A Passion for Iceland
I met Bill Holm at the library. His gaze was defiant, quizzical, perfervid. He had a florid complexion, penetrating eyes and a bushy beard.
He was staring out from the flyleaf of The Windows of Brimnes: An American in Iceland, his engaging travelogue published in 2007. I was preparing to go to Iceland; Bill would be my guide.
In this elemental land, sculpted by nature, I didn’t know where to go beyond Reykjavik, the capital, where some two-thirds of Icelanders live. The interior is largely impenetrable.
Most visitors travel Route One, which runs some 850 miles around the island. On this Ring Road, as it is called, the majesty of Iceland unfolds: a staggering dominion of rock, fire and ice. The land is alive, raw, primeval.
One moment you are in a lava desert with beguiling monoliths that evoke Ayers Rock and the Australian Outback. Another finds you hugging the side of a mountain, sea lapping below, evoking the Grand Cornice of the French Riviera. There are black beaches like those in Santorini and volcanoes like those in Sulawesi.
Swans, thousands of them, play in lagoons. Sheep graze in alpine uplands. Horses canter in seaside pastures. Puffins circle headland cliffs.
Steam seethes from rocks. Waterfalls tumble from grassy hills. Basalt columns thrust out of the sea. Icebergs drift in aquamarine lakes. In August the light is long, the fog heavy, the wind constant and the snow occasional.
Bill describes this panorama with wonder. Like British poet W.H. Auden, who visited here in 1936, he delights in taking his readers to the far side of the world. Most of all, Bill rhapsodizes about Brimnes, his home in Hofsos. It sits in a hamlet perched on the eastern shore of the Skagafjordur, one of the great fjords of northern Iceland.
Having been introduced to Bill, Brimnes and Hofsos, I had to come here. As it happened, Hofsos is near the ancestral seat of the forebears of the wonderful Janis Johnson of Winnipeg, whose distinguished family (she’s a veteran senator, her late father a renowned doctor and lieutenant governor of Manitoba) came from Iceland to Canada. When I realized Hofsos was where I’d find Bill Holm, Janis sighed and said, “Oh, Bill …”
Hofsos is also the home of the Icelandic Emigration Centre. It was founded by Valgeir Thorvaldsson, a carpenter, masseur, singer, farmer, horsebreeder. He imagined a museum and centre of genealogy, then began buying and restoring collapsed fishermen’s cottages and raising money. The Centre opened in 1996.
Set in three buildings, it is a superb re-creation of the great exodus from Iceland. It examines why people left, where they went, how they went, how they fared. Many went to Canada (Ottawa dispatched agents who recruited the hearty Icelanders to settle the Prairies) particularly around Gimli, Manitoba, where Janis summers.
It was natural that Valgeir and Bill, both independent spirits, would become fast friends. Indeed, it was Valgeir, the generous of heart, who sold Brimnes to Bill, a Minnesotan of Icelandic descent who began coming here a decade ago.
Who is this Bill Holm, I wonder? I learn he is a poet, essayist, teacher, musician and polemist. He has written some 12 books and taught in China, among other places.
The Windows of Brimnes is his meditation on Iceland. It is a river of rhapsody at full flood broken by diverting tributaries into music, poetry, religion, Icelandic horses, even fog. Reading Bill, I am struck by his humanity and his spirit. He dislikes a materialistic America. He talks passionately about nature, the universe and his mortality, more than once.
I couldn’t wait to meet him — and, writers being writers, a curious tribe, I knew I surely would. I wanted to visit places he did, such as Drangey, the high, brooding island of the Icelandic Sagas you can see from Hofsos.
Another was the view of the fjord at Arnarstapi, which moves Bill to tears. Whenever he sees it, he thinks: “What a world! What a universe! What a pleasure to be alive and sentient in such a place on such a day.”
The other day, Valgeir took me over to Bill’s house, which isn’t as isolated or romantic as I’d imagined. It is strangely empty and forlorn. I poke around the living room, noting his books and piano and contemplating the world outside. These are the windows of Brimnes, a byword for the mind and soul.
But I will not meet Bill, now or ever. He has died of pneumonia, without fair warning, at age 65. They will spread his ashes on the Skagafjordur, and Valgeir will create a room honouring Bill’s life and work at the emigration centre. A room with a view, of course.
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