Norah Lange: Argentina's "Scandinavian Lark"

 

Norah Lange (1905-1972) was an avant-garde writer whose early forays into poetry would transition into some of the most original prose in Argentine literature. When Jorge Luis Borges returned from Europe in 1921, he introduced his literary friends in Buenos Aires to Ultraism, a Spanish movement that consolidated the metaphor as the supreme poetic technique. At the time, sixteen-year-old Norah's mother hosted tertulias every weekend in her home on the Calle Tronador. These social gatherings attracted poets and writers of various generations and served as a place to share a drink, listen to music, and play games. Lange, as a young female writer, could use these gatherings as an opportunity to interact with the literary scene's all-male cohort without stepping out of the boundaries Argentine society deemed suitable for a young woman from a respectable family.1 Singing and playing the accordion, Norah charmed her guests while solidifying her role within the literary movement. Oft-cited as the group's muse, Lange consciously cultivated a girl-woman persona that embodied the avant-garde spirit of innovation, rebellion, and playfulness, situating herself within the group, even as she was doubly exoticized for her status as a woman, and a woman of Norwegian descent.2

Borges was a frequent visitor to the Lange home, and befriended both Norah and her older sister Haydeé.3 Norah cites her friendship with Borges as one of the two most valuable influences on her work (the other being that of her husband, the poet Oliverio Girondo). However, she empathetically notes that although she was already writing poetry before Borges returned from Europe, she enjoyed talking about poetry and its modes with him: "I liked his company. I liked it so much that I accepted the sacrifice of long walks (in spite of how much I dislike walking) so that I could converse with him. He spoke to me of Ultraism. I kept on writing my verses."4 Lange's contributions to the Ultraist movement include work for the short-lived mural-magazine Prism (Prisma), Alberto Hidalgo's Oral Magazine (Revista Oral) at the Café Royal Keller, and the literary journals Prow (Proa), Nosotros, and Martín Fierro. Norah and the Peruvian Magda Portal were the only female poets among the sixty-seven included in the definitive anthology of the movement Índice de la nueva poesía americana (Index of the New American Poetry), published in 1926, cementing her affiliation with the avant-garde poets even as she was turning to prose.

Norah wrote three books of Ultraist poetry, though her most critically acclaimed works were her later novels. Her debut, The Street at Dusk (La calle de la tarde) (1925), included a preface by Borges, who misidentified her as a girl of fifteen, even though she was actually twenty when the book was published.5 Days and Nights (Los días y las noches) (1926) followed a year later. Her last book of poetry, The Course of the Rose (El rumbo de la rosa), was published in 1930, but at that point, she had already begun to experiment with prose. Her first attempt was Voice of Life (Voz de la vida) (1927), an epistolary novel in which a young woman writes letters to her absent lover. 45 Days and 30 Sailors (45 días y 30 marineros) (1933) relates the voyage of a woman who traveled unaccompanied to Norway on a cargo ship. Norah had done the same when she was twenty-three, visiting her sister Ruth and her Norwegian husband. These first novels forthrightly explored female sexuality in a way that contemporary critics either completely ignored or roundly condemned. While Norah later dismissed her earliest writings, modern critics have noted a continuity of themes from her earliest poems through her mature prose. In all of Norah's work, the domestic realm, traditionally portrayed as a feminine domain of refuge and tranquility, acquires a sense of the uncanny. The autobiographical Childhood Notebooks (Cuadernos de infancia) (1937) is Lange's most well-known work, and it won her both the Premio Municipal in 1937 and the Tercer Premio Nacional in 1939. The book that followed, Before They Die (Antes que mueran) (1944), is a "hollowed out" version of Childhood Notebooks, serving as a counterpoint to the young narrator searching for her unique voice while still enmeshed in the plural "we" of family.6 The narrator of Before They Die is past adolescence, a singular "I" who confronts the reality of death and the meaninglessness of constructed identity in a series of mysterious vignettes. Between these two poetically enigmatic narratives, Lange published Speeches (Discursos) in 1942, a collection of addresses she composed and performed at the myriad banquets organized by her peers. She would later republish an expanded collection in 1968 under the name Dear Assembled Company (Estimados congéneres). Her mature works, People in the Room (Personas en la sala) (1950), The Two Portraits (Los dos retratos) (1956); and The Glass Room (El cuarto de vidrio) (1966, published posthumously in 2006), all center on domestic realms in which the young protagonists obliquely observe the drama of familial interactions while leaving the reader to wonder how much of what is depicted is merely imagined by the narrators themselves.

