It’s Saturday night – and it’s feckin’ freezing.
Seven below.
Even inside the Egilshöll stadium, my fingers feel like popsicles. Taking notes means pitting the will against whatever half-responsive nerve cells are relaying messages from my benumbed digits.
Inside the locker room, Sigurður Jefferson is screaming his testicles off.
But not because of the cold.
“We’re the only fucking football team in Iceland!” he yells. “We’re fucking Vikings!”
It’s not the most original of sentiments – but it gets his teammates going.
And they really need to get going.
It’s halftime, and the Einherjar – literally army of one, referring to the warriors in Norse mythology who met their death on the battlefield and then caught a Valkyrie-driven Uber to Valhalla – are 20 points down.
34-14.
They’re losing to a ragtag bunch of Romanians called the Bucharest Rebels.
Everything’s going goddamn terrible.
