This young poet laureate to-be came to the award ceremony with his family. He sat through speeches, music and recitals – and eventually the panel judge came up on stage to present the award. His poem was read and he turned white as the driven snow. This was not what he had written. Not one of the dozen or so poems he’d submitted. Traumatized he went up on stage anyway, not knowing what else to do. He was there, his grandmother was probably watching with tears in her eyes. You don’t let your grandmother down if you can help it.

The ceremony drew to a close and the cocktail after-party started. With a drink in him (or so) the young poet approached the panel judge and admitted the truth. He had never even heard the award-winning poem – let alone written it. There had been some misunderstanding.
A cloud of bureaucrats dispersed in a whiff of smoke – back to the filing cabinets, the calculators, and where did I put my Excel? The mistake was quickly corrected – the young poet had submitted his poetry under the same pseudonym as another (experienced, well-known and respected) poet. The older poet was called in immediately and the prize quickly transferred to him.

But not even in the land of the Eddic and Skaldic poetry does the mainstream care very much about poetry or its awards. Not a single reporter was on site to tell about “the most prestigious poetry award in the country”. And so the story traversed the grapevine (not the paper your holding) for weeks and months before reaching the disinterested ears of a journalist – whose ears swashed and buckled forthrightly, catching the news and pasting it frontpage.

This disinterest has not plagued all poetry awards. A few years back, around the time of the aforementioned scandal, I founded and organized the „Icelandic Championship in Awful Poetry“. As all good things it was born in the blogosphere and quickly grew out of proportion. The media can always be trusted to reinforce your idea of reality. Poetry is boring, therefore we don’t cover it, but awful-poetry is funny (and reinforces the idea of poetry being awful to begin with) and therefore we cover it. The week before the announcement of the prize, Morgunblaðið (Iceland’s biggest newspaper) ran three interestingly bad poems at a time, with comments from the panel of judges, and the top three prizes were handed out on prime-time TV’s Kastljós.

(I’m btw not entirely sure the media was completely wrong, since the best awful poems were indeed much more interesting than a lot of the award-orientated drivel being published these days).

I will leave you with the last verse of the victorious poem by Eyrún Edda Hjörleifsdóttir (in my own translation):

A pile of ringworms eddies in a bath of remoulade – mine and the Choco-beast’s,
a single unblossomed and trembling late-summer night in May.
My toenail splits and bleeds, the road up the way
and the hour of my most yellow band-aid has sunk in a pool of pus.

Eiríkur Örn Norðdahl will be performing his sound poetry with Paul Dutton at the Scream in High Park, Toronto, July 13.

Originally appeared in last week’s Reykjavík Grapevine.

First: Mind the Sound, writings about the 17th century Icelandic nonsense/sound-poet Æri-Tobbi and my own work from his writing. Published in aslongasittakes and (in finnish translation) in Nuori Voima magazine.

Second: Hay-grinder of the greenpeace-kitten earth-channels of the desert-asphalt sugar-free beach-found transparent salt-Coke – a column about ‘kenning’ metaphors in skaldic poetry. Published in The Reykjavík Grapevine.

Third: Focus on Iceland: The fanatic self-image. A short lecture on the self-image of Iceland and Icelanders, given at the Haga-Helia College, Helsinki.

Fourth: Icelandic Art Makes Me Feel Nothing At All. A column for the Reykjavík Grapevine, about art criticism and its ambivalence.

Also: Hnefi eða vitstola orð. Video-poem (in Icelandic).

It may have been the year 1600 – on the dot – that a child was born in Iceland (probably) named Þorbjörn Þórðarson. Perhaps it was later though, it’s hard to tell. No one really knows. And I wouldn’t want to lie. You deserve the truth. And he may have smelled just as sweet born on any other date.

Þorbjörn grew up to be a poet of semi-renown, a blacksmith and a fisherman. Not much is known about the man or his life, even his identity and name being up for debate, but he is thought to have spent most of his years in the southern and western parts of Iceland. His poetry lived, as the poetry of many of his Icelandic contemporaries, mostly through an oral tradition of a nation with a fondness for rhymes – through collected folklore, and in part through myth. His early poetry is more or less forgotten, although it is said to have been rather plain – uneventful yet skillful, his art being occasional and his subject matter being (as was common) everyday life. Through an unusual act of divine intervention, this would all change.

One day Þorbjörn was minding his blacksmithing business in Skógarnes at Löngufjörur, Iceland, when a group of travellers approached, looking for a safe way to cross Haffjarðará-river. The travellers greeted Þorbjörn heartily, seeing as here they’d found a local man who could advise them on their journey through terrain that they knew very little of. Þorbjörn was by all accounts having a bad day. His blacksmithing was tiresome and not moving along with the expediency he would have wished. Perhaps he was, like many contemporary poets, fed up with his dayjob and wishing to have the time necessary to hone his poetic skills.

When the travellers asked where they should cross the river, he answered (as was poets wont in his time) with a poem. More precisely, a quatrain:

Though with hammer to iron I cater
‘tis all for naught I slammer.
Take the course for Eldborg-crater,
and cross at Þóris-hammer.^[1]

This would all have been well and good, had the advice Þorbjörn gave to the travellers, in his mindless irritation toiling away with the iron, not been a bit inaccurate. Or to put it plainly (we do strive to make it simple): His advice was dead-wrong, erroneous, false, reprehensible and vicious – put it how you will: Þorbjörn sent the travellers towards an impassable part of the river, straight into the rapids of hell. The travellers however, being sufficiently naïve to believe a poet’s pretty words, tried to cross where they were told. Needless to say, they all drowned.

Now in those years God was not the forgiving fellow we’ve come to admire in later years, and he did not at all enjoy having to receive the all-too early travellers (perhaps he wanted time to work on his poetry). So he smote Þorbjörn with a curse: He bereaved him of the ‘gift of poetry’. But Þorbjörn, being of stubborn stock, wouldn’t take no-poetry for an answer, and kept at it, poesying like a mad-man, quite literally: no matter how he toiled away at his quatrains and tercets, they all turned out nonsensical, full of words that weren’t words, sentences that alluded meaning, leaning on nothing but the verse-framework:

Loppu hroppu lyppu ver
lastra klastra styður,
Hoppu goppu hippu ver.
hann datt þarna niður.^[2]

Some of the words in the first three lines can be seen as having ‘meaning’, while some are ‘meaningless’ – the context is complete nonsense, beautiful nonsense, soundbouts in rounds galore – he is less literati than alliterati, or even illiterati – and yet it sounds like something a fisherman-blacksmith would write, it sounds like a fisherman-blacksmith’s vocabulary, nevermindyou that the words don’t mean anything – they SOUND.