As she relates in Childhood Notebooks, Norah's youth was divided into the distinct "before" and "after" marked by her father's death. A Norwegian immigrant to Argentina, Gunnar Lange had arrived in that country in 1886 via Honduras to work as a cartographer and surveyor. In 1896 he married Berta Erfjord, twenty years his junior and the daughter of immigrants, with a Norwegian father and Irish mother.7 In 1915, the widowed Berta moved her seven children, six girls and one boy, from Mendoza to Buenos Aires. Throughout her life Norah maintained a strong affinity for Norway, but this sympathy grew even greater after her year-long visit with her sister Ruth's family. In Norway, she supplemented her knowledge of the country's classics with its contemporary poets and writers. Upon her return to Buenos Aires, she wrote a number of articles in various Argentine magazines and newspapers in which Norway was featured, such as an article in La Nación in 1930 about the contemporary poet Herman Wildenvey, which also included a survey of the greatest Norwegian writers from the eighteenth to the twentieth century.8 The only novel written by the nineteenth-century author Camilla Collett also received a separate article in El hogar the following year.9 The article I translate here, "The Songs of the Eddas" ("Los cantos de los Eddas"), was published in the literary and scientific journal Azul in 1931, outlining for its readers a brief history of the Younger and Elder Eddas, as well as the main figures of the Scandinavian legends and mythology featured in them.10 Vladimir Brljak in this volume convincingly contends this article is what sparked Borges' enduring interest in ancient Germanic literature.11 In 1934, Lange was asked to do an interview for the newspaper Crítica with Alfon Hansen, the doomed Norwegian sailor who attempted to sail east-to-west around Cape Horn in his 36-foot gaff-rigged boat designed by the Norwegian naval architect Colin Archer, called the Mary Jane. An epigraph to the article notes that Norah, "the inquisitive and brilliant female writer," was the most appropriate to do the interview "not only because although she is Argentine, she is of Norwegian origin and race, but also because she recently took a trip to her ancestors' homeland" and had "acquired a vast maritime experience." While the epigraph praises Lange's ability to speak Norwegian and her "knowledge of the peoples of the faraway country" that allows her to "question the solitary sailor thoroughly," Lange in the article itself relates her trepidation at disturbing the man who clearly preferred the company of his cat and dog and was tired of answering the endless stream of near-identical questions from a sequence of reporters.12 Six years later, Hitler's invasion of Norway and what Lange saw as the Argentine press's tendency to depict Norway as complicit in its invader's cause spurred her to write two articles on Norway's behalf: "They Slander the Norwegian People," and "Norway Under Foreign Oppression."13

Norah, with her playful, flamboyant personality, was the muse of her Argentine literary peers, their Valkyrie, an exotic, red-haired, "Scandinavian lark."14 She was also a daring, experimental writer whose work reflects her kaleidoscopic identity as Argentine and Scandinavian, avant-garde and female.

 

The Songs of the Eddas

Norah Lange15

 

When I think of those Kings of the Sea, the Vikings, their quality of shared daring seems admirable to me, so apparent even in any engraving of the time. I refer to those "sea stallions," the Viking ships with their golden lion heads and bronze dragons, elegant beasts erect over turbulent waters. (In the history of culture, the ships are of particular importance, if you think about what a technical challenge the construction of a ship was at that time.) In saying "shared daring," I am reminded of a passage in Norwegian History that has an illustration referring to King Harald and his men when they invaded the ship of Torre Haklang, in Havsfjord. The prows scrape together, the bronze shines, there is a smell of blood, and one can almost feel the burning heat of the spears.

It's wonderful, that element of beauty that things have. Does not the truth of all beauty generally reside in its creation?

