Recycling in Icelandic

A gas station amid an Icelandic grove – it's really an odd sight. Because there is insufficient forest for hiding garbage in Iceland. Agricultural engines, cars and other junk are usually rusting somewhere behind the houses.

Among them are some pieces worthy of being placed in a museum. For example, an old Rafha-stove with its nice, once red-hot heating spirals. Surely, there are people like the staff of the Technical Museum in Seydisfjordur eager to preserve such relics. Many Icelanders, however, bear no relation to old things and are skeptical towards the question of recycling objects that become "worthless".

Nevertheless recycling thrives in Iceland and several communities are running the sorting and recycling of household waste very earnestly. But decades before, ?sgeir J?n Emilsson (1931-1999), called Geiri, fisherman and artist in Seydisfjordur, had his own recycling system. He fashioned picture frames out of empty cigarette boxes, and with his tools, he changed aluminum cans into filigree chairs.

Would Geiri have followed the administration's instruction for recycling? I doubt it because the artist did not respect the sheriff, the tax man and other officials belonging to another solar system. Geiri did not have an easy life. The youngest of twelve siblings, he was blind in one eye and deaf in one ear from birth. He was charismatic and sincere and always took sides with the underdog, the exhibition catalog published by the art center Skaftfell says. The exhibition closes on June 30, but the Geirih?s, the colorful painted house of the outsider-artist can be discovered on a walk through Seydisfjordur anytime.

In contrast, Geiri Sverrir Hermannsson (1928-2008) from Akureyri was unable to destruct an object of utility. The skillful carpenter saved every nail and hammer he ever held in his hands. Whether rusty or crooked  the nail Sverrir had pulled out of the timber at the renovation of the Nonni's house he could not bear to trash. And Sverrir had worked on the restoration of many historical buildings.

When his house in Akureyri was in danger of overflowing with all the amassed things, Sverrir shaped his passion to a public collection. The Sm?munasafn Sverris Hermannssonar, the Museum of Small Exhibits in the South of Eyjafjord, documents his collection passion with a sure feeling for the aesthetic. May all keys, door handles or drills look similar  their arrangement is subject to a willful principle of classification, well thought out and fondly commented.

"People think that I must be crazy & I have never thrown away a pencil since I started to learn in 1946 & I'm considered very eccentric; just peculiar." The smiling composure Sverrir had showcased his marotte is catching on with us who have seen only the scurrility, the collection obsession or the overwhelming abundance in the beginning. We gaze at the old penholder the mice have brought to their nest, nibbled a bit but eventually left it as whole as it is.

What should we do with the empty aluminum can, what with the Rafha-stove considered as technically outdated and what with the fisheries utensils from the last century? Museums and art centers alone cannot solve the Icelandic recycling problem in the long run. Also the visitors have to contribute.

In Greniv?k up in the Eyjafjord there is a little fisheries museum, a wooden hut where the longlines were baited and the caught fish was salted. Tools, lines, work clothes and barrels are on display, dried fish is hanging from the ceiling by green strings. By reason of a holiday dried fish with butter is served at the entrance. There are the fibrous pieces you can buy pre-packed everywhere.

Suddenly I hear thuds from outside the hut. A few Icelanders are exercising in pounding a big fish. The crushing and defibering is hard muscle work. The hammer slips away from the handle and just misses one of the bystanders. Eventually the fish edges down, crumbles, defibers and is distributed.

Still chewing I discover a green string beside the stone serving as an anvil. I become suspicious and in the hut I realize that not only the hammer but also the fish has been an exhibit. I swallow  the exhibit is irretrievably eaten up. Looking around my meal companions I ask myself: Could it be that the Icelanders take recycling a bit too seriously?

Translation of Recycling auf Isl?ndisch by Bernhild V?gel, Iceland Review (German version), March, 3, 2010