Read Online Under the Glacier by Halldór Laxness - Free Book Online
Authors: Halldór Laxness
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trying to raise. Could be a little difficult for the people in the Ministry of Ecclesiastical Affairs to make head or tail of information of this kind.
Tumi Jónsen: On the whole, there are various things at Glacier that people would find difficult to understand if understanding of the womenfolk is lacking.
Embi: If these women have no human characteristics, there’s a risk they will not throw much light on things in my report.
Mrs. Fína Jónsen: It’s said of Úrsúla the English and these women, and no doubt applies to Þórgunna as well, that they never wash.
Embi begins to get bored with all this: Haven’t they got smelly armpits, then?
Mrs. Fína Jónsen: Always clean. The cleanest women at Glacier. Never seen to eat, but always plump. No one’s seen them sleep, but ready for anything, even at three in the morning. Never known to read a book, but never stumped by anyone, however learned. Oddest of all, though, they never age. They disappear one fine day like birds, but never decline; always as doughty as Þórgunna; even come back from the grave as ghosts.
Tumi Jónsen: They’ve been known to make rather poor wives; not easy to cope with, despite that good flesh. Could be that their husbands did not always have the qualities that suited such women.
Mrs. Fína Jónsen: Everyone in the know is agreed that they have exceedingly beautiful navels.
Postscript: It’s a dangerous mission for Lapps, said Ingimundur the Old’s Finns in Vatnsdœla Saga , when he sent them on a magic journey to explore Iceland. One poor little part-time tutor from the south has no motorway to guide him when he finds himself in the footsteps of the extraordinary Otto Lidenbrock, who years ago went looking for the Icelander Árni Saknússemm. Professor Lidenbrock followed the trail of this philosopher and alchemist down the crater on Snæfellsjökull all the way to the centre of the earth; there he found Saknússemm’s rusty old knife lying on the bare ground. I seem to recall that Professor Lidenbrock came out again through Stromboli. Perhaps the poor part-time tutor who writes this has yet to go through the centre of the earth before Christianity at Glacier is fully explored. But where shall I come up?
12
Farriers
The sun shone on the glacier and the door of the primus repair shop was wide open. Horses were shod here, too. On the 18th of June, 1857, when professor Dr. Otto Lidenbrock came here, the parish pastor had been busy shoeing a horse; and it’s the same today, but this time with a helper. The horse was tethered to the staple on the door of the shed. The farrier took after his predecessor and finished shoeing the horse before greeting any visitors. The horse was a big rawboned beast, not properly moulted yet and not in good condition after the winter. A farm-owner stood with his back under the horse with its hock in his arms, holding up the hoof for the shoe; the farrier was fastening it, wearing smithy clothes, his hair grey-streaked and dishevelled. He had the shoe-nails in his mouth. This big horse would certainly have had no difficulty in wrenching the staple from the door-frame or even yanking the shed from its base.
Farrier: May I ask the visitor to hold the horse for a moment just while I’m finishing? We didn’t have the heart to put a muzzle-noose on him. It wouldn’t do any harm to scratch him behind the ears. Unfortunately I don’t have a horse-scratcher.
The undersigned caught hold of the horse’s reins at the muzzle and began to scratch him behind the ear. The horse accepted this and quietened down, so the undersigned began to contemplate the glacier. In actual fact the glacier is too simple a sight to appertain to what is called beautiful, which no one knows the meaning of and by which everyone means something different from everyone else: one of those words it is safer to not use about a glacier nor anything else.
The undersigned has never before seen this mountain glacier except from too far
Tumi Jónsen: On the whole, there are various things at Glacier that people would find difficult to understand if understanding of the womenfolk is lacking.
Embi: If these women have no human characteristics, there’s a risk they will not throw much light on things in my report.
Mrs. Fína Jónsen: It’s said of Úrsúla the English and these women, and no doubt applies to Þórgunna as well, that they never wash.
Embi begins to get bored with all this: Haven’t they got smelly armpits, then?
Mrs. Fína Jónsen: Always clean. The cleanest women at Glacier. Never seen to eat, but always plump. No one’s seen them sleep, but ready for anything, even at three in the morning. Never known to read a book, but never stumped by anyone, however learned. Oddest of all, though, they never age. They disappear one fine day like birds, but never decline; always as doughty as Þórgunna; even come back from the grave as ghosts.
Tumi Jónsen: They’ve been known to make rather poor wives; not easy to cope with, despite that good flesh. Could be that their husbands did not always have the qualities that suited such women.
Mrs. Fína Jónsen: Everyone in the know is agreed that they have exceedingly beautiful navels.
Postscript: It’s a dangerous mission for Lapps, said Ingimundur the Old’s Finns in Vatnsdœla Saga , when he sent them on a magic journey to explore Iceland. One poor little part-time tutor from the south has no motorway to guide him when he finds himself in the footsteps of the extraordinary Otto Lidenbrock, who years ago went looking for the Icelander Árni Saknússemm. Professor Lidenbrock followed the trail of this philosopher and alchemist down the crater on Snæfellsjökull all the way to the centre of the earth; there he found Saknússemm’s rusty old knife lying on the bare ground. I seem to recall that Professor Lidenbrock came out again through Stromboli. Perhaps the poor part-time tutor who writes this has yet to go through the centre of the earth before Christianity at Glacier is fully explored. But where shall I come up?
12
Farriers
The sun shone on the glacier and the door of the primus repair shop was wide open. Horses were shod here, too. On the 18th of June, 1857, when professor Dr. Otto Lidenbrock came here, the parish pastor had been busy shoeing a horse; and it’s the same today, but this time with a helper. The horse was tethered to the staple on the door of the shed. The farrier took after his predecessor and finished shoeing the horse before greeting any visitors. The horse was a big rawboned beast, not properly moulted yet and not in good condition after the winter. A farm-owner stood with his back under the horse with its hock in his arms, holding up the hoof for the shoe; the farrier was fastening it, wearing smithy clothes, his hair grey-streaked and dishevelled. He had the shoe-nails in his mouth. This big horse would certainly have had no difficulty in wrenching the staple from the door-frame or even yanking the shed from its base.
Farrier: May I ask the visitor to hold the horse for a moment just while I’m finishing? We didn’t have the heart to put a muzzle-noose on him. It wouldn’t do any harm to scratch him behind the ears. Unfortunately I don’t have a horse-scratcher.
The undersigned caught hold of the horse’s reins at the muzzle and began to scratch him behind the ear. The horse accepted this and quietened down, so the undersigned began to contemplate the glacier. In actual fact the glacier is too simple a sight to appertain to what is called beautiful, which no one knows the meaning of and by which everyone means something different from everyone else: one of those words it is safer to not use about a glacier nor anything else.
The undersigned has never before seen this mountain glacier except from too far
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