Your chosen gender: male

Century of birth: 10th

Country of birth: Iceland

Best friend: a dolphin

What did your parents want you to become: a fisherman

What are you really doing now: Playing my lute, my only possession, in an alien prison

What is your day job: Cleaning up my cell and the walkways outside

What is your night job: making jokes with the dolphin in the big aquarium who miraculously appears to understand me

Where would you rather live: have my own ship – who cares if it glides over the sea or goes through space?

If you were a plant lover/gardener/botanist – what would your garden/park/meadow/field/balcony/window shelf/… look like? I would have big trees all over the place and a nice, wild forest around my house. Did one of the trees just move? Shhhh, don’t scare it!

You hate plants? Tell me about it. There are simply none around me – what’s to hate?

What is the weirdest story of your life? Once this goddess, I think her name was Juno, appeared out of thin air. I was awestruck, but she only took me through this light and I ended up being in here scrubbing floors. Thank Odin they let me keep my lute!

Favorite text: “My lute is stronger than your head. You’d rather not cause me to prove it to you.” – myself

My chosen name is: Einskaldir Enginnsson

…

I(nterviewer): And now, we present Mr Einskaldir Enginnsson. Mr Enginnsson, you are a singer?

Me: Yes. But do call me Einskaldir, please. I do not like to be reminded of my father.

I: So, you look like you are not from this place. Do singers in your home wear clothes of your style as professional clothing?

Me: No. Actually, these are the clothes of a fisherman. I work as a fisher on a small boat. I bring food to my village so they all have enough to eat.

I: Ok, so you are really a fisher?

Me: No, I am a singer. I just work as a fisher. I come from a small place, there are not many of us. My parents told me I had to go fishing with the men, or we would all not have food. But on the boat, when you row out to find fish, there is a lot of time to pass. So I started to sing songs I just made up, and with time I became a singer.

I: Ah, that’s interesting. Row? What is that?

Me: Have you never seen a boat? Like a big bowl of wood, only there are men sitting inside, and there are sticks in the water. You pull one end of stick to you, all others do the same, boat moves.

I: That is curious. I have heard very old stories, about fishers and boats, sometimes men going away to take things from other people, this was surely a very hard time.

Me: No. Not harder than here. I mean, in the light time I scrub floors and windows. It messes with my hands a lot, but there is this fat I put on my hands, then it becomes better. In the dark time, they take me to this bar on this big floating metal island here. Above the bar, there is a huge case of – do they call it glass? – and in there is a funny fish that looks like a dolphin.

I: This appears to be very alien to you.

Me: Yes. I was born on a really big ball of rock they appear to call Earth, and it was like a thousand years after some guy was born. They say he freed the world … Free? I am free, my parents were free, their parents were, and so on. We all were free, until at one hundred parents before me, when the first group came here. I cannot count very well, but this was in the beginning of our world. So it must have been before this funny man. He even got himself killed.

I: Hold on. Now I am confused. You are telling me confusing things.

Me: I don’t know either. In my island, you live, you die, you go to Valhalla and drink forever with Odin. No one kills, no one needs to free anyone, everyone goes to Odin for the eternal feast.

I: You do know that this is a prison? That the people who live here are not free?

Me: They cannot go away. I cannot go away. But it is not so bad. We get food, and when I sing in the bar at night, the dolphin sometimes laughs at my songs. I believe he understands me. I think he likes the song about the two gay dolphins most (laughs heartily).

I: What if you could leave? What would you do?

Me: I always lived on boats. My whole life. I do not know what boats they have here. But I will do all I know – have a boat, go places with my men …

I: But there are no fish out here!

Me: That does not matter. You have good men, you are on a boat for a time, it is all I know. What the boat does does not matter to me. But I do not want to break other boats. It is not my place to decide who goes to drink at Odin’s feast and when.

I: Don’t you like plants? You are telling me about boats and fish all the time …

Me: I do. But they call the place where I am from Is-land. There it is very cold. Not much can grow. If I could, I would love to have a house by the sea, a bit inside a big forest. They even say there are moving and talking trees, but I have not seen one yet. I would love to have some by my house, but it is said they are afraid of people who come to kill them for firewood.

I: Okay. But then, as a free man who would never hurt anyone, how come you ended up here? I mean they put people here who do bad things …

Me: I don’t really know. I was out with my boat and my men, and suddenly some rift of light opens, a woman comes out. She says her name was Juno. I was like, what the Hel, she took me with her through the light, next thing I know I am here, like she wanted to collect me for something. But I have been here a long time and have no idea for what.

I: Okay, thank you for your time! To end this interview on a high note, can you tell us about the best experience of your life?

Me: (smiles broadly) There was this one Midsummer feast. We all were very drunk on mead. There was this shield maiden from another town, standing even taller than me, who came to me and started to dance. Of course, drunk as we were, we stumbled and fell, almost into one of the fires. We started to wrestle on the ground, I pulled her on top of me, and the rest is a blissful blur (smiles more)

I: Thank you for this great interview! Goodbye, and good luck – maybe you get your space boat one day!

…

Featured image: Sunset © Clio Montrey.

Ernst Spitaler is the author of this GYHAFY identity. Visit his personal blog, The Confused Singer.