For example: the songs of the Eddas. Many discussions have developed regarding their origin. Sophus Bugge believed that many of them were composed in the British Isles. Kr. Elster, the most authoritative opinion, affirms that the majority are Norwegian and that their origin is very difficult to pinpoint, although it is most likely that the oldest were circulating in the ninth century. Prior to those later songs there had existed other, less artistic, poetry, but with roots that point to that evolution. One can declare with certainty that a great majority of these songs were composed in Norway. The newest are probably Icelandic, and occasionally some, like the "Altamal," are from Greenland.

Nothing is known of that early poetry, beyond the conclusions that can be deduced from the runic characters set in stone in the three Northern countries. These inscriptions, composed metrically, were formed into stanzas similar to the oldest songs of the Eddas. The epic songs have their origin in this cycle of legends from the fourth century: memories of battles, the emergence of new kingdoms, and when kings, captains, and warriors appeared in all their glory, then disappeared almost immediately. There are interesting events, such as the pilgrimage of the Huns, the mystic suicide of King Ermanrik, the death of Attila, and above all the victory of King Theodrik and his marvelous procession.

Why the name "Edda" was given to these songs is a point no one has been able to clarify, given that its corresponding meaning in Old Norse is "great grandmother." New studies have confirmed that Edda derives from the word odr, which means "doctrine" or "the teaching of the art of poetry"; it also means "poem," and is the noun used by Snorre Sturlason (the Icelandic historian from the eleventh century that has helped the name of the scalds live on today) in his work regarding the technical difficulties of this ancient poetry, which came to be called the "Younger Edda." To continue the sequence, the discoverer of the "Codex Regius," the Icelandic bishop Brynjulf Svenson (1645), gave this text the name "Elder Edda," since the manuscript dates back to the middle of the thirteenth century. Snorre's Edda has a particular importance within Norse mythology and poetry.

"Edda" is used incomprehensibly these days, confusing the term with the collection of epic songs and gods found in the parchment book, the "Codex Regius," in The Royal Library in Copenhagen. This book, which is most commonly titled the "Elder Edda" or the "Edda of Saemund," was composed around the year 1270. The 45 manuscript pages that have been preserved are of inestimable value.

The songs of the "Elder Edda" can be divided into four groups:

1. Purely mystic songs
2. Mystic-heroic songs
3. Didactic songs and
4. Purely heroic, in other words: Voluspa, Havamal, Trymskvida, and Lokasenna. To the post-epics belong, among others: Völundarkviða, the three poems of Helge and countless compositions about the Volsunger and the Gjugunger sagas.

Kr. Elster declares that the majority of the songs in the Eddas are Norwegian. There is no doubt about this. Norway's nature has provided its beautiful landscapes and poetic expression. The fjords, the mountains, the dark water, the harsh landscapes of Western Norway are there, with their rugged and resilient timbre, although the material for the songs almost always comes from elsewhere. The names of the authors are not known, but it has been proven that they are prior to the tenth century, for reasons of language and the quality of their descriptions.

The songs are clear, strong, and simple in form. Each stanza is composed of 8 or 6 lines, with 4 syllables, sometimes 5. The narrative poems employ a variation that also has 8 lines in each stanza; next to it is a stanza of 6 lines and an irregular number of syllables. The poetry still maintains its warmth, while the descriptive and fantastical expressions preserve their latent origins.

In the collection of the Eddas, the songs of the gods are the oldest, written in the form of a conversation or dialogue in which the victorious Odin pits his knowledge against Man and other gods. In the majority of these poems, the tone is heavy and serious. A tragic shadow floats above the world of the gods.

This is how we arrive at that dark, violent poem called "Voluspa." This poem occupies a renowned position: it introduces the ancient Norse cosmology, their concept of the world of both gods and men. This poem is a masterpiece of artistic expression. It is of a sobriety and a grandeur that even today awakens a deep sense of the sacred. Odin sets off for the well of Mimer in search of counsel, for which he must pay with one eye. On his return voyage, he encounters a prophetess (Volva) and requests she predict his future. And so begins the prediction. She narrates battles, the death of Balder, the punishment of Loke and all his penances after death. The dark powers rise, surrounding the gods, and the end of the world draws near. A valuable and inventive imagination has given form to the scenes in this poem. It is considered the best in the collection; powerful and disturbing, with a tragic vision of the world.

