Iceland’s Grimsey Island

by Richard Humphries

Asahi Weekly, September 19, 2004

"People don't play chess so much these days but they are trying to revive it in the school," Sigrun Olasdottir, a guesthouse owner, told me.

Normally, chess in a school wouldn't be so unusual, but after all, we were on Grimsey Island, the northernmost island off the coast of Iceland, famous for the 64-square board game.

Grimsey is tiny, some 5 square kilometers and located 40 kilometers above the rest of Iceland. It has been inhabited for centuries, though only some 100 people still reside there today. In the past, for those isolated lonely days, there was, well, chess.

Sometimes poor play meant suicide; it was that serious. In the 1870s, an American journalist and chess lover, Daniel Willard Fiske (1833-1904), heard how much the island loved chess, so he donated 12 marble chessboards (only one remains today, locked up) and eventually bequeathed the islanders $12,000 (¥1.3 million) - a huge sum then - to build a community center.

"Every November 11," Ms. Olasdottir said, "we all meet in the center and have coffee and cakes in honor of the benefactor's birthday."

There is a need to reintroduce the game, as Grimsey is no longer so isolated. It can be reached by boat or plane and residents sometime travel abroad. There is a small school in the community center but it only takes children up to age 13. For high school, they must go to the mainland, and usually to Akureyri, the largest town in northern Iceland.

Today, Grimsey seems quiet though many tourists come in the summer to see its amazing bird life. I only saw kittiwakes, guillemots and eider ducks, but perhaps luckily I missed the arctic tern, which stays from late May till August.

That small bird travels from Antarctica to the Arctic and after such a trip is very protective of its nests. It will dive bomb anyone who comes too close.

"One guest came in holding the top of his head, shaking and bleeding," Ms. Olasdottir told me. "I had to calm him down and say, ‘Relax, they don't go for your eyes, just the highest point they see,' and that this wasn't like (Alfred) Hitchcock's movie The Birds."

Savvy locals and visitors hold sticks above their heads so the terns only go for that.

Birds also make it interesting for the twin-engine Twin Otter 20-passenger aircraft that connect Grimsey with the mainland a few times a week. Oskar, a construction worker staying at the guesthouse, was hired to extend and pave the small runway. He explained why. "Sometimes, it is too windy to land or there are too many birds on the runway and the plane has to pretend to land just to chase them off."

Most visitors come just for an hour or two so they can say they've been above the Arctic Circle, which cuts through the island. But, in fact, it is best to stay longer, walk around remote, treeless Grimsey and meet the outgoing islanders. Although the name means "Island of Grim" or "Grim's Island," it isn't really grim when the sun is out. The island's economy is supported by fishing and part of the year this means either cod or another fish caught for its caviar. But with only 100 people, there is inevitably some doubling up of jobs.

I walked from the guesthouse about 20 meters to the airport check-in - which must be one of the most convenient for that purpose in the world. Ragnildhur, the check-in woman, told me something of the multiplicity of jobs. "My husband is a fisherman and aside from this job, I am also the island's banker," she said. "I keep the money in my house and can do everything a normal bank does except make loans."

The air traffic control officer at the airport was also the postman. You don't have to go far in Grimsey to get things done. Ragnildhur also recommended that I look in a small shed about 100 meters from the airport. It was literally the northernmost building in Iceland and the only one above the Arctic Circle. There, I would see - hanging and drying - what is probably Iceland's most notorious food, hakarl - at least for foreigners who don't appreciate its unique charms.

To make hakarl, you take a Greenland shark and bury it in the ground to leech the toxic juices out. You let it rot for about four months. Then, you hang the putrefied shark to air-dry for several more months. Finally, it is ready to be eaten, normally along with the local schnapps, Brennivin, which some people say, unkindly, helps kill the smell and the taste.

"Many people eat it, but there's no way I will," Ragnildhur admitted. And I was not brave enough to sneak a taste either. (RH)