An Irish Viking built
a shrine upon this site;
a thousand winters gone,
his bones are shingle here,
his blood runs in my veins.
The town boys fish and dream
of Malaga hotels.
Their cod is abbey silver,
their beach digests old nets
and skeletons of boats.
Hoarse the shout at dawn,
a mist takes Eyjafjord,
a trawler's scanner sounds
the wealth of Helgi Magri;*
the deeps lap at the shrines.
*Author's Note: Helgi Magri - or Helgi the Lean - was the first Viking settler in the Akureyri district at the end of the 9th century, and is the first Icelandic ancestor in my mother's lineage some thirty-three generations back.
Akureyri is next to Eyjafjord, the longest Fjord in Iceland.