And after chilling and terrifying poems, "the earth is covered in green grass"...and trees. The gods form Ask and Embla, the first human couple. But evil interferes with Man and gods, and in dark stanzas, the most realistic part comes, which is the description of the destruction of the world:

Brothers will fight each other
incurring many deaths;
sons of sisters
will break their kindship.
Evilness and indecency
will reign over the earth.
 
The time of the ax and the sword;
the shield splits.
Time of storms,
time of wolves,
before the fall of the world.
Then no man
will have mercy upon the other.
 
(Afterwards, intense, the death of the gods)
 
The sun darkens,
the earth sinks into the sea;
in the sky pale
the shining stars.
Death knell of flames
and an ocean of fire.
And towards the sky, high
play the flames.

The poem "Voluspa" provides us with a panorama of the Old World. From it we can learn about the beliefs of our Norse ancestors. It deals with the old prophetess who demands silence. It has important things to say, and it begins with a narration of how the world was formed.

On the other hand, the "Havamal," a somber poem in which Odin speaks, presenting his understanding of life and his worldly knowledge and experience that has made the poem a prudent and wise song, has an unmistakable depth of bitterness. Next to the Voluspa, the Havamal is considered to be the best poem dealing with human subjects. "Havamal" is composed of the words of Odin, for the good of Man. The most characteristic element is that Odin speaks about himself, of his soul and his power.

There are other poems referring to Odin, such as when he descends to Hell to decipher Balder's dreams; his argument with the giant Vaftrudne; his revenge on King Geirod. Odin is the one who always triumphs, because he has gone through everything and he knows everything; he is the one who shines in art and in knowledge. Tor, on the other hand, is the exact opposite; he has an honest strength, nothing more, just as we see in his search for his hammer, with Trym, with the giant Hyme, and with the Midgard serpent. And when Loke mocks the gods, it is also Tor who comes to their aid, using all his awesome strength. It is Tor who fights against the malevolent powers, and he is the best friend of Man.

"It is not good to be too confident; he who is overly wise is rarely happy." And then, the first verse includes everything from that violent age in which death could become reality at any moment:

Before entering
keep an eye out around you;
look out of the corner of your eye
towards every door...
 
You cannot know for certain
where the enemy hides
that awaits your step.

Further on, we find the Norwegian concept of hospitality. A guest should be humble, and for the first time one can discern in these poems a love of home, no matter how modest it might be:

Having a house
is better than begging.
Each man is master of his home.
Having only two goats and a hut
is better than begging.

The other poem of Havamal is short, barely 10 verses. It is a type of erotic-didactic poem that deals with the deceitfulness of women. Odin proclaims that "one should not believe a woman's word" and goes on to relate his experience. Once he fell in love with the beautiful daughter of a giant who tricked him by making him believe she would meet with him. When he arrived at the indicated place, he found only her enormous dog there waiting.

And everything comes to an end, friends, except renown:
 
Cattle die, friends die,
thyself must also die,
but I know one thing that will never die:
the judgement hanging over the deceased.

No age has been described with such clear verses as these about the Vikings in the Havamal poem. It is an educational poem. It speaks with a profound knowledge that even today acts with a characteristic moral strength. In the appraisal of a person's worth, his power and status are not of utmost importance, but rather it is his experience and his compassion. Success is variable. No one will be rejected due to undeserved poverty, and no one should be ashamed of the roughness of his clothes. The best thing a man can possess is a ready empathy. The fundamental point in Havamal is the sense of perfection with which friendship should be regarded. Friendship should be not only a feeling, but above all a loyal alliance, much like an institution.

Much could be said of this poem alone that contains as many thoughts on lofty things as on the daily questions of practical morality. It is a poem that presents intimate impressions of Man, as the Norwegians were in the ninth century, their emotions, their ambitions, and their courage. A single unassuming quotation gives a good idea of that enormous poem: "The kind and courageous man lives best."

