My father, Gústaf Adolf Ólafsson, was born in 1949, at a time when Iceland was emerging from one world and entering another.
The old Iceland of fishing villages, farms, cramped houses and harsh living conditions was still alive, but a new era had begun knocking firmly at the door.
On the surface, this was a time of progress. People wanted to believe a better life was being born. More work, better conditions, more technology and more opportunities.
But beneath that faith in progress there was also fear. The world had entered the Cold War.
This was the world Dad was born into.
Not into wealth or particular comfort, but into a small house called Breiðholt. There he grew up with his parents and many siblings.
They had to get along in close quarters.
The house was small and the people many, but their hearts and minds were large.
Perhaps some of his contradictions began there. He grew up in a small house, in a country growing larger in its own eyes. In a society becoming more modern while still carrying the harshness of earlier times.
Such a world does not necessarily produce smooth-edged men.
It can produce men who are both tough and sensitive, suspicious and romantic, independent and loyal, extreme and gentle.
A man who took a stand
As a young man, Dad was mad about cars. He was, after all, in his prime when American cars were at their most magnificent. V8 engines, chrome and flowing lines.
There is an amusing contradiction in his having little patience for the United States as a superpower while having a great eye for American cars.
The Vietnam War profoundly shaped his view of world affairs. To him, it symbolised how great powers could speak of freedom and democracy while using their force against poor people far away.
Dad rarely sided with power in a story like that.
He sided with the small, the stubborn, those who refused to be overcome even when the odds against them were overwhelming.
The presence of the US military at Keflavík Airport probably played a part too. Dad had limited patience for “the Yanks”, as he put it.
Americans could become “gum-chewers” in his vocabulary, and he sometimes claimed that men who had worked too long for the Yanks were useless when it came to real work.
Of course, that was extreme and harshly put.
But it was also Dad in his purest form.
He took a stand. He put things into vivid language. And he said them in ways that were not easily forgotten.
Millimetres, not inches
Dad became a metalworker, a sheet-metal worker and boilermaker, completing both his trade training and master craftsman qualifications.
He was not a man who spent a long time talking around things.
He wanted to see them done.
As a metalworker, he naturally had strong opinions about other trades, as any good metalworker should.
He believed, probably largely to provoke people, that you had to be somewhat limited to take up plumbing or electrical work.
The comparison between metalworkers and carpenters did not require much discussion either.
In his view, it was enough to point out that one group worked in millimetres while the other was still somewhere among inches and centimetres.
This was Dad telling stories.
You did not always know whether he entirely meant what he said, or just meant it enough to enjoy saying it.
He had that mixture of opinion, humour, provocation and conviction that made his sentences outlive the conversation.
The romantic
There was another, softer side to him too.
Although Dad was neither a hippie nor much of a Beatles fan, he was a romantic at heart.
He had a keen eye for beauty, particularly the beauty of women, and there were few things he found more beautiful than an elegantly dressed woman in a dress.
Well, except perhaps a pregnant woman.
In his world, few things were more beautiful than a woman carrying a child.
He did his part in that area too.
My sister Linda was born in 1968. I arrived in 1973, Arnviður in 1976, Lóa in 1978, Jói in 1981 and Gústi in 1985.
Purely out of consideration for women, Dad chose to spread that workload among three of them.
Unnur gave us Linda. Guðríður, my mother, took care of me. Anna Gulla gave us the younger ones.
Those three women, not least, show that Dad had an eye for both beauty and character. They are all remarkable women, full of good qualities and many talents.
Even so, it probably would not have been fair to put all of us, Dad included, on the shoulders of just one of them.
Perhaps it was not a conventional family portrait.
But it was our family portrait.
Large, colourful, complicated, sometimes chaotic, but full of people whose roots lay in him.
And as the years passed, it became ever clearer what was closest to his heart.
His people.
Parents, siblings, the mothers of his children, children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren and friends.
What we accumulate
Dad did not accumulate many worldly possessions, and that never seemed to be much of an ambition for him.
He had little interest in money as an end in itself.
Sometimes I had the impression he even thought money was dangerous. That it could divide people, confuse their values and make them worse than they needed to be.
I think differently about some of this today.
But perhaps that is also part of what we inherit from our parents. Not only the opinions themselves, but the questions we later have to answer for ourselves.
Not a perfect man
It is easy to speak beautifully of the dead by smoothing away all their edges.
But then the person disappears too.
When I think of Dad, perfect sentences are not what come to mind first.
Words come instead.
Quick-witted. A way with words. Physically strong. Temperamental. A good craftsman. Warm-hearted. Sensitive. Impatient. Extreme. Kind when it counted. A true friend to his friends. Faithful. Flawed. Mischievous. Fallible. Brave.
And much more.
And he was my dad.
Perhaps that is precisely what remains.
Not a picture of a perfect man, but of a whole man.
A man with light and shadow, strength and weakness, love and flaws.
A man who touched the people around him. Not everyone in the same way, but few not at all.
He had every right to be full of contradictions.
As a child of God, he was imperfect.
And perhaps that is exactly what I value so much about him.
By their fruit
In my heart and in my values, his influence is visible and welcome.
Some of his flaws live in me too.
But so do his virtues.
And for that I am grateful.
Somewhere it is said that a tree is known by its fruit.
When I look at my siblings, his grandchildren and his great-grandchildren, I see that the trunk was strong, even if the branches did not always grow straight.
Dad taught me many things.
Some with words.
Some through actions.
Some I want to carry forward.
And some I want to do differently.
That too is part of what parents leave us.
We do not receive only what was perfect. We receive the whole person. And perhaps that teaches us the most about loving, forgiving, being grateful and being humble.
I am grateful to have had him in my life.
Grateful for the strength, the stories, the humour, the warmth, the hard work, the loyalty and all that rough-edged human beauty he carried with him.
I am also grateful to be able to see him clearly and honestly.
Not as a perfect man.
But as a child of God, as a man and as my dad.
Thank you for everything, my dear dad. Even the things we will do differently next time.
God bless you and give you fair winds, Dad.