Pink Arctic Thyme

Words By Rachael Fowler

“Sofðu, Unga Ástin Mín,” the thin, blonde woman says, “is the most beautiful Icelandic lullaby.”

She stands at the front of the bus, clutches a grey microphone with one hand and a teal patterned seat with the other. Her hoodie is light blue and matches her eyes. To us, her name is “Ama.” She is from Reykjavik, the biggest city center, and her Icelandic name, she says, is unpronounceable for the English tongue.

When she speaks, she inhales between each sentence with dedication. Words, period, breath. Words, period, breath.“My mama sang this song to me when I was young,” she says, “and I will sing it for you now. In English, it means ‘Sleep, My Young Love.’ ”

I peer at Ama from the very back of the bus. I’m sprawled out across four seats, propped up on one elbow. Iceland is my last stop afer two months of traveling this summer. I’m exhausted. I learned early on that the hum of a motor calms me and any horizontal surface equals a bed. I try to rest.

My friend Karie pulls her faded crimson Bama hat over her face and snores across the aisle. Te tour started this morning at 8:00 am, and she has been napping between each stop. Þingvellir National Park, sleep. Gulfoss Waterfall, sleep. Haukadalur Geysir, sleep. She misses the landscape outside, the ground made of lava that’s covered in moss, the mountains of snow, and Vatnajökull, the largest glacier in Europe. Tere are no trees.

Te Icelanders say you cannot get lost in a forest here. If you do, just stand up.

I poke Karie when I want to, but she never wakes. I never fall asleep. Instead, I listen to Ama and think maybe a lullaby will soothe me.

Her mouth is too close to the microphone, and her voice crowds the speakers.“Sofðu, unga ástin mín, úti regnið grætur.” Sleep, my young love, outside the rain cries.

Rain is a common topic in Iceland as the weather is particularly moody. When Karie and I biked out of the city a few days ago, the rain was cruel. One minute, it was sunny and too hot for our long sleeves and wool ear warmers.

Tree minutes later, the wind carried twenty degrees away from us and we shivered. Te rain shot at us diagonally. Biking, I pulled my hood over my wool headband.

“You look like a bandit like that,” Karie said, pulling her black gloves over her fngers. We peddled through construction, peddled under a bridge, peddled by an ivory Icelandic horse. Google maps got us lost. . But we ended up at our destination, Mount Esjan, eventually.

Te Icelanders have a saying: If you don’t like the weather, wait fve minutes. When we reached the mountain, the saying made sense. Te sun came out. Te rain was over

Te rain in Iceland is diferent than the rain in Alabama. It doesn’t smell slightly salty, and it doesn’t steam of the asphalt like in July. While Ama sings, I miss the rain in Mobile. I miss copper roofs and the tap, tap, pour of summer thunderstorms that land on them. I miss the broken gutter at my house, the black mildew that lives on it, and the way rain water cascades of the side. I miss the clap of thunder, the burst of lightning. Mostly, I miss how nothing is thirsty, no scratchy brown pine, no blade of grass, no emerald elephant ear plant. Azaleas like rain and so do alligators. And I miss it. And I miss them too. But it’s nice that Iceland accepts rain as a part of life. I’m comfortable with that acceptance.

Ama continues. Her voice is not raspy. It’s smooth and it’s deep. She carries the melody well, and I can tell her mama sang to her. “Of ég svarta sandinn leit svíða grænan engireit,” she sings. Ofen I gazed at black sands, burning green meadows.

Sand is not a common topic here. Tere’s not much sand for the Nordic people. Coastlines are rocky and waters are frigid. Orange Beachis the Caribbean compared to this place. White powder sand. Oddly warm water. Seagulls. Stingrays. Sunburns.

Te sun and the horizon have a strange relationship in Iceland. It’s a long-distance sort of arrangement. In the summer, the sun is always up, dips down slightly for a few hours, never truly crosses the horizon.

I wonder if there’s sand beneath Reykjavik’s Faxafói Bay. When Karie and I hiked up Mt. Esjan, we saw the little wisps of white cotton grass foat around us in concentric circles, zoom down the bumpy mountain, and whip across the black bay water above the Minke whales and the Humpbacks.

In Alabama there is no cotton grass. Tere’s just cotton and just grass. And our cotton isn’t part of a fairy tale. Our cotton doesn’t foat. But I remember the January it snowed in Mobile. I remember the three inches of white sleet that sunk from the sky, drifed over Mobile bay, and melted above the mullet and the catfsh. And I know there’s sand beneath our bay because I’ve scrunched my toes into it for years. And somehow I picture sand in Faxafói too, because suddenly the two bays don’t seem so dissimilar.