The final line was all Þorbjörn had left of more traditional poetry, word-by-word: he fell there down. From the moment his curse became reality, more often than not, only Þorbjörn’s last lines would be ‘readable’. As his poetic career continued, Þorbjörn got to be known as ‘Æri-Tobbi’, Tobbi being a nickname for Þorbjörn and ‘æri’ meaning ‘crazy’ or ‘insane’ – and so he’s known today.

Little did God know, on the day he smote his curse on Þorbjörn, that he’d be giving birth to Iceland’s first avant-garde poet – a sound poet, no less, whose control of zaum is first-class, putting him in a category with such 20th century greats as F.T. Marinetti and Hugo Ball.

Æri-Tobbi was not the only poet in Iceland to be treated in this manner by the vengeful God, to whom the countrymen swore allegiance (although hesitantly, and merely in public) in the year 1000. Hallgrímur Pétursson, another 17th century poet and priest, was given a similar treatment for abusing his gift. At the time, the gift of poetry was seen as being magical, and poems would be written for magical purposes, be it to poetry the evil out of things, or to poetry a pretty girl/guy into bed. People would even fight with poetry, the most famous duel of all being that between Kolbeinn Jöklaskáld (yet another 17th century poet) and the Devil himself. Kolbeinn poetried the devil back to hell by rhyming the word ‘tungl’ (moon) – our ‘orange’ (unrhymable) – with ‘ungl’ or ‘úln’: a variation on the word for ‘wrist’ – this is all highly dubious, not really words and not even really rhymes, but the devil always being one to promote the avant-garde, readily agreed and cleared off to hell.

Hallgrímur had no such worthy opponent. He was having trouble with a fox who kept killing his sheep – a nasty biter, though no devil. One day, while in the pulpit, he saw the fox in question, and immediately proceeded to poetry it away, with such an astounding result that the fox literally sank into the ground (I’m not making this up!). God, being enraged at Hallgrímur for poetrying for secular matters from the pulpit, dried up all the poet’s poetry. It was not given back until Hallgrímur started his 25 thousand word anti-semitic rant / psalm of passion, which counts among Icelandic Christianity’s literary classics, having been published over 80 times (in a country currently of 320 thousand people)^[3].

As far as posterity goes, there’s no remnants to be found about Hallgrímur ever having been a sound-poet or avant-gardist, despite his standing as one of our most respected poets. Quite the opposite.

He eventually caught leprosy and died.

II

While Æri-Tobbi was far from making any common-sense with his poetry, while he had totally lost his grip on words, sentences and their meanings, the verse-form remains, fully equipped with rhyme and the old Nordic rules of alliteration: ‘props’ & ‘mainstaffs’ – the anchors of poetry that even some modern Icelandic readers would openly claim was an unconditional requirement for any poem (worthy of the name). For a quatrain the most common form these rules take (there are variations) goes something like this: A pair of alliterations in the first and third line (props), and one at the beginning of the second and fourth line (mainstaffs). It’s to be noted that all words in Icelandic have the stress on the first syllable, so that’s where the alliteration goes (moreorless) without exception:

Ambarar vambarar skrumburum sker
skrambra þumburinn dýri.
Vigra gigra vambra hver
vagaði hann suður í mýri.

The rules of props & mainstaffs are so intrinsic to the Icelanders’ idea of poetry that when foreign verse-forms, like the sonnet, are imported they get a permanent injection of props & mainstaffs: A sonnet in Icelandic without props & mainstaffs is a rare exception – and this includes translations of foreign sonnets.

And the same evidently applies to 17th century sound-poetry in Icelandic. Although being a sound-poet freed from the burdens of meaning Æri-Tobbi could move more easily through in-rhymes, and would consistently over-alliterate (which was / is a semi-crime in Icelandic poetry), and repeat words or similar word-forms and thereby layer his sounds where he was unable to layer his meaning. This is not poetry meant to be taken sitting down:

Aldan skjaldan galda grær
græfra ræfra russu.
Sæfra tæfra síldarmær
sussu sussu sussu.

There’s a consistent use of R’s in various combinations in his zaum-words – the R in Icelandic being particularly rolled, the alveolar trill of [r] – a common blend being ‘br’s and ‘fr’s and ‘vr’s, with some notably difficult consonant-sequences like ‘glr’. Where one of these sounds occur in a line, it’s more than likely to reoccur, either in the same line or the next one. Some of this is a dire strain on the tongue:

Aglra geglru guglra stögl
og geglra rambið.
Gaglra stiglu giglru strambið
gaf hún þér ekki stærra lambið?

If living to be seen (read, enjoyed, enlightened) by posterity can be used as a measurement for the worth of poetry, the poetry of Æri-Tobbi is by far more excellent than that of Þorbjörn his predecessor. Its unique type of nonsense has kept it alive for over 400 years, because, quite frankly, it’s inimitable, mad, lingually destructive, fierce and beautiful.

III

Sound poetry is the art of treating all words (or phonemes) as if they were a peculiar form of onomatopoeia – that is, instead of treating words as if they imitated the sound they describe, you treat words (or phonemes) as if they imitated the sound they make.

An interesting and (perhaps) descriptive recent example of this is to be found in the poem “1,2,3” by Swedish poet Klas Mathiasson, from his book urklippt ^[4] (trans. ‘cutout’)– the first three lines are written thusly:

BRA        BRA        BRA        BRA         BARA       BRA
BRA        BRA        BRA        BRA         BARA       BRA
BRA       BARA      BARA     BRA         BARA      BARA

‘Bara’ is Swedish for ‘only’ and ‘bra’ is Swedish for ‘good’. The poem, magnificently read by the poet on a CD accompanying the book, becomes an incantation where one word melds into the other in a seemingly endless circle. Now, in Icelandic, ‘bra’ is literally onomatopoeic – being the sound ducks make – and in English its short for brassière (French for ‘bra’ I believe). ‘Bara’ is ‘coffin’ in Italian, and ‘gregarious’ in Latvian – in Japanese, ‘bara’ means ‘rose’, but it’s also short for ‘Barazouku’, an influential gay magazine, according the online Urban Dictionary, as well as being a ‘delicious guyanese food which can be eaten at special occasions’ and slang for ‘penis’.

