And the lambs flow like fuzzy wine–week one

Physicist should study Icelandic farmers to better understand how the warp the time-space continuum to accommodate all they do in an average day. Anna and Sveinn both wear an incredible number of hats in their farming roles–Sveinn runs all the machinery at their small processing shop in town in Akureyri to wash, sort and bags their potatoes–steadily working their way through the summer harvest over the course of the year, and then he makes all the deliveries to the local grocery stores around town. Anna also acts as the manager for a series of utterly gorgeous rental properties on the farm just south of theirs, now owned by a lovely, and very entrepreneurial Swiss man named Thomas (each house is impeccable appointed with fjord facing hot tubs– I would highly recommend them to any prospective Iceland traveler!!), and, every morning and afternoon, she drives the “school bus” for the local elementary school which is a 4 wheel jeep that is parked at the farm and comfortably fits all six of her student passengers. I am utterly amazed by their unrushed ability to seamlessly juggle all these roles.  have a distinct memory during my last visit, in the midst of a particularly challenging birth, where I was holding the mother sheep upright, between my legs, while Anna made a small lasso with a string, looped it around the lambs’ head and front legs, then use one of her legs to brace herself against the sheep’s tail and pull until pop! Finally out came the lamb. Anna gave it the typical pat to the lungs, breathed in its mouth, swung it gently by the back legs to its circulation going, placed it in front of the mother to start cleaning it, and told me cheerily “Ok! I am off to drive the school bus now!” 

When Saskia and I came into the barn my first morning here, Anna had just finished helping one sheep have the third of her three lambs, but suspected this last unlucky one had inhaled liquid into its lungs so she wasn’t sure how it would do. She had an appointment in Akureyri so had to scoot, and told us to put the new family in their “box” after the lambs dried off a bit, and was off. The sheep house consists of six long isles with three, 3 foot wide catwalks of sorts in between the isles where hay is laid out, and one can walk more easily, elevated above the throngs. The floor where the sheep stand is slatted so debris can fall down into a 4 foot pit below.

Eventually, come November, the floors will be completely taken up and all the valuable fertilizer scooped out with a tractor and collected to replenish the potato fields. This morning, the sheep with her three new lambs had been cordoned off at the end of one of the isles, and we needed to move her around a corner, into an individual stall. We covered the plastic mats in the stall with a layer of straw, then went to move the new quartet of a family. I scooped up all three lambs, two in one arm, one in the other, and Saskia opened the door and stood guard in the direction we did not want the mother to go, while I walked backwards, baiting the mother with the lambs and “baaing” like a lamb as you do to get the mother to follow. I remember the first time I did this feeling hilariously ridiculous, and also a little incredulous at the prospect of this vocal impersonation in the way that non-method actors must have looked at Brando in the 70s. But, it works. Two of the lambs were shivering noticeably when we put them down, so we placed them under the udder and squirted a little milk towards them to help get them to initially latch. It is one of the more endearing sights in life when a lamb learns how to kneel down on her front legs for maximal nursing ergonomics, and, once she gets the hang of it, her tail starts to wag back and forth with such satisfied energetic ferocity you think she might lift her rear clear off the ground, helicopter style. 

As the week has progressed, with the advent of more and more lambs (we are at around 40 at this point, I believe) the babies and corresponding mothers are marked with spray paint on their backs or heads in matching symbols of different colors and patterns so as to tell who goes with who. After this, the lambs are given an ear piercing via a gun similar to that used on human ears,, but in this case the jewelry takes the form of an orange plastic tag. On one side, it has a number beginning with the year, so all this year’s lambs begin with a 5 for 2025–thus, you can easily look at a sheep and tell how old it is–along with a unique numerical designation. On the other side of the orange tag is a code for the specific farm the animal belongs to (4Þ12). The farm code is needed in the fall gathering of sheep when all the animals of the area are brought back down together from the mountains and then have to be sorted back out to their retrospective homes. The lambs each also get a little cut to their ear which is unique to each farm in case the tag falls out, which sometimes happens. This was, of course, a practice in the days before plastic tags were available as well. For Áshóll, every lamb’s right ear is folded and clipped at a slight downward angle, so that, when unfolded, they have a V-shaped gap at the top. To this, a second small cut is then added on the right hand lower side of the right ear. Luckily, Anna does the piercing and cuts, and I just had to hold the lambs and assure them it was okay if they tried to squirm, or, understandably, peed on me a little if they were afraid. In my inexperience the first time doing this, I felt, looking down at myself, like one does when seeing a virtually newborn baby about to get their ears pierced by a semi-stoned teenager at a Claire’s accessories store in the mall. Isn’t that baby too young? And is that person really qualified?

I also got to be part of helping with the first adoption of the season this week. Sheep typically have two lambs at a time–this is ideal so that each lamb gets a sufficient amount of milk, and (maybe this is anthropomorphizing) but I would just think three would just be a lot to keep track of for any one sheep mother come summer in the mountains when your kids are all under three months old and cliffs abound. Sometimes, of course, they do have three (any sheep with more than the expected number of lambs gets a blue spray painted dot on their rear end after the mobile sonogram practitioner comes earlier in spring. Sheep with less than the expected number get a pink dot). Thus, when a sheep just has one lamb, it is ideal to have her take on an extra from a mom with three.

