{"id":4512,"date":"2015-10-15T20:42:06","date_gmt":"2015-10-15T20:42:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/icelandic\/?p=4512"},"modified":"2015-10-15T20:42:06","modified_gmt":"2015-10-15T20:42:06","slug":"run-for-your-life","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/icelandic\/2015\/10\/15\/run-for-your-life\/","title":{"rendered":"Run for your life!"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"15200210018_d26e80b6d0_h\"<\/a>

Her\u00f0ubrei\u00f0 by Sparkle Motion at Flickr.<\/p><\/div>\n

The autumn nights are growing colder and we’re heading for the long dark season, so let’s talk about spooky things! Icelanders of old thought that the only safe place in the world was within the walls of a house (and occasionally not even there, but more on that later on) and well, they were right about that. The world outside was rife with danger of all kinds, the weather, other humans, mythological creatures and beasts, magic, ghosts, even the land itself. Considering what life on this barren little island has been like for most of Iceland’s history this is possibly not surprising in the least so let’s just move right to the main topic of today’s post: a song that lists many such dangers.<\/p>\n

\"5161921794_b1e38ced10_b\"<\/a>

“Troll Wife’s Leap” on the Sprengisandur route.<\/p><\/div>\n

\u00c1 Sprengisandi<\/strong> <\/em>(= on Explosion Sands) (You can listen to this song here<\/a>.)<\/p>\n

Sprengisandur<\/em> is a large desert on the east side of Iceland above Vatnaj\u00f6kull.<\/em> It used to be a route to the south Iceland that occasionally had to be taken although people did avoid it if they at all could. Sprengisandur really is a dangerous area, and its name comes from the fact that you’ll have to ride your horse without breaks and to cross it in one go, which might mean the horse would “explode”, which originally mean die of exertion.<\/p>\n

R\u00ed\u00f0um, r\u00ed\u00f0um og rekum yfir sandinn,<\/em>
\n rennur s\u00f3l \u00e1 bak vi\u00f0 Arnarfell,<\/em>
\n h\u00e9r \u00e1 reiki er margur \u00f3hreinn andinn,<\/em>
\n \u00far \u00fev\u00ed fer a\u00f0 skyggja \u00e1 j\u00f6kulsvell;<\/em><\/p>\n

Let’s ride, ride, fly over the desert,
\nsun glides behind Arnarfell,
\nhere wander many unclean spirits,
\nbecause the shadow on the glacier is growing;<\/p>\n

The first two dangers are mentioned! It’s getting dark, which means that if you’re not out of Sprengisandur while you can still see in front of you you’ll soon be in darkness so thorough continuing is useless, but who wants to camp on Sprengisandur? Not the composer, that’s for sure – there are ghosts all around. Possibly there’s a hint that some of them might even come from the glacier itself.<\/p>\n

Drottinn lei\u00f0i dr\u00f6sulinn minn,<\/em>
\n drj\u00fagur ver\u00f0ur s\u00ed\u00f0asti \u00e1fanginn.<\/em><\/p>\n

God, lead my horse,
\nharsh will be the last leg of the travel.<\/p>\n

Oh yes, so it will be. The song makes no clear definition where the riders are at the moment but certain landmarks that are mentioned tell that they’re riding northwards, and during the song they make their way closer and closer to safety. Still, they’re in a hurry if they want to make it while there’s still light.<\/p>\n

\"15090036888_a7f170f7cd_k\"<\/a>

Arctic fox by Jean van der Sluijs at Flickr.<\/p><\/div>\n

\u00deey \u00feey! \u00feey \u00feey! \u00feaut \u00ed holti t\u00f3fa,<\/em>
\n \u00feurran vill h\u00fan bl\u00f3\u00f0i v\u00e6ta g\u00f3m,<\/em><\/p>\n

\u00deey \u00feey! \u00deey \u00feey! A fox ran on a hill,
\nshe wants to wet her dry mouth with blood,<\/p>\n

\u00deey \u00feey! is what the fox says! \ud83d\ude00 My apologies for that lame joke. Foxes feature heavily in the creation of some of Iceland’s deadliest monsters, the skoff\u00edn<\/em> and the Skugga-Baldur<\/em>, both of which were the offspring of a cat and a fox. The first one had cat as mother and fox as father and was therefore somewhat harmless, as weird-looking kittens could easily be gotten rid of.<\/p>\n

