‘What should it be like, Papa?’
And I would have answered:
‘The knottier the branch, the more twisted and misshapen, the more bent people call it, the harder it is to find it a place among the smooth planks, the more people agree that it should be thrown on the fire, the more useless it is, the more unsuitable for anything except letting one’s imagination run riot, the more I covet it, the more I yearn to weigh it in my hand, the more I long to let my whittling knife be guided by its knots and veins … Yes, bring that piece to me …’
And while we, father and daughter, each whittled away at our crooked branch, I would have spoken to her like this:
‘If a virgin meets a stray horse on a moorland path she sees only a horse. It stands there on the moors, whole and undivided. Yet her youthful eyes have already jumped from one end of the beast to the other, and her mind has added up the body parts, checking that everything is in place: legs, head, body, hooves, tail, mane and muzzle. “There’s a horse,” the virgin’s mind says to itself with such lightning speed that the girl does not even hear it. She thinks no more of it and continues on her way, unconcerned. Yet it is often a near thing, for the girl must not only keep in mind the horse’s legs, head, body, hooves, tail, mane and muzzle; it is not enough that every part is in its place; she must also pay heed to which way round the parts turn. For if the horse’s hooves face backwards, it is a nykur, a kelpie or water-horse, and will want to kidnap the girl, lure her on to its back and gallop away with her to its dwelling place deep in the cold moorland tarn … Remember what I say, Berglind: if you meet a horse in the countryside, look at its hooves. If the horse is standing knee-deep in grass, hiding its feet, walk steadfastly away. If there is a pond gleaming behind the figure of the horse, you must take to your heels. And should the nykur lure you on to its back with the intention of carrying you down into its wet lair, you are to shout its secret name: “Nennir”. And it will throw you off. For in common with the other instruments of darkness it cannot bear to hear its name, unlike good spirits which grow and gain strength if one names them aloud and sings their praises. Remember my words, Berglind’ … That is how I would have talked to her, administering a fatherly warning … For the nykur is like man in that it is hard to tell the bad from the good … Though man has one advantage … If you meet a man on a moorland path it does not matter whether he is standing in deep grass or on hard-packed snow … Hmm, I wonder which part of Ari of Ögur faces backwards? My thoughts drove me out of the hut … I wandered along like a sleepwalker and came to my senses here at the tip of the rocky bank which forms the island’s northern harbour … Baaa … One more step and I would have walked off the end … Fallen into the sea, sunk like a stone, drowned … But the black sheep bleated loudly and woke me from my reverie … Now we are quits … Baaa … When I looked at the sky I saw the grotesques in the evening clouds spreading and stretching beyond the limits of reason and understanding … They are like bladderwrack spread out to dry on the rocks … And as the eye travels from one strange beast to the next in search of the boundaries between them, it moves from one joint to another … Wanders among countless joints … There is no beginning or end except in the whole undivided picture, in all its parts … One can never say for certain which limb or body belongs to which entity, for the branches and shoots are all equally valid … The thought has crossed my mind that it is the joints themselves, the places where the parts meet that are the eternal and absolute in this world, for they exist and at the same time do not exist except as the gaps that connect the most unrelated phenomena … And the gaps between the limbs that the joint connects can be incredibly small, as small as the gaps between the tiny legs and feet of a bluebottle … Or they can be vast, the distance so immense that the human eye cannot comprehend it, cannot see the poles even though one is standing midway between them, or is aware of only one limb and knows nothing of the other … It is in these invisible halls that I believe God dwells … As was proved long ago when the Roman general Placidus rode out on the stag hunt in the forest by Tivoli … When the hunter drew back his bow, intending to fell his quarry which at first sight appeared to be what he called to himself ‘a fleet-footed stag’ — but the dawn sun rephrased, calling it ‘a dew-bedecked deer calf, lord of all beasts, his antlers glowing against the sky’ — he had a vision of the glorious Christ … Yet the divinity does not luxuriate in a labyrinth of blazing gold antlers, or pride himself on the light-bordered tines: no, he exists in the cool morning air between the branches of the beast’s intricate crown … It seemed to General Placidus that he saw the boy Jesus standing on the young stag’s forehead, resting on one toe and holding out his arms to bid him, a pagan, welcome into his Father’s kingdom … Love flew into his breast … The quarry felled the hunter … Placidus took the name Eustace and entered into the service of love … And was scorned … Robbed of all his goods … Tortured … Forced to flee … His sons were devoured by wolves and lions … His wife was ravished by pirates … Yet he continued to sing the praises of goodness … He regained his wealth … Had more children … Refused to take part in the Emperor Hadrian’s burnt offerings … Was imprisoned … And with his wife and young children was put on a grid and roasted alive in his persecutors’ oven, burnt to ash in the bowels of the idol, a giant bronze ox … The martyr became Saint Eustace … Good to call on in times of terror if one’s family is in peril … The antlers of a hart, coral, spread fingers, birch twigs, a loosely knotted fishing net, crystals, river deltas, ivy, mackerel clouds, women’s hair … diverse as these phenomena are and formed from opposing elements, nevertheless they all revolve around the invisible joints, their opposite forms touch even though they are far apart … and if I imitate their form, reaching my arms to the sky — moving them together and apart in turn, waving them to and fro — then Jónas Pálmason the Learned is no longer alone … I am the brother of all that divides, all that curls, all that intertwines, all that waves … after the day’s rain showers the web of the world becomes visible … the moment night falls, the beads of moisture glitter on its silver strings … nature is whole in its harmony … twit-tweet … as can clearly be seen if one treads a dance here on the harbour bar … twit-tweet … but it all gets into a tangle if one tries to classify it according to reason … the strings refresh the eyes and mind … it is difficult to grasp them … twit-tweet … welcome back from the sea, brother sandpiper … twit-tweet … it is high tide on the island of Patmos … the strings run through me … twit-tweet … I thrum them … alas, now I miss my picture books … twit-tweet … geyser-birds …
The Tail or Leftovers
And so we leave Jónas Pálmason the Learned in that happy hour, a frail old man dancing with the universe. We will not join in with his cries of joy when his exile on Gullbjörn’s Island is revoked without warning in the summer of 1639. We will not follow him to Hjaltastadur, where Reverend Pálmi Gudmundur will give him a roof over his head for the fifteen years that remain to him. We will not sit with him at his writing desk when he is finally at liberty to tap from the barrel of his brain all the learning that he has accumulated during his long life, which he now sets down on paper for his patron, Bishop Brynjólfur Sveinsson: his biographical poem ‘Sandpiper’, his writings on natural history, his little book of herbs, his commentary on the Edda, the legends, outlaw ballads, genealogies and pictures of whales — and the many other texts that made this book possible. We will not be present when a seventy-year-old Jónas secretly has a child with a maid, a boy, named after his father, who inherits half his nickname, becoming Jónas ‘the Little Learned’. We will be absent but we will send our respects when he dies in 1658 and at his own wish is buried crosswise before the church doors.