In a place called “Skorradalur” valley, there is a beautiful lake and trees grow and many mountain sides in the valley. My greater family on my mothers side had a summer house there since the 1950s, where my maternal grandfather built the summer house himself for the most part. Many generations of my family have had great summers there, and it was for many decades the a center point of family gatherings and games. I have a strong bond with the area of the valley and have a great love for the place.
Back in the August of 1978 the greater family gathered there for the yearly family fun, and I was a kid of 6 years old. Since my parents had lived in the USA for 10 years, we had a couple of baseball bats and some baseball gloves, and a spontaneous decision was made to play baseball. Most people did not know the rules but no one cared, and most of us took part in this, kids, teenager, young adults and the older ones too. It was too much fun, most people could not hit the ball and certainly not catch the ball either, and so everyone was laughing the whole time and just could not stop smiling. We completed the game somehow and had dinner on the grass.
After dinner we went to the creek nearby and sang Icelandic folk songs until the men poured gasoline upstream into the water stream at the creek and when it reached the lake some 100 feet downstream, they lit it on fire. So there we all where in history, singing old Icelandic folk songs in front of a hundred feet of burning creek. I does not get more Viking than that.
