Poetry & prose
Íslendingadagurinn writing contest winners

Lögberg-Heimskringla is pleased to present the winners of this year’s Íslendingadagurinn Poetry and Short Story Contest. Each year, the Icelandic Festival of Manitoba invites submissions of previously unpublished poems and short stories in three age categories: Junior (12 and under), Intermediate (13–18), and Open (adults). Short stories must be 1,000 words or less, and one entry is allowed from each individual; poems must be 300 words or less, and each individual may submit up to two entries. Entrants’ names are masked to ensure that entries are judged on their merits. 

Open Prose Winner
Fylgja Okiyôtêw (Follow the Visitor from the Great Distance)

Indiana Humniski, Gimli, MB

Not even the coolness of the sea spray could quell her nerves. 
Fjola’s hands clutched onto the wooden side as if her life depended on her grip. For those aboard the Brennivín, it did. She tipped her head back hoping, by breaking her view of the waves, she might find relief. Looking at the sky, still clouded with ash from the eruption, she found no luck. 

Sometimes, she imagined that the season’s snow was just ashes caught in the clouds. Perhaps, it was. Since the darkened times, she held her breath whenever she watched Papa turn back after combing the fields. His wheelbarrow remained empty. When smoke covered up the sun, crops died alongside sheep. Even sweet Elskan had fallen – the lamb with enough wool to clothe a family. No crops meant no food; no food meant no money and so, onto the ships she went. Her cousin, Magnús, was already settled in the new land. Gimli. Her father had booked her passage, slipping Captain Kristján a promise of a few extra lambs come harvest. Papa was fooling with fire, betting on imaginary stock. 

As connected as the island was, tangled in a network of whispers, her father was well-known for trade and little-known for talk. Like a ptarmigan with a broken wing – the hope of flying and the inevitability of a fall. That was how it was with Papa, saving all his sweetness for his midnight sips. He had spoken more as her voyage approached. Each moon, his heart grew a few ticks of a lamb’s tail. Then, she could’ve sworn to spot a hint of the man from when her brother was breathing, gentle as when he bathed Bjarni’s fever-hot brow with a scrap of her then-elementary knitting. Resting a half-made sweater on her luggage, he muttered, “mundu hvaðan þú komst” from the doorway. Remember where you belong. 

Fjola wasn’t sure if she belonged anywhere. The Captain had promised greener grass, licking his lips at the thought of the springtime lamb. The grass was green enough in Siglufjörður. The soil was hard, but it was good. At least, it used to be. That’s the thing about leaving. The land is frozen as how it used to be. 

Home was giving way to dots of green and yellow like lichen, shrinking with each groaning row of the boatmen. Soon, they’d start to sing songs to keep their thin, bloodless lips warm, she reckoned. Her hands itched to start a scarf at the sight. After a few heaves, the men began to sing. Lyrics floated in wisps of foggy breath; she knew the lilting sound of Icelandic as well as she knew how to breathe, tilting her wind-reddened ear towards the music. She wanted to remember her native tongue, the only one she’d known. 

Soon, she would be surrounded by the terms that Magnús wrote. A few words scribbled onto his letters in the language they called Cree. The settlers and the neighboring village of tawny-skinned folk spoke through trade rather than talk. Papa would approve. Perhaps, he should’ve boarded the Brennivín. She wondered to herself if those folks, with wrinkled smiles and healing hands, would like the wool that she had packed. They called Magnús oh-kee-yo-tew, written how it sounds. A word that they seemed to use to describe visitors. She would soon be one too. She was left to guess at the other things Magnús would teach her. He was a decade older, weathered in wisdom and a Canadian winter. The Cree had taught them how to crack the ice, reap the swimming harvest below the winterbourne crust. 

Without them, her cousin’s community would have starved. 

Without her cousin’s community, the Cree would have remained alive. 