Is it legume from a press, that makes me so digress? These so-called meanings will tell us nothing! Yet it recalls the dictionary-philic attitudes of some of the first sound-poets – the movement of Dada, who claimed their club-title could be made to mean anything from everything to nothing in the various languages of the world. And perhaps I’m not digressing at all.

Phonemes do not mean, they sound, and if I’m wrong and they in fact do mean, they only ever mean what they sound. It’s the mechanism, I guess – I shouldn’t apologize, this is how it might work:

1)    Subject hears sound.
2)    Subject interprets sound.
3)    Sound doesn’t exist in subjects innermost dictionaries.
4)    Subject starts fabricating the evidence, eventually landing himorherself in poetry lock-up for fraud.

One of the aspects of sound-poetry, one of the facets that makes it such an international phenomena, is that its untranslatable weirdness is (moreorless) equally untranslatable in any given language. Yes, Jaap Blonk’s work sounds like Dutch, and Marinetti’s work sounded like Italian – just like Æri-Tobbi’s work sounded like Icelandic – but none of it is a “correct” representative of the respective language. Yet it’s not a given that the words chosen for a piece of sound-poetry don’t correlate to an entry in the dictionary. Much of sound-poetry’s oeuvre consists of actual words, and even grammatically correct sentences. And can even be found in many dictionaries, in different languages and cultures – simple one-syllable sounds (like ‘bra’ or ‘da’, ‘bra bra’ or ‘dada’) often exist in several languages and most sound poetry being merely strings of one-syllable sounds means that it might to some extent be interpretable by your brain through a ‘close listening’. Hugo Ball’s “Gadji beri bimba” might be “Gat í beri bimbult” (Hole in berry nauseous, in Icelandic) or God Gee Berry Bimbo.

All sound-poetry is to a great degree something that advertently/inadvertently becomes subject to an inner homophonic translation, because ones head interprets a spoken voice as language, and interprets language as being something that inherently has a meaning one can look up in a dictionary (I’m not saying it’s a ‘right’ way of understanding sound poetry, I’m saying it’s inevitably always part of the mix). This also goes for word-based or sentence-based sound-poetry because the weirdness incorporated into the sound tends to lead us as listeners astray, regarding their spelling or dictionary-meaning. So even words in sound-poetry that exist in dictionaries and are strung together into grammatically ‘correct’ sentences tend to get appropriated by sound-poetry and turned into ‘pure’ sound at some point, that can (and tends to) be reinterpreted back into ‘traditional language’ – and not always in the original meaning.

The categorical difference between sound-poetry and instrumental-music (including sound-poetry’s cousin, scat-singing) is that the listener inevitably interprets what he or she hears as ‘language’ – not only is it the framework that the work is presented within, but it’s also inherent to much of the actual work, that it actually ‘resembles’ language. It mimics language. So I theorize:

Zaum is to language as onomatopeia is to an actual quack, an actual bark etc.

IV

One of the aspects of Æri-Tobbi’s sound-poetry is that it intersects its zaum with perfectly dictionariable words, and I’m told other words can be traced somewhere (go, etymology, go!) – but in any basic non-researching reading (let alone incanting) of his poetry you’re not gonna be sure what is a word and what is zaum. It’s not intentionally written as nonsense, at least that is not how the myth goes – it’s an attempt at writing poetry by a poet bereaved of his gift. This, I interject, seems to imply that God is firmly on one side of the content vs. form debate – as he did not choose to bereave Æri-Tobbi of the gift of form, but only his meaning-content (again, in the dictionary sense of meaning (no, not ‘meaning’ as the word’s described in the dictionary, but the way a dictionary conveys meaning)).

And so, once in a while, a sunbeam gets through, a single word or even a sentence:

Imbrum bimbrum ambrum bambrum apin dæla
skaufra raufra skapin skæla
skrattinn má þeim dönsku hæla.

The tercets closing line means something like: The devil can praise the Danish. What of the rest of it? ‘Dæla’ is pump, ‘skæla’ is whine – but without the help of a dictionary the rest of it eludes me, and the endings (conjugations?) are unusual, in the sense that they are repetitive, which in Indo-European languages is more an exception than a rule – especially a 4X repetition, as in “Imbrum bimbrum ambrum bambrum”.

Portions of other words can be ‘translated’. Thus ‘imbrum’ might refer to ‘imbra’, the fast that begins every quarter of the Catholic church year; the only word starting with ‘bimb’ I can find, is ‘bimbult’, nauseous; ‘ambrum’ might refer to ‘ambra’ which is (amongst other things) the wailing of a child. ‘Bambrum’ could be from ‘bambra’, to drink fast or swig. ‘Apin’ might be a form of ‘api’, a monkey, or ‘opin’, that is to say: open. ‘Skaufra’ might be ‘skauf’ – the foreskin of a horse’s penis. ‘Raufra’ might be ‘rauf’, an opening. ‘Skapin’ might be ‘skapaður’ or ‘sköp’ – created or female reproductive system (more commonly: her genitalia) or even destiny.

Most of these words that I’ve linked to the word-forms in the poem through etymological guesswork are very uncommon.

An attempt at a translation (sans form, plus more guesswork) might look like this:

During the catholic fast,
we felt nauseous
from the wailing of children
and swigging from the open pump.

The foreskin of a horse’s penis
made the cunt’s opening whine.

The Devil can praise the Danish.

Now, we might have different opinions on whether this makes any more sense than the original, but at least these are sentences – not even the most arid critic would disagree with that. But those looking for more finality of meaning, might want to distance themselves even further from Æri-Tobbi’s sound-poem, interpreting the interpretation – The poem discusses sins of the flesh and juxtaposes animal(istic) intercourse, crying infants and barbaric drinking habits with the strict medievel Catholic church (abandoned in Iceland, for Lutheranism, in 1550). The final line could be read as an indictment of the Danish colonial-lords of Iceland, either saying that they’re on the devil’s side (literally) or more colloquially saying something along the lines of “who cares about the Danish”. To be noted: When the protestant reformation occurred all the property of the Catholic church was appropriated by the Danish king, and he replaced the pope as head of the church, becoming more influential and eventually subjecting Icelanders to a commerce-monopoly where all imports had to be from (or through) Denmark.

