Lullaby of birdland

National Review, Feb 23, 1998 by John Simon

For many years I have kept a parakeet named Eliza--for Eliza Doolittle, since she too was supposed to learn how to speak. And so when an Icelandic friend of mine proposed a trip to Iceland to hunt ptarmigan, I was a bit uneasy. But then, for many years I have also harbored a vision of hiking across the heath with a pocket full of shot behind the sniffing dogs waiting for the birds to break. So I agreed.

It is said that St. Brendan sailed near the island in the sixth century and, seeing the flames from the volcanoes, called to his men, "We are at Hell's gates. My sons, let us flee from this place. Up with the sails and row as fast as you can!" The Keflavik airport is less forbidding. In fact, everything has been arranged. Our guide, Ami Baldursson, and his dogs Kara and Mossie collect us and we set out on the four-and-a-half-hour drive to the north.

The road tracks the shoreline, more or less. As we head up the coast we drive up and down fjords, flanked by watery gloom to our left and heavy hills to our right. Though the Sagas speak of a tree-covered land, Iceland is now barren-so barren, in fact, that the astronauts trained here before they went to the moon. The Vikings may have used the wood for fuel, or perhaps the sheep they brought munched on the saplings. In any case, nothing but fields and an occasional patch of woody brush remain, so that Icelanders now joke: If you get lost in an Icelandic forest, stand up.

We stop twice to stock up on provisions, and to sample lamb hot-dogs served Icelandic-style--with sauteed onions and honey mustard. Then we pile back into the car. As we pass by the white farmhouses with red roofs, Arni talks lovingly about the ptarmigan--rjupa in Icelandic. "It's such a beautiful bird," he says. "So white." In the summer, he explains, the feathers are a speckled brown, like those of other grouse, so that the bird can hide in the brush. But with the snowfall, the feathers turn, and the birds fly up to the snowline, just high enough so that the snow hides them but not their food. Then Arni remembers a recent evening with his wife. "She was in a sentimental mood, you know, but I didn't realize it. She asked me, `How can you shoot these beautiful birds when they are flying?' I said without thinking, `I just aim a meter and a half in front.'"

But the ptarmigan aren't special only for their wardrobe. Their feathered feet make them truly unusual, and eminently suited for the Arctic winter. They are also fast fliers, which makes them an excellent game bird--although they mate for life, which seems, somehow, to make them ... not. After some discussion, however, we calmed our doubts by considering that perhaps the domestic arrangements of the ptarmigan were sufficiently complex--undoubtedly including single ptarmigans, gay ptarmigans, Marv Albert ptarmigans--that we should not overly concern ourselves with them.

Eventually, we arrive at the house where we are to stay; it stands amidst crumbling Viking walls and looks down the length of a fjord. Unfortunately, snowfall has been unusually light this year; which means the birds are higher up in the hills than normal; which means we are in for a lot of hiking.

Dressed, finally, for the freezing cold, we head off with the dogs. With the wind blowing briskly into our faces, we climb for an exhausting hour over frozen fields to the snow-covered brush. All of a sudden, we notice that Mossie is pointing; she's standing still with her right forward leg tucked under her. We unlock the safety latches on the guns and move in a line up behind her; a flutter of brilliant white feathers makes a break to the left, we unload, and the bird falls. Kara jumps forward to retrieve.

The excitement rejuvenates us, and after examining the bird and placing it in the pouch, we tramp off in search of another. It's not long before Mossie has found one. This time, we see it huddled on the ground up ahead and wonder, for a moment, about the propriety of shooting it before it flies. (There is a joke about two hunters who spot a bird running along the ground. As one of them takes aim, the other says to him, "You're not going to shoot him while he's running on the ground, are you?" "Of course not," the first replies. "I'm going to wait till he stops.") However, we decide that it's all right to shoot it "for the pot." Just before we take him, we see that there is another right beside him. They go together--no widows this time around.

We get two more before it's time to head back to the house. The sun has been setting for hours--after taking most of the day to rise barely 15 degrees--but now it begins to settle below the horizon. As the colors fade, the sky grows dark and cold, and we get back to the lodge just before it turns black outside. Our muscles are aching, and we waste no time breaking open a bottle of brennivin, the Icelandic schnapps, marketed elsewhere under the label Black Death. We soon feel much better.

Of the million ptarmigan living in Iceland, more than one hundred thousand are shot every year, and of those more than half end up on the Christmas table--rjupa being the traditional Icelandic Christmas feast, according to Sagas a thousand years old. (Interestingly, Icelanders can read these stories with no difficulty whatsoever, the language, in the absence of immigration, having been almost perfectly preserved.) Our five ptarmigan, sauteed in butter and garnished only with salt and pepper, make for a feast indeed; the meat tastes like perfect venison, only less sharp and--because we have earned it--infinitely more satisfying. We sleep like Viking kings.