Three Superb "New Yorker" Pieces on Iceland

Photo by Valdimar Thorlacius, from Elizabeth Kolbert's "Independent People"

In my post last week regarding the June 8 & 15 New Yorker, I focused on Peter Schjeldahl’s wonderful critical essay “Apart.” But there’s another excellent piece in that issue – Elizabeth Kolbert’s “Independent People.” It’s about Iceland’s response to COVID-19 – how it managed to beat the curve. But it’s also a rarity – a coronavirus travelogue. Kolbert says, “Despite the generalized gloom, it was thrilling to be going somewhere; for the previous eight weeks, the farthest I’d travelled was to the liquor store.” It was thrilling for me, too, just to be able to vicariously tag along with her as she nosed around Reykjavík,  struggling to abide by the rules of her modified quarantine. My favourite part of the piece is the last paragraph, in which Kolbert describes a Reykjavík evening:

That evening, the weather was clear and cool—by New York standards, too cool to eat outside, by Reykjavík standards balmy. The outdoor cafés were crowded. Restaurants had been asked to arrange their tables to keep groups two metres apart, but some diners, I noticed, had pushed the tables closer together. Everyone was talking and laughing, masklessly. The scene was completely ordinary, which is to say now exotic—just people meeting up with friends for dinner. For a traveller these days, this might be an even better draw, I thought, than glaciers or whale-watching.

That “Everyone was talking and laughing, masklessly” is inspired!

Reading “Independent People,” I recalled two other New Yorker pieces on Iceland that I enjoyed immensely: Adam Gopnik’s “Cool Running” (July 11 & 18, 2016) and Nick Paumgarten’s “Life Is Rescues” (November 9, 2015).

“Cool Running” is Gopnik’s first-person account of his experience hanging out with historian Guðni Jóhannesson as he campaigned to become Iceland’s President. I like the last paragraph of this piece, too – a description of election-night at the Reykjavík Grand Hotel ballroom when it became clear that Jóhannesson won:

I have always wanted to be the first to say to someone “Congratulations, Mr. President.” And so I waited for Guðni to come to the ballroom. He arrived at last, buffeted by cameras, and made a speech, with Eliza, in a blue First Lady’s dress, by his side. He was obviously promising to be the President of all Icelanders, the last step in the choreography of candidacy. A birthday cake appeared, and then—a hallucinatory moment—another Icelandic actress sang “Happy Birthday,” in a perfect impression of Marilyn singing it to J.F.K., sexy sibilant by erotic syllable: “Happy biiirthday, Misstah Prez-uh-dent . . . ” The crowd cheered in pleasure and recognition. We live on one planet, indivisible.

Paumgarten’s “Life Is Rescues” tells about his experience riding with a search-and-rescue team on patrol in Iceland’s southern plain. The team is part of Iceland’s renowned Slysavarnafélagið Landsbjörg – an extensive system of emergency-response volunteers. The piece contains one of my favourite details in all New Yorker writing – bananas hanging on a row of plastic hangers in a kitchen tent:

I wandered out into the rain and then into the kitchen tent. On a row of plastic hangers someone had hung the team’s bananas. Each hanger held two bunches. I stood looking at this, in admiration and wonder. Iceland.

“Admiration and wonder” pretty well sums up the viewpoint of all three of these great New Yorker pieces. I highly recommend them.