One of the most beautiful poems is "Skirne's journey." It is about the love of Frey for Gerd, the giant's daughter. One day Frey sits on the high seat of Hlidskjalf, and looking out, "he takes in the whole world." He directs his gaze towards the land of the giants and his glance falls upon a beautiful young woman, and love fills his heart with sorrow. His parents, wanting to know what ails him, send Skirne to find out what is making Frey sad, and Frey tells him: "Never has a young man loved a maiden as I love her." So Skirne asks Frey for his horse that can cross the magic flames and his sword that bends only towards the enemy, and, thus prepared, he sets off for Jotunheim, towards Gyme's farm. When he arrives, he tries to persuade Gerd, first with promises, then with threats, to marry Frey, but it is all in vain. He threatens her life but is unable to intimidate her. He only succeeds with the help of magic, and Gerd consents to meet with Frey in nine nights. The poem ends with the impassioned, longing voice of Frey:

"The night is long,
two are even longer,
how will the time pass in three?
 
Many times, a month
has seemed shorter to me
than half this night of yearning!"

The "Harbarsljod" "Song of Harbard" is a comical poem. (Tor, son of Odin, is the god of thunder in Norse Mythology; thunder is produced by the rolling of his cart pulled by two goats). Trym has stolen Tor's hammer. Then Loke (Loke is the father of the monster Fenrisulven and of the Midgard serpent) goes to Trym, requesting that he return it, but Trym does not accede, arguing that he will only do so if Loke brings him the goddess Freya to be his wife. She becomes enraged and refuses. So, Loke resorts to the ruse of disguising Tor as a woman and brings him to Trym's house. In the poem Trymskvida Tor encounters the Midgard serpent, and the joy-filled verses tell of Tor's expedition to the land of the giants in search of his hammer. There is an adventurous tone to this poem that has made it popular in the three Nordic countries. Things become funny at the end between Trym and a disguised Tor, who, despite his anger and his disguise, devours with a powerful appetite everything within reach; meanwhile the astute Loke tries nimbly to cover up the foolish mistakes Tor makes. Tor eats, on his own, a bull, eight salmon, and all the sweets intended for the women, drinking along with that three casks of mead.

Then in the poem "Lokasenna," Loke mocks the gods at the banquet of Aegir until Tor throws him out.

Rigsdal, the Lay of Rig, is the most impressive song of the Eddas. Going by the name of Rig, Heimdal visited Man (according to the custom of the gods). The idea of the poem is to describe the origin of the social classes and to glorify the king's judgement, as well as to achieve an intimate and reliable understanding of the homes in which Rig lodges and of the people who he finds there. The ranking of the social classes is described in three levels, from the serf to the free peasant to the noble, duke, or chief. (The word bonden "peasant" has much more prestige in Norwegian, and its translation is impossible). The serf, who lives in his hut, contrary to the peasant with his "house" and the noble with his mansion, is ugly and dirty, stooped with cracked skin. The serf has the burden of all the grunt work, such as carrying heavy loads; his children are expected to work the land, milk the goats, etc. His daily food is composed of a morsel of coarse-baked bread and a soup made from the leftovers of the flour used. It is very different from the peasant's house, with his beard and smooth hair, tight-fitting shirt and his wife with a traditional cloth covering her head. The child later born to Edda, and who is called Trael "servant," is described with a nobleman's disdain. With his dark hair and ugly face, it is clear he is not of Nordic heritage. And doesn't that child who comes involuntarily to a world of misery inspire pity?

He began to grow
and he was well.
On his hands there was
wrinkled skin.
 
Crooked knuckles
big fingers
and an ugly face,
curved spine
and long heels...

From the hut, Rig goes to the house of the free peasant, finally arriving at the chief's residence. The chief, or lord, has a table covered with linen, white bread, roasted birds and wine.

And what a change, what a sweet description of the child Jarl "duke."

A mother gave birth to a child,
she wrapped him in silks
she sprinkled him with water
and called him Jarl.
 
Blonde hair
and light cheeks,
penetrating eyes
like a young eagle.

"Volundarkvida," the song of the blacksmith Volund, is well known and can be found even in medieval French poetry. The Norwegian song of Volund is the only one that survives complete. The true legend deals with the blacksmith Volund who is captured and mutilated by the Swedish king, Nidud, and the savage vengeance of Volund. He kills the king's son, then rapes his daughter; afterwards, he builds himself a pair of wings and takes flight. The Norse gave the house of Volund the name of Labyrinth. (This is strangely similar to the Greek legend of Daedelus.) The poem is characterized by its descriptive power in dealing with the blacksmith's revenge.

