Iceland’s Mr. Bowling has warm personality

They recently opened a 22-lane bowling center in Reykjavik, doubling the number of bowling lanes in the Icelandic capital from 22 to 44. Plus the three in the basement of the swimming pool in Akranes. So there are 47 bowling lanes in all of Iceland.

There are 64 lanes in all of the South Point Bowling Center, where Hafthor Hardarson was telling me this.

Haffi Hardarson, 25, is the only pro bowler from Iceland. When I asked if that made him Mr. Bowling in Iceland, or the prime minister of Icelandic bowling, or Norm Duke on ice, he said that it did, that "somebody has to do it."

Until Friday, I had never met a native of Iceland, though I did listen once to a couple of tracks off one of Bjork's CDs.

(Bjork is an Icelandic singer-songwriter; Of Monsters and Men is an indie folk band from Iceland. Haffi Hardarson says he enjoys Of Monsters and Men much more than he enjoys Bjork.)

Hardarson said he learned how to bowl at The Small Lebowski - those three lanes in the basement of the swimming pool in Akranes. There were supposed to be four lanes but measurements were 10 inches off, so the fourth lane had to be sacrificed.

It probably didn't affect bowling history, not having that fourth lane. But it really must slow down play at the Thursday Night Mixed Doubles in the Frozen Moose League.

Haffi Hardarson laughed but said moose are not like reindeer and volcanoes and umlauts and summit meetings between world leaders, that they are not indigenous to Iceland.

"See that guy over there," he nodded to one of the Swedish pros checking in at the PBA Geico World Series of Bowling. "He's probably got a moose."

There may be a few polar bears in Iceland, Hardarson said. Sometimes they come over on icebergs from Greenland.

Unlike the Finns I've met, Haffi Hardarson has a keen sense of humor. Keke Rosberg and Kimi Raikkonen, both former Formula One world driving champions from Finland, were pretty much humorless, and I remember "60 Minutes" doing a piece about how laconic and stoic the Finnish people are.

So I assumed the only pro bowler from Iceland would be laconic and stoic, too, though it is 1,370 miles from Reykjavik to Helsinki.

(It's only 916 miles to Norway, but Hardarson says you don't want to take the cargo ship that makes the weekly North Atlantic voyage, for it is not exactly a cruise ship. And sometimes they blow right past the Faroe Islands, even if you have to use the restroom.)

That got us talking about Greenland again. Greenland is 753 miles from Iceland, its nearest neighbor, but it's like having Mr. Freeze from "Batman" as a neighbor. It is a forlorn place, Hardarson said, with only 56,479 people - Iceland's population is around 320,000 - and they don't bowl in Greenland. They can't even play soccer there; it's too cold to grow grass.

(The capital of Greenland is Nuuk. Though I am not a world traveler, it is, I think, probably best to avoid capital cities that sound like a "Three Stooges" sound effect.)

I mentioned to Hardarson that after the Beatles returned from America, which was slightly before his time, and one of the British press asked, "How did you find America?" John famously said: "Turn left at Greenland."

"It's like we always say, 'Greenland is ice and Iceland is green,' " Hardarson said, which isn't quite as pithy as what John said, though I am sure Ringo would have laughed.

The reason we spoke mostly of geography and frozen tundra and icicles in beards and the Boris Spassky vs. Bobby Fischer chess match of the century, held in Reykjavik in 1972 - even when Fischer returned years later he was sort of weird, Hardarson says - is because there's not much of a bowling record to speak of.

Even the PBA officials said they had never heard of Haffi Hardarson.

When I asked Hardarson if he was ready to make a go of it on tour, he said probably not, because the guys on tour are great, and he doesn't know how good he is, or even if he is any good at all.

But he's here, and there aren't any icicles in his beard - no moose and polar bears - and the women are attractive, almost as attractive as the ones back home, who are blond, gorgeous, and can beat the Swedish Bikini Team in a best-of-7 series.

Do Icelandic chicks dig guys who throw a heavy ball in the stepladder finals?

"I'm bowling very good right now, and they follow me (back home). They know my every step," Hardarson said.

On Saturday, he finished in an 80th-place tie in the Alka-Seltzer Plus Cold Cheetah Championship at South Point, closer to the top than the bottom in a field of 240 bowlers, many of whom hailed from bowling places such as Wisconsin and Iowa and New Jersey - most of whom, I can almost say with certainty, have never bowled in a three-lane alley in Iceland that was supposed to be four.

Las Vegas Review-Journal sports columnist Ron Kantowski can be reached at rkantowski@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0352. Follow him on Twitter: @ronkantowski.