On the Field of Ancient Peacemaking

By Roger Rosenblatt

Driving through rain east of Reykjavik to look at Thingvellir, site of the first Icelandic parliament (established 930), the oldest such assembly in the world. I'm not feeling so young myself, the imagination blank except for memories of a book called Letters from Iceland by W.H. Auden and memories of the Icelandic sagas, populated by heroes with unpronounceable names who made elegant speeches and went at one another with axes. More recent memories: news analyses assuring the public that Reagan and Gorbachev definitely are and definitely are not going to accomplish anything substantive at this presummit summit. Most recent memory: the underground Broadway disco in Reykjavik, an Icelandic rock group called Strax, led by a woman with her black hair done up to look like a crow in flight, singing about U.S. and Soviet journalists vying for scoops.

What am I doing here? What are any of us doing here--a flock of mad ducks flown north for the winter, descending noisily on this modest, good-mannered nation? We're here for the story, naturally: journalists always turn their heads where the noise is. For the nearness of power too. Merely the thought of the two big bosses sitting knee to knee, tossing the world's well-being back and forth, is enough to thump the journalistic heart. Back in Reykjavik, in that stout symmetrical house by the water, an abstract enmity is reduced to two men talking together. A rare real moment in the bipolar war of nerves, well worth writing home about. And still: What am I doing here?

No structure stands at Thingvellir anymore. The place where the ancient Icelandic chieftains met is a field by a lake fed by a stream fed by a waterfall that rolls over black rocks with the sound of enthusiastic applause. In summer, tourists pitch tents out here in hordes. This morning finds a single tourist: there was no car on the road but mine. (Is history my scoop?)

At a distance from the field, two mountains rise into a white mist pulled across them by a wind like the hem of a woman's slip. Rain-shagged sheep, mops with four legs, pursue their ridiculous business of all-day eating. On this field over a thousand years ago, an assembly of all Iceland sat down to keep the peace. The obvious parallel pops up: many chieftains then, two chieftains now, striving for balance and order so the world does not run to ruin. It is a tradition in Iceland, this striving for equilibrium. The sagas, crazy as they got, almost always wound up with heroes mending relations after a series of bloody revenges.

In Njal's Saga, known to every schoolchild, the hero is burned to death, and it falls to his son-in-law Kari to avenge the family. Coldly, he knocks off 15 of his enemies, but then suddenly the killing stops. He feels he has overdone it. He asks the pardon of his chief antagonist, and stability is restored. As it is in Hrafnkel's Saga, where, after the obligatory killings and counterkillings, the hero refuses to execute his archrival and chooses to re-establish the balance in the country.

Only in Grettir's Saga are the themes of equilibrium and balance absent. Grettir is a law unto himself. Taking on everyone alone, he finally chooses death over the safety of the world.

What one wants to see Reagan and Gorbachev do in Reykjavik is understand Grettir's Saga and make the opposite choice. Maybe that is what we are doing here: hoping to witness the restoration of order, which we would report to the waiting world, which would be glad to hear it. The news would be of equilibrium, of civilization held together as it was held together again and again in the Icelandic sagas on this field where arms control was practiced in the open. Recent events involving Zakharov and Daniloff, in fact, imitated the pattern of Njal and Hrafnkel and other similar sagas: a basic conflict followed by strikes and counterstrikes, followed by an attempt at conciliation.

Am I overdoing these parallels? Yesterday I walked around the National Museum of Iceland, staring at swords and spearheads a thousand years old, strangely neutral in glass cases. I tried to see ICBMs in the primitive weapons. I could not. At the University of Iceland, I saw an exhibition of medieval manuscripts--Njal's Saga and Grettir's Saga lying on display side by side, like a choice. I tried to make analogies between the old wars and the new. It felt contrived.

But here in this green, cold place called Thingvellir, which insisted upon the stable community of nations, the connection of ancient and modern seems right. No sentimental thoughts intrude, no excessive dreams of heroes embracing. Only the cool, practical statement of necessity, as in the sagas: northern, Lutheran, severe.

The statement is composed and graceful, like Iceland. On a street in Reykjavik, I saw President Vigdis Finnbogadottir walk from her office to her car, on the way to greet Reagan. I was the only passerby who gawked. Icelanders took the sight of her in sensible stride, the way they seem to take one another. Elegant and purposeful, she appeared the embodiment of her entire nation, empowered by a sense of carefulness that reached back centuries.

"Take good care, friend, not to break this settlement," says Njal to a warrior after an assembly at Thingvellir. "Bear in mind what we have already discussed. If your first journey abroad was a success, this one will be a triumph. But if you break this settlement . . . you will be killed here in Iceland."

Here in Iceland this week, the reporters crowd into the press conferences and rush to the airport to watch the exciting arrivals. We poke about like terriers, peer over one another's shoulders, corner sources, wedge our bodies in tight places to catch a glimpse of anybody, anything. What are we doing here? In that book by Auden, the poet records Iceland's ancient "formula of peacemaking":

Ye two shall be made men: At one and in agreement At feast and food At moot and meeting of people . . . And wheresoever men met Ye shall be so reconciled together As that it shall hold for ever between you.

Under the frenzy and the grass, one hears that as a prayer.