The Woman at 1,000 Degrees

10 The Jónic Order 1959–1969

In the years following the war and preceding the endless Cod Wars, every second man in Iceland was called Jón, our version of John. You literally couldn’t go anywhere without bumping into a Jón. You only had to step onto the dance floor to be sure of conceiving a little Jón. In the space of ten years I had three baby boys with three different Jóns, and some people nicknamed me the Jónic Queen.

Jón Haraldsson was the first in line, a Brilliantined wholesale merchant with a double chin and black-peppered cheeks. With him I had Harald Fairhair. Then there was Jón B. Ólafsson, a ginger-haired hack who wrote for the newspaper, hard in bed but limp outside it. With him I had the Smorgasbord King, Ólafur, who lives in Bergen in Norway these days, where he gets along best with bread, but few things irk him as much as visits from his Mum.

Finally, there was Jón Magnússon, the solicitor and genealogical genius, the soft, wobbly one, who had cultivated the art of carpe diem, which he practised on a daily basis, with a bottle and bravura. With him I had my Magnús, ‘the Lawmender.’ For the sake of convenience I call my Jóns Pre-Jón, Mid-Jón and Post-Jón.