nordic memories: fixed

on November 29th I wrote about some memories in a post called nordic memories. this post is a correction.

I wrote about my great grandmothers' childhood, but apparently my brain doesn't remember everything equally well, because the incident happened to my great grandfather and not great grandmother. whoops...

expanding the story: the city where this happened is called Skarð and has been abandoned ever since it was depopulated. my mother told me that once in a while there are planned trips to the bygd, so descendants of the people who once lived there can see the ruins and get some kind of closure. I'd very much like to go there sometime, but it won't be for a while. I'm going to the Faroe Islands this summer, but those days are filled up with birthdays and parties, and I doubt that anyone will agree, or have the time, to go on this somewhat bleak journey with me. someday I'll have to go, though, since the family history fascinates me.

nordic memories

I'm not feeling too hot today, so my plan for the day is to do as little as possible. I just realized how awesome it really is that Spotify finally has come to DK. after listening to some Rihanna and Arab Strap, I brewed a cup of chamomile tea and found (almost) everything that Sigur Rós has ever released. wow! it's been at least 6 years since I've listened to them. I forgot how absolutely cute they sound. I wish my mom still knew Icelandic so she could teach me, and I could understand the lyrics. mah. but some of it is pretty close to Faroese, so sometimes I catch the drift of what the song's about (a tiny little bit). I'm now listening to Ágætis Byrjun, my then-favorite album.

a great song from Ágætis Byrjun, Svefn-G-Englar. most people have probably heard it, which is good

when I was still in high school, me and my then boyfriend, P, used to lay side by side on my one person bed and listen to Sigur Rós, mostly ( ). we'd tell each other the pictures and moods that came into our minds. after doing this long enough, a story would start to form.

the one I remember the very best is about a woman and her husband. they lived alone in a little stone house by the sea, with dried fish and sheep coats hanging outside. the husband went out fishing and the woman sat outside the house sewing, waiting for him to come home and staring at the sea. after a long time sitting outside, the woman feels cold and sees an insisting fog drifting inland. she goes inside to warm herself and falls asleep, thinking that her husband will wake her when he returns. dawn breaks and she wakes. apart from herself, the house is empty and cold; even under her covers she's freezing. out the window she can see that the fog is thicker than yesterday, and she decides to look for her husband. she wanders up and down the shore for a long time, not finding any trace of him, but once she thinks she hears him calling. she goes back to the little house to eat a bit and see if he really has come back and is outside, yelling for her to come to dinner. the first thing she sees reaching the house is his boat; it's lying on its side on the shore, destroyed and full of holes. her heart falls and she falls to her knees, but she does not cry, as she knew that this would happen someday.

the end.

the story reminds of my great grandfather. my grandmother has told me, that when my great grandfather was little and lived in a tiny bygd with his family, all the grown men, as usual, went out fishing. the ship broke and no one came home. at that time, around the 1910s, there was nothing they could do, as there is nothing much else to eat on the Faroe Islands besides fish. they couldn't even sail to one of the other surrounding bygds and get help, since there was no boat left on land. luckily a boat came some days later and the people could get the help they needed. as far as I remember, every soul moved away from the bygd to rid themselves of the memory of what had happened there.

the end.

wauw. what a lot of memories a few songs can trigger, and my head is still full of many more.