Trees in my DNA

I’ve always had a longing for forests; tall elegant pines and silvery otherworldly beech trees rising from the fern-carpeted floor, aroma and birdsong filling all my senses.

But I’m born in Iceland were there are very few trees so this affinity with forests felt bizarre.

It wasn’t until I visited the birthplace of my German grandmother, and found that the village sat at the edge of a huge pine forest, stretching as far as the eye could see.

Could it be that my longing for forests had been carried to my DNA?

I thought of her, Martha Clara, as she reached the shores of a volcanic and barren island, Vestmannaeyjar, off the coast of Iceland, to start a new life with her Icelandic husband and there was not a tree in sight.

What must she have thought? Did she long for the forests of her childhood and that longing was inherited by me, forever connecting me to her?