Diary XI
March 13, 1930. The latest Engineering Association magazine has a summary of the major construction works undertaken by the state last year. Bridges and roads feature prominently, with a budget of just under one million krónur. The annual number of man days worked amounts to 113,731, a five-fold increase since 1925. I welcome the road improvements, of course, but at the same time worry that the continued emphasis on road works will result in dwindling interest in the railway project…
June 25, 1930. At noon cannon shots sounded twice from the harbor to announce the arrival of King Christian X and Swedish Crown Prince Gustaf Adolf for the Althing Festival…We set off eastward at six o’clock and arrived at the car parking area just after nine o’clock. We found our tent immediately. Hjörleifur had brought our equipment here yesterday and set everything up. Young Jacob is very excited about sleeping in a tent. There is a damp fog that makes it dark despite the fact that the sun hardly sets at this time of the year…
June 26, 1930. There are more than 4,000 tents in the Leirar area. I dug out my college graduation cap, and we marched to the religious service by the Almannagjá waterfall at 9 o’clock. At half past nine we processed up Lögberg with a brass band to the fore. The festival was inaugurated, and the choir sang “Ó, Gud vors lands.” A thousand years have passed since Icelanders, the earliest ones, assembled for the first meeting here at Thingvellir by Öxará River. At half past eleven, the session of the united Althing was formally opened by the king. I have long held the view that this nation needs a head of state. Our king is most stately and gracious, but it is not enough that he only comes here every few years, and then there is the fact that he does not speak the language. It is my opinion that we need our own king, even if that means severing the link with Denmark…
Halldór found the former surveyor in a small double room in the Grund Nursing Home, resting on his bed and listening to the radio. The bed was too short, and had been extended by placing a small chest at its foot and draping it with folded blankets. The old man rose to receive his visitor; he was a giant of a man, a good six foot six despite his slight stoop. He had a neatly trimmed white beard, an aquiline nose, and sharp eyes. When they shook, Halldór felt his hand engulfed in the old man’s powerful grip.
Halldór explained the purpose of his visit, and Kristján invited his guest to take a seat on the only chair in the room, as he sat down on the edge of the bed. It took Halldór a moment to decide how to begin, finally settling on the simplest question. “How did you meet engineer Jacob?”
“He asked me to be his survey assistant,” Kristján replied.
“How come?”
“I had some experience with that sort of thing. I graduated from secondary school in 1912 but couldn’t afford college, so I became an assistant to some people in the Danish army who were mapping Iceland. My father was a farmer in the Kjós district, and the surveyors rented horses from him, which I looked after as they traveled about.”
“What surveying did you and Jacob do?”
“The first job we did together was to survey for the railroad eastward through the Threngsli Pass. After that it was whatever came our way.”
“Were you fully employed by Jacob right from the start?”
“No. I did a lot of tourist guiding across the highlands, as I’d gotten to know the countryside well during my survey trips with the Danes.”
“When did he offer you a full-time job?”
“That was in the spring of 1927, when it looked as if the Hydroelectric Company would be building the railroad.”
“And that came to nothing?”
“That’s right.”
“Did you take an interest in the setting up of the railroad company?”
“Yes, of course; shares in the company made up the bulk of my salary from 1932 until 1939.”
“So you must have lost a lot of money.”
“Well, I made my choices.”
“What did you do during these years?”
“In the summers, I selected routes and did the basic surveys for the railroad line northward along Kjölur, and in the winters, I worked on drafting.”
“Was this a feasible option for a railroad?”
“Yes, definitely. Three German railroad engineers came here in the summer of 1936, and I showed them the route I’d picked. They were very pleased with it.”
“Was this presented to the authorities?”
“No, it was a very sensitive matter during those years. Because we had a left-wing government, we had to keep everything involving Germany under wraps, so the Germans pretended to be geologists taking soil samples. I remember that we ended our journey back south to Reykjavik by filling some hessian sacks with stuff taken from an earth bank in Kjalarnes, and labeling them with all kinds of symbols.”