Ama told us that the bay here is special because of whales, because of fsh, because of fords, and because of people. And I trust her. And afer she pulls in one more breath, she sings the end of the lullaby. “Mæðan kenna mun þér fjótt, meðan hallar degi skjótt, að mennirnir elska, missa, gráta og sakna.” Mother will teach you, ’til the sun reaches the horizon, that men love, lose, cry and pine.

In the winter, the sun is mostly gone, the horizon forever lonely. Te two only meet for small amounts of time. It feels tense to me.

Right now, there is no sunset. Te sun doesn’t even go down. I haven’t seen a sunset like those in southern Alabama since I lef Mobile two months ago.

Croatia came close with yellows and blues. But Mobile skies are orange, pink, and purple. Tey are layer upon layer of color and clouds, a beauty smudge on top of the horizon.

When our airplane frst few into Iceland’s horizon, I started thinking about narwhals. Apparently they live up here. I know they exist, but I don’t believe in them. Not really. A water unicorn is too wondrous to believe. And I’ve never seen one in the wild. But now I think that Mobile sunsets are narwhals, narwhals of the sky. We all know they happen, but can’t really believe in them until we see one in the wild. I saw La Rambla, St. Peter’s, the Sacre Couer, and the red light district. I saw legal mushrooms and the cafe where Harry Potter was written. I’ve been through ten countries before Iceland, and yet I feel more worldly because I know the Mobile sunset. I know the narwhals of the sky. And that feels like an accomplishment.

Iceland is my favorite place outside of home. I like how there’s water, and mountains, and highlands. I like that there are elves, that truly they exist. I like that I am here, and that I’m here with my friend. Because even though Karie sleeps when I cannot, we both search for the same things.

We both like overpriced cheese pizza and European gummies shaped like eggs. We both tend to stare at red-bearded Icelanders who are two feet taller than we are, who, we are sure, are descendants of Vikings. We both like Lebowski Bar, a not-so-secret tourist hub in downtown Reykjavik which serves expensive white russians and delicious cheeseburgers. We both spend too much money on sushi. We both like rum-flled chocolate balls. We both like chai lattes. We both like a lot. But more importantly, we both like home.

We miss grilling our own burgers and drinking pre-bottled margaritas. We miss swimming in warm water and sprinkling Tony’s on everything. We miss shrimp and crawfsh and fried fsh sandwiches. We miss English. We miss our boyfriends. We miss our beds. Iceland is a Christmas land to us. Tere are glaciers, snow storms, cotton grass patches, elves, trolls, and reindeer. Tere are actual Vikings and actual narwhals. Our winter feels like spring to them. And in all honestly, we may never get back here.

“Iceland is beautiful in the winter,”

Ama says. “Come back to see us then. And I’ll sing you another lullaby.”

“Another one?” Karie asks, forcing herself to sit up. “She sings loud.”

“Yeah she does,” I say.

“Are we almost back to town?”

“I think so.” “Good,” she says, folding herself back down on the seats. “I’m hungry.” “So am I.”

I view lullabies as stories and histories. Tey are words and sounds deeply rooted in culture. Some are lovely. Some are dark. Most are lessons. Some are horrifc. “Sofðu, Unga Ástin Mín” is about an outlaw who threw her baby into a waterfall so she could leave with her husband as he ran from the authorities. It’s horrifc. It’s dark. But it’s also beautiful. And it’s a part of Icelandic culture. It’s a story and a history. “Sleep, My Young Love” is Icelandic. It’s specifcally, spectacularly Icelandic.

I lean against the window, press my forehead against the glass. Te mountains blur into one long jagged blob of white and grey. Every now and then there’s a clif covered in moss. Tat’s where the elves live, I think. Right under those stones. And that’s where the lambs graze. And according to Ama, Icelandic lamb is the best on the planet. Tey’re all born in Iceland, to Icelandic farmers. Tey all shufe across the lava land and traipse up the furry green hills. Tere’s a specifc type of herb that grows only here: pink Arctic thyme. Te lambs eat it by the bundles when they roam. When you slice into their meat, the color is perfectly pink. Te lambs have essentially marinated themselves with herbs. No lamb on the planet is better than one from here.

I wonder about home, about the South, about Mobile. What is our pink Arctic thyme? What do we marinate ourselves in? What makes us us? What makes us specifically spectacular? If I ever make it back to this Christmas land, I want to know the answer.