Plenty of Nothing

About Íþróttabandalag Vestmannaeyja

ÍBV play in the top Icelandic men's soccer league, the Úrvalsdeild (known this year as the Pepsideild owing to a deal with Pepsi). The sports club was founded in 1903, and they have been Icelandic football champions three times, in 1979, 1997 and 1998, and have won the Icelandic Cup four times, in 1968, 1972, 1981 and 1998. Last season they finished third, qualifying them for entry into the earliest round of the 2013-14 Europa Cup. They wear white at home, and red and black away. Their home field is Hásteinsvöllur, which accommodates 2,834, mostly standing. The Icelandic soccer season being so brief, ÍBV play only 22 league games.

The team is managed by Hermann Hreiðarsson, a local boy who made it big in English football, playing for Crystal Palace, Brentford, Wimbledon, Ipswich Town, Charlton Athletic, Portsmouth and lastly Coventry City, in addition to 89 appearances for the Icelandic national team. While at Pompey he won the 2008 FA Cup, along with legendary English keeper David James. This season he has recruited James to play for ÍBV.

Today Vestmannaeyjar host Breiðablik, who take their club name from Baldur's house. Breiðablik are fresh off their 2013 League Cup victory. The Dieldebikar, or League Cup, is played before the season begins, and if I'd been more on the ball I would have covered it here. It takes the 24 Úrvalsdeild and 1. deild karla teams and divides them into three groups of eight. Each club plays seven games and the top eight overall move on to a knockout stage, with quarterfinals, semifinals, and the final which was played on April 27. ÍBV didn't get beyond the group stage. [ÍBV win 4 - 1.]

Vestmannaeyjar is a fishing town on the island of Heimaey off the south coast of Iceland. Readers of the National Geographic magazine will recall that a volcano nearly wiped out the place in 1973. The name means Westman Islands and refers to the first people to set foot on it, a boatload of escaped Irish slaves. The Norse called the Irish Westmen.

Manager Allan Moore has signed on for another year at Cappielow. Motherwell's Micheal Higdon was charged with assault less than 24 hours after he was named Player of the Year. Yesterday in the Scottish Football League First Division playoff semifinals Forfar and Brechin were eliminated, setting up a Dunfermline/Alloa final.

Sapporo visit Yamagata. [Sapporo win 0 - 1.]

Rough Seas

Nice footage of an Icelandic fishing vessel in rough seas here on Youtube. (It's excellent reference material for any of you who have made up characters who were raised on trawlers.) D

Eyjafjallajökull

Two months late, but here's a little song to help you learn to say Eyjafjallajökull, and here is a discussion specifically about that sound represented by the double l at the end of the name.

Magnus Magnusson

Magnus Magnusson has died.   Though the Icelandic Scot will be remembered in the UK for his career on TV, I'll always think of him as a translator of the Penguin Classics' Icelandic sagas.  I have four volumes co-translated by him and Hermann Palsson: Njal's Saga (1960), The Vinland Sagas (1965), King Harald's Saga (1966), and Laxdaela Saga (1969).  The bare bones exposition, irascible characters and laconic dialogue of these books remain a model for me when I write.  Here's a bit from chapter 48 of Laxdaela Saga:

      Over at Laugar, in Saelingsdale, Gudrun rose early as soon as the sun was up.  She went to the room where her brothers were sleeping, and shook Ospak.  Ospak and his brothers woke up at once; and when he saw it was his sister he asked her what she wanted, to be up so early in the morning.  Gudrun said she wanted to know what they were planning to do that day.  Ospak said they would be having a quiet day -- 'for there isn't much work to be done just now.'

    Gudrun said, 'You would have had just the right temper if you had been peasants' daughters -- you do nothing about anything, good or bad.  Despite all the disgrace and dishonour that Kjartan has done you, you lose no sleep over it even when he rides past your door with only a single companion.  Men like you have the memory of hogs.  It's obviously futile to hope that you will ever dare to attack Kjartan at home if you haven't the nerve to face him now when he is travelling with only one or two companions.  You just sit there pretending to be men, and there are always too many of you about.'

    Ospak said she was making too much of this, but admitted that it was difficult to argue against her.  He jumped out of bed at once and dressed, as did all the brothers one after another; then they made ready to lay an ambush for Kjartan.

This prose style may be Magnusson's legacy.

Douglas