BLUES

Words by: Ragnar Tómas Hallgrímsson

“A brutal ballet of flesh and bone”

It’s Saturday night – and it’s feckin’ freezing. Seven below.

Even inside the Egilshöll stadium, my fingers feel like popsicles. Taking notes means pitting the will against whatever half-responsive nerve cells are relaying messages from my benumbed digits.

Inside the locker room, Sigurður Jefferson is screaming his testicles off.

But not because of the cold.

“We’re the only fucking football team in Iceland!” he yells. “We’re fucking Vikings!”

It’s not the most original of sentiments – but it gets his teammates going.

And they really need to get going.

It’s halftime, and the Einherjar – literally army of one, referring to the warriors in Norse mythology who met their death on the battlefield and then caught a Valkyrie-driven Uber to Valhalla – are 20 points down.

34-14.

They’re losing to a ragtag bunch of Romanians called the Bucharest Rebels.

Everything’s going goddamn terrible.

Let’s rewind…

The Rebels scored a touchdown during the first play of the game. Their quarterback – who had all kinds of time – spied a wide receiver sneaking up the right side of the field with limited coverage.

Like a cell phone in the boonies.

After he ran into the end zone, the game announcer and his assistant – seated at a rickety table above the bleachers –scrambled to get the game clock going.

“There’s something wrong with this damn thing!” The announcer complained. He was wearing a Lamar Jackson jersey and comporting himself like an office worker caught in a scuffle with a dysfunctional printer.

“Anybody know how to work it!?” he said, jabbering into the void.

Einherjar hadn’t played a game since last March – so of course they were rusty. That’s one of the things about being the only American football team in Iceland. Not a lot of on-the-job training.

When they gained possession (eight points down), the centre hiked two bad snaps to quarterback Bergþór Philip Pálsson; and each time, Bergþór – who goes by Beggi – pounced frantically on the skidding pigskin as if he were jumping on a pinless grenade.

And then he imploded.

Despite the rust, the Einherjar don’t break easily. They’ve got spirit and moxie and subscribe to a kind of football mindfulness that involves fully inhabiting every passing parcel of time – without getting needlessly distracted by the calamities that seem to beset each moment.

“There’s only the next play!” someone yells philosophically from the sidelines.

They’re forced to kick it. Rebels’ ball.

The Romanians, who are the strongest team in their national league, progress swiftly upfield – but then one of the Einherjar safeties makes an interception.

When it comes to the Viking Gods of American Football, however, Óðinn is blind in both eyes.

Flag on the play.

“Offside. Defence. Five-yard penalty,” the head referee, a man named Jan Eric Jessen, announces to the crowd. He says something else, too, but it’s barely audible.

The announcer calls “first down,” and a man in his thirties, who’s been watching the game from the concrete walkway above the bleachers – a stone’s throw away from the dysfunctional clock – strolls over.

“That can’t be right,” he observes.

“Jan said first down!” the announcer fires back.

“Yeah, I know, but I don’t think that’s right,” the man replies, in a voice full of meekness and understanding.

Below them, near the halfway line, a Rebel wide receiver catches a short pass and breaks through a series of abortive tackles.

The announcers begin complaining about the clock again. Ref Jan Eric – noticing the slow progression of time – walks over to the announcers and suggests they find someone to help out with the clock.

As he walks away, the main announcer calls, “Jan, it’s not automatic first down when there’s an offside!”

“Yeah, I know,” he replies. “I said third.”

Some backstory

The Einherjar football team was founded in the year of our unlordly economic meltdown.

2008.

They played their first match in 2016 – but all of their games are friendlies. Not yet recognised by the National Olympic and Sports Association of Iceland (ÍSÍ), the Einherjar must fend for themselves as far as their finances are concerned.

Ten days before the game, left tackle Úlfar Jónsson – who also coaches the youth team – stood on the sidelines of the Kórinn sports stadium in Kópavogur, waiting for the clock to strike 10:00 PM.

If that seems like a pretty late hour for practice – it’s because it is.

“It’s cheaper to rent the last slot of the day,” Úlfar explains, “but we still need to shell out ISK 160,000 ($1,130) a month, which we manage to eke out through practice fees collected from the players. We’ve also got a handful of sponsors, Shake and Pizza at Egilshöll, for example.”

The application process for ÍSÍ has proved a real hassle.

