Icelandic folktale: Death Diverted

This is one of many Icelandic miracle tales:

When the Black Death raged through the Skagafjörður area in 1403 the angels of death travelled the land by day in the form of a blue mist, but at night they looked partially human.

One night the farmer of Fornu-Vellir woke up to the sound of sheep grazing on the roof of the farmhouse. He got up to drive them off and when he had done this he noticed through the dark that two of the angels of death were standing by the gate to the home pasture. He suspected that they had business at the farm that they were discussing. He listened in and heard one of the angels say:

“We shall visit here and here we shall visit.”

The other replied: “We shall not visit here and here we shall not visit.”

The first one then said: “We shall not visit here and here we shall not visit, for the light of the sainted Mary shines from a tussock and we shall leave as soon as can be.”

After that the angels departed, and the Black Death never came to the farm. The farmer gave thanks to the sainted Mary for her act of grace. After this the farm’s name was changed to Skinþúfa (Shining Tussock).

The farm’s owner changed the farm’s name to Vallanes in 1908. By that time the name of Skinþúfa had become garbled to Skinnþúfa (Skin Tussock), and the farmer was unfamiliar with the origin of the name.

Copyright notice: The wording used to tell this folk-tale is under copyright. The story itself is not copyrighted. If you want to re-tell it, for a collection of folk-tales, incorporate it into fiction, use it in a school essay or any kind of publication, please tell it in your own words or give the proper attribution if you choose to use the wording unchanged.

Comments

Webistrator said…

Vallanes today:

https://goo.gl/KRgU6M

February 04, 2017 3:57 am

How to make a simple origami bookmark

Here are some instructions on how to make a simple origami (paper folding) bookmark:

Take a square of paper. It can be patterned origami paper, gift paper or even office paper, just as long as it’s easy to fold. The square should not be much bigger than 10 cm/4 inches across, unless you intend to use the mark for a big book. The images show what the paper should look like after you follow each step of the instructions. The two sides of the paper are shown in different colours to make things easier, and the edges and fold lines are shown as black lines.

Fold the paper in half diagonally (corner to corner), and then unfold. Repeat with the other two corners. This is to find the middle and to make the rest of the folding easier. If the paper is thick or stiff it can help to reverse the folds.

Fold three of the corners in so that they meet in the middle. You now have a piece of paper resembling an open envelope. For the next two steps, ignore the flap.

Fold the square diagonally in two. You…

Reading report for January 2014

Here it is, finally: the reading report for January. (February‘s report is in the works: I have it entered into Excel and I just need to transfer it into Word, edit the layout and write the preface. It will either take a couple of days or a couple of months).

I finished 26 books in January, although admittedly a number of them were novellas. As I mentioned in my previous post, I delved into a new(ish) type of genre: gay (or M/M) romance. I found everything from genuinely sweet romance to hardcore BDSM, in sub-genres like fantasy, suspense and mystery and even a quartet of entertaining (and unlikely) rock star romances. Other books I read in January include the highly enjoyable memoir of cooking doyenne Julia Child, two straight romances, and Jennifer Worth‘s trilogy of memoirs about her experiences as a midwife in a London slum in the 1950s. I also watched the first season of the TV series based on these books and may (I say 'may') write something about this when I have finis…

Stiff – The curious lives of human cadavers

Originally published in November and December 2004, in 4 parts. Book 42 in my first 52 books challenge.

Author: Mary Roach
Year published: 2003
Pages: 303
Genre: Popular science, biology
Where got: amazon.co.uk

Mom, Dad, what happens after we die?

This is a classic question most parents dread having to answer. While this book doesn’t answer the philosophical/theological part of the question – what happens to the soul? - it does claim to contain answers to the biological part, namely: what happens to the body?

Reading progress for Stiff:
Stiff is proving to be an interesting read. Roach writes in a matter-of-fact journalistic style that makes the subject seem less grim than it really is, but she does on occasion become a bit too flippant about it, I guess in an attempt to distance herself. Although she uses humour to ease the grimness, the jokes – which, by the way, are never about the dead, only the living, especially Roach herself – often fall flat. Perhaps it’s just me, but this is a serio…

Reading in Reykjavík

Search This Blog