Half-Light over Cold Seas 



QNorse') 



THE VALKYRIE are riding high this day, for the dark clouds 

 rush across the sky at such a speed that from the bottom of the 

 fjord it would seem they must surely rumble and roar upon their 

 passage. But all below between the two-thousand-foot cliffs is still 

 and silent. The blue smoke from the roof openings of the big house 

 curls languidly into the air and hangs in translucent wraiths by the 

 cliff faces. It is ever mysterious that, although the wind may be 

 blowing in a tempest outside upon the sea and high above the moun- 

 tains, the air in the deeper inlets of the fjords may still remain almost 

 motionless. Sound too is often absent, as though the fjords were a 

 vast crypt, so that the screams of infants in the peat huts echo across 

 the water, and the lowing of a cow may be heard miles away up the 

 valley. 



It is dark also, although the day is well advanced and the winter 

 still two full moons away. The clouds racing across the narrow sky- 

 Hght of the fjord are low and rain-soaked, and the waters, as they 

 always are at this time of the year, are almost black. Only inland, 



