Three days living with sheep
“I thought it was a painting or something!”
My friends were unanimous when I showed a picture I took in the countryside, a few hours' drive away from Reykjavik: A wooden window frame cuts a square out of an expanse of the landscape. Out of it, the morning glow is coming to an end and the pale blue sky is tinged with pinkish-yellowish scattered clouds like a stroke of a dry brush. In the foreground, there is green pasture with a bay spreading in the background. This is no doubt beautiful, but something essential is missing. On the meadow, there should be added white fluffy spots — sheep. I was there to complete the “painting,” i.e. to “smala fé” (sheep roundup).
I was allowed to join the gathering serendipitously. But, to tell the truth, I had never touched sheep until then, let alone gathered them. Nevertheless, I fully understood that sheep means so much more for Icelandic farmers than I could imagine. As an Icelandic learner, I knew the word “fé” has two meanings: “sheep” and “capital”. Over generations, people have lived with sheep, protecting and inheriting their traditions so that sheep and money became synonymous.
On the day before the gathering, dozens of people including children had come up and prepared for this important event, and most of them were locals or otherwise experienced. I was so grateful for having the chance to take part in the tradition that I strained myself to do well. Our mission was to climb up the mountains and to make flocks of sheep descend. With significant work imminent, I went for a swim along a shore to ease the tension. The night was coming at that time, and across the bay I could barely see the fjord, half blanketed by a cloud that resembled freshly sheared fleece. All the sound was absorbed into nature. When I looked back, the black mountains that we were climbing on the next day towered over in the serene hush, as if they were staring down at me.
As the heavy sky of the previous day implied, the weather got worse when we scaled the mountains on the day for gathering. While climbing craggy and slippery slopes, we split up into groups to corral sheep. I could hardly see other members or sheep, but the howling wind bore their faint voices from afar. In case flocks came near me, I waited patiently by sharpening my senses. Soon my trousers and outerwear – whose catchphrase is “waterproof” – repelled rain, and my uncovered face became numb.
Finally, I could see a grain-size flock of sheep that was driven downward far away. It seemed to come running toward me, but I couldn’t recognize how far they were from me since undulating slopes blocked my view. Then in a moment when I lost concentration, the flock appeared very close to me. Five or six sheep ran parallel to the slope in line. The lead sheep would have found me, but it suddenly changed direction to run up the slope. I burst into a run with panic. However, with a shivering body clung by soaked clothes, how could I catch up with four-legged mountaineers with perfect cold protection? The more I chased it, the more it eluded me. Finally, it disappeared to the other side of the mountains “in two shakes of a lamb’s tail,” while I was gasping for air and looking up at the flock getting further away until it was again as small as a grain.
In short, I screwed up.
Gathering the flock I missed was carried over to the next day. I felt terribly sorry about it, but people patted me on the back reassuringly and treated me to home-cooked meals.
The cozy wooden dining room was full of pleasant chat. Piping hot kjötsúpa (meat soup) and grilled mutton fresh from the oven gradually thawed my body. Holding a warm bowl, I imagined the people who had lived in this place. Did they gather, laugh, and appreciate each other just like us after such work? Were they watching the scarlet sunset at the end of a long day after long labor? They might have sat by the fire and thought about how to run the shuttle for their loom... Every single moment of the stay, I felt at one with nature, animals, people, the past, and myself. It was a precious experience for me to scrutinize myself and forget about anxiety and restlessness while staying somewhere where time passes slowly and gently.
After all the work was completed, and when I prepared to go back to the south with reluctance, I caught sight of children drawing. Thick markers, held by small hands, ran over a blank side of paper to outline cloud-shape circles, and then added curving squiggly lines in the middle of them. That brought a smile to my face — what a simple and beautiful way to draw sheep! Soon the paper was filled with flocks of sheep. The squiggly lines, depicting the heads and the horns of sheep in the simplest way, looked like M whose seam came undone, or rather Japanese hiraganaひ (hi). Never did I think of stumbling upon the syllabary of my mother tongue, I was a little bit confused so many meanings of hi popped into my head: Day (hi, 日), fire (hi, 火), shuttle (hi, 杼), or scarlet (hi, 緋)... surely all of these were in that place, in the life that revolves around sheep.
Outside of the window behind partly scraped hangikjöt (hung meat), the picturesque view still stretches there. But this time white spots were added to the “painting.” As the seasons pass and the spots disappear from the frame again, I will come back and paint the spots there, again and again.