Ókídók!
The results from last week’s survey are in, and in response to the question whether you’d like to hear more about my own personal experience of moving to Iceland and adapting to Icelandic society, or for me to continue writing much the same as before, a whopping 93% said they wanted the former option, aka more tea.
You realize, I hope, that writing subjectively about my experience means you’ll get a whole lot of info about me learning to adapt to life in general, not just Icelandic life, as the two are inextricably linked.
I’ll try my best to keep it interesting and not make it sound like someone’s dream that they insist on telling you about in minute detail while you’re too polite to walk away.
Yes? Ok then. Here we go.
My first attempt at Iceland
I have previously shared that I moved to Iceland in my early 30s as a single mom, having lived most of my life abroad, and that I have been here ever since.
I have not, however, written much about my previous failed attempt to move to Iceland, ten years earlier, when I was 21.
(Small side note: apologies in advance, but I may refer to my memoir a fair bit. It covers my life pretty much up to the point that I am writing about here, gives the reasons why I did so, and a bunch of other relevant details. Since I know that many of you have read it, you’ll no doubt understand a bit better what was going on.)
Those of you who have read my memoir know that it ends with me moving to Iceland in the wake of a major breakthrough in my psychiatric treatment. My psychiatrist felt that moving back would be a good next step for me, and that I might find the support I needed there.
My departure from Canada was pretty radical, and let’s just say that I came to Iceland pretty broken, without any idea of who I really was, and trying very hard not to fall apart.
The year was 1984.
There was a house in Canada that had been bought for me—a long story that I relate in detail in my memoir. It sounds amazing, of course—having had my own house at the age of 17—but in truth it was a place that facilitated my mother’s discard of me.1 When I decided to leave Canada I put that house on the market. It sold soon afterwards, but a period of time passed before the funds could be transferred to me in Iceland.
I made the move with the intensity of someone just released from a hostage situation, and with a vague notion of what that move really entailed. My perspective was shaped by my life in Toronto, where I had lived both with roommates and on my own. I’d mostly been working in the restaurant industry because I was too much of a mess to do anything constructive with my life, such as get more education. My sole aim was to figure out what had happened to make me into the psychological train wreck that I was—because, frankly, I had no idea. Until I did.
So I thought that when I moved to Iceland I would find a place to rent and maybe pick up a restaurant or bartending job. But at that time—much like now—rental housing was really hard to come by. Most Icelanders own their own homes—that’s basically how the housing market works here—meaning the rental market is minuscule. Today, of course, the problem is exacerbated by tourist rentals like Airbnb.
As for the restaurant job—at the time there were hardly any restaurants in Reykjavík, and the bar scene was, well … pretty damn scary. Icelanders have always been rowdy drinkers, and bars at that time served only hard liquor because beer was still illegal. Well, they also served wine—but no one went to a bar to drink wine. People—just like now—typically got shitfaced at home before going out because liquor was so damn expensive at the bars. Later that summer I worked two or three shifts as a bartender at a place in the basement of the National Theatre, and it was awful. By the time they got to the bar people were drunk, aggressive and rude—and there weren’t even any tips to make it worthwhile because tipping has never been a thing in Iceland.
So anyway, I arrived in Iceland, moved in with my father and his family, and got a job cleaning rooms at the Hotel Saga. Overall the situation was … not ideal. So, as soon as the funds came through from the sale of the house in Canada, I basically went out and bought the first apartment I looked at—which turned out to be a hovel. I didn’t have anyone to advise me, and I was so desperate to get into my own place that my judgement was completely clouded.
A couple of hours after I had signed the contract with the realtor my grandmother called me in a panic, asking if the deal was already done … she had talked to a relative who told her that under no circumstances should I buy that place because it was in a building that the Icelanders call forskalað (don’t know the English term). It was something that people at one time thought was an excellent idea, until they discovered that it was a terrible idea. What it entailed was that timber houses were covered with a shell of concrete, ostensibly to protect them, but in the end the concrete inevitably formed cracks, water seeped in, the wood rotted, and the house was ruined—or, in the event that it could be salvaged, had to undergo very expensive repairs.
I had basically bought an apartment in a house that everyone avoided like a spitball on a sidewalk.
Also, there were a few other things wrong with that apartment.
There were four flats in the building: one in (a part of) the basement, two on the first floor (mine included), and one on the top floor. In my place the central heating was shared with the other apartment on the same floor, since initially it had been one flat … but the heating controls were in the other apartment. That meant that my neighbour could go away for a long weekend and turn off the heat (which he once did), and there was nothing I could do about it. I couldn’t even phone him to tell him to come turn it back on because he was somewhere out in the countryside and cellphones hadn’t been invented yet.
The walls were paper thin so I could hear everything, and I mean everything, that went on in the other apartment. And vice-versa.
I could also hear everything that went on in the upstairs apartment, where a couple lived who routinely had drunken brawls on the weekends. The man beat his wife, and once threw her down the stairs so that she broke her leg.
This couple had a dog, and you could not step one foot on the lawn surrounding the building without planting it in a pile of dogshit that was never cleaned.
My apartment consisted of a kitchen, a living/dining room, a toilet, and a bedroom that had an open circular staircase down to the basement. That basement was unfinished and had mildew in the walls. The only thing down there was a makeshift shower that had been cobbled together out of wooden planks, and was like a little shack in the basement, with a concrete floor and drain. I think I used that shower about three times in the six-or-so months that I lived there, preferring to shower at the local swimming pool because it was so horrid. In short, that basement was the stuff of nightmares, and I could never bring myself to sleep in the bedroom because of the hole in the floor that led down to it. Instead I set up my bed in the dining room and slept there.
The house was situated on a lot that sat between the main street Laugavegur, and its parallel street Hverfisgata. More or less where Hjartagarðurinn is today, for those of you who are familiar with Reykjavík. You could cut through our yard to get from Laugavegur to Hverfisgata, and people did that, all the time, especially when Reykjavík nightlife was in full swing on the weekends. That meant people were regularly puking in the yard (among the dogshit piles) or pissing up against the wall of the house. Fun, fun times.
So, what attracted me to this place, you ask? Well, it had a rather lovely archway between the living/dining room, and wooden panelling that made me think of a warm cabin. At first glance seemed to me a house with “soul”—and I desperately needed soul, being completely devoid of my own.
They say that houses are a reflection of one’s own psyche, at least in dreams—and boy was that house a reflection of my psyche at the time. A psyche that longed for warmth, but ultimately wound up with a dilapidated, decaying basement, central heating (yes, warmth) controlled by someone else, violent neighbours, and people pissing up against it. A house that no one wanted, not even me.
Yep. It kind of said everything about my self-esteem, and what I thought I was worth.
Sorry for the downer post, but hey, you asked for it!
More on my thrilling Iceland adaptation next week. 😁
You know I just have to plug this one:
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As I write this I am aware of how entitled it may come across, and of course I am grateful for what I was given, but on the other hand a grim reality can lurk behind the facade of something that seems amazing.
I would like to buy the book Daughter, not too computer savvy. Love your” Letter from Iceland”. What bookstore in Iceland has it for sale?
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It isn't surprising when young adults from horrific backgrounds make bad decisions. After all, only bad has been modeled to us by the adults around us.
Really, it is pretty amazing that any of us manage to figure out how to adult. You made it out. With a few bumps and bruises, sure, but you learned how to adult without a manual. Pretty damned amazing.