Smallpox had torn through both populations, picking people with the unseeing hand of whatever Gods watched over New Iceland. Perhaps, the same Gods that rocked the ship. He never forgot to write about the settlement’s scarcity of women with messy quillwork. A wish disguised as a census. She prayed that it wasn’t a hint at his hopes for her arrival. She tried not to think about him as she watched the land shrink. 

It wasn’t the same way that she tried not to think about Jón; one out of revulsion, the other out of necessity. Jón, his storm-blue eyes and gentle hands, was staying. He was bound by duty, his birthright as the inheritor of his father’s fishing boat. She tried to ignore his eyes as his father had, thoughtlessly, asked her about her departure. Jón’s hand merely gripped the boning knife tighter. He was careful, something that had drawn Fjola in. Careful enough to keep them secret. In turn, Fjola was careful not to tell him about the voyage. His countenance slackened with relief. She endeavoured not to imagine the implication – he wanted another kind of life, a life made simpler without her in it. 

It had been a week since she slipped the scrap of leather into his fishing satchel. She had used her sheep’s bone needle to weave a single word – a lover’s command – in thread she had stained with dandelions until it shone like sunlight. “Fylgja,” she had woven for him. Follow. 

When she caught his gaze on the docks that morning, she was met with no inkling of regret. He kept his steady step as he boarded his father’s floating legacy, the Minnugur. His hands were busy with the ropes, too occupied to wave her farewell. No one expected him to. The farmer and the fisher were separate entities, beings that did not intertwine. With a slight shake of his head, Fjola was dismissed from Jón’s life, his heart, and their homeland. He didn’t need the Captain’s greener future. 

The speck that she called home lay blurred on the horizon, shuddering through saltwater streams flowing down her face. The rowing tempo never waned even as the sun stole away from the sky. The men rocked to the rhythm of their ceaseless, staccato song. 

Fylgja. Fylgja. Fylgja.

Intermediate Prose Winner
The Traveling Group

Declan Vigfusson, Winnipeg, MB 

A group of friends who were all soccer players went to an abandoned house. The group of friends were touching everything and the farther they went, the more frightened and scared they got. It felt like they did this before. Most of them wanted to leave but the group leader named Vigfuss said repeatedly, “It’s not the first time.” Everyone was skeptical. Once the group got to the basement they walked around and saw an old shield with a huge symbol on the front behind the boiler. Vigfuss said that we should all touch the shield at the same time everyone said, “Ok,” and they all touched the shield and ZAP.

The group of friends were miraculously rowing on this boat named Knarr. The whole group said, “Oh no, what time is it?” The leader of the Viking boat said, “It’s time to get to the village!” The group all looked at each other confused but went along with it. Once everyone got to the village, each of the group members had families, and they somehow aged 10 years.

The group of guys were wondering how to get back but while they were there, all the kids in the village were sad and had nothing to do. All they did was play with wooden dolls and swords. So, they came up with the idea of making a sports ball, but everyone didn’t know which one to make. 

Vigfuss said, “Let’s make a soccer ball!” The problem was to figure out how to make one. 

Later that day, Johann said, “Let’s try making it out of leather.” So, they mashed a great deal of leather into a ball. Everyone was happy, but the ball was heavy and hurt their feet.  

Vigfuss said, “Remember the modern-day balls. Let’s use a pig skin and fill it with air so it’s light and it will be easy to kick.” The group agreed that it was a great idea. After a week of finding pig skin and trying to sew it together with some trial and error, the group finally made the ball. The group started to play with the new ball. Everyone was excited!

Einar said, “We need to make a goal.”  

Bjorn said, “We should find something to rite on these stone walls.” He continued, “Let’s use charcoal from the fire pit to draw the outline of the goal.” The group used the charcoal to draw the outline on one side of a stone structure and then did the same across. They started to play with the ball and had a game but during the game this huge group of young kids were watching in amazement. Because they had never seen a ball before.  

Vigfuss and Johann said, “Come over here guys. We will teach you how to play.” The Icelandic kids picked up the sport so fast and even older Vikings started playing and having the time of their life.

