The Atom Station

Footnotes

1

Two-thirds of all the houses in Reykjavik (pop. 70,000) are centrally heated by water pumped from hot springs in Mosfell District, some twelve miles away.

2

Iceland’s greatest and best-loved hymn-writer (1614–74).

3

An Icelandic cultural publishing house: literally, “Language and Culture.”

4

Icelandic schnapps (brennivin), made from concentrated alcohol and water, flavored with aniseed oil; about as potent as whisky. The nickname comes from the black label on the bottle.

5

Eldest son of Njal, in the medieval prose epic Njal’s Saga.

6

Jonas Hallgrimsson (1807–45), Iceland’s greatest Romantic poet, who inspired the nineteenth-century nationalist revival.

7

Icelandic currency is based on the kron (pl. kronur); the krona has 100 aurar (sing, eyrir). The official rate of exchange is now 105 kronur to the pound sterling.

8

The garden square in the middle of the administrative centre of Reykjavik, in front of Parliament House; a favorite spot for strollers.

9

A contagious lung disease that killed hundreds of thousands of sheep in Iceland just after the war. The disease, which is peculiar to Iceland, has not yet been identified with any other known disease.

10

An Icelandic periodical first published in Copenhagen in 1835; Jonas Hallgrimsson (the Nation’s Darling) was one of the founders. It was the rallying point of the nationalist and literary renaissance.

11

A medieval Icelandic collection of Scandinavian heroic and mythological poetry.

12

A common motif in folk-tales: the barren woman swallows an enchanted fish and becomes pregnant.

13

Jon Gudmundsson, a seventeenth-century Icelandic antiquarian; a prolific writer, and deeply superstitious, he wrote a book in 1644 about the “hidden places” and “secret valleys” of Iceland.

14

From the folk tale about a farm girl who killed her illegitimate baby in a sheep pen in order to be free to go to a dance. The baby appeared to her mother as a ghost and sang this song to her.

15

The first month after midwinter, from mid-January to mid-February.

16

In 1564 the Danish Governor of Iceland proclaimed a law under which adultery was to be punished with the death penalty.

17

The famous words spoken by Gunnar of Hlidarend, in Njal’s Saga, when he decided not to go into exile but to remain at home and brave his enemies instead.

18

The great Icelandic historian, poet, and saga-writer of the thirteenth century. He wrote Heimskringla (a history of the kings of Norway) and Snorri’s Edda, a textbook of poetry and mythology.

19

The last Catholic bishop of Holar, one of the two sees in Iceland. He and his two sons fought bitterly against the Reformation and Danish oppression, and were executed in 1550.

20

In that year, after a long period of power seeking and civil strife, Iceland entered into a confederate union with Norway, under the Norwegian crown.

21

In Scandinavian mythology, one of the monsters of darkness. He was fettered by the gods until, at the Ragnarok (destruction of the gods) he burst free and killed Odin.

22

Folk-tale: a deacon from Myrkriver was drowned when riding to fetch his sweetheart to a Christmas party. His ghost arrived to pick up the young woman, and tried to take her with him into his grave. She escaped with difficulty, “and was never the same again afterwards.”

23

By Jonas Hallgrunsson; it is about a mother who is caught with her child by a blizzard. The mother dies of exposure, but the child survives.

24

An old Icelandic scholastic “translation” of Jesus Christ of Nazareth: Jon and Jesus, the two commonest names in both countries; Smyrill, the anointed one; Braudhouses (breadhouses), from the Hebrew etymology of Nazareth.

25

The street in which the old jail in Reykjavik stands.

26

A semi-legendary, highly exclusive band of Vikings, who lived spartan and war-dedicated lives in the Baltic city of Jomsborg (now unknown) in the tenth century. They were wiped out in the battle of Hjorungavag, against Earl Hakon of Norway.