Essay: On the Field of Ancient Peacemaking

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Driving through rain east of Reykjavík to look at Thingvellir, site of the first Icelandic parliament (established 930), the oldest such assembly in the world. I'm not feeling so young myself, the imagination blank except for memories of a book called Letters from Iceland by W.H. Auden and memories of the Icelandic sagas, populated by heroes with unpronounceable names who made elegant speeches and went at one another with axes. More recent memories: news analyses assuring the public that Reagan and Gorbachev definitely are and definitely are not going to accomplish anything substantive at this presummit summit. Most recent memory: the underground Broadway disco in Reykjavík, an Icelandic rock group called Strax, led by a woman with her black hair done up to look like a crow in flight, singing about U.S. and Soviet journalists vying for scoops.

What am I doing here? What are any of us doing here--a flock of mad ducks flown north for the winter, descending noisily on this modest, good-mannered nation? We're here for the story, naturally: journalists always turn their heads where the noise is. For the nearness of power too. Merely the thought of the two big bosses sitting knee to knee, tossing the world's well-being back and forth, is enough to thump the journalistic heart. Back in Reykjavík, in that stout symmetrical house by the water, an abstract enmity is reduced to two men talking together. A rare real moment in the bipolar war of nerves, well worth writing home about. And still: What am I doing here?

No structure stands at Thingvellir anymore. The place where the ancient Icelandic chieftains met is a field by a lake fed by a stream fed by a waterfall that rolls over black rocks with the sound of enthusiastic applause. In summer, tourists pitch tents out here in hordes. This morning finds a single tourist: there was no car on the road but mine. (Is history my scoop?)

At a distance from the field, two mountains rise into a white mist pulled across them by a wind like the hem of a woman's slip. Rain-shagged sheep, mops with four legs, pursue their ridiculous business of all-day eating. On this field over a thousand years ago, an assembly of all Iceland sat down to keep the peace. The obvious parallel pops up: many chieftains then, two chieftains now, striving for balance and order so the world does not run to ruin. It is a tradition in Iceland, this striving for equilibrium. The sagas, crazy as they got, almost always wound up with heroes mending relations after a series of bloody revenges.

In Njal's Saga, known to every schoolchild, the hero is burned to death, and it falls to his son-in-law Kari to avenge the family. Coldly, he knocks off 15 of his enemies, but then suddenly the killing stops. He feels he has overdone it. He asks the pardon of his chief antagonist, and stability is restored. As it is in Hrafnkel's Saga, where, after the obligatory killings and counterkillings, the hero refuses to execute his archrival and chooses to re-establish the balance in the country.

Only in Grettir's Saga are the themes of equilibrium and balance absent. Grettir is a law unto himself. Taking on everyone alone, he finally chooses death over the safety of the world.