We would not dare such interpretations, would not bother (the devil can praise these interpretations!) for we are only interested in the sounds. And then again, while phonemes sound more than they mean, the sounds tend to inadvertently mean while sounding.

V

My own relationship with Æri-Tobbi stems from my childhood – I don’t remember where or when, but I remember being enthralled and giddy about his poetry. It wasn’t particularly hard to recognize or play with (in the sense of reading, like writing, being a game) because I found in it something that reminded me of Þórarinn Eldjárn’s (1949 – ) children’s poetry (and reminiscence is nine-tenths of the discovery). Eldjárn’s poetry is often nonsensical, a distortion of sayings and colloquialisms, double-entendres and the like. It’s playful in a way I wish all poetry was playful. And in Eldjárn’s recent poetry book from 2001, Grannmeti og átvextir ^[5] (Edible neighbours and eating-interests, perhaps – a wordplay on Grænmeti og ávextir – Vegetables and fruit) he includes a poem called “Takk takk Tobbi” (“Thanks thanks Tobbi”) that consists of some of Æri-Tobbis most famous zaums and stream-lined variations of them. While the poem is infinitely more ‘understandable’ than any of Æri-Tobbi’s work, it somehow shows more clearly the connection between these two poets – the 17th century madman, and the 20th century children’s poet – than any of Eldjárns previous work. Or perhaps more precisely, it underlines that which was always there: The joy of (the sounds of) words shared by the two men. And for me personally, it came with the vainglorious feeling of having been right all along (yay!), iterated in the last two lines:

Þambara vambara, Þorbjörn minn
þakka þér fyrir arfinn þinn.

(Þambara vambara, my dear Þorbjörn
thank you for the inheritance)

In early 2008 I wrote the poem ‘Úr órum Tobba’, (trans. From the madness of Tobbi) a six-to-seven minute long sound-poem carved from Æri-Tobbi’s zaum ^[6]. The poem was first performed at the Scream Poetry Festival in Toronto, at the Lexiconjury Revival Night, and has in fact not been performed since^[7] (although published on CD, along with more of my sound-poems^[8]).

‘Úr órum Tobba’ is at once a found poem and sound poem, collaged and cut-up lines of zaum taken from the quatrains, tercets and couplets of Æri-Tobbi – the first of the thirteen stanzas is written thus:

Axar sax og lævarar lax
Axar sax og lævarar lax
Hoppara boppara hoppara boppara
stagara jagara stagara jagara
Neglings steglings veglings steglings
Skögula gögula ögula skögula
hræfra flotið humra skotið
Axar sax og lævarar lax

Each stanza has eight lines, and all are intersected with two of Æri-Tobbi’s most famous zaum-lines:

Agara gagara agara gagara
vambara þambara vambara þambara

The eight-line stanza recalls for me the ballade, yet the exclusion of Æri-Tobbi’s more straight-forward lines (leaving only the zaum) brings a darker element into the mix, and the stanza-length brings with it more momentum than is to be found in Æri-Tobbi’s much shorter poems, and increases the iniquitous nature (sound) of the work. It is indeed still playful, but the game may have turned a bit sinister.

The handling is in some ways opposite to the handling of Eldjárn mentioned earlier. While Eldjárn keeps Æri-Tobbi’s signature zaum, he funnels it into more literally understandable stanzas – underlining the light nature of the original poems. My own version of 13 eight-line stanzas where little to no “sense” can be made, becomes more of a dark matter, more of a druidic incantation, and I feel myself stressing the sounds quite differently than I would stress the original – at times moving them back in the throat for a guttural approach. I should mention that these decisions, and I’m not fully comfortable with calling them decisions, were something that came quite naturally through the process of piecing the found-sound-poem together. I would have guessed beforehand (and I think I did) that the poem would turn out much more “pleasant” than it eventually did.

Úr órum Tobba is the only sound-poem I’ve done that’s made from zaum – the rest mostly consisting of grammatically “correct” sentences. I guess it’s some sort of ode to the old man, and perhaps also to Þórarinn Eldjárn in part, and it may say more about my own interest in reading, writing and sounding than it pleases the audience (although, vainglorious as I am, I should mention that its only performance was received very warmly) or than it says anything in particular about Æri-Tobbi (let alone Þórarinn Eldjárn). For a love-song it’s pretty dark, I can’t imagine anyone wanting a love-song like this:

Viggjara þöggara vúgrar brúgrar
frugrar skrugrar frá því skreytti
Vampara stampara vumparar bumpara
frumbara þumbara fjandans lómur
ára diks á priksum, krunkum
nagla stúss og nafra púss
klastra stir og kjóla ruð
hellirs dagra hallar suð

But then again, we don’t get to choose who loves us, or even how.

Eiríkur Örn Norðdahl

Originally published in aslongasittakes, and in finnish translation in the Nuori Voima magazine. Both beginning of may, 2009.

FOOTNOTES

When, eventually and at long last, modernism reached Iceland in the mid-fifties understandability wasn’t anybody’s main concern, but lack of rhyme, alliteration – that is to say, traditionality, singalongevity and rememberability. People asked, how am I supposed to remember this drivel if it doesn’t drive on alliteration? Where is the song in irregular metre? Why are you disregarding the Icelandic heritage?

As interesting as these questions are, I’ll leave them be for now, and ask instead (I already have an answer – it may be right, it may be crazy, but it just might be a lunatic we’re … wait, back to the text at hand): why didn’t the readers criticize the difficult visuals of the poetry? Why weren’t they pissed off at Steinn Steinarr’s “Sun-winged circle-waters / equipped with hollow-mirrors / of four-dimensional dreams”? (The Time and the Water).

The answer is to be found in the crossword-puzzly nature of ye olde Icelandic metaphors: the kennings of skaldic poetry. A kenning is (I’m copypasting from Wikipedia) a circumlocution used instead of an ordinary noun […] For example [you] might replace sverð, the regular word for “sword”, with a compound such as ben-grefill “wound-hoe”.

Kennings can be rather complicated, and Icelanders not having anything simpler to be proud of (this is way before the rise and fall of Merzedes Club), had to make do with being proud of ye olde Icelandic poetry (and ye olde Icelandic Sagas, bien sûr). This meant at least reading it and perhaps, occasionally and with some luck and a scholarly background, understanding bits of it.

But, you ask, enraged: what’s so difficult about a metaphor? You don’t need to have a doctorate in literature to get that “wound-hoe” might mean sword?