Anna had spotted a sheep whose baby was stuck and needed help, so I reached down and grabbed one of the mom’s horns, grabbed the other, and then swung my leg over her back, with an ending position like I was riding a fuzzy jet ski. (A variation, if you need the sheep to lie down is to take a horn in one hand, then with the other, reach under their body to her back leg and gently pull it towards you so the sheep goes down on her side in a bit of a variation on sheep  jiu jitsu). Once the sheep is still, the other person can help with the birth. In this case, sadly, the first lamb who came out was not alive, we tried patting the lungs, breathing into the mouth and, giving it to the mother to clean, but eventually, once it was clear it wasn’t going to be possible to revive it,  Anna sprung into action, as in contrast to human adoption processes, sheep ones move quickly. I stayed with the mom while Anna  filled up a bucket with hot water, surreptitiously grabbed a lamb from a pen out of sight, brought it back behind the mother sheep, pulled her second lamb, dunked the adoptee in the hot water and rubbed it together with the freshly born lamb so they would have the same smell. When the sheep’s head was turned towards the action I quickly removed the one who had passed away and Anna plopped down the two other lambs in front of the mom and she dutifully started licking. The adoptee, dunked suddenly in water and in the company of her abruptly new family, convincingly played the part of being freshly born, as bewildered and shaky on her slippery legs as her just born sibling. This subterfuge doesn’t work 100% of the time–sometimes a sheep catches on and won’t accept the adopted lamb, but often she takes it credulously—even if she’s only physically given birth to one lamb– like: “huh? I could have sworn I only gave birth once, but here are two, so okay? I guess I’m good at birthing!” which is handy in practice and also doesn’t do much to dissuade the stereotype that sheep are definitely lookers, but maybe aren’t the brightest bulbs. 

It has been incredible weather since arriving, so we’ve been able to move the mothers and lambs quickly from their individual birthing boxes (generally an extremely cozy 3 by 3 foot enclosure) quickly into group stalls and then out to the grass fields. Getting outside as quickly as possible makes a huge difference in the lambs’ strength when they can rapidly start to experiment with using their legs, walking around and trying out their spasmodic jumping and frolicking. Icelanders are huge believers in the curative power of fresh air, and human babies too often take their naps bundled in snowsuits and blankets, and then placed outside in an upright pram. What would get you arrested with a CPS call in the US, (i.e.- an unattended baby outside a pub on a sunny afternoon) would be lovingly admired, or else thought so unremarkable as not to be noticed here. 

To make more individual compartments in the sheep house during lambing season, the walking space at the end of the isles is transformed by stapling down a long layer of burlap, then adding a bedding of straw, and bringing out mobile separated wooden gates that are tied in place to quarden off boxes. When the burlap is first stapled down, it resembles a fashion runway (I’ll be it blandly colored…) and because the kick off of lambing season always corresponds with the famous NY Met Gala–the debutante ball display for the crem de la crem of the fashion and celebrity world, I enjoyed thinking of celebrity/lamb look-alikes (Rhianna had a famously lamb inspired white fluffy number in a previous red carpet walk, and Billie Eilish’s punk black & white & neon green aesthetic, often accompanied by her brother/collaborator, called to mind another lamb duo). “You look fabulous, darling! Who are you wearing?” I imagine the red carpet photographers calling. “Bahhh!” reply the so-adorable-they-can-get-away-with-it four legged celebs, wagging their tails unthinkingly and refusing to stay still to pose.  

May 2nd is Anna’s birthday, and the day before, there were plans for her three sisters, their kids, and Anna’s parents to all join for a birthday celebration in the late afternoon. I so admire their ability as a family to be operating on 4ish hours of sleep per night, but also get cleaned up, look beautiful and happy and undistracted for a couple hours of festivities. And in Iceland they don’t just have one cake for a special occasion, but rather a vast series of cakes, sweets, blueberries, grapes, whip cream, brie, crackers, coffee (always!), Pepsi Max and Egils Appelsín, a beloved fizzy orange-flavored soda. 

Parties are a situation where it’s extremely helpful to have another foreigner present since although all the extended relatives are extremely welcoming and generous to always including visitors, and many speak at least some English, I still feel rude and exhausting to force someone at their own family’s party to make small chat in a foreign language on the intellectual level you would reserve for a pet rock. I’m doing better with my consistency on my daily Pimslur Icelandic language lessons than in visits past, but still I max out around the level of “Excuse me, main street is over there, and what say you good, today?” so it was completely beyond my vocabulary to ask Sveinn’s sister in Icelandic what it was like to recently meet her unknown new 20 years older half brother when it turned out I was thumbing through a family history album he’d given them. Saskia and I thus happily did the “never fails and is also legitimately entertaining” foreigner move of getting a photo book of Anna and Sveinn’s adorable grandchild, Alexandra, off the shelf  and looking adoringly through it, repeating “falleg stelpa!” (beautiful girl). I really do enjoy looking at “typical” pictures of babies across countries  and seeing what that suggests about culture and rites of passage, etc. This album revealed that before age one, you should probably have ridden a horse, a snowmobile and a bicycle with some assistance, but soon you’ll be doing it on your own. 

Happy birthday, Anna. Happy birthday lambs!