Literature Grisons author Joachim B. Schmidt tells Icelandic story
Ósmann defies the elements. It's no walk in the park in 19th century Iceland. Nevertheless, the ferryman's life is sometimes as sweet as rock candy, at least in the new novel biography "Ósmann" by Joachim B. Schmidt.
26.03.2025, 06:31
SDA
While reading, you quickly forget that the life of the Icelander Jón Magnússon Ósmann (1862-1914) is "performed" in this book like a play. This is because the individual scenes are accompanied by a brief weather report and an indication of how many winters the protagonist survived - and then you are right in the middle of the whipping wind.
With Ósmann, you look out over the Skagafjord, see how the Greenland ice is piled up in it or how the spring rain falls over the peaks of Tindastóll. And then, in the summer of 1904, it happens: Ósmann finds a woman he has never seen before washed up on the beach. It would not be the first corpse that the ferryman in Joachim B. Schmidt's novel "Ósmann" has had to report. But this woman is not dead.
"She drew up her legs and dug the fingers of her left hand into the sand - so it wasn't a corpse lying there on the riverbank, not a ghost, no, it was a living being, even if the living thing only seemed to be hanging by a thin thread. But why was the woman naked? Had she taken off her seal robe?"
And then you are right in the middle of Icelandic mythology, in which drowned people become seals and sometimes rejoin the human race. For Ósmann, at any rate, elves, trolls and ghostly souls are not uncommon, "because anything was possible on the mythical beach." Even humanity under inhuman conditions: The ferryman helps the poor and gives children rock candy.
Nature-related superstition
"Iceland made me a writer," says Graubünden author Joachim B. Schmidt in an interview with the Keystone-SDA news agency. "I traveled there for the first time as a teenager, with my godfather," he recalls. "I fell head over heels in love with the island and vowed to come back." This was followed by a trip as a tourist and a year with jobs in a nursery and on a farm. Although Schmidt trained as a structural engineer, he grew up as a farmer's son in Cazis on the Heinzenberg. This probably helped him when he was working in Iceland. In any case, he endured the winter and moved to the island in 2007 to stay.
Glacier ice, wind and weather in a landscape that is as magnificent as it is inhospitable are not unique to Iceland, but also to the Alps. Wind brides, Wildmandli and all kinds of mountain spirits can be found here - our ancestors also regarded them as restless souls. "I believe that myths and legends flourish wherever man is confronted with an overpowering nature," explains Schmidt. "Where people can disappear without a trace, whether they have fallen into the sea or into a crevasse, you have to find the answers yourself."
On the edge of civilization
Ósmann himself is not a mythical creature, nor is he a literary creation. The ferryman, seal hunter, drinker and poet actually lived at the mouth of the Skagafjord. He lost two wives and three children and saw friends drown in storms. His application to build a bridge across the estuary to save lives on the edge of civilization was rejected by the then still Danish authorities: too expensive, not important enough. In Ósmann's time, people in the villages of the barely developed Swiss mountain regions also died in storms, the women in childbirth and the children before they could walk. Here, too, the lack of infrastructure often prevented survival.
Jón Magnússon Ósmann committed suicide in 1914 in the icy waters over which he had guided locals, travelers and researchers for 40 years. The fact that he is said to have longed for the seal woman he once found on the beach is probably due to the author's literary freedom and his penchant for romance.
But Schmidt was able to draw on the stories of Ósmann's descendants and a notebook to which the ferryman had confided his pain and his verses; and on Kristmundur Bjarnason's 1974 biography.
The author also skillfully weaves in harbingers of modernity, such as the laying of undersea telephone cables from mainland Europe to Iceland. Progress, however, drove the ghosts away. "After all, they are creatures that are strongly connected to nature," says Schmidt, "and today this nature is falling victim to capitalism, even in Iceland. Even the elves can no longer compete with heavy industry, Norwegian aquaculture and huge road construction projects." Well, there is literature that sometimes reminds us of them.
*This text by Tina Uhlmann, Keystone-SDA, was realized with the help of the Gottlieb and Hans Vogt Foundation.