Well, no, I answer, blushing yet happy to have this opportunity to expound: wound-hoe ain’t that hard – but I’m a fairly literate person, and I had to look up both ben and grefill. I’ve heard the latter, and I might’ve guessed correctly (we’ll never know), but that doesn’t make it part of my active vocabulary, snoozing on the outskirts of my passive vocabulary. And ben? I thought that was Michael Jackson’s rat (the two of us need look no more!)

But wait! It still gets more complicated. You can replace one part of the metaphor with another metaphor. That is to say, instead of just simply saying “ship of the desert” (camel), you can replace either ship or desert with yet another metaphor, making, for example “sea-steed of the desert”. “Steed of whale roads of the sand-sea”. or “Hay-grinder of the greenpeace-kitten earth-channels of the desert-asphalt sugar-free beach-found transparent salt-Coke.”

And all it “really” means is camel, in a more fun and interesting way. According to Snorri Sturluson, you can have up to six metaphors in a kenning, and although more are to be found in some poetry, they’re considered useless (Snorri is too dead for us to ask why). Add to this allusions to Nordic mythology, the gods etc. – Sif’s hair is gold, for example – and other particulars which you can’t really know without being well versed and read in this particular form, most of it is completely unreadable to a layman reader, and even a scholar must delve into it to solve these puzzlified mysteries. A lot of it’s actually easier for me to understand in English translations, having been modernized and interpreted, than it is in the original – although I was taught in elementary school that I could read it, and made to read it in high school (with thorough notes explaining every step, and it still was hard to get).

Oh, and yes, the word order could be totally messed up as well, making the piecing-together of base-word and determinants quite a challenge.

So when modernism finally, finally (hurrah! hurrah!) made it to Iceland, it’s no surprise that the people, so used to reading poetry they couldn’t understand, didn’t really react much to it as being difficult. Because when it comes to being hard to decipher, Ezra Pound and Steinn Steinarr can’t hold a candle to Snorri Sturluson.

Written for The Reykjavík Grapevine.

This coming thursday I will be reading in Malmö, Sweden, along with finn-swedish poet Cia Rinne and the nestor of swedish concrete poetry, Bengt Emil Johnson, as well as the poetrygroup 3 Advokater. Malmö Litteraturbar Stanza – Inkonst.com 26.03.2009 – at 8 pm

In spirit and likeness I will be in Akureyri, Iceland, on the third of april, performing poetry off a screen. Sharing the stage but not in disembodied presence will be Ingunn Snædal, Jón Laxdal and Þórarinn Eldjárn.

Next up is Poikki-taiteellinen kirjallisuustapahtuma or the cross artistic literary event at Korjaamo , Helsinki 04.04.2009, at 7 pm. Amongst others performing are Kati Neuvonen and Jani Sipila.

Onwards Helsinki – avant-garde apreciation night at the english bookstore Arkadia-bookshop – 07.05.2009, with Mathias Rosenlund, Pauliina Haasjoki, Mikael Brygger and Hannele Mikaela Tavaissalo et. al.

Still more Helsinki, two days later – the literary clique Uusälyttömyysl fawns performances at Ravintolalaiva Wäiskin keskibaari, Hakaniemenranta 11, 09.05.2009 7 pm

May – middlish – I will be at The Nordic Poetry Festival in Tallinn, Estonia – 12-16.05.2009.

In all probability there will be one more may-reading, at Vanha Ylioppilastalo (the old student house) on the 20th, but it’s yet to be confirmed.

The poetry translation part of my homepage has grown considerably, containing over one hundred poems I have translated.

A few poets have then been added to the series 25 Icelandic Poets – my translations of Icelandic poets into English.

The head of a woman is not heavy

The head of a woman is a
…………………………..snowwhite
…………………………..downy
…………………………..wisp

The head of a woman sails
over bright-blue sunday-skies
and laughs

.

.

.

The head of a woman?

Bathed in tears
sweat
blood

Rushing
through a dark night

With no
hope of
resurrection?

.

.

.

Flying through the night
the head of a woman lost its bearings
and its way – but the sun
carried on regardless
accustomed to the wiggling laughters of
tulips
and moths

.

.

.

While the head of a woman
is not heavy
it’s nevertheless often
hard to hold

not to mention
the face

.

.

.

Some days
the woman
would take her head
off a pedestal
and keep it
between her legs
for a while

.

.

.

Sugar-white
head on a clothesline
flutters in the breeze
eyes closed
hair
long and smooth
coiled around the clothesline
- the sun shines in a clear sky

.

.

.

The head of a woman will dance
in Klambratún-park tonight
under an inebriated moon
and half-naked trees
accompanied
by the composers of autumn

waddling
pecking
shrieking
composers of autumn

.

.

.

Surely — yes
surely
it would be better
– in sensitive moments –
to be allowed to rest
one’s weary nape
in rugged hands

to not always have to
drive it back
stiff
hard
stubborn

Surely
Sometimes

.

.

.

In her head the woman still keeps
the din of days that passed
in euphoric dreams and died
so woefully later

The ships still sail through seas of night
and meet, crawl silently
out of darkened fogs
and meet

Ingibjörg Haraldsdóttir

………..Translation: Eiríkur Örn Norðdahl

………..Posted on the occasion of International Women’s Day, March 8, 2009.

I don’t speak Finnish. I work at home and it’s a very difficult language that I’ve not even had (or given) time to learn. I can read a bit of French but I don’t understand it spoken. No Czech. A part of my work is translation, either poetry for the sake of poetry or something else for the sake of the money (mostly, though sometimes I get to translate something good). I translate from English, Swedish, Norwegian or Danish into Icelandic, and (grammatically) simpler things from German. Most recently I’ve been trying out translating from Icelandic to English.

And thus I sometimes feel strange in my own language, as I feel strange in all other languages around me. I’m an ocean in an archipelago of languages (excuse my metaphorizing). Sometimes I talk swedisms. Or even occasional finnisms (which is weird since I don’t speak Finnish and it’s very far from Icelandic). I say more weirds than words at times. And at times writing becomes interestingly difficult, and at other times it’s irritating – one is easily irritated when not in basic understanding of one’s lingual surroundings, when one starts losing the grip of one’s own tongue.

None of this is helped by reading language-orientated poetry. Bruce Andrews don’t heal this. Nor does Nada Gordon, Anna Hallberg or Jordan Scott. They just make me feel weirder.

