ABSTRACT
On 5 October 1912, a fishing boat foundered with its crew of five in a huge storm off the West Fjords. Such loss of life was nothing unusual in Iceland’s fishing villages at that time, when men still rowed out in open boats to the fishing grounds. Among the men on board was Halldór Jónsson, at that time a farmer at Miðdalsgröf-the diarist, scribe, and lay scholar who made an appearance earlier in the book, one of the main protagonist of the book. He was forty-two when he died, leaving a widow and five children. Such events were naturally tragic for the families left behind and the communities that lost not only family breadwinners but also the means of production (i.e., vessels and fishing gear) at a stroke. But for poets and lay scholars the loss was even greater as individuals disappeared from among their own ranks. Their ideas about their activities and those of the group are never so clearly articulated as when they face such trauma and pay tribute to their fallen comrades.
