Aircraft. It sounds like something one could learn: how to breathe, how to oxidize. But this craft is the kind that floats, and it is enormous. It takes us the full width of Norway at its widest point to reach cruising altitude.
The Boeing 787 is nicknamed the Dreamliner, and its crowded cabin, though far from silent, is filled with a lovely hush of white noise that makes it difficult to stay awake. The only light left in the sky is a band of red above an oddly low horizon which goes before us like Yahweh leading the Jews out of Egypt, on and on into what my body assures me should be night.
five-hour sunset
a movie plays on the back
of every seat
Our original flight map had shown the plane going farther south, but I wake to find us over northern Iceland. In little over an hour we’ve made the journey that used to take the Norsemen more than a week in their own formidable crafts, part Dreamliner, part F-22. I’m not sure what always makes me favor window seats on the left side of a plane, but this time it pays off: that stream of bright orange in the near distance can only be the lava flow from the volcano Bárðarbunga, which on Google Earth—accessible from my seat-back video screen—shows as a great round hole. Now it is the rest of the island that is black, and the caldera, when it periodically appears, is as livid as a setting sun.
a glowing wound
in the darkness six miles below
Bárðarbunga
Volcano! in half
a dozen languages
we gape through our portholes
A little later, as the lava flow recedes into the distance, I start to see the lights from settlements along the north coast. Pressing my face right up to the glass, I realize there’s still just enough light to distinguish land from the slightly darker sea. I recognize Vatnsfjord from the maps that accompanied translations I’ve read of Vatnsdæla Saga and Grettir’s Saga, and then the fern-frond-like Westfjords from, well, every map of Iceland ever (though I do think of the ill-fated hero Gisli). Then we are back out over the north Atlantic, its waves and storms as remote as a legend from our comfortable, high-tech bubble. The west seems brighter now, but it will have faded to blackness by the time we land in New York. I remember with a smile something someone said about the pilots as we waited to board at the Oslo airport: “If they’re too late, they won’t have time to fly up over the top of Canada as they usually do.”
curve of the horizon
even from this height
it’s hard to believe
Ah, Dave. You saw it. Thank you for this haibun — I’m glad you were on the left side.
You know me — I’m a leftist from way back. :)
Lovely! Thanks for sharing this.
Glad you liked! Thanks for stopping by.
Thanks for this, Dave. Fantastic post.
Beautiful piece of writing. Thanks.
Glorious. Thank you, Dave, for bringing us along for the ride.
I just finished The Far Traveler, a book about Gudrid — the historical Gudrid as well as the one of the sagas — so Iceland has been much on my mind.
Ah yes, that book is on my to-read pile. I enjoyed Brown’s book about Snorri Sturluson.
This is really fabulous, Dave. I’m glad you captured the moments here for us all to read.
Wonderful. The haiku at the end really took me back to childhood and crossing the Pacific for the first time, my dad and I staring at that curved horizon in wonder. Thank you for this.
Thanks to all for the kind comments.
James – Glad to hear that last one worked. I wasn’t sure if I’d gotten the point across or not.