Here I dwell in a matchbox
that I care for so dearly
since I painted the inner walls
last winter.

Life goes on as usual.

In the store everyone meets and laughs
and pats eachother on the back.
Most are hoping a robbery will happen soon
and enjoy their faithful security service.
The insides and the bones are expensive.

The people at the hospital lent me a
battery so that I could enjoy my
success longer – and therefore I carry
a battery on my back
instead of wings like the others.

That’s fine.
I sleep while they recharge.

The safe-guarding of the future and the past
weighs heavily on the shoulders of our authorities
who encourage us with
convincing care.
That’s good. That’s fine.

They say that exercise and a healthy
diet will keep the years from coming on.
I show up at their doorstep with
my alarm-clock
and they set it for me.

That’s fine.

I hang up my pyjamas next to
the wedding gown. The young people
get plenty of time to decide
whether they want to be a corpse or
a bride when they grow up.

Then you could also go the full distance:
become both corpse and bride
and choose both
the orange and the apple.

A story was told of a woman who changed
the lightbulbs in dreamworld
and now she feels much better.

A story was told of a man who shot down
all the lightbulbs in dreamworld
and now he feels much better.

Bridegroom. Corpse. Orange. Apple.
Dog. Cat. Pepsi. Coke.

But now it’s high time to crawl out
and get some coffee in a cup.
A doughnut, a pretzel or a bun
and say hi to the cutest sun:

Hi, cutest sun!

Now everyone feels much better.

Kristín Ómarsdóttir

Translation: Eiríkur Örn Norðdahl

> How well-respected do you think poetry is as an artform in Iceland?

It depends very much on the categorization of “poetry”. The respect might be more tied to individuals or groups of individuals. I think there’s a deep respect for the older elite – Þorsteinn frá Hamri, Hannes Pétursson, and the twentiethcentury “modernists” (Icelandic modernists are more of the prufrock-type than the Cantos-type, let alone Dada, cummings or Stein types). The spectrum of respect goes from there to the “hagyrðingar” – literally: ‘craftsman of words’ – which are generally old farmer-type gentlemen who write occasional quatrains. Sometimes one writes (or speaks) the first two lines, and the other must finish it with correct rhyme and alliteration. Younger poets (‘ungskáld’ – used mostly for those under thirty) are generally spoken of in a slightly condescending manner – i.e. ‘it’s very exciting to follow the younger poets, but I fear they lack the patience and skill necessary for …’ etc. These people are also mentioned categorically (as a group) when the periodical shrieks of ‘poetry’s dead’ start being heard, and are habitually accused of not being ‘new’ enough (apparently radical experimentalism isn’t new enough either, since it’s just old to be new – if you get my drift – new is out, but that doesn’t mean old is in either, it just means you pick on what suits you).

>Are writers of poetry comfortable about describing themselves as poets, or are they more likely to feel slightly embarrassed?

It differs from person to person. Some people see it as if you needed to be ordained a poet from a higher power (anyone from the god of beauty, – either Baldur the Beautiful or Óðinn the Wise – to an editor at one of the larger publishing houses), others that it’s simply anyone who makes an effort to deal with poetry – and some of course feel that certain efforts, although called poetry, aren’t poetry at all. Some might say that poetry that doesn’t rhyme isn’t poetry (these people still exist in Iceland, and you’ll even see an article or two every year in morgunblaðið, claiming this – bear in mind that or ‘modernists’ didn’t appear until the mid-fifties, and at that time not rhyming was considered a revolutionary idea in poetry), while others might make the claim that a certain dealing-with-language is necessary for poetry, and a limerick perhaps, or a nicely worded sentence cut into short lines, isn’t ‘really’ poetry.

>Are poets popularly seen as being in tune with the present, shapers or the future, or mired in the past?

I think they are popularly seen as being mired in the past. Of course they aren’t popularly seen at all. Those that read the respected Icelandic poetry, I think, would say that they deal in eilífðarmál (eternal matters) – and that poetry shouldn’t be of time at all. The more iconoclastic would say that poetry in Iceland mostly deals in nothing, truisms and cliché put forth in pretty (often archaic or semi-archaic) language. When the crisis hit in october people started pulling out classics, working-class poetry by Steinn Steinarr for instance, but the most interesting thing about it to me, is that people immediately started reacting to it, remixing it – switching nouns and verbs to make it fit to the present situation. So instead of Í draumi sérhvers manns er fall hans falið (Everyone’s downfall is implicit in their dreams), it became Í banka sérhvers manns er fall hans falið (Everyone’s downfall is implicit in their banks). So what happened is that alot of people reacted by resorting to classical poetry, but treating it with a similar sense as the present experimentalists in Icelandic poetry – a language-materialist stance, if you will. Most of these efforts resulted in, in my honest opinion, pretty trite work (and of course it was written by ‘absolute beginners’)– but they do indicate a stance towards poetry and language that is shared with the (mostly) marginalized experimental poets and a fondness (rather than respect) for the classics.

> Does poetry have a special role to play in Iceland because Icelandic is a relatively small language, in terms of the number of its speakers? Is it closely connected to people’s sense of national identity,

Special role, is a difficult concept to grasp for me – but I’d say it was important, although more or less important than in larger countries, I can’t say. It’s certainly part of the mythology of Iceland (99% of what gets said about Iceland and Icelanders by themselves (and by association foreigners) is halftruths at best). The language was purified in the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th, by the nationalist movement (whose leaders were in great part poets) – so danish influence was cleaned out and Icelandic went a couple of centuries backwards in terms of vocabulary, with neologisms for newer foreign words to boot. Dialects were more or less done away with as well. Spelling was made uniform in the beginning of the 20th century, and has stayed mostly the same since (the Z was removed in the seventies, and some other minor adjustments have been made). So what this does is it builds a bridge that extends towards the Sagas and the Eddas, but to do so the bridge passes over alot of the 18th and 17th century writing – with it’s ununiform spelling, vocabulary and weirdnesses (the Sagas and Eddas are of course harder to read – but usually people are just happy and proud enough to be able to understand anything at all – and as far as that goes, my theory of us having a better understanding for 17th and 18th century literature, had we not gone through such rigorous nationalism, is a theory built more on feeling than research). A lot of people even claim to have difficulty reading Laxness, since he had the misfortune of learning to read and write before spelling was made uniform – but all it is is a couple of extra accents on a few letters. Icelanders are used to their language being very uniform, and they respond badly to any breakingoftherules. And therefore they are impatient with foreigners, for example, who are trying to learn the language, and often switch quickly to english (this is getting better though, as the people get more used to foreigners, who had literally no presence in Iceland up until 15 years ago, maybe – only 10 years ago I remember hearing about foreigners not being interviewed on the state radio because of their accents).