During that week, the guys were walking around seeing everything that’s in that small village. Vigfuss, Bjorn, Einar and Johann were having fun but really wanted to get back to their families and parents back at home in the modern day. The group was trying to find the shield that took them to that time, but a huge horn sounded in the village. All the Vikings were running towards the wall surrounding their village. 

The whole group was wondering what was going on and a Viking running by said, “Vikings, let’s go! We’re fighting!” The group was puzzled and confused but started to run towards the Vikings. They saw Vikings throwing spears and shields blocking attacks.  

The group members said, “Let’s find that shield!” They were running and dodging spears and found this new looking shield with the same emblem on the front as the one that was in the abandoned house. Vigfuss picked up the shield and blocked the enemy’s strike while Einar picked up a sword and swung it at the enemy’s stomach, which killed him instantly. 

Einar said, “Let’s get around the shield and let’s get back to our time. Fast!” Vigfuss, Bjorn, and Johann said, “OK.” They all gathered around the shield and Bjorn said, “Three, two, one …”  They all touched the shield, but it didn’t work. Another enemy was running full speed at them. 

Vigfuss said, “Come on! come on! come on! And with a half second to spare, ZAP! The enemy’s axe went through the air and struck the ground underneath where they just had been.

Everyone was back to their positions when they were in the abandoned house. Everyone was so relieved and happy that they were back and once they finally got up from shock, they carefully rolled the shield back to the spot that it was in.  

Johann said, “That was a close one. I’m going to take a little more time off before we go again.” While they were walking back home, they all made a deal never to talk about what happened to anyone else and everyone agreed happily. Johann said, “We say the same thing every time.”  

Vigfuss was walking back to his family, wondering what they were going to say, thinking that lots of time had passed. But once he got home it seemed like it didn’t even pass an hour.  

Mom said, “How was the outing with the boys? It was shorter than last week,” not looking up from her cooking.  

Vigfuss seemed confused but he just played it off by saying, “It was fun I can’t wait to do it again.” Mom was happy but the bump in his throat was unbearable. He wanted so badly to tell her that he was there, in Iceland, for the creation of soccer. But he had to remember the promise. 

The basement in the abandoned house was like a small museum with special artifacts from multiple European countries and the Viking shield took them back to their ancestor’s village in Iceland.

 

Open Poetry Winner
The Giant’s Mountain

Zaina Budaly, London, England
A spider roofed with delirious eyeballs, 
the mountain stores its seabirds in sockets. 
Are they gannets beading the rain-pillowed earth?
My eye is a beetle dangling
from a leaf, accepting the view as a mystery:
the fine line between what you see 
and what you suspect exists
blends like silt and air paused in permafrost.  
Spindrifts smudge
the sun silver, wafting where wings fan 
out into scallop shells for shelter. 
Where death cannot die
life conspires to self-destruct. The ocean
bludgeons a mimetolith to blowhole, to 
bridge with polar claws gloved in bridal lace.
Voracious caves thirst for diligent waves
throwing tongue
after tongue. A language assembles in my mind;
I wrestle with it like a Viking ship 
clambering to the shore, and gulp. The fury 
of the giants reigns eternal here. My footprints
in the black sand grimace, and from afar, a yellow 
coat shrivels.
My heart fusses like a bird locked in a fox’s jaws, flapping
as though in flight. I blink 
and the raincoat is gone.

 

Intermediate Poetry Winner
Woven Like Brothers

Rachel Li, Vancouver, BC

Two birds fly over the seas,
Both waiting to visit each other
From the lands of forest and ice.
Bonds so interconnected
That words and torment cannot suffice,
I simply cannot differentiate between their species.
Two birds share the same view.
Together they soar, and together they speak;
What matters most is what comes from their beak,
And I believe that will always be true.
Two birds collide with one another,
And these two,
These two are woven like brothers.
For a hundred and fifty years,
These birds have thrived, and they will thrive
Until the day that they die.