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Gunnar Marel Eggertsson, Latter-day viking

Scandinavian Review, Winter 2001 by Merin, Jennifer

If you ask Gunnar Marel Eggertsson what it means to be a modern-day Viking, he responds with calm, almost bemused assurance, "I don't know." Yet his countryman and the world at large have dubbed the 45-year-old Icelandic sea captain just that. And they are not without reason. The rugged blond, blue-eyed Gunnar Marel not only looks the part, he is a direct descendant of Leif Eriksson, a Viking icon if ever there was one.

He learned about that family relationship just about a year ago, from a friend who was researching Icelandic genealogy.

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Though he is pleased to know it, Gunnar Ma.rel claims that his family history is not that unusual. "Leif Eriksson lived just about 30 generations ago," he explains. "And, we Icelanders are such a small nation that most of us are direct descendants of someone who was well known back then, and perhaps was also mentioned in the Sagas."

By the time he learned that his blood line is tied to that most famous Viking, Gunnar Marel was already well on his way to establishing his own reputation as a modern Viking. He had completed construction of a homemade 75-foot Viking ship, an exact replica of the Gokstad, a vessel built in 870 AD and preserved in mud at a Viking burial mound in Norway, until it was dug up in 1882; it has since found its permanent berth at the Viking Ships Museum in Oslo.

Gunnar Marel built his ship to sail the 1000-year-old Viking trade routes covering some 2,600 miles from Reykjavik to North America. He dubbed his ship the Islendingur (Icelander), a name selected specifically to remind everyone that Leif Eriksson and the other Vikings who set sail for America, which they called Vinland the Good, were actually from Iceland, although other nations occasionally claim them.

Aboard Gaia

Islendingur's run would not be the first time Gunnar Marel undertook this sort of challenging Viking voyage. In 1991, he was second in command aboard Gaia, the Norwegian-built Viking ship that sailed from Trondheim down the coast of Norway on May 17, and crossed the sea to ports in Iceland, Canada and the United States, arriving in Washington, D.C. on October 9, and continuing on to make an appearance at Earth Summit, the ecology conference in Brazil.

Gaia's 14-month voyage, a joint project between the governments of Norway and Iceland with sponsorship from Norwegian cruise ship magnate Knute Kloster, was intended to make the modern world aware that the Vikings regularly visited North America centuries before the arrival of Christopher Columbus, who has been widely credited as the first European to land on North American soil.

With Gaia's challenging journey and public relations mission accomplished, a sea-weary Gunnar Marel returned to his home town of Heimaey on the Vestmanna Islands, and actually contemplated getting a job on land. But that was a passing notion. Gunnar Marel says:

Everyone on the Vestmanna Islands - I should really say in all of Iceland belongs to the sea. We can't forget it. We are the world's best sailors. It's in our blood. Icelanders grow up knowing certain things. My father and his father were both boat builders and fishermen. From my early childhood, I observed them and listened to them talk about boats all the time, and absorbed their knowledge. And I have been at sea since I was five years old. These are my earliest memories; they just become part of who you are.

Volcanic Disruption

Gunnar Marel was born in Heimaey in 1955. He was 18 when the island's volcano erupted spectacularly and all residents had to be evacuated to the mainland.

It was 2 AM when my father came to my room and woke me up. I didn't believe him and went back to steep. Fifteen minutes later, he came back and grabbed me from my bed: To the east of our house, the sky looked like it was exploding with red fireworks. By 7 AM, all 5000 people living on the island had been evacuated to the mainland. It was a very big experience. I'll never forget it.

Gunnar Marel and his family returned to Heimaey to find their home entirely covered - up to the chimneys - with pellet-like volcanic pebbles. In high communal spirit, islanders dug out their homes, boats and businesses, even creating a special lava pebble garden to commemorate the upheaval and turn disaster into something beautiful.

Life got back to normal. Normal for Gunnar Marel meant working on one of the vessels in his family's fishing fleet; catching puffins - up to 1,000 a day - to be eaten by his family throughout the year; and being an active member of the island's rescue squad, which fishes people out of the sea when they fall in, retrieves stalled or stranded ships to harbor, and saves lives and property in other trying circumstances, including volcanic activity.

Do volcanoes loom large in the Viking psyche?

We live very close to nature, as our ancestors did. We are standing on a powder keg, almost expecting an explosion at any moment. It happens every year. We are used to it and, you might say, we are prepared.

Gunnar Marel doesn't remember exactly how long it was after he returned home from the Gaia voyage that he began thinking about building his own Viking ship, one that would be more technically accurate and truer to Viking sailing tradition than Gaia had been.

Gunnar Marel Eggertsson, Latter-day viking

Scandinavian Review, Winter 2001 by Merin, Jennifer

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