factor into that beds along both walls, and all the space they had to move around in was a small aisle in the middle, and maybe a small space at the end of the row of beds. Later, some of the baðstofur (plural of baðstofa) had a room at one end where the farmer (the head of the house) and his wife slept. The rest of the folks slept together. (Or, well, not together. Just ... in one room.)
The main objective in all this, obviously, was to stay warm. That’s why people slept two to a bed, and that’s why they built the baðstofa above the sheep and cow shed, so the heat from the animals would rise up and wrap the people in its cosy and delicious warmth.
We won’t talk about the smell. People bathed maybe once a year (whether they needed to or not), changed their bedding as often, and stashed their chamberpots beneath the bed (though they were generally emptied in the mornings). Add to that the beasts below the floorboards, and the stench was probably a little overpowering, irrespective of what people are able to get used to when needed.
This was compounded by the absence of privacy, the lice that were so aggressive that people often had open lesions on their skin, the lack of daylight and ventilation, the proliferation of insects, death and disease, and the realisation that those conditions would probably not change in your lifetime, and you really have to wonder how the Icelanders managed to keep from collectively marching off the nearest cliff.
3 Stayin’ awake
My theory? They remained sane largely due to the kvöldvaka. It was their anti-depressant, their Prozac, in the old days.
The word “kvöldvaka” is one of those pesky words that simply cannot be translated into English. A very basic literal translation would be “evening wake”, which doesn’t make sense, particularly since that’s “wake” as in “staying awake”, not as in someone-died-and-they-are-lying-in-an-open-casket wake. So we have to resort to a non-literal translation, which might well be: “Anything designed to keep people awake and entertained during those dark evenings in the baðstofa so they could perform their work more efficiently”.
It took place during the evenings in winter when everyone at the farm was hanging out in the baðstofa doing their “winter work” - knitting, spinning, carding, tool-making ... basically anything they did with their hands and that could be done indoors.
And yet, even the above definition doesn’t do full justice to the role of the kvöldvaka. It was also a time when children were educated - where they were taught to read and write. It was where people told the sorts of stories that became ingrained into their very identities and being, of heroes, gods, trolls, outlaws, hidden people, and things that went bump in the night. Or where they read out loud from whatever books were available on the farm at any given time, giving people a brief respite from their day-to-day slogs. It was where they kept their minds active by making up poetry on the spot, which they called að kveðast á - someone would make up the first line of a poem, someone else would make up the next line, and so on. Or someone would recite long, epic poems from memory about Norse gods and kings and everything that constituted good, ethical behaviour, thereby teaching everyone else about good, solid values, as well as about history, geography, their own culture, and other cultures.
In the midst of the losses, the griefs, the hardships of people’s day-to-day lives, the storie
s told at the kvöldvaka provided hope. They spoke of another time and place, of ancestors who were heroes or kings or chieftains (and murderous pillaging Viking raiders, but we won’t go there), who had confronted adversity and emerged victorious. Naturally the stories always had a happy ending - or if not, they at least had a moral lesson. Through them, people came to believe that a better life was possible.
Finally, one cannot underestimate the significance of those stories to the upbringing and spiritual development of children. They provided a moral compass and role models where parents so often failed - not because they were bad parents, but because so little time could be devoted to the raising of children. People toiled from morning to night, their time completely taken up by the business of survival. The children were therefore left pretty much to their own devices, and the stories they heard fuelled their imaginations. They learned of noble and valiant heroes who had integrity, who could be admired, and whom they could imitate. Those stories shaped their character, and strengthened their sense of right and wrong.
In short, the kvöldvaka was the cradle of the Icelanders’ emotional and spiritual lives, a cultural institution upon which the nation’s values rested.
4 Read on
Children largely learned to read during the kvöldvaka. And I would like to say that it was because their parents bore such an intense reverence for the written and spoken word that they could not imagine anything more essential than their offspring learning to make sense of those squiggly symbols that we call letters.
But it was slightly more complex than that.
You see, teaching children to read was not an option, at least not in 18th century Iceland. The national church decreed that everyone had to learn to read, so they could successfully adopt its religious teachings. Not that this was exclusive to Iceland - making people literate was the business of ecclesiastical authorities all over Europe. Still, I don’t know the church elsewhere actually made it obligatory to teach your kids to read - although I may be wrong.