BLOG: Early Morning Musings; Three Cheers for Iceland!

It was a Thursday afternoon, 3 p.m., and what was I doing? Watching a Team Handball match between Sweden and Iceland, of course! What else was there to do? We were in the midst of that quadrennial orgy of unfamiliar sports, the Olympics, and I was planted in front of the TV, gorging myself with little-seen delights.

Even though a creek of Swedish blood trickles through my veins, I didn’t have a horse in this race. My mother’s family did all they could to avoid being identified as Swedish, and I have pretty much taken up that tradition. So the Swedes were there. Good folks. And the Icelanders, headed up by their wonderful coach, Guomundor Guomundsson. (I dream of his lovely daughter marrying the son of former Twins first baseman Doug Mientkiewicz. Thoroughly 21st century people, they would decide that henceforth they and their offspring would carry a hyphenated name: Guomundsson-Mientkiewicz. I can just see that on the back of a baseball jersey some day!) In the last few years the Icelandic economy has performed in a way that makes the US of A seem like a paragon of growth. Team Handball has sustained the national morale through this hard time. The Icelanders are Team Handball fanatics.

Anyway: I sat there watching Team Handball, a sport I know absolutely nothing about. Turns out it is played by seven-person teams: a goalie and six “outfielders” who play positions like “pivot.” It is kind of a cross between basketball and hockey, played with a ball that is larger than a softball and smaller than a volleyball…about the size of a cantaloupe, say. The purpose is to throw the ball in the net.

In a few short minutes I became an expert in Team Handball and could pick out the strengths and the flaws of each team. Ultimately the Icelanders prevailed by the final score of 33-32, thanks, I believe, to their wonderful Left Backcourt, Ingimundur Ingimundarson. 

So it goes with the Olympics. Every four years I pay attention to Team Handball and Water Polo and Swimming and Gymnastics and Equestrian Sports, but only for a few days. I’ve watched archery and shooting. I’ve even watched Table Tennis and I was in front of the TV when the infamous Badminton tanking incidents took place. I would watch weightlifting but I haven’t found it on any of my channels, and will watch wrestling when that comes along, but not even the Olympics can get me excited about boxing, even though I cut my Friday night teeth on the Gillette Cavalcade of Sports and matches from Madison Square Garden and the St. Nicholas Arena.

Volleyball is exciting, and the American women’s basketball team is a treat. I can’t get excited about the American men’s team, though it should win all of its games by a mile. Some poor kids from a third-world nation getting beat up on by players from the National Basketball Association (or, as some of us think of it, the TMA—Tattooed Millionaires Association). And, of course, in the second week, track and field.

The Olympics. When they are over, I will say good-bye to most of these sports for the next four years. We’ll celebrate our American winners. That goes without saying.

But I would also like to celebrate the Ingimundur Ingimundarsons of this world; those athletes from small nations who have dedicated themselves fully as much as the Americans, sometimes to sports we do not appreciate, and now have a moment on this big stage to show themselves. They love their nations fully as much as we love ours, and their nations love them, and that is how it should be.

There is a wonderful hymn titled “This Is My Song” in the Evangelical Lutheran Worship hymnal. When the closing ceremonies for the Olympics are held, this hymn could be on our lips:

This is my song, O God of all the nations,

A song of peace for lands afar and mine.

This is my home, the country where my heart is;

Here are my hopes, my dreams, my holy shrine;

But other hearts in other lands are beating

With hopes and dreams as true and high as mine.

My country’s skies are bluer than the ocean,

And sunlight beams on cloverleaf and pine.

But other lands have sunlight too, and clover,

And skies are everywhere as blue as mine.

So hear my song, O God of all the nations,

A song of peace, for their land and for mine.