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"The Undependable Global Positioning System 1.2: Icelandic Module," by Rick Moody
You have chosen the Icelandic Module of the Undependable Global Positioning System, which will enable you to fail to grasp your exact position in the country known as Iceland, or in any other country, should you elect to use Icelandic coordinates while travelling in Lesotho, Malaysia, etc. The Icelandic Module is bilingual, with both Icelandic and English texts (see practice guidance module below), and is a product of Undependable Global Positioning, LLC, a multinational entertainment provider incorporated in the State of Delaware, with corporate offices in Hoboken, NJ, and Springfield, MA. We are not liable for harm or injury during the use of this device.
Where to?
1. Við erum lítið land, með miklum expanses ljós og rými. Á veturna myrkri, eilíft myrkur, þegar það er bara ljóma hádegið að benda á möguleika á sólarljósi, er það oft raunin að í andstæðar skíðamaður norðurljósin shimmer á sjóndeildarhringnum, sérstaklega þegar þú flýja útjaðri OKKAR stærsta borg, Reykjavík. Margir hafa villst á meðan reynt var að ná þeim norðurljósin, en að reyna að koma til hvíldar í himneska insubstantiality þeirra. Í raun, það er hugtak, hér á landi, drukkinn á magnetosphere, sem bendir á móti okkar ferðamanna sem eru eftirtektarverð fyrir einn-sinnaður stunda á norðurljósin. Það væri fínn staður til að byrja ferð þína. (We are a little country, with great expanses of light and space. During the winter dark when there is only a glow at midday to suggest the possibility of sunshine, it is often the case that there are aurorae shimmering on the horizon, especially when you escape to the outskirts of our largest city, Reykjavik. Many have become lost while attempting to rush into the womblike comfort of the Northern Lights, while attempting to dwell in that mysterious, shimmering insubstantiality. There is a term here in Iceland, drunk on the magnetosphere, which suggests tourists who are single-minded in pursuit of the ionic phenomena. Now begins your journey.)*
* Icelandic being a language mostly unmodified since medieval times, there are necessarily false equivalences in these translations. We do not guarantee that the two linguistic renderings bear any resemblance to one another. For a complete Iceland text, go to www.ugps.com/iceland/complete.
2. Þú veist hvernig á flugvellinum á Keflavík sögðu þér að þú ættir ekki að aka burt af vegum með rauðu nema þú varst að leigja fjórhjóladrifs ökutæki? Við held ekki að þú ættir að hafa áhyggjur af því að svo mikið. Það er bara svona hlutur sem vátryggjendum krefjast þess. Þú ert ekki að fara að sjá the óspilltur wilderness ef þú færð ekki út þar í innri og hafa sumir gaman. Svo hvers vegna ertu ekki að fara á undan og slökkva hringvegur áður við komum til Reykjavíkur, því það er bara annað European City einhvern veginn, og þeir eru alltaf blaring ö frá öllum verslunum, það er allt Björk allra tíma í Reykjavík, og þú getur notað allt að borg mjög hratt. Ég var sérstaklega vonsvikinn með typpið safninu sem fer eftir nafni Íslands Phallological safnið. Þú vilt hugsa stað eins sem hefði meira áhrifamikill víðáttan. The hvalur hani var frekar stór, ég viðurkenni það, en þegar þú færð niður til að horfa á skordýra penises, það er bara ekki mikið að tala um. Reykjavík má klárast í dag eða tvo, treystu mér. Það er bara of mikið steypu. (You know how at the airport rental agency in Keflavik they told you that you shouldn’t drive off the roads marked red on the map unless you were renting a four-wheel-drive vehicle? We at UGPS Iceland think otherwise. Don’t worry about that so very much. Don’t worry about the insurers. You’re not going to see the pristine wilderness if you don’t get out there into the interior and have some fun. Go ahead and turn off the ring road before we get to Reykjavik. You can use up Reykjavik rather quickly. I was particularly disappointed with the penis museum (the Iceland Phallological Museum). You’d think a place like that would have a more impressive display. The whale phallus is large, I admit it, but in the case of the insect penises, also on display, there’s just not that much to talk about.)
3. The mikill hlutur óður um ferðamannastaður heitir Gullfoss er að það bara er ekki að margir þar. Eitt skipti sem ég fór þangað eftir lokun, og það var enginn í kring, en rekki af póstkort mynd var enn standa út að framan, svo ég hjálpaði bara mig nokkrar. (The great thing about the tourist destination called Gullfoss is that there just aren’t that many tourists there. One time I went there after closing time, and there was no one around at all. There was only a rack of picture postcards standing out front. I helped myself to a few. More importantly, no one was guarding the waterfall itself, which is the biggest in Europe. You could walk down there and have a look without interference. It was one of the few times the incessant nattering of my brain became inaudible to me. You have not been brought this far, to Gullfoss, just to look at a waterfall. You have been brought this far to see Langjokull, the glacier, over there in the distance. Maybe you have seen the occasional glacier in your time, but you have not beheld the majesty and strangeness of Icelandic glaciers. These glaciers are more ancient, more merciless, more heedless of mammalian affairs than any others outside of the Himalayas, so why don’t you just head out in that direction now, toward the glacier.)
4. Það er rétt, er a einhver fjöldi af þessum vegum unpaved.
5. Vissir þú koma gönguferðir stígvélum? Þar sem við fáum nær jöklinum í þessu insufferable hálf-ljós, er það líklegt að puny leiguna bíl, Yaris þinn er að fara til að mistakast. (Did you bring hiking boots? Because as we get closer to the glacier, in this insufferable half-light, it’s likely that your puny rental Yaris is going to fail. Even though it has a standard transmission and you are trying to use the lower gears, the Yaris is not designed for the roads nearing Langjokull, a terrain devoid of farmhouses or anything else man-made. It’s just you and the glacier now. So maybe you will want to pull over and put on the hiking boots. And gather into a rucksack your duct tape, jacknife, and protein snacks.)
6. Það er satt að það er mikið af djamma á Íslandi. Íslendingar sem eru áskilin fólk með þurra vitsmuni og mildi, eins og að hafa góða aðila, og það virðist að þriðja hvert íslensk unglingur byrjar í hljómsveit, og svo mikið af þeim, í æsku þeirra. (It’s true that there is a lot of hard partying in Iceland! Icelanders are a reserved people, with a dry wit and an austere gentleness, but they also like to have a good party, and it does seem that every third Icelander starts a band, and so a lot of them, in their youth, spend most of the weekends in the city watching bands and abusing whatever cocktail of drugs and alcohol they can get their hands on. We have to admit reluctantly that the mapping agency to which we subcontracted the mapping of the roads around the glacier declared insolvency last weekend. Later, we saw these guys passed out in the public square near Laugavegur, apparently having celebrated their bankruptcy at length. As a result, the mapping around the glacier, where you are presently located, is kind of bad.)
7. Sjá, í fjarska, nú, hvernig ljósin eru undulatory, hvernig ljósin eru öll scorbutic, leyfa þér að vera niðursokkinn í þeirra mömmu-faðma, þeirra Bear-merja, þeirra Maronite, mariculous þeirra, þeirra mind dendriform.
8. Bókmenntir okkar er ríkt með sögum. Foundational skjöl okkar eru sögur, þar sem menn sem heitir Erik drepa aðra menn með ása, insuring sem þeir eru herleiddir til afskekktum stöðum, og hver þá bægja ströndum Norður meginlandi Ameríku, sem þeir nafn Grænland í því skyni að stuðla að samkomulagi þar. (Our literature is rich with sagas. Our foundational documents are sagas in which men named Erik slay other men, usually with axes, insuring that they are subsequently exiled to remote places, for example, the coast of the North American continent, which they name Greenland, in order to promote settlement back home. It is unlikely that, while you are driving in the outback, you will encounter any axe-murderers, but all Icelanders, more or less, are related to all other Icelanders, so if you should happen to encounter a living person, which is doubtful, that person might be related to the Erik renowned for his axe-murdering. Drive away from him. But under no circumstances should you attempt to drive your rental Yaris through a stream.)
9. Jæja, fá út og ganga þá, ekki vera lily-livered og veikburða, þú puny manna.
10. Það er satt um álfa. Sumir af the sterkur, og sjálf-úr Íslendinga, krakkar sem geta farið út í eyðimörkina og lifa fyrir daga á súpu úr soðnum mosa, trúa þessir gaurar á álfa, og hefur verið þekkt fyrir að byggja, kílómetra frá einhverju manna bústað, sætur lítill álfur hús sem lítur út eins og eitthvað sem gæti verið hannað af svuntu-þreytandi hausfrau frá Indianapolis fyrir vinum sínum með safna Mania, nema að þessi álfur hús úr tré, í stað þess að vera úr Bisphenol A í Shanghai . Sem þýðir: að álfur hús þú ert að sjá núna er ekki ofskynjanir. (And it is true about the elves. Some of the most robust and self-made of Icelanders, guys who can go out into the wilderness and live for days on a soup made of boiled mosses, these guys believe in the elves, and have been known to construct, miles from any human habitation, a cute little elf house that looks like something designed by an apron-wearing Indianapolis hausfrau for her friends with collecting mania. The elf house you are seeing right now, in the middle of nowhere, is not, therefore, a hallucination brought on by exposure and fatigue.)
11. Vissir þú að koma þeim orku snakk?
12. Vissir þú að koma með nægilegt framboð af vatni? Þú ert tugi kílómetra frá næsta bæ, en það er hægt að jökull ferð mun koma í gegnum heyra í vor. (In spring, there will be some glacial melt.)
13. Hvers vegna ekki bara að keyra bílinn inn í þessi gljúfri nálægt Bláfell? Þú fékk tryggingar á bílinn, ekki satt? Svo sem gefur skít? Vissir þú að á 19. öld var munnur helvítis orðrómur að vera á Íslandi? Það var orðrómur til vera einn af eldfjöllum á Íslandi. Svo þú ert, fyrir alla intents og tilgangi, í helvíti, sem er líklega ótrúlega öðruvísi, segja, PS 321 skólahverfi í Park Slope, Brooklyn, þar sem þú getur fengið fjórar mismunandi tegundir af fryst á fjórum mismunandi hornum? (Why not just drive the car into that ravine near Blafell? You got the insurance on the car, right? Who gives a shit? Did you know that in the 19th century the mouth of Hell was rumored to be in Iceland? It was one of the volcanoes in Iceland. So you are, for all intents and purposes, in Hell, which is remarkably different from, say, the PS 321 school district in Park Slope, where at a certain intersection you can get frozen yogurt on all four corners. Do you feel the folly of your lifestyle now? I know a guy in Brooklyn who once applied a superheated butter knife to his own manhood in order to forestall compulsive sexual activity. I am betting that no one who comes this way on foot, to Blafell, in order to see the dance of the Northern Lights, would be willing to apply a superheated butter knife to his manhood. Lay yourself down on the lichened steppe and feel what the earth feels like. Now you can listen in a way you have never listened. In fact, the Icelandic module of the UGPS is equipped with a special Silence Playback function that will allow you to record and play the ambient silence of extremely remote locations such as this one. We have a special demonstration recording from Snaefellsjokull, where the cliff walls are especially high.)
14. Bless, Gangi þér vel, og vera viss um að heimsækja okkur í sólinni Íslandi aftur. (Like all UGPS modules, the Iceland module is equipped with a Last Will and Testament flash-recording capability, and a memoir-writing subroutine, which you can use if you have enough time on your hands, and are bored with unheated stew that you have been eating out of a can. At least now you do not have to worry about whether to go to that dinner party in Williamsburg. You can sing Icelandic drinking songs, or, if you like, you can dig up some of that Hakarl, which is basking shark that has been buried in the ground for four or five months. It has a strong ammonia flavor.)
Read the rest of this story in Unstuck #3.
"The Undependable Global Positioning System 1.2: Icelandic Module," by Rick Moody
You have chosen the Icelandic Module of the Undependable Global Positioning System, which will enable you to fail to grasp your exact position in the country known as Iceland, or in any other country, should you elect to use Icelandic coordinates while travelling in Lesotho, Malaysia, etc. The Icelandic Module is bilingual, with both Icelandic and English texts (see practice guidance module below), and is a product of Undependable Global Positioning, LLC, a multinational entertainment provider incorporated in the State of Delaware, with corporate offices in Hoboken, NJ, and Springfield, MA. We are not liable for harm or injury during the use of this device.
Where to?
1. Við erum lítið land, með miklum expanses ljós og rými. Á veturna myrkri, eilíft myrkur, þegar það er bara ljóma hádegið að benda á möguleika á sólarljósi, er það oft raunin að í andstæðar skíðamaður norðurljósin shimmer á sjóndeildarhringnum, sérstaklega þegar þú flýja útjaðri OKKAR stærsta borg, Reykjavík. Margir hafa villst á meðan reynt var að ná þeim norðurljósin, en að reyna að koma til hvíldar í himneska insubstantiality þeirra. Í raun, það er hugtak, hér á landi, drukkinn á magnetosphere, sem bendir á móti okkar ferðamanna sem eru eftirtektarverð fyrir einn-sinnaður stunda á norðurljósin. Það væri fínn staður til að byrja ferð þína. (We are a little country, with great expanses of light and space. During the winter dark when there is only a glow at midday to suggest the possibility of sunshine, it is often the case that there are aurorae shimmering on the horizon, especially when you escape to the outskirts of our largest city, Reykjavik. Many have become lost while attempting to rush into the womblike comfort of the Northern Lights, while attempting to dwell in that mysterious, shimmering insubstantiality. There is a term here in Iceland, drunk on the magnetosphere, which suggests tourists who are single-minded in pursuit of the ionic phenomena. Now begins your journey.)*
* Icelandic being a language mostly unmodified since medieval times, there are necessarily false equivalences in these translations. We do not guarantee that the two linguistic renderings bear any resemblance to one another. For a complete Iceland text, go to www.ugps.com/iceland/complete.
2. Þú veist hvernig á flugvellinum á Keflavík sögðu þér að þú ættir ekki að aka burt af vegum með rauðu nema þú varst að leigja fjórhjóladrifs ökutæki? Við held ekki að þú ættir að hafa áhyggjur af því að svo mikið. Það er bara svona hlutur sem vátryggjendum krefjast þess. Þú ert ekki að fara að sjá the óspilltur wilderness ef þú færð ekki út þar í innri og hafa sumir gaman. Svo hvers vegna ertu ekki að fara á undan og slökkva hringvegur áður við komum til Reykjavíkur, því það er bara annað European City einhvern veginn, og þeir eru alltaf blaring ö frá öllum verslunum, það er allt Björk allra tíma í Reykjavík, og þú getur notað allt að borg mjög hratt. Ég var sérstaklega vonsvikinn með typpið safninu sem fer eftir nafni Íslands Phallological safnið. Þú vilt hugsa stað eins sem hefði meira áhrifamikill víðáttan. The hvalur hani var frekar stór, ég viðurkenni það, en þegar þú færð niður til að horfa á skordýra penises, það er bara ekki mikið að tala um. Reykjavík má klárast í dag eða tvo, treystu mér. Það er bara of mikið steypu. (You know how at the airport rental agency in Keflavik they told you that you shouldn’t drive off the roads marked red on the map unless you were renting a four-wheel-drive vehicle? We at UGPS Iceland think otherwise. Don’t worry about that so very much. Don’t worry about the insurers. You’re not going to see the pristine wilderness if you don’t get out there into the interior and have some fun. Go ahead and turn off the ring road before we get to Reykjavik. You can use up Reykjavik rather quickly. I was particularly disappointed with the penis museum (the Iceland Phallological Museum). You’d think a place like that would have a more impressive display. The whale phallus is large, I admit it, but in the case of the insect penises, also on display, there’s just not that much to talk about.)
3. The mikill hlutur óður um ferðamannastaður heitir Gullfoss er að það bara er ekki að margir þar. Eitt skipti sem ég fór þangað eftir lokun, og það var enginn í kring, en rekki af póstkort mynd var enn standa út að framan, svo ég hjálpaði bara mig nokkrar. (The great thing about the tourist destination called Gullfoss is that there just aren’t that many tourists there. One time I went there after closing time, and there was no one around at all. There was only a rack of picture postcards standing out front. I helped myself to a few. More importantly, no one was guarding the waterfall itself, which is the biggest in Europe. You could walk down there and have a look without interference. It was one of the few times the incessant nattering of my brain became inaudible to me. You have not been brought this far, to Gullfoss, just to look at a waterfall. You have been brought this far to see Langjokull, the glacier, over there in the distance. Maybe you have seen the occasional glacier in your time, but you have not beheld the majesty and strangeness of Icelandic glaciers. These glaciers are more ancient, more merciless, more heedless of mammalian affairs than any others outside of the Himalayas, so why don’t you just head out in that direction now, toward the glacier.)
4. Það er rétt, er a einhver fjöldi af þessum vegum unpaved.
5. Vissir þú koma gönguferðir stígvélum? Þar sem við fáum nær jöklinum í þessu insufferable hálf-ljós, er það líklegt að puny leiguna bíl, Yaris þinn er að fara til að mistakast. (Did you bring hiking boots? Because as we get closer to the glacier, in this insufferable half-light, it’s likely that your puny rental Yaris is going to fail. Even though it has a standard transmission and you are trying to use the lower gears, the Yaris is not designed for the roads nearing Langjokull, a terrain devoid of farmhouses or anything else man-made. It’s just you and the glacier now. So maybe you will want to pull over and put on the hiking boots. And gather into a rucksack your duct tape, jacknife, and protein snacks.)
6. Það er satt að það er mikið af djamma á Íslandi. Íslendingar sem eru áskilin fólk með þurra vitsmuni og mildi, eins og að hafa góða aðila, og það virðist að þriðja hvert íslensk unglingur byrjar í hljómsveit, og svo mikið af þeim, í æsku þeirra. (It’s true that there is a lot of hard partying in Iceland! Icelanders are a reserved people, with a dry wit and an austere gentleness, but they also like to have a good party, and it does seem that every third Icelander starts a band, and so a lot of them, in their youth, spend most of the weekends in the city watching bands and abusing whatever cocktail of drugs and alcohol they can get their hands on. We have to admit reluctantly that the mapping agency to which we subcontracted the mapping of the roads around the glacier declared insolvency last weekend. Later, we saw these guys passed out in the public square near Laugavegur, apparently having celebrated their bankruptcy at length. As a result, the mapping around the glacier, where you are presently located, is kind of bad.)
7. Sjá, í fjarska, nú, hvernig ljósin eru undulatory, hvernig ljósin eru öll scorbutic, leyfa þér að vera niðursokkinn í þeirra mömmu-faðma, þeirra Bear-merja, þeirra Maronite, mariculous þeirra, þeirra mind dendriform.
8. Bókmenntir okkar er ríkt með sögum. Foundational skjöl okkar eru sögur, þar sem menn sem heitir Erik drepa aðra menn með ása, insuring sem þeir eru herleiddir til afskekktum stöðum, og hver þá bægja ströndum Norður meginlandi Ameríku, sem þeir nafn Grænland í því skyni að stuðla að samkomulagi þar. (Our literature is rich with sagas. Our foundational documents are sagas in which men named Erik slay other men, usually with axes, insuring that they are subsequently exiled to remote places, for example, the coast of the North American continent, which they name Greenland, in order to promote settlement back home. It is unlikely that, while you are driving in the outback, you will encounter any axe-murderers, but all Icelanders, more or less, are related to all other Icelanders, so if you should happen to encounter a living person, which is doubtful, that person might be related to the Erik renowned for his axe-murdering. Drive away from him. But under no circumstances should you attempt to drive your rental Yaris through a stream.)
9. Jæja, fá út og ganga þá, ekki vera lily-livered og veikburða, þú puny manna.
10. Það er satt um álfa. Sumir af the sterkur, og sjálf-úr Íslendinga, krakkar sem geta farið út í eyðimörkina og lifa fyrir daga á súpu úr soðnum mosa, trúa þessir gaurar á álfa, og hefur verið þekkt fyrir að byggja, kílómetra frá einhverju manna bústað, sætur lítill álfur hús sem lítur út eins og eitthvað sem gæti verið hannað af svuntu-þreytandi hausfrau frá Indianapolis fyrir vinum sínum með safna Mania, nema að þessi álfur hús úr tré, í stað þess að vera úr Bisphenol A í Shanghai . Sem þýðir: að álfur hús þú ert að sjá núna er ekki ofskynjanir. (And it is true about the elves. Some of the most robust and self-made of Icelanders, guys who can go out into the wilderness and live for days on a soup made of boiled mosses, these guys believe in the elves, and have been known to construct, miles from any human habitation, a cute little elf house that looks like something designed by an apron-wearing Indianapolis hausfrau for her friends with collecting mania. The elf house you are seeing right now, in the middle of nowhere, is not, therefore, a hallucination brought on by exposure and fatigue.)
11. Vissir þú að koma þeim orku snakk?
12. Vissir þú að koma með nægilegt framboð af vatni? Þú ert tugi kílómetra frá næsta bæ, en það er hægt að jökull ferð mun koma í gegnum heyra í vor. (In spring, there will be some glacial melt.)
13. Hvers vegna ekki bara að keyra bílinn inn í þessi gljúfri nálægt Bláfell? Þú fékk tryggingar á bílinn, ekki satt? Svo sem gefur skít? Vissir þú að á 19. öld var munnur helvítis orðrómur að vera á Íslandi? Það var orðrómur til vera einn af eldfjöllum á Íslandi. Svo þú ert, fyrir alla intents og tilgangi, í helvíti, sem er líklega ótrúlega öðruvísi, segja, PS 321 skólahverfi í Park Slope, Brooklyn, þar sem þú getur fengið fjórar mismunandi tegundir af fryst á fjórum mismunandi hornum? (Why not just drive the car into that ravine near Blafell? You got the insurance on the car, right? Who gives a shit? Did you know that in the 19th century the mouth of Hell was rumored to be in Iceland? It was one of the volcanoes in Iceland. So you are, for all intents and purposes, in Hell, which is remarkably different from, say, the PS 321 school district in Park Slope, where at a certain intersection you can get frozen yogurt on all four corners. Do you feel the folly of your lifestyle now? I know a guy in Brooklyn who once applied a superheated butter knife to his own manhood in order to forestall compulsive sexual activity. I am betting that no one who comes this way on foot, to Blafell, in order to see the dance of the Northern Lights, would be willing to apply a superheated butter knife to his manhood. Lay yourself down on the lichened steppe and feel what the earth feels like. Now you can listen in a way you have never listened. In fact, the Icelandic module of the UGPS is equipped with a special Silence Playback function that will allow you to record and play the ambient silence of extremely remote locations such as this one. We have a special demonstration recording from Snaefellsjokull, where the cliff walls are especially high.)
14. Bless, Gangi þér vel, og vera viss um að heimsækja okkur í sólinni Íslandi aftur. (Like all UGPS modules, the Iceland module is equipped with a Last Will and Testament flash-recording capability, and a memoir-writing subroutine, which you can use if you have enough time on your hands, and are bored with unheated stew that you have been eating out of a can. At least now you do not have to worry about whether to go to that dinner party in Williamsburg. You can sing Icelandic drinking songs, or, if you like, you can dig up some of that Hakarl, which is basking shark that has been buried in the ground for four or five months. It has a strong ammonia flavor.)
Read the rest of this story in Unstuck #3.
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