Gunnar Oddsson

Today I went to the farm of Flatatunga in Skagafjorður. Five Icelandic sheep dogs surrounded my car as I was driving up to the farmhouse, so I decided to stop the car and get out. The farmer, who was turning hay in his tractor, got out and walked up to me. I introduced myself, he introduced himself. I told him I wanted to take some pictures, he said sure, and said when I was done, I should come into the farm house to have some coffee and cakes. We chatted about the history of the farm: he told me about the time two young men tried to lift a large flat stone said to be covering the grave of a landnámsmaður, back when his grandfather owned the farm, about the time Kristján Eldjan came to speak to his father, and about the fire on the property when his great-grandfather was running it.

I had of course little in the way of narrative to offer up to him in response, but I think he appreciated my observation that farms in California do not have 1000 years of history behind them. However cool or hip or  fancy a house in California might be, it will never have the cache of Flatatunga in my book.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Dett í, ofan á, úr, út

Twitterverse

The sky weeps