Vardø may have felt like traveling to the edge of the world, but Norwegians consider Å i Lofoten the true end of the line. The tiny village is situated at the southern terminus of the main road through the Lofoten Islands. The final village’s moniker, Å, is also the last letter of the Norwegian alphabet.
The Lofotens are a scattering of islands that feel like a topographical game of jacks that has been cast into the sea. Sharp, rocky and sublime they frame the southern portion of the Hålogaland province of Norway. The fishing industry has been supplanted by tourism, but prior to that, the region was a Viking stronghold.
Sunset in the Lofoten Islands. Photo by Espen Restad Hanssen
Now, lets talk journeys and the way that things unfold. I began this pilgrimage with the primary intention of examining the development of vernacular Icelandic building practices as viewed through the lens of traditional Norwegian construction.
My research led me to the Icelandic sagas as a means to provide a socio-cultural context to the building techniques. More than construction details and wall assemblies, I wanted to understand what life when these types of buildings were in use. What I had not realized at home in Seattle was how important the Icelandic sagas are to Icelanders, and in turn, how important they would become to me.
Glaumbær historic farm near Sauðárkrókur, Iceland
Turf blocks are cut to a variety of types. Above the Glaumbærarhnaus (“Glaumbær block”) is laid on its side in the structure, crosswise to the wall; each block is as long as the entire width of the wall. Nearly twice as broad as the strips, torfa are used to cover the roof.
Herringbone pattern capitalizes on walls settling to close any small openings.
I visited numerous turf constructions.
I touched them and was surprised by their warmth.
I lingered in them and was surprised by their coziness.
I examined them in search of evidence of the boat builders that were their creators.
Though historic, the buildings did not allow me to engage cultural undercurrent embed in the landscape.
They are artifacts, not architecture.
They are striking, but hollow.
In the evenings I would curl up in my tent and read the sagas.
Drangey Island is just north of Sauðárkrókur and is a pivotal site in Grettis saga. Grettir, one of the great warriors of the sagas, was no ordinary man. Immensely strong, he is said to have carried a bull on his shoulders, killed berserks (crazed Viking warriors) and bears, and finally vanquished the terrifying ghost Glámur. Grettir spent 19 years as an outlaw, before being slain on the island of Drangey with his brother Illugi. Photo by Jessica Auer.
Berserkjahraun (Berserker’s lava field) on the Snæfellsnes Penninsula, Iceland. In the Eyrbyggja Saga, two Swedish Berserkers, insanely violent characters that could psyche themselves up for battle, are set to an impossible task by a farmer: to clear a passage through a lava field in exchange for the farmer’s daughter’s hand. Once the Berserkers succeed, the farmer who never intended to give up his daughter, murders the Berserkers by trapping them in a scorching sauna and slays them as they try to escape.
I coordinated the sagas that I read with my travels. They impacted the way I viewed the land, the country and myself. I existed as neither a tourist nor a local. I donned many titles as I ventured trying to find the one that fit.
Traveler.
Researcher.
Super tourist.
Pilgrim.
Let me introduce the sagas with an excerpt from a draft of my thesis:
“Eight hundred years ago significant works of literature were written in Iceland. The Íslendingasögur, or “Sagas of Icelanders”, are stories that describe the lives of Icelanders in the late 9th through 11th centuries. In contrast to contemporaneous medieval writing, the Sagas are written in prose and reflect the struggle and conflict that arose within the societies of the second and third generations of Icelandic settlers.
The island nation has a long oral tradition of storytelling strongly rooted in place. The fjords and farmlands described in the sagas can be identified and trod upon. For centuries, the cultural canons were embodied in the people, told and retold. Several hundred years after the time of action, the sagas were written and recorded by anonymous writers.”
My words are academic and will never carry the power of the words of Icelanders themselves and the pride that they feel for the sagas. I care not for the debate of whether or not the stories are historically accurate. What moves me is the passion that each Icelander I spoke with has for the sagas and how each story of love, revenge and family duty are embed in the Icelandic landscape.
To hear the Icelandic perspective:
Ferðalok is a archaeologically focused six-part documentary that examines the authenticity of the sagas: Ferðalok Trailer.
Memories of Old Awake is a documentary that introduces Dr. Emily Lethbridge, a british researcher who spent a year traveling Iceland and reading the sagas in situ: Memories of Old Awake.
image from Ferðalok
The sagas entranced me, though I could not fully articulate why. It was thrilling to bike by a farm and then realize that there is that place where that person murdered that other person to avenge the murder of someone else. A thousand-year-old drama felt surprisingly tangible.
In the 1890s, W.G. Collingswood and Jon Stefansson wrote ‘A Pilgrimage to the Saga-Steads of Iceland’ which illustrated the saga sites. They theorized that the sagas took for granted that the reader was familiar with the landscape, and that an understanding of the landscape was critical to allow the reader to ‘stage these dramas’.
When I first read several of the sagas in Seattle they lacked the vividness of reading them in Iceland. What I was feeling but couldn’t describe was finally elucidated when I read the words of Dr. Kári Gíslason in his discussion advocating the potential for literary tourism in Iceland.
“… overlooking the saga past - or not engaging with it in at least some detail - means that visitors miss the chance to experience the Icelandic landscape in the way that is close to local perceptions. Because the sagas remain a part of how Icelanders view rural landscapes, and indeed how Icelanders view themselves as a nation, saga-related travel is a way of meeting the local culture through environment.”
Traveling through Norway I have looked for that same sense of connection with the landscape, the people and their past. Surely, as most of the saga characters traveled to and from Norway, there would be a cultural residue that I could perceive. I found nothing.
It was not until I arrived in Å and rode to the end of the road, walked to the end of the path and then continued a bit more did I find the connection that I had sought to the sagas. I had made the mistake of looking for specific saga sites as they exist in Iceland. But the role of Norway in the sagas is more enigmatic. She is the motherland, the point of departure.
Leaving the path in Å one climbs a small crest and then descends. This topographical threshold removes civilization from view. You are left with: sea, sky, and stone. The weight of the mountains pressing behind you, the view to the sea is sweeping. It is sweeping though not because there is an unobstructed view. The craggy fingers of the land stretch before you. Due to the atmospheric perspective they fade as they recede. Like a visual echo they speak the same verse more and more softly, until they disappear.
looking seaward from Å, Norway
It is this vista that I hold in my mind’s eye as I begin to design for my thesis. I can gaze out to the furthest bounds and imagine what it was like for those intrepid souls who embarked on the journey and lived the stories that I have read.
The underpinning of my thesis is to investigate how to make a cultural undercurrent embed in a landscape legible and accessible to populations of varying cultural literacy. It will examine the way a people can preserve, reveal and share their culture. The stance is that if the approach to tourism infrastructure is one that prioritizes the local it can provide a more authentic experience for the visitor.
This thesis will be explored through the Icelandic sagas.
I am proposing a cultural pilgrimage route punctuated by remote reading rooms that aids in the global accessibility of the historic literary legacy of Iceland. The reading rooms will be sited in the landscape of each saga and provide both pilgrim and tourist a place to read the sagas in situ.
The project is at its essence shelter;
but shelter with the specific purpose of reading,
and more specifically with the purpose of reading a specific text.
Tally-ho.