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Reading and writing in the land of ice and fire (and smoky peat).

Travelling  via peat-iron words: moskeri, torfskera, tushkar, tusker, tairsgeir, turf spade.

The human’s ingenuity cannot compare to Nature’s raw power in the land of fire and ice.

‘AL4-1c, Karahnjukar’ by Petur Thomsen. Culture House, Reykjavik.

Myrdalsjokull glacier south of Mount Hekla photographed today from the plane.

 

Iceland’s Nobel Prize winning author Halldor Laxness sets his novel, ‘Brekkukots Annall (trans: The Fish Can Sing)’ in the area of Reykjavik just across from the National Museum where all these peat spades are housed. Brekkukot was based on a real farmhouse, Melkot, which was located between the cemetery and the Reykjavikurtjorn lake just off what is now the city centre. Built in the 18th C. it was a double gabled traditional turf structure. Laxness’s parents had met there whilst working as farmhands and he had fond memories of it, its last tenant being a great aunt, before it was demolished in 1915 to make way for the grand suburban houses which now occupy the site.

As well as the cottage itself being of turf construction the use of peat as a fuel is also described in the book.

“The late Bjorn of Brekkukot was born and bred in this part of the world; his father had been a farmer here in Brekkukot when it had been a farm with its own meadows on the south side of the Lake, where, later, peat-pits were dug to supply this future capital city with fuel.”
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“I cannot remember her otherwise than bowed and toothless, with a bit of a cough and red-rimmed eyes from having to stand before the open fire in the kitchen-smoke of Brekkukot, and before that in other cottages whose names I did not know. There might sometimes have been a little soot in the wrinkles of her face…”
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boalliatmik inkialtr kaerpi

“Pall had me (made), Ingjaldur made (me).”

Wooden peat spade with runic inscription found in an Icelandic  bog dates from the 12th C. Nat.Mus.  Reykjavik

This wide-bladed wooden peat spade was found in a bog in Iceland “.. it was probably lost there in the Middle Ages whilst digging peat for fuel.” Nat.Mus. Reykjavik

Moskeri- peat spade @reykjavik #nationalmuseumiceland

Sphagnum mosses can absorb 20 times their own weight in water…or blood.

In Ness on the Island of Lewis they commemorate the fallen with a poppy outside each croft where a man did not return from the First World War. Often there is more than one. Sometimes there is now no longer a croft. Because of its absorbent qualities sphagnum moss from the peatlands was used for bandages.

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