Born on a Blue Day: Inside the Extraordinary Mind of an Autistic Savant (29 page)

Icelandic is considered a very complex and difficult language to learn; for example, there are no less than twelve different words for each of the numbers from one to four, depending on the context of the sentence. Icelandic nouns have one of three genders: masculine, feminine and neuter. Adjectives change according to the gender of the noun they describe:
Gunnar er svangur
(‘Gunnar is strong’) but
Helga er svöng
(‘Helga is strong’) where Gunnar is male and Helga female. In addition, Icelanders do not borrow words from other languages as do the English, but create their own words for modern things:
tölva
for ‘computer’ and
símí
for ‘telephone’ (from an Old Icelandic word meaning ‘thread’).

In September the programme makers’ choice of language was finally revealed to me in a package sent to my home. It contained a pocket dictionary, a children’s book, two grammar books and several newspapers. The production had decided for budgetary reasons to have only four days in Iceland, instead of the one week that had originally been planned, and for this reason the language learning material had been forwarded to my home several days ahead of the trip. However, there was a serious difficulty: the dictionary provided was very small, so it was almost impossible to begin decoding the texts provided by the production. I was also unhappy that there would be only four days instead of the seven originally planned in Iceland, since the culmination of the language challenge was going to be a live television interview in Reykjavík conducted entirely in Icelandic. To complete the challenge successfully, I needed as much exposure to the spoken language as possible.

The situation being as it was, I did the best I could with the material I had. I learned common phrases and vocabulary from the grammar books and practised building my own sentences from the word patterns I was able to pick out from the various texts. One of the books came with a CD, so I tried to listen to it to get a sense of accent and pronunciation, but it was very difficult for me to concentrate because of the way my brain tunes in and out while listening. With another person I can listen very intently, making a special effort to sustain my level of concentration throughout, but I find this much harder to do when listening to a CD, maybe because there isn’t the requirement to make such a big effort to stay continuously engaged. As a result of these difficulties, I was beginning to feel very disheartened as the day of the flight arrived.

It was time to say goodbye to Neil again, though at least it would only be for a few days. I was collected by taxi and driven to the airport where I met the film crew. Fortunately it was quiet and there were few people walking around. I had brought the books with me, but hoped to receive better learning materials once we arrived in Iceland. The flight was not long and I spent most of the time looking out of the window or reading through the stories in the Icelandic children’s book.

Iceland is one of the smallest countries in the world, with a population of little over a quarter of a million. It is situated in the North Atlantic, just south of the Arctic Circle. Located on a geological hot spot on the mid-Atlantic ridge, the island is extremely geologically active. It has many volcanoes and geysers, and geothermal power heats many Icelanders’ homes. The nation’s literacy rate is 100% and poetry and literature are popular. More books, magazines and periodicals are published per capita in Iceland than anywhere else in the world.

Upon arrival at Keflavík airport it was a bus ride to Iceland’s largest city, the capital, Reykjavík (with a population of just over 110,000 it has the nickname
Stærsta smáborg í heimi
– ‘the biggest small city in the world’).

It was near the close of summer, though the weather was still calm: the air was chilly and fresh, but not bitterly cold. The bus had long, shiny windows running down each side and looking out as we rode we saw large swathes of silver-grey clouds hanging in the sky and underneath a stream of stark, metallic blue landscape in the distance. As we neared Reykjavík I could see the daylight begin to soften and scatter and I closed my eyes and counted to myself, in Icelandic:
einn, tveir, þrír, fjórir …

At the hotel I had my first meeting with my Icelandic tutor Sigriður, though she said to call her ‘Sirrý’ for short. Sirrý worked with foreign students as a tutor at the local university, but said she had never heard of anyone trying to learn Icelandic in so short a space of time and was doubtful that it could be done. In a hold all Sirrý carried lots of reading materials for us to study together. Whenever an opportunity arose, we opened up the books and I read the pages out loud so she could check my pronunciation and help with any words I did not understand.

The large amount of reading helped me to develop an intuitive sense of the language’s grammar. One of the things I noticed was that a lot of the words seemed to grow in length the further along they appeared in a sentence. For example, the word
bók
(‘book’) is often longer when used at the start of a sentence:
‘Bókin er skrifuð á íslensku
(‘the book is written in Icelandic’) and longer still at the end:
Ég er nýbúinn að lesa bókina
(‘I have just finished reading the book’). Another example is the word
borð
(‘table’):
Borðið er stórt og þungt
(‘the table is big and heavy’) and
Orðabókin var á borðinu
(‘the dictionary was on the table’). The spatial location of the word in the sentence helped me to know the grammatical form it would likely take.

The time pressure proved the toughest part of the challenge. A lot of the little time I had to study was spent in a car being driven around several different locations for filming – a problem made even worse by the fact that sirrý was prone to carsickness. There was, of course, an upside to being taken to visit many different places; Iceland is a visually stunning place and it was an opportunity for me to absorb the atmosphere, something that would have been impossible to do in a class or hotel room.

We spent a day at Gullfoss, meaning ‘the golden waterfall’. Situated in the glacial river Hvita, the enormous white cascade drops 32 metres into a narrow canyon, 70 metres deep and 2.5 kilometres long. Viewed from nearby, the fine drizzle continuously thrown up into the moisture-filled air resembled how I see the number eighty-nine in my head. This sensation was not unique. Standing out of the rain in a small, dingy wind-hewn cave close by, I felt as though I had climbed inside the dark hollowness of the number six. Even the undulating curves of faraway mountains reminded me of numerical sequences. It was then that I felt most at home in Iceland.