“It’s been one step forward and two steps back,” Úlfar notes. “Without making them sound like massive dicks: when we first contacted them, they said that the sport would need to be practised in all the six regions of Iceland – but that couldn’t be right. We pointed out that facilities for figure skating were only located in Akureyri and Reykjavík. They then suggested we begin by applying to UMSK [the Youth Association of Kjalarnesþing, for youth and athletic associations in the capital area], and that’s in the works. I get regular updates from our head referee.”

As he says this, a young, scrawny wide receiver walks up and unceremoniously slaps him on the rear end. There’s a spark of static electricity.

“I’m getting electric shocks left and right!” The man, a bundle of peculiar energy, says – before bursting into laughter.

“I’ll have to speak to the head of human resources,” Úlfar replies with a wry smile. He’s a tall and solid man who has the demeanour of a Viking chieftain, despite his young age. He’s 21, studying sociology and working part-time.

“This is the dream. Let’s see what happens,” he says solemnly.

“You dream of playing football abroad?” I inquire, not quite understanding.

“No, I dream of developing the sport here in Iceland; that we get the same respect as all the other sports clubs: [the handball team] HK, Stjarnan, etc; that we’re able to conduct regular seasons, similar to the high school seasons in America; that we can offer athletes the opportunity to play abroad – and bring players over here.”

He has an earnest look on his face.

“It’s perhaps an unusual dream for an Icelander,” he admits.

Úlfar lived in Belgium from the age of one up to the tenth grade. He played American football for two years during high school, mainly against American soldiers.

“There’s a real sense of NFL culture there. They’ve got two professional leagues. They travel to the Netherlands and Germany; don’t have to go far to find games. The NFL’s everywhere today,” he adds. “People are playing fantasy football and watching games on TV. Sometimes when I’m picking up equipment here, I hear the kids say, ‘Hey, is that NFL!?’”

I ask him how long before we have two teams in Iceland.

“Depends on how much time we invest,” he replies. “We’re closer now with the under-18s – because they’re motivated. They have two teams that play nine-a-side games.”

When the buzzer goes off, Úlfar takes the field with his teammates as dozens of winded football players – English football, that is – stroll off the field. The Icelanders call it bumbubolti (pot-belly ball), referring to the kind of ball sports played in stadiums across the country by men well past their prime.

The Einherjar are a motley assortment of players, which is one of the charms of American football: there’s a position for all physiques; a heavyset man with long grey hair and a Viking beard, takes his position in front of Beggi. Úlfar, who has long arms and massive shoulders, is, as the Icelanders like to say – “no lamb to play with.”

“Alright, let’s complete every single ball now,” Beggi yells.

Watching the Einherjar practice is like observing some kind of armoured analogy for modern life: people trying to do way too many things in way too short a time; football practices, Úlfar later notes, usually last for two hours, given the complexity of the game.

The Einherjar only have one.

They scramble through the three phases of the game: offence, defence, and special teams – only that they’ve allotted the latter phase all of about five minutes. After the centre hikes two rotten snaps at quarterback Beggi, they call off special teams on account of the clock winding down.

I worry what this means for their upcoming game.

Sigurður Jefferson

Ask anyone and they’ll tell you that Sigurður Jefferson is one of the most talented players in Iceland.

His foray into the sport began five years ago, when he was a sophomore at junior college – and when he barely knew what American football was. (Despite being half-American himself.) It wasn’t until a friend dragged him along to practise that he understood.

He hasn’t stopped playing since.

Handball – which Sigurður’s played since he was nine (he plays professionally) – was his first love, but there’s just something about the NFL that engrosses him. It differs from all the other European sports because it requires a different mindset: a man must be willing to transform his faculty of vision so as to perpetually “see red” – nurturing a kind of homicidal attitude towards his opponents, the kind that has led to a series of gruesome injuries that have long plagued the sport.

And then there’s all the hype and exaggeration, so often on display in American football stadiums, the kind that doesn’t appear to come naturally to the Icelanders, who very often bristle at American melodrama.

But that doesn’t necessarily hold for Sigurður Jefferson. He has some knack for showmanship.

A natural athlete who’s tried almost every sport he can think of, Sigurður Jefferson proves to be a real menace on the field; 14 points down, Sigurður returns a punt from deep inside the end zone and tears upfield like a soldier who’s just consumed a bowl brimming with stimulants. He weaves and jumps over Rebel defenders and makes it well beyond midfield.

The crowd, composed of maybe 150 people, goes wild.

Sigurður’s talents had been restricted to defence for the past two possessions but now transitions into the role of running back. He completes a 15-yard run on the first attempt – and looks very much like a man possessed.

After some good progress, Beggi throws an interception –but the Rebel defender drops it. Sigurður Jefferson tears through