Last Words: Lóa’s Hjálmtýsdóttir’s Football Infection

I have more than ninety-nine problems, but the worst one is a severe case of defiance disorder. It’s a common side-effect of having been a teenager in the nineties. This disorder makes it extremely difficult to enjoy popular things like sports, new flavours of soda, and well-received movies, to name but a few.

That said, the Eurovision song contest season is easy to enjoy, because it offers a lovely platform for sarcasm and snide remarks. Football is not as ripe for the picking. There is not much to say about the young, mostly handsome men running around with their huge thighs glistening in the sun. The football rolls this way, the football rolls that way and sometimes it ends up in the little tent occupied by a mostly handsome young man with watchful eyes and gloved hands. Some people cheer, others boo.

“There is not much to say about the young, mostly handsome men running around with their huge thighs glistening in the sun.”

I don’t know why I’m explaining this to you, but you can probably imagine how odd it was for me when one day I found myself standing on a hill in the middle of Reykjavik, doing the god-awful “Viking clap,” blissfully “húh-ing” with thousands of people as our little football men returned home after a successful run at one of these important tournaments they go to. Even my mother was there on the hill beside me. I had never even heard her use the word “football” before. I felt a little bit ashamed of myself a few days later, and vowed to never again fall for this cult-like plague.

Disappointingly enough, several months later I was standing on my balcony scratching my head over an IKEA floor-puzzle when I heard a sound in the distance. I listened closely and realised it was coming from the neighborhood football stadium. It was hundreds of voices singing the sappy-cheesy song they sing when the Icelandic football team plays foreign teams. The lyrics are about coming home, and some goddamn glacier aflame with the colors of the sunset. I finished laying the IKEA floor with blobby tears in my pathetic eyes. It was beautiful. I’m worried I might be in danger of infection once again. If you see me “húh-ing,” please don’t judge—like a virus, it’ll pass soon enough.

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