1954.
274 pages.
Gollancz Fantasy Masterworks.
Paperback.
Skafloc, kidnapped when he was a child and raised by the elves, received the sword Thyrfing as a naming day present from the Aesir. This was considered a perverse gift by most, as the sword has been broken by Thor to prevent it from being used to cut the roots of Yggdrasil [...]
Posts filed in Poetry
The Broken Sword by Poul Anderson
An English villager’s complaint
Ye friends to truth, ye statesman who survey
The rich man’s joys increase, the poor’s decay,
‘T is yours to judge how wide the limits stand
Between a splendid and an happy land.
Proud swells the tide with loads of freighted ore,
And shouting Folly hails them from her shore;
Hoards e’en beyond the miser’s wish abound,
And rich men flock from [...]
A TV Dante
My sister is one of the most important students at NTNU’s Department of Nordistics (or whatever) and Literature, primarily through her role as founder of the departemental body responsible for arranging events related to the relevant field of study (primarily Nordic linguistics and literature, as well as literature in general). Yesterday, she had arrange a [...]
Inspiration strikes from the weirdest skies…
So, we’re doing syntax in the English linguistics course I’m taking, and in today’s lecture, we went through the various ways of determining whether or not a string of words is a phrase or not — a mildly put important part of the whole syntax bit. One of the examples the lecturer used was the [...]
The mission
“The Poet does not flee from reality; she expands it in her flight.”
— Olaf Bull,
(my translation).
Beowulf
Beowulf, the movie adaptation of the Old English poem, was a fun experience, especially as it was the first movie I’ve watched in 3D.
I only knew of the content of the poem from John Gardner’s Grendel, which is told from (surprise) the monster’s point of view, and that one pretty much ended with Grendel’s death, [...]
How to interpret a peculiar request
“‘Item I gyve unto my wife my second best bed …’
(from Shakespeare’s will)
The bed we loved in was a spinning world
of forests, castles, torchlight, clifftops, seas
where we would dive for pearls. My lover’s words
were shooting stars which fell to earth as kisses
on these lips; my body now a softer rhyme
to his, now echo, assonance; his [...]
2007-10-12 — Quote of the Day
Half a league half a league
Half a league onward
All in the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred:
‘Forward, the Light Brigade
Charge for the guns’ he said
Into the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred.
‘Forward, the Light Brigade!’
Was there a man dismay’d?
Not tho’ the soldiers knew
Some one had blunder’d:
Theirs not to make reply,
Theirs not to reason why,
Theirs but [...]
2007-09-30 — Quote of the Day
I snatch a time when I crouched outside the meadhall hearing the first strange hymns of the Shaper. Beauty! Holiness! How my heart rocked! He is dead. I should have captured him, teased him, tormented him, made a fool of him. I should have cracked his skull midsong and sent his blood spraying out wet [...]
Ullr, the onion of war!
From Wikipedia’s kenning article:
Bárum Ullr, of alla
ímunlauks, á hauka
fjöllum Fyrisvalla
fræ Hákonar ævi;
nú hefr fólkstríðir Fróða
fáglýjaðra þýja
meldr í móður holdi
mellu dolgs of folginn
Simply based on meaning, i.e. without kennings, the passage runs: “Accursed King Harald! We carried gold in our arms during all of Hakon’s life; now the enemy of the people has hidden gold in [...]
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