So – purist, uniformist and nationalist language, without dialects, loan-words or accents, foreign or domestic. It’s a bit of a prison – but it also means there’s work to be done for poets. It’s an interesting language for a poet to work in. Like fiddling with virgins.

> or supported by any national cultural programmes?

Actually, the national cultural programmes care more for prose and fine arts than they do for poetry. Poetry is very much seen as a hobby, by the system – a lot of Icelandic writers have spent their twenties being poets, and turning to prose later, when they finish school, get stipendiums and turn ‘serious’. Almost every major icelandic novelist’s first book was a book of poetry. It’s seen as a training ground, you hone your wordskills in poetry, and then turn to prose when your muscles are up for it. Which tends to relegate poetry to the space of ‘stylistic excercise’ – which is what alot of it is, in Iceland.

The institutions – the writer’s stipendium for instance – seems to be more favorable towards those that have written novels, than those who only write poetry. I should stress that this is only a feeling I have, I’ve not made any research on this.

>
> Is writing poetry popular as an activity, and is there much of an audience for poetry?

Sometimes I get the feeling almost everybody does it, in some capacity. Either you write rhymes, or you write confessionalisms for the drawer, or you occasionally put down some lyrical modernism, or you’ve written song lyrics, or you collect funny news story double-entendres, or you doodle letters, or you do one-line throwbacks to current events on your blog , or you compose neologisms– etc. And if you take into account the population of Iceland, shitloads of poetry gets published. 105 books of or about poetry in 2008 – which would make a 105.000 in the US, relatively speaking. This is shitloads, obviously.

But then again, Icelanders are more interested in writing poetry than reading it. And Icelanders are mostly oblivious to foreign poetry – even those deep in the cultural world, are mostly ignorant of what’s happening in our neighboring countries. They’ll know some of the biggies – 20th century greats like Edith Södergran, Tomas Tranströmer, Tor Ulven and Dan Turell – but are hardly even interested in the contemporary poets, and the cultural media turns a blind eye (mostly, not completely) to events like the Nýhil Poetry Festival, where the biggest (younger) contemporaries show up – Anna Hallberg, Leevi Lehto, Ida Börjel, Lone Hörslev, Catarina Gripenberg, these are names known to the Scandinavian poetry community (and sometimes their worth is disputed, but they’re still known) but not in Iceland.

And yet, I must mention, that despite everything – people do show up at poetry events like the Nýhil festival. But my feeling is they’re mostly interested in the domestic poets.

>How is it disseminated; i.e. through the printed word (books, magazines), through public readings (poetry readings and performances), or in private circles (family and other social gatherings)?

Magazines don’t print alot of poetry in Iceland, and those that do usually go out of business quickly. There’s always some poetry in Tímarit Máls og menningar (which comes out 4X a year) and in Lesbókin, the saturday cultural section of the newspaper Morgunblaðið – although the latter seems to mostly use it for filling up space, where filling is needed, as the poetry printed seems to be picked for it’s width and length, rather than it’s quality. Stína, a magazine started a couple of years ago, prints more poetry, but I’ve not seen it for awhile – maybe they’re belly up by now. Also Jón frá Bægisá publishes translations, and Són as well – but these have very little distribution, and a traditionalist tendency that seems to make me stay away most of the time.

As mentioned, books are printed – most of poetry is printed privately or through smaller publishing houses. The bigger publishing houses tend to be scared of it, as even when it doesn’t translate as a pure loss for them, it’s too much bother for too little money. Nýhil and Nykur, which almost exclusively print poetry, are usually responsible for about 5-10 books a year each.

We have very little tradition for reading-series, and the ones we’ve had weren’t really much good. There are events now and again, mostly to celebrate the publication of a book, but otherwise not much. The stage you wanna stand on is The Nýhil Festival – it’s probably the biggest audience you’ll get (I’m not sure, but I’d guess 300-400 each of the two nights).

I don’t think there’s much poetry at all at smaller social gatherings, and if there is, it’s of the hagyrðingar-variety.

>
> Is there much influence from poetry in other languages, and do Icelandic poets always write in Icelandic, or do some of them write in foreign languages in order to reach a wider audience?

Curiously enough, back in the days the nationalists would sometimes write in danish. And writing in a foreign language was more or less seen as the only alternative to literature being a mere hobby until Halldór Laxness came along. Writing in english is scarce among those that take it seriously (although many teenagers tend to find english easier for emotions – perhaps ‘cause it’s less serious, more melodramatic, more the language of pop, rock and movies – where most of them get their dramatic inputs), and I’d dare say that the only ones writing in other languages are at least half of the respective nationality.

Personally I’ve tried to translate some of my poems into english – but then alot of my poetry is very sound-based, so ‘understanding’ it doesn’t necessarily demand of you that you know all the words (I also tend to speak so fast that what I’m saying isn’t necessarily heard). I’ve read quite alot at festivals in Europe and NorthAmerica, but I usually just read in Icelandic – and still they love me!

> Is poetry quite a unified scene in Iceland these days, or are there a number of groups of writers that have distinct programmes, themes, or styles of writing?

Esthetically, it’s pretty uniform, although it’s factional in a more personal manner. There are two groups of poets active in Iceland, Nykur and Nýhil – and it’s hard for me to be objective in judging them, since I’m a founding member of Nýhil. I think most would agree that Nýhil is more radical, that there’s more experimental work coming from Nýhil, and more profanity, actually – since some of the poets there are dealing in both the language of transgression and the language of the body – one critic called it the poetics of bodily fluids. Nýhil also takes more time to discuss poetry and esthetics, and publishing books on such matters. It’s probably also more elitist – I think it’s harder to publish with Nýhil than Nykur. Nykur might be more interested in confessional poetics – and democratisation of poetry. It’s losely connected to the site ljóð.is, where anyone can post their poetry, and you can suggest a ‘poem of the day’ etc. While Nýhil is losely connected to the site tregawott.net (currently not online – but you can see the last issue at www.norddahl.org/tregawott/leikur/forsida.html – it should be up again in a month or so). Tregawott.net is an edited site with translations, essays, new poetry etc. and definitely not open to just anything.

