vitjun

Dreams dream you, here, and there is nothing you can do about it. Don't fight it. You'll wake up in the dark (as much as there is summer dark here, and there is not much) or in the day. If you wake in between, you might catch the sky still blushing a little too.

spottinn

Salve et vale!

Slingshot around the horn, around the barren beaches under the glacier, around the long end of the pond where the angry terns dive, and gone again. That stake is well driven down into the rock, though. The rope creaks, but the knot holds to the ring (could it be otherwise?), the ring squeaks on the pivot, and the line will sweep back.

Vale et salve!

wagtail

A waghalter was a gallows bird, but the bird called wagtail has nothing to do with the noose. Here she is maríuerla. Erla is a bird name and always has been (though now it is a woman's name too, like lóa). The cognate in German means heron. Why she also has the name of the Virgin is anyone's guess, the little flirt.

á flakki

Nú renna öll vötn í Gígjukvísl. Vertu blessuð, Skeiðará.

vugguvísa

They bear them out of their sleeping places and lay them down in cradles. They lie on their backs with the skin against carefully arranged gray foam. We wake them gently, open them, peer down into their faces and try to read their expressions. Sleepy and generous, they let us turn their pages without complaint.

snemma á fætur

I have to admire the skógarþröstur I passed this morning on my way to work. He held a truly impressive collection of worms in his (her?) beak. He eyed me with a look of accomplishment from the hedge before going on his way.

I was coming in later than usual (though not shockingly so) after a later-than-usual night among musicians at a pub, tapping my foot to a beat that sent the pint glasses marching inexorably over the table edges. I don't regret it. But I see today that it pays to rise early with a proverb already in mind.

helst í fréttunum er

Noon news comes on, not only in the break room but in offices lining the hall. On my way to the coatroom I see the inhabitants hunched over by their radios. What latest financial catastrophe has taken place? It looks like every movie about the London Blitz I've ever seen. After a raid, everyone by their radios: Where did the bombs fall? Is Camden Town still standing? Do you know someone there, or did you?

The headlines in the daily paper are the same. In the spaces afforded by the pictures, someone has frantically scribbled some figures, trying to grasp the extent of the damage.

dul

grímumaðr
kuflmaðr
komumaðr
huldumaðr

draumalandið

Mig dreymir þá, ljósa og silkirómaða.

27 + 36 = 22

Mikið afskaplega er það gaman.

" ... close your eyes, clear your heart ... "

Mikið afskaplega er ég vonlaus í því.

Rrrrreyndu að fylgja - !

Hann brosir alla vega, og við hlæjum. Kannski ef ég tel - einn, tveir - en þar fór það. Byrjum upp á nýtt, þá.

" ... and it's really not okay, no it's really not okay ... "

Kryssa ... kryssa!

Neibbs.

blekfuglar

Shifting from Times New Roman to Palatino Linotype (for which I bear great affection), all my ǫ's vanish and in their stead appear hundreds of curious-looking black birds. They are almost too sweet to get rid of. Maybe if I shoo them away they will perch on the desk lamp instead.