It wasn’t who I had to be

by Rosie Taylor

First impressions of Iceland:

1. It’s rather chilly.
2. The wind is strong.
3. There are no trees.
4. Back home in Massachusetts, the creatures that run into the road when you’re least expecting it are squirrels and deer. Here, it is sheep, of all critters.

I wrote this during the four hour car ride north, from Keflavik Airport, outside of Rekjavik, to what would be my home for the next six weeks, the relatively small town of Sauðárkrókur. It was around three in the morning, still light out—despite the hour or so that the sun dips below the horizon in the summer, it does not get fully dark until sometime in August. Some of my impressions were eventually disproved: it actually gets quite warm when the wind stops blowing and the sun is out, and there are occasional forests…ones that have been purposely planted by Icelanders, that is. I was totally and completely in a new world: new country, new language, new people that I had only met a couple of hours before. This, I knew, would be the experience that I had been looking for to solve my problem, but oh, did it pull a turn on me!

What was I doing in Iceland, of all places? When I was younger I had always listed it as a place I wanted to go, but I had never expected to actually get there. Though surprisingly close in comparison with Europe and other popular travel places, for me it had a kind of faraway, mythical quality to it, a land of which I knew next to nothing about. That was, until I had the opportunity to join onto an archaeological dig to look for Vikings. The summer before, I had been on a dig, one which I thought had sealed my determination to become an archaeologist, even though it was a protected one. This time, it was the real thing, and it solidified my interest before I even got there. They were planning on digging up a Viking longhouse, and somehow I felt my fourth grade knowledge of the Norsemen just wasn’t good enough.

So—back to my so-called problem: people I didn’t know. One thing I had really wanted to overcome before heading off to college in the fall was how I felt around groups of people. I hadn’t really acknowledged it as one of mortal mind’s mirages or something that wasn’t real about me; I had always accepted it unconsciously: “Well, that’s just how I am.” But after having to switch schools for my senior year of high school, I suddenly realized that this wasn’t who I had to be. I needed to adjust myself to fit a new world, not wait for the world to adjust to me.

As soon as I realized that this was something I needed to face, I figured that my upcoming trip to Iceland would solve everything. But I finally received a revelation about two weeks into my trip—this should not be Rosie trying her hardest to learn to face the world on her own, because there was definitely someone there who I needed to acknowledge before succeeding on my mission: God. As soon as I realized this, I knew it was the right thing to do. So here comes the spring cleaning. I chucked every thought that I had expected to be helpful from a human standpoint out the door. And when my inner ear was finally clear, God’s voice came pouring through.

That’s how it happened. Just like that, all fear or resistance I had of groups of new people just vanished. A new horizon opened up, and Iceland became my playground as I explored anything new I could get my mind around (and some things I couldn’t), from flying down the fjord in a four-person, single engine Cessna to get an overhead shot of the site, to clambering down scree slopes because we thought it would be a “short cut” after a hike; from visiting the most historically important place in Iceland, to creating the myth of the vengeful Viking Thor Magnusson after the discovery of a well-preserved Viking cloak pin at the dig site; from learning as much as I could about Icelandic history, the Vikings, and geophysics (and a bit of the Icelandic language), to ultimately becoming completely comfortable with every single member of the 18-member team. For the first time after such a long period spent with people, 24 hours a day, I was still not ready to leave anyone in the group when we returned to the United States. I not only conquered any uneasiness I felt about the unknown, but I also overcame all of my misgivings about my own reactions to people. It proved to be a fantastic voyage, mentally and physically…and my determination to become an archaeologist has only waxed greater from the experience!

This entry was posted on Tuesday, September 30th, 2008 at 4:33 pm and is filed under Fear. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.