It has almost been two weeks since the wedding. Pia and I have been together in Groningen half settling into married life, half trying to avoid the looming date of my departure.
Already as we were making our way back to Reykjavik we could feel the magic of Búðir begin to fade. As we wound our way along the coast and emerged from the tunnel, our wedding began to feel like a dream.
Awaiting us in Reykjavik were Daði, Sessa, Gunnhildur, Björn Þor, and Mary Frances who were among the first to welcome us as newlyweds. It was quite fitting to celebrate our marriage under the roof where we first came together and with the friends who brought us there. After wonderful food, many drinks, and very little sleep, our stop in Reykjavik ended as we carried on to catch our flight out of Keflavik. Again we were moving away from Búðir.
Now in the Netherlands, it feels like months have passed since the wedding. Due to our current circumstances we aren’t able to settle into married life in any sort of regular sense, but Pia and I have returned to work, traveling to her sister’s house to watch the kids while I schlep my laptop on the bike. Like Búðir, this way of life is only temporary and will fade as soon as I board the train to Schiphol. Then the reality of things will set back in: nine more months apart. Unlike the previous year, Pia will not be able to visit. The time spent apart will be longer, the stacks of paperwork taller, and the lonely nights quieter.
We have four and a half more days together before being torn apart; they won’t last nearly long enough. But no matter how painful my departure becomes there is one thing to remember: beneath the peaks of Snæfellsjökull will always sit our sturdy wooden church waiting for us to return. No matter how far we are apart from one another or that place, there will always exist that one moment when we were together in a dream.
Snæfellsjökull
Over the jagged lava fields,
the knolls and rows of cliffs:
there, gusts from the north, as if
through a gate to shores of death,
pierce cold headlands of rock.
Snæfellsjökull, high as heaven,
looks across the sea.
There, tough spirits ruled
that realm in ages past;
cold, stiffened trolls stand,
their bodies turned to stone.
Few gods live upon the land
but one I know watches still
the ocean wide and blue.
—Steingrímur Thorsteinsson (1831–1913)