Speaking of things named Bryndis....

Speaking of things named "Bryndis", can you see the name of the plane? Look under to co-pilot window. How cool is That!?

And Peter Johnsson's wife argued with my father that it was not an Icelandic name.

Nothing in the "Old Country" is ever the same, no matter what the "Old Country" is. The Old Country moves on while the émigrés keep things the way they were when they left.

Ahh, the stories we heard about the Old Country.

I once had the uncomfortable experience of being in the room with an older Portuguese man from Oporto who had, at no small expense, paid the bill for his son and daughter to visit the "Old Country". He listened in sadness and horror as his twenty-something kids recounted their time there. (And the FUN they had!) All his insistence on being good "traditional" Portuguese, of keeping the ways, of resisting the madness of the modern world in their adopted homeland crumbled away as the kids told of how things really were in Oporto, in Lisbon, in the rural areas. The modern world had found the "Old Country" and in a brief few moments I could see the recognition in his eyes; he could never go home.

I carry in my head all the West Icelander myths and sagas as told to me by my father and his generation. That "Old Country" doesn't exist any more either. I have come to terms with that. We are who we are and we are where we are. There is no getting around it, and I believe the resistence to accept the society in which one lives, and pine for the "Old Country", and the sadness and resentment that ensues from that mistaken but understandable outlook, is a contributing factor to the disconnect felt by many of the children of those transplanted families. Be in the country but not of the country. Hard advice to follow for a kid whose world is shaped every day by his surroundings.

Not that I felt the disconnect. I am a second generation Canadian. But that doesn't mean I can't see it in others or bear witness to the desperate ways new Canadians cling to the "Old Country".

Song for today: "Transatlanticism" - Death Cab for Cutie
kind of on theme of the day...
Hear the song here: