Free 66° North by Michael Ridpath

made, the old turf-walled crofts gave way to modern concrete farmhouses.
    At first Bjartur resisted, but eventually he too took out a loan from the local Cooperative Society run by Ingólfur Arnarson, a neighbour’s son named after the famous first settler of Iceland, and built himself a house.
    The bust followed the boom, as night follows day. Money was scarce. Farmers defaulted. Ingólfur Arnarson left the area for Reykjavík where he soon became Governor of the National Bank and later Prime Minister. Bjartur’s new concrete house was cold, draughty and almost uninhabitable. In the end, he couldn’t keep up with the payments either. The house and the land atSummerhouses was sold off at auction, and Bjartur trudged off over the heath to start all over again, carrying his sick daughter in his arms.
    But even at the end, when he had not a króna to his name, he still had his pride, his independence.
    In the aftermath of the
kreppa
, Iceland needed to remember Bjartur.
    Unfortunately, it had turned out that Matti wasn’t Bjartur. Matti had succumbed to the bankers, the borrowing, the easy money. Like the rest of Icelandic society, they had destroyed him.
    ‘Sindri! Will you give us a hand sorting the sheep?’ Freyja was walking rapidly towards him. ‘If you remember how.’
    ‘I’ll remember,’ said Sindri, and followed her towards the pen.
    Once the sheep had been corralled into the communal pens, each farmer’s family went in to sort out their own animals. They were clearly identified by tags, but of course the farmers recognized many of their own animals and had given them names. Frída soon found her Hyrna, much bigger and stronger after the summer in the hills. Sindri was amazed how they could do it; he could dimly remember in his youth that one sheep looked very different from another, but now they all looked pretty much the same. Apart from the odd black one, of course. Sindri had always preferred the black ones.
    ‘Come on!’ Freyja called to him. Sindri entered the fray. He got butted a couple of times early on, but the technique of straddling the sheep, avoiding their horns, and dragging them off to the correct pen soon came back to him. It was hard work, but there was an air of exhilaration among the farmers of the dale. They were happy to have their sheep back. The animals would graze the home meadows for a month or so, before many of them would go off to slaughter. The rest would spend the winter indoors, pampered by their masters.
    After two hours it was all done.
    ‘Thanks, Sindri,’ said Freyja. ‘That was a great help. The
réttarkaffi
is at Gunni’s house. Are you coming?’
    ‘No,’ said Sindri, wiping his brow. ‘I need to get back to Reykjavík.’
    ‘Why don’t you stay the night with us?’ Freyja asked.
    Sindri smiled. ‘I’d like to. But I have some things I have to do tomorrow.’
    Freyja looked at him oddly. She clearly didn’t believe that Sindri ever had anything to do that was genuinely important. Which, until recently, was probably true.
    ‘Well, it was nice to see you. Thank you for your help. And if you ever do have some time and want to stay with us, we could use the extra hands. We couldn’t pay you, but we can feed you well.’
    ‘Maybe I will,’ said Sindri. ‘Do you know yet when you will have to sell the farm?’
    ‘The bank are holding off for the time being. But there’s no chance I can ever meet the payments. Why they lent Matti so much money, I will never understand.’
    ‘I’m sorry about that,’ said Sindri. ‘About what he did.’
    Freyja shrugged.
    ‘What will you do?’ Sindri asked.
    ‘I’d like to carry on farming if I can, for the girls to have the same upbringing I had. But I don’t know how. My brother works in Reykjavík, he runs a small software company. He thinks he might be able to get me a job. I don’t want to move to Reykjavík, but perhaps we will have to.’
    ‘Well, let me know what happens,’ Sindri said. ‘Good luck,