The Skugga-Baldur was not harmless by any standard. Its father was a cat and mother a fox, so it was born in secret and had a good chance of growing into adulthood. A Skugga-Baldur could speak, was often so clever it could outwit most humans and worst of all could kill you by looking at you. Skoff\u00edn could too, but a skoff\u00edn had almost no chance of surviving its first days. Unlike the basilisk myth neither of these beasts had to lock eyes with you, if they saw you they could kill you, simple as that – you would never see it coming.<\/p>\n

e\u00f0a l\u00edka einhver var a\u00f0 h\u00f3a<\/em>
\n undarlega digrum karlar\u00f3m;<\/em>
\n \u00fatilegumenn \u00ed \u00d3d\u00e1\u00f0ahraun<\/em>
\n eru kannske a\u00f0 smala f\u00e9 \u00e1 laun.<\/em><\/p>\n

or maybe someone was shouting
\nwith a strangely dark male voice;
\nthe outlaws on \u00d3d\u00e1\u00f0ahraun
\nare maybe gathering sheep in secret.<\/p>\n

Outlaws stealing sheep would be another, definitely real danger, since these men had nothing to lose. Being an outlaw meant anyone could kill you at sight without getting punished for it, stealing sheep was also punishable by death… and a person crossing over Sprengisandur very likely carried lots of things an outlaw might need, the horses alone would seem very tempting to a band of outlaws. Was the \u00feey \u00feey! sound really the fox or someone giving his friends a signal?<\/p>\n

\"Aussicht<\/a>

Her\u00f0ubrei\u00f0 by Ulrich Latzenhofer at Flickr, this time in daylight.<\/p><\/div>\n

R\u00ed\u00f0um, r\u00ed\u00f0um, rekum yfir sandinn,<\/em>
\n r\u00f6kkri\u00f0 er a\u00f0 s\u00ed\u00f0a \u00e1 Her\u00f0ubrei\u00f0,<\/em>
\n \u00e1lfadrottning er a\u00f0 beisla gandinn,<\/em>
\n ekki er gott a\u00f0 ver\u00f0a \u00e1 hennar lei\u00f0;<\/em>
\nv\u00e6nsta kl\u00e1rinn vildi \u00e9g gefa til
\na\u00f0 vera kominn ofan \u00ed Ki\u00f0agil<\/em><\/p>\n

Let’s ride, ride, fly over the desert,
\ndarkness is on the side of Her\u00f0ubrei\u00f0,
\nthe queen of elves is bridling her horse
\nnothing good comes from ending up in her way;
\nmy best horse I would give
\nto arrive to Ki\u00f0agil.<\/p>\n

Her\u00f0ubrei\u00f0 is a mountain on \u00d3d\u00e1\u00f0ahraun. Elves in Icelandic lore are never automatically good news, especially if you meet them outside of civilization. So far all the stories of friendly elves happen when humans and elves share very close living quarters, but even then you only need to make one mistake and you’ll have an angry elf coming for revenge. The last lines state his destination is in the north and that he’s so desperate he’d give his best horse to be there already.<\/p>\n

\"OLYMPUS<\/a>

Ghosts in a landscape by Axel Kristinsson at Flickr.<\/p><\/div>\n

Want to read more about the creatures mentioned in this post?<\/strong> Here goes!<\/p>\n

Don’t let them see you<\/a> (about skoff\u00edns and Skugga-Baldurs).
\nSkugga-Baldur, or Blue Fox; a book by Sj\u00f3n<\/a> (an amazing, beautiful and horrifying story that ties into the legend of this beast – recommended for reading!)
\nGhosts and hidden people<\/a> (of the malicious ghost of Gunna, and the hidden people who were friendly to humans).
\nBeautiful and dangerous<\/a> (not-so-human friendly elves).
\nA Yule story<\/a> (or: how to behave around elves).
\nDraugasetri\u00f0, the haunted ghost museum <\/a>(more about Icelandic ghosts).
\nM\u00f3\u00f0ir m\u00edn \u00ed kv\u00ed kv\u00ed<\/a> (different Icelandic ghost types specified).
\nThe moon is shining, the dead man’s riding<\/a> (a famous Icelandic ghost story).
\nThe heartbroken girl who became a legend<\/a> (another popular ghost story).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\"\"

The autumn nights are growing colder and we’re heading for the long dark season, so let’s talk about spooky things! Icelanders of old thought that the only safe place in the world was within the walls of a house (and occasionally not even there, but more on that later on) and well, they were right…<\/p>\n

Continue Reading<\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"author":91,"featured_media":4522,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"content-type":""},"categories":[90791,91060],"tags":[91405,3,10341,2332,2401,91392,91396,6977],"class_list":["post-4512","post","type-post","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-icelandic-culture","category-icelandic-history","tag-advanced","tag-culture","tag-intermediate","tag-nature","tag-poetry","tag-post-full-of-links","tag-so-icelandic","tag-supernatural"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/icelandic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4512","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/icelandic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/icelandic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/icelandic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/91"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/icelandic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4512"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/icelandic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4512\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4523,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/icelandic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4512\/revisions\/4523"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/icelandic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4522"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/icelandic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4512"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/icelandic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4512"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/icelandic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4512"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}