Ink with Ice Crystals

This morning I opened an old translation of The Story of the Ere-Dwellers (also know as Eyrbyggja Saga). I can think of no prose more elemental than that of the Icelandic Sagas; it's as if they were penned in black ink with ice crystals. This language of barren fells, blood feuds, Viking ships and the lingering presence of the Norse gods drift into the sentences of today’s observation.

There was a bird, a Brown Creeper, that visited the great Ash this morning. Now the bird fell to climbing the trunk, and searched out food from the crevices found therein the bark. This bird betakes itself to climb head upwards always ascending, never down. So the Brown Creeper moves from tree to tree.

”But Thorod made a bargain that winter with Thorgrima Witch-face that she should bring a storm on Bjorn as he went over the heath; and on a day Bjorn fared to Frodis-water, and in the evening when he was ready to go home the weather waxed thick, and somewhat it rained, and he withal was rather late ready; but when he came upon the heath cold grew the weather, and the snow drave down, and so dark it was that he might not see the road before him. Then came on a storm, with such hail that he might scarce keep his feet, and his clothes, which before had got wet through, took to freezing on him, and he was so wildered withal that he knew not which way he turned.”
— from The Story of the Ere-Dwellers, done into English from the Icelandic by William Morris and Eirikr Magnusson (1892)

Posted on 07 de março de 2017, 05:09 AM by