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132 • S P O R T I N G C L A S S I C S extremely amiable, well-educated people. In our entire time circumnavigating the island, we did not meet a single person who couldn't speak English. In fact, many of the Icelanders speak accent-less, grammatically perfect English. Coupled with the financial crisis in 2008, which crashed the value of the Icelandic krona and rendered travel to the island suddenly affordable, Iceland's friendly and outgoing nature now poses something of a problem. Indeed, parts of the island are in danger of being loved to death. When I remarked upon the number of tour buses and foreign—especially East Asian— tourists at many of Iceland's most famous waterfalls and glacial lagoons, Snævarr made a very surprising observation. "You know," he said, "tourism only became our number one industry last year." That is a very scary thought, and one that has big implications for Iceland's relationship with fish—especially brown trout. "In a lot of ways, we have been behind the rest of the angling world," Snævarr commented. "Catch-and-release only became normal here within the last ten years or so. Fly fishing is also a new thing for many Icelanders. My grandfather did not fly fish." With the rise of catch-and-release, and fly fishing itself, has come an increased awareness of the absolutely world-class caliber of Icelandic brown trout fishing. as far as it goes." I found the concept strangely liberating, as if each generation was awarded an especially clean slate on which to write the story of their lives. Such surprising linguistic revelations aren't limited to an unusual naming system. You see, the Icelandic language literally is Old Norse— in fact, modern-day Icelanders can read the Viking sagas with less difficulty than we have reading Shakespeare, whose plays are only half as old. As the language of a conservative, agrarian people, Icelandic reflects the values and rhythms of the terrain itself. It is a land where the major annual milestones have always been fawning season and shearing season, where even day and night move at a slower pace than in the rest of the world. Some Icelandic sayings are quaint: "That'll heal before you're married," Snævarr remarked one afternoon after I cut my hand making hotdogs (Iceland's national guilty pleasure). "I just got married," I replied, confused. "No, it just means you'll get over it," he explained, leaving me to reflect on the implications. Other Icelandic colloquialisms are downright ominous, like their way of saying they will one day have revenge on anyone who crosses them: "I will meet you at a beach." Despite their somewhat forbiddingly heroic past, today's Icelanders are an onward into the light. Led almost like children by the friendly guide, it was not until we crossed onto the volcanic caldera itself—still hot enough to burn off the fog—that we seemed to once again rejoin the slipping time stream of regular humanity. Thus I learned that Iceland, itself a place out of time, has strange effects on its guests. O ne evening, bounding over the broken turf of Bót's sheepfields with the midnight sun just scratching the edge of the sky, I asked Snævarr about his name. My questionable online research had suggested the English translation was "snow warrior," which I found very much in keeping with my overdramatic image of a proper modern Viking. After he finished laughing, Snævarr explained that his name actually means "Snowman, son of George." Icelanders eschew the family surname, instead employing patronymics, which change from generation to generation. We paused for a moment before crossing a sheep fence, and Snævarr continued. "If I have a son," he explained, seeming to look into the future as he did, "his last name will be 'Snævarrsson.' And if I have a daughter, she will be 'Snævarrsdottir.'" "And what about your family . . . the people of this farm?" I asked. "This is the family of Bót, the family that lives at Bót," he acknowledged, "but that is schropTschop/isTockphoTo.com