Recollections of Ragnarök Grace Luopa Jennifer Brooks Honor’s Project HUM 130 SPRING 2021 “I had a friend, and I carried him home—covered in a white sheet. My biggest mistake was that I was not lost with him. How terrifying it must be to die alone… So let us fight together with all our courage” Hugrekki Nedow “For us elves, you die with your purpose, or you die with the peace that your purpose is fulfilled. Not one elf, man, or beast rests in any realm without a purpose” Ágyl 2 y name is Hugrekki, the strange Icelandic word meaning “courage”. It’s a name not many people hear, not just because of its rare origins, but because nobody uses it, not even when they speak to the one to whom it belongs: me. Usually, when addressing me, everyone shortens my name; a strange concept I have yet to understand, which is how I came to be referred to by names like, “Hugh”,”Mr. Greki”, and my personal favorite, “Mr. Grey”; for sheer originality. What a surprise, indeed, to hear someone finally use it. But as of the present I merely walked down the same path I took every day; the one from my house into town. Today the snow had piled high in the night, and now a white, glittering landscape opened before me as I finished locking up. It was exceptionally cold, something I would’ve enjoyed when I was young, but now the bits of wind that found its way into my jacket set my joints to ache. I clutched my walking staff down my single stone stair. I liked this stone because, somehow, it never iced. Some say it's because it had been a part of the giant rock which my house was built into many years ago, and sustained heat better than most any other place, but one way or another, I hadn’t the heart to get rid of it. Even though it was quite useless, I felt it protected me, or at least, was a good omen. The road into town was little more than a mile and the early morning snow often covered the tracks from the previous day. None of this made any difference to me, for I had trudged this path for thirty-five years. I knew every tree and every rock, and almost never lost my way. The few times I did, happened only when I made my way back in the dark, when the moon was absent and everything gave a shadow. But this morning was 3 clear, and halfway through my walk, I met the young blacksmith’s apprentice, Levi, on his way to gather stones from the river. “Good day, Mr.Grey, not cold enough for you yet?” he said, with a light expression, his nose a dark shade of pink. “Not quite my boy, not quite,” I said with a chuckle, “Is McGowan finished sharpening that sword I gave him? I could pick it up today on my way back?” “Yeah, he’ll be finished by the end of the day, he told me if I ran into you I should say that you give him quite a lot of trouble for something you never use, and I’ll admit I’d like to know too, why do you always have it sharpened?” “Well, the time will come when I should need that sword, as they say, ‘A coward thinks he will live forever, If only he can shun warfare’ but I suppose you never know, even I grow tired of waiting. Otherwise, I would advise McGowan to mind his business.” I smiled and we exchanged a few more words before I sent him on his way. The rest of the walk was singularly cold, and by the time I reached town, the usual crowd was alight. I passed by the opening doors of the shops lining the cobblestone road to my left, feeling the salty breeze of the ocean to my right on the way towards the harbour. My walk was always the same every day. The plump woman called Tenpenny busied about in her bread shop, to which the whole front wall was glass, plastered with the name “Penny’s Bakery” in bold on the front; fresh loaves sat on display, golden brown. Next door was the Cobbler, whose skinny, gnarled, and long-fingered hands often set me on edge when he held his tools or shook my hand. He was called...well, I often forget his name, mostly because his tall skinny build reminds me of an undertaker, so, regrettably, that is what he is called in my own mind. 4 There was the cafe which more often than not was serving fish, or fish sticks, fish sandwiches, fish stew, or even fish dumplings, something I smelled too often to be by any means acquainted with it or its owners, but the sign was the biggest on the block, so I never missed the emboldened letters of, “Sal’s Cafe- Serving local fish” swinging on the wooden sign. The only thing I ever heard of the place was that the family who owned it presumably had a very beautiful granddaughter, who was an artist, and her works hung all along the walls. Down the street there was the pub, where every night I saw the lights blazing through the fog from my boat. It was owned by two brothers: the Snardloff’s, one of which was tall and muscular, with an intricate beard and mustache, while the other was rather short and seemed to try and make up for it in width. Even with two heads, they could never decide on a name, so it was simply just “The Pub” to everyone in town. I didn’t care either way, the only time I went by was either to drop off my load of fish, or to receive my pay for the month. No more, but always hopefully less. The last off the stretch, wrapped around the corner at the far end of the street, away from the humid wind of the sea breeze was my personal favorite shop. When I would find free time after turning up empty-handed from hours at sea, I would always find myself here rather than anywhere else in town. The shop belonged to a Book Doctor named Snorri Sturluson, an upright fellow with a long beard and big round glasses, “for seeing the small stitches of the bindings,” he always said. I never knew why, but something about Sturluson made me feel at peace, as if he had an understanding of me that not even I knew the extent of. The rest of the shops on the lane were either of no interest to me, or changed owners so many times I couldn’t keep track. And still farther, the other parts of town were simply for the houses of its inhabitants. As for the blacksmith’s forge, it was on the far side of town, as far out of the way of the sea breeze as McGowan could get. So, the closest thing I had to a 5 friend I never saw on a daily basis, but maybe that was a good thing, because I never had much to say when we did meet. Arriving at my boat at the edge of the dock, I laid down my walking staff and released the boat from its thick ropes tied to the dock. My boat was small, but it worked well for simple fishing jobs. Most people used bigger boats, which always ended up stuck by the ice one way or another, my boat was much more maneuverable. Usually I would have to use a broom to wipe the snow off the cover, but every day since the snow had been heavy, I always found the snow already cleared away. I suspected the Blacksmith apprentice. When the day was spent and the sun began to set, I rowed through the bits of ice still left in the sea, towards the docks, ready to return home. When the boat was firmly secured to the dock, I looked down at my almost empty net and sighed, seeing my breath cloud in front of me. Swinging the load of fish onto the platform, I climbed out of the boat. The sky was now dark and speckled with stars, and the lights from the pub could be seen at a distance. Putting my hand to my brow, I wiped cold sweat and my eye was drawn into the distance at the corner of the street. There I beheld a dark shadow, a human silhouette, but somehow strange-looking. I rubbed my eyes to try and focus in the dark, but when I looked again, there was only a torch, playing shadows on the ground in a flickering rhythm. ‘It must be sleep, I need sleep,’ I said to myself, and adjusting the load on my shoulder, I made for the pub. Outside of work, I never had any reason to enter the pub, it was too loud, too bright, and combined with the heavy stench of fish, beer, and sweat, one loses touch of all senses, something I imagined wasn’t very good for the mind. Or maybe it was my contempt for people who seemed 6 too satisfied with a life that, to me, seemed meaningless. Regardless, every night I brought my bag of fish to the cooler just outside the back door of the pub, and presently, letting the fish slide from the net into the box of ice, I felt that something was watching me.