Both groups are somehow outside of the mainstream of ‘recognised’ poets, since neither adheres to the chain-of-command for ordaination from the larger publishing houses. This is evident in a mild irritation that sometimes surfaces in the more mainstream cultural media. There’s a bit of a rivalry between Nýhil and Nykur, that tends to stay under the surface though – mostly we’re amicable, but Nýhil has dealt Nykur a few jabs for of it’s overly positive stance towards all poetry and Nykur has dealt some to Nýhil for it’s overly negative stance towards most poetry.

>Could you mention a few poets you are particularly interested in, and what attracts you to their writing?

I’m interested in a lot of poets – I take it you’re mostly thinking of Icelandic ones – I’ll try to stay away from Nýhil and Nykur poets here. There’s some concrete poetry from the 80’s and 90’s that I enjoy – Óskar Árni Óskarsson, Gyrðir Elíasson and Ísak Harðarson most notably. Sigfús Bjartmarsson’s book Zombí is underrated and wonderful. Kristín Ómarsdóttir has a wonderful weirdness to her language, as does Þórunn Erlu-Valdimarsdóttir (who’s affiliated with Nýhil, although of an older generation). Bragi Ólafsson and Sjón have some european streaks that attract me – a kind of semi-surrealism, although very much less revolutionary in spirit. Anton Helgi Jónsson published some interestingly iconoclastic books in the eighties, but has been mostly silent since then – aside from a few experimental pieces and visual pieces on his homepage (www.anton.is) – but he actually just won a big prize for a new poem. Jóhamar is one of the most powerful voices – an angry, bitter man in poetry, somehow, very experimental, and very marginalized, although his last book got rave reviews (but I fear he’s still marginalized). Bjarni Bernharður’s books where he deals with a murder he committed in the early eighties, through poetry, are sometimes a very difficult and an interesting read. Þórarinn Eldjárn’s children rhymes are wild. Ingibjörg Haraldsdóttirs Höfuð konunnar (The head of the woman) is a dancing feminist revolution filled with snippets of sarcastic sniping. Hallgrímur Helgason’s translation of Ice-T is superb.

The above are all living and mostly current. Twentieth century: Sigfús Daðason (our TS Eliot meets Paul Eluard), Steinn Steinarr (our Eliot in Prufrock meets working-class rhymer), Dagur Sigurðarson (closest thing we had to a beat-poet), Þórbergur Þórðarson was a great satirist of romantic poetry, and more.

Older: Jónas Hallgrímsson, (one of the aforementioned nationalist), importer of foreign verse forms and innovator of words; Látra-Björg, master of sonoric verse; Vatnsenda-Rósa, our greatest love-poet; Æri-Tobbi, a traditional poet who lost his ‘gift’ after angering god and got turned into a ‘mad’ sound-poet; Snorri Sturluson, goes without saying.

My closest friends: Steinar Bragi’s Litlikall is a speedmanic study in careless attacking language, and perhaps internet language; Jón Örn Loðmfjörð’s digital experiments are groundwork; Kristín Eiríksdóttir is lyrical beauty engendered; Ófeigur Sigurðsson’s poetics are infernal, and he’s the only user of archaism’s I can read; Sölvi Björn Sigurðsson’s take on Dante’s Inferno as a drunken binge through Reykjavík was verse, and totally got away with it; Ingólfur Gíslason is the sarcastic conscience of contemporenity, a Sigfús Daðason for our times – and there’s loads of people on the verge of doing something great.

British poets – I like Sean Bonney, Billy Childish and Famous Seamus is kind on dreary eves. Ian Hamilton Finlay is wonderful – particularly Honey by the Water. Hugh MacDiarmid, Edwin Morgan. Basil Bunting. Sean O’Brien. Maggie O’Sullivan. Caroline Bergvall is sort of a “british poet” I guess, although Norwegian-French (based in London, I think, for most of her career).

I’m probably forgetting tons of poets I like, and will probably beat me over the head for it.

>(I would be interested to know, for example, what kind of reception Nyhil and your own writing had in Iceland).

The critical reception of my own work has been from reserved to great, and public reception has been from horrendous to mindblowing. I think there’s generally more positivity in the Icelandic literature debate than there is negativity, naturally so since most people know eachother on a personal level – it’s hard to find someone ‘in’ literature who doesn’t more or less know everybody else ‘in’ literature. This breeds both a type of incest (esthetically) and a type of amicability (at least publicly – there’s a lot of talking-behind-backs, in my experience). There’s also a kind of cowardice – most people would rather not review a book than say something overtly negative (since negativity comes at the prize of (a quite natural) backlash). And nobody wants to be the person who railed on Tulips & Chimneys when it was published, only to be laughing stock almost a century later. So we become cowardly instead, and don’t say what we actually feel (as if the reviewers of Tulips & Chimney were ‘wrong’ not to like it – as if poetry was a question of being right and wrong about predicting who ‘wins the race for the canon’).

As seems to be with all ‘groups’ a great deal of the attention Nýhil gets is negative, while the attention the work of it’s members get is positive. It goes something like this: “I don’t like Nýhil but I think his/her work is great” – “(S)he is so much better than the other Nýhilists” – I know this same reaction from the language-materialists in Sweden, involved with the magazine OEI, and the Flarf-collective in New York. I don’t know what it means, exactly, but the collective response towards a poetry collective tends to be more negative, while response towards individual works tend to be more positive. These are of course no absolutes – but so far I’ve never seen a “I really like Nýhil/OEI/Flarf but his/her work sucks”. Maybe it’s easier to relegate the negativity you don’t dare utter about individuals to a group of individuals – but of course this can be a problem for the group, especially one interested in constantly recruiting new good people (like Nýhil), when despite the positive reputation of the members, the group becomes seen as a negative stamp rather than a positive or neutral one. One could be tempted to see this as literary society spitting out the political structure (so it can resume it’s role as chief-ordainer of beautiful poets) – and maybe I will, yes I think I’ll just do that. Think of me what you will.

All the best,
Eiríkur

These five are already up:

Sigfús Daðason (1928 – 1996)
Böðvar Guðmundsson (1939 – )
Þórunn Erlu-Valdimarsdóttir (1954 -)
Anton Helgi Jónsson (1955 – )
Elísabet Jökulsdóttir (1958 – )

You can see the translations here.

I’ll post another notification when I reach 10!

(The picture is of Sigfús Daðason)