I am pleased to read this. Oh so many years ago, when my children were in high school, we had an exchange student from Iceland, for a whole year...what a wonderful experience that was...and we all learned so much. I also believe that Iceland was the first country to use fuel cell cars as municipal vehicles...it's worth keeping an eye on Iceland! They have wonderful poetic legends also!
This is from a letter I wrote to a grandchild...one of my favorite stories about Iceland: "I am thinking of you so much up there is the Norse world…have decided to lurk around Norse history websites just to be near you…in my imagination anyway. You might enjoy this (below) which I posted at 12:38 p.m. December 19, 1999, on the poetry forum in the New York Times. I think it says a lot about the power of writing, and especially of poetry.
“ There is a wonderful story in the Icelandic Sagas which tells of a king whose son drowned, and the king laid himself down on his bed and refused to eat, to die of a broken heart. Saying that she would go with him into death because she was devoted to them both, she came to sit silently beside his bed. After a while the king asked, “What are you chewing on?” “Dulse,” she said. “It makes you die faster.” “Then give me some too,” he said.
After another while the king found that he was thirsty, so she gave him some water to drink. Then he asked again and again, because the seaweed had made him very thirsty. She then told him that she had been putting milk in the water, and thus they would not die so soon after all. She said that while they were waiting to die, it would be a good idea if he made a poem in memory of his son, and her brother, whom they both loved. “I will carve in runes the words of your poem, as you say them to me,” she said.
The king agreed, and he began to speak to her of all his sorrow over the loss of his favorite son, and all his fury against the seagod. Then he began to feel better. When he had finished the poem, he got up, made the funeral feast in accordance with the ancient custom, sent his daughter back to her home with handsome gifts, and took up his ordinary way of living. He lived to a great old age.
This fascinating lady would be Thorgerdur, associated with the Goddess of Fate, in Icelandic myth, and daughter of Egill, the great poet."--Barbara Smith Stoff
