“The boy and I went out to sea in great spring weather, we haven’t been there much, more in Snæfellsnes, but at this time of the year there is quite a lot of cod there and we were going to swim for fish,” says Jón Pétur Zimsen, member of parliament for the Independence Party, in an interview with mbl.is, but the member of parliament faced the man with the scythe out at sea at Kollafjörður on Monday evening with his seventeen-year-old son.
The brave rescuers from Kjalarnes forced the father and son out of hell, and the story that follows is quite different from what is discussed in the hall of Alþingi every day, as it does not need to go through a second or third debate.
“We sailed out of Kollafjörður and then swerved to starboard towards the slaughterhouses where pigs and chickens are being slaughtered. We were each in our own boat, pedal boats with paddles that reach ridiculously high speeds,” says Jón Pétur.
Up shall climb the keel
Everything went smoothly until the second sheet came off the MP’s boat. “It was all right, I made it all the way, but when we were about to turn ashore, we connected the boats together, the boy was ahead and was going to pull me along. Then I got into a small accident and leaned too much. It’s not difficult to capsize these boats. And goes into the sea,” he says.
Jón Pétur was wearing rain pants with a taste, and when he was in Ægis’s grasp, the pants slipped down around the member of parliament, who was also wearing his pants on his heels, and they severely restricted all his movements.
“I couldn’t move my legs properly and thus couldn’t swim breaststroke. I got onto the boy’s boat and hoisted myself onto him, but he lifted himself up, the fins had no grip in the sea so he couldn’t move forward. At some point we both tilted in the same direction and his boat also overturned,” says Jón Pétur.
Jón Pétur with Birgi, a lifeguard in Kili in Kjalarnes, who fetched him out to sea. The rescuers were very quick on the scene, as their clumsy reaction was unheard of.
Photo/Submitted
The boy already got on his feet like Þórir Jökull, a poet of old, about whom he wrote a famous verse. “I had been there for maybe ten minutes in the sea and with my pants on my heels, had become quite cold. I got on the boat to him and we both sat there on the keel and started thinking about how we would get ashore, we were less than 200 meters from shore and you didn’t want to call anyone,” says Jón Pétur and laughs at his adventures as he survived them.
In the end, the father and son saw that they would reach neither land nor shore.
It’s cold, the seas are in a hurry
“So I called the emergency line and they pointed us out, I could describe pretty well where we were. That’s when I felt that I was starting to get weak,” he says.
About a quarter of an hour later, the rescuers from the rescue team Kili in Kjalarnes came at full speed on sea cats, quick to the call, tenacious in the face of adversity, as they say.
“They took us to land where a large crowd was waiting, the police, two ambulances and lots of people. I just asked myself what was going on, I was just going to drive home. The ambulances were going to send a boat out, but they canceled at the last minute and we were taken into an ambulance,” says Jón Pétur.
The father and son were wrapped in heating blankets and enjoyed the best service of Icelandic ambulance personnel, who, according to a journalist, have the most comfortable professions, although he was not directly transported by ambulance yet, but often talked to ambulance personnel at many sites.
mbl.is/Eggert Jóhannesson
Make up your mind
In the ambulance, the member of parliament realized the truth of the matter, there were no compensatory parliamentary seats available, only thermometers.
“They are talking about 32 and 33, and I just asked if this was our temperature, and it was. We were given saline intravenously and taken to the emergency room, and when we got there, we were up to 36. At the emergency room, we received incredibly good service and I was soon on my way,” says Jón Pétur.
He visited the rescue team Kjöl today and realized the cold reality even better. “It’s by the cliffs of Kjalarnes and if we didn’t have our phones, no one would have noticed us. We couldn’t have stayed there much longer, freezing cold, and I don’t even think about it if we hadn’t been able to call. The boy might have been able to swim ashore, I don’t know about me,” says Jón Pétur, but both of their phones were able to withstand being completely submerged in the sea.
This is where life will be
“Of course, it wouldn’t have been fun to end my life there, but I don’t think about ending it with my boy,” says the member of parliament frankly.
Finally, he wholeheartedly thanks the rescuers.
“The message is just that the rescue teams are doing an invaluable job, they are the heroes of Iceland, always ready to sacrifice their time in addition to all the training. The ambulance staff were also really nice, absolute geniuses, we received trauma care in the car and I don’t know what. I am just extremely grateful and I am infinitely grateful to the people who came to this rescue where lives were at stake,” says Jón Pétur Zimsen a member of parliament for the Independence Party who survived the cold clutches of Kollafjörður.
Þóris Jökuls Steinfinnsson’s verse on the kilin in its entirety, which has been partially reproduced here in intertitles:
You must climb on the keel,
the seas are cold;
harden your heart
here you will be alive;
scythe bent head,
even if a shower falls on you;
love had you maiden;
everyone must die once.
