Meltwater (Fire and Ice)

HÁKON STAYED at Hladir that winter. He became great friends with Vermundur and treated him well,
since he knew he came from a distinguished family out in Iceland.
    ‘With the earl were two Swedish brothers, one called Halli and the other Leiknir. They were big strong men, bigger and stronger than any other men in Norway or elsewhere. They used to go
berserk, and when they got themselves into that state they were not like other men, but like mad dogs who feared neither fire nor steel .” ’
    Jóhannes Benediktsson glanced up at his class of thirteen-year-olds as he turned the page. He had them transfixed, every one of them. He read The Saga of the People of Eyri to his
Icelandic class of this age every year. And every time he remembered how his own father had read the saga to him so many times when he was young, especially this passage. For
Jóhannes’s father Benedikt had been brought up on a farm in the Snaefells Peninsula where the saga had taken place, indeed the very farm where Vermundur’s brother had taken
charge of the two berserkers back in Iceland a thousand years before.
    The lava field between the two brothers’ farms was called the Berserkjahraun, and Benedikt had had all sorts of stories to tell about it.
    Jóhannes might just be a middle-aged man in a nondescript classroom in modern grey Reykjavík, but he could bring some of the magic of that ancient time into the lives of his
mobile-phone-toting, PlayStation-and-Facebook-obsessed city kids.
    The bell rang for break. They didn’t move. Jóhannes was tempted to continue, but it was best to keep up the suspense. He snapped the book shut with his customary flourish. The class
groaned.
    As he followed his students out of the classroom, Jóhannes was surprised to see Snaer, the head of the Icelandic Department, waiting for him in the corridor.
    ‘Reading The Saga of the People of Eyri again?’ he said.
    Snaer was fifteen years younger than Johannes and fifteen centimetres shorter. ‘Were you spying on me?’ Jóhannes answered, his brows knitting in disapproval.
    ‘I thought we had discussed this,’ said Snaer.
    ‘Oh, we have, we have,’ said Jóhannes. ‘On numerous occasions.’
    ‘Well, it looks as if we need to discuss it again,’ said Snaer, leading Jóhannes back into his classroom and shutting the door behind him. He took up a position in front of
the teacher’s desk and turned towards the older man. The break-time chatter of adolescents interspersed with the regular thud of a football seeped in through the window.
    ‘You know that the syllabus requires you to teach Njáll’s Saga and Laxdaela Saga to this age group. Those are possibly the two greatest sagas in the Icelandic
language. So why can’t you teach them?’
    ‘Because they are in baby talk,’ said Jóhannes.
    ‘They are simplified, perhaps, but they convey the essence of the originals. Much more than the essence.’
    ‘Baby talk,’ said Jóhannes.
    ‘But thirteen-year-olds can’t understand the originals. I have been teaching them for nearly twenty years, and I know they can’t.’
    ‘And I’ve been teaching them for over thirty years, and I know they can,’ said Jóhannes. ‘You spied on me just now. You saw my class. They love that saga.
There’s something for everyone: love, honour, fighting, murder, treachery, ghosts, witchcraft; everything a teenage child could possibly want. Sure, at first they might find it hard to
follow, but they learn. They learn quickly, and that’s the point.’
    ‘I admit you have a good reading voice. But why don’t you read them Njáll’s Saga ?’
    ‘I won’t read them anything in baby talk.’
    ‘Even though it is laid down in the National Curriculum?’
    ‘Even then.’
    Snaer glared at him. ‘I also understand that you have been teaching Form Ten that Halldór Laxness is a lightweight.’
    ‘I have been teaching them to think critically. Just because he won a Nobel Prize it doesn’t mean everything he wrote is perfect. And the arrogance of the man! He took it upon
himself to make up his own rules for how Icelandic should be spelled, he thought our Viking ancestors were all vulgar brutes, and’ – here Jóhannes pulled himself up to his full
height – ‘he thought we should wash more. Why should I be told how often to have a bath by that communist?’
    Snaer closed his eyes. Jóhannes waited. It was true that they had had this conversation before, three months before, shortly after Snaer was