A trip to thermal fields in the Haukadalur valley provided the opportunity to view Iceland’s famous erupting geysers up close. The word ‘geyser’ comes from the Icelandic verb
gjósa
meaning ‘to gush’. They are a rare phenomenon – only around 1,000 exist worldwide. Geyser activity is caused by surface water gradually seeping down through fissures and collecting in caverns. The trapped water is heated by surrounding volcanic rock at a temperature of around 200 degrees Centigrade, causing it to expand into steam and force its way up and out. Eventually the remaining water in the geyser cools back to below boiling point and the eruption ends; heated surface water begins seeping back into the reservoir and the whole cycle starts over again.

Watching the geyser erupt was fascinating. At first the turquoise water begins to boil, then large bubbles form and burst, pulling the steaming water upwards. The eruption itself is sudden and violent, producing a thick, soaring column of glistening water ten or more metres in height. The air around the geyser is permeated with the smell of sulphur, like rotten eggs, which fortunately is carried away on the wind.

Travelling for long periods at a time between filming was very tiring and food breaks were always welcome. While the crew tucked into hamburgers and fries, I sampled traditional Icelandic dishes such as
kjötsúpa
(lamb soup) and
plokkfiskur
(a kind of fish hash). As much as possible, I conversed entirely in Icelandic with sirrý, while making notes in a large, black notebook I carried around with me at all times.

The culmination of the challenge came with a live television interview on the popular current affairs programme
Kastljós
(‘spotlight’). I was nervous but also confident before the interview, though I had no idea exactly what questions the interviewers would ask me. For nearly a quarter of an hour I talked with the two presenters entirely in Icelandic, in front of an audience of hundreds of thousands. It was an eerie experience to sit in front of cameras and converse in a language I had only been acquainted with for the past week. Even stranger was that I was understood completely. As the week had passed, watching and listening to various Icelanders conversing in their native tongue, it had seemed so easy and so natural to them, as though they were breathing Icelandic. In contrast, my speech was slower and more laboured. I explained to the interviewers: ‘
Ég er með islensku asma
’ (‘I have Icelandic asthma’).

There were other interviews with the local media in Reykjavík and an appearance on Iceland’s main breakfast television show; the interview also being conducted in Icelandic. On that programme, sirrý also appeared with me and was very complimentary about how well she thought I had done in the week that I had been studying the language. Sirrý also gave an interview in English for the documentary programme, in which she said that she had never before had a student like me and that I was ‘not human’! I was very grateful to her, not least because her help and encouragement had been invaluable to me.

Returning from Reykjavík at the close of filming the documentary I had the opportunity to reflect on just how far I had come. Only a few years before it would have seemed impossible that I would be able to live such an independent life: to fly to and travel around a country as huge as the United States, meet all sorts of people and visit all kinds of places and have the confidence to share my innermost thoughts and experiences with the world. The visit to Iceland too had been both amazing and moving and I had felt privileged that the Icelandic people had embraced me so warmly and enthusiastically. It was the strangest thing: the very same abilities that had set me apart from my peers as a child and adolescent, and isolated me from them, had actually helped me to connect with other people in adulthood and to make new friends. It had been an incredible few months for me, and it wasn’t over yet.

Early one morning the following spring I received a phone call telling me that I had been invited to appear on an upcoming edition of the
Late Show with David Letterman
. The arrangements had been made through Discovery’s Science Channel, which had broadcast
Brainman
for the first time several weeks before in the US. The reaction to the programme had been very positive, including a detailed review in the
New York Times
. Although I had never seen the Letterman show before, I had heard of it and knew that it was long-running and popular. The Science Channel’s team had agreed to cover the costs of the trip to New York for the day’s recording and a timetable had already been organised for me. There was only one catch: I had to fly out that afternoon as the interview was set to take place the next day.

It was fortunate that Neil was working from home and agreed to help me pack and take me to the airport. The necessary reservations were promptly booked online for me, so that all I needed to do was to get ready and go. It was a good thing that everything happened so suddenly, as I had no time to feel anxious and instead had to concentrate fully on routine matters, such as getting myself washed and dressed and my bag packed. In the car on the way to the airport, Neil tried to help me stay calm by telling me to enjoy the experience and just be myself.

The seat on the plane was big and comfortable and I was able to sleep for most of the time, which helped me a lot. Upon touchdown at JFK airport, I followed the other passengers out and through numerous passages until we arrived at the long queues for security and passport control. When it was my turn I walked up to the booth and handed over my passport. The man on the other side of the glass asked how long I was planning to stay in America and I replied: ‘Two days’. Surprised, he said ‘Only two days?’ and I nodded.

He looked steadily at me for a moment, then returned my passport and waved me through. After collecting my bag I walked on to arrivals and saw a man holding a sign with my name on it. I had been told that a driver would be waiting for me once I arrived at JFK, so I walked up to him and he took my bag and we went to the car, which was long and black and very shiny. I was driven to a hotel on Manhattan’s Central Park South and dropped off. Not long ago I would have been terrified at the idea of entering a hotel by myself and trying to find my way around all the different numbered rooms, trying not to end up desperately lost. By this time, though, I was so used to hotels that it wasn’t a problem. I collected my keys, walked up the stairs to my room and went to bed.