Another beautiful poem is that of Svipdag, son of Groas, and his beloved, and the obstacles he has to overcome before winning Menglod. For example, here is the greeting Menglod extends to Sveidal:

Welcome,
I have achieved that which I desired.
My greeting will be followed by kisses;
everyone will cheer at the good sight
of two people loving each other...
 
I have been longing
for your caresses,
as you also sighed for mine;
now it is certain
that you and I will live
together eternally...

The most obviously rich historic poem is the one dealing with the Gjukungers and Sigurd Favnesbane. The legend of the Volsungere, as is later narrated in an extended Saga, arrived in the North around the year 900. The songs of the Eddas are from different ages and have varied sources. Their origin is older than that of the German Niebenlungenlied, in which all the characters are Christians; however, this most recent song of the Eddas was influenced by German myth.

The main figures in these Eddaic poems are Sigurd Favnesbane; Gudrun, the daughter of Gjuke, and her brother Gunnar; the valkyrie Brynhild and her brother Attila, the king of the Huns; the dwarf Regen; King Jormnrek; and the last husband of Gudrun, King Jonakr. It is a tragic poem, weighty like no other. In the end, Gudrun is the only survivor, having been robbed and stripped of everything. The dark powers of destiny float around the poem's protagonists. The thirst for vengeance never abates, even when it comes to one's own children. The tone of the verses is singularly Nordic, [and the poem is] made up of characters that can be seen in all works of Norwegian literature. The strength of the expressions, the mysticism found within sorrow, the realistic strength of the scenes: all reveal a mode which endures in the Sagas.

The tragedy of the poem is born from how Sigurd treats the valkyrie Brynhild and Gudrun. Engaged to the first, he forgets about her when he drinks a forgetfulness potion and marries Gudrun. And what worse pain for Brynhild than that of seeing Sigurd in the form of Gunnar, riding a horse, crossing the flames and courting her as if he were Gunnar. Brynhild brings about Sigurd's death and then kills herself. The last songs tell of Gudrun's revenge and of how one crime follows another until Gudrun is the only survivor.

And then, speaking of Gudrun, "she did not cry like the other women, but felt near to bursting with grief." Her sisters assemble to try to alleviate her pain through tears, and at that moment Gudrun seems to me to be more admirable than Brynhild.

Brynhild, who was thus:
Standing next to the pedestal
gathering her strength,
then a fire burns
in Brynhild's eyes.
 
The daughter of Budle
gives off poison,
while the wound
of Sigurd she looks upon.

But Gudrun is more beautiful, perhaps because of her weakness, perhaps because of her involuntary participation in the tragedy that suddenly envelopes her:

Then Gudrun fell,
leaning towards the bed;
her curls undone,
her cheeks flushed,
and a shower of tears
falls upon her skirt...
 
This is how Gudrun cried,
the daughter of Gjuke,
in a swift torrent
her tears sprang,
until outside, in the stable,
the geese honked,
those sacred birds
that Gudrun kept...

Just as in the Sagas, later, the Eddas have this unique power to describe characters that show their deepest strength during the greatest crises of the soul, in hatred, love, and even more so in pain. They have delved best into grief and with better emotional results and perfect execution, all these motifs having inspired the epic songs. Volund, who cruelly and without cause takes revenge on the small children of his enemies; Brynhild, who cruelly kills the only one she loves; Gunnar, King of the Burgundians, following her into death; Gudrun, who remains shut up, unable to cry, next to the body of Sigurd, until her tears emerge when she is shown his wounds; and Gudrun, who also sends her sons to their death to avenge their sister Svanhild.

The most admirable character of the Eddas is Odin, known in the North of Norway and Germany as a nocturnal horseman who is in constant battles with the wood nymphs. In Southern Germany they have another image of Odin, which exists also in England, and is the one that believes him to be a sort of God of Death who crosses the night sky in search of dead souls. In the ancient mythological and epic Irish poetry, Odin is the one who plays the leading role. He is foremost the God of War, and also the God of Wisdom, being adept at reading runic inscriptions and magic words.

Odin is described as a tall old man, with a long beard and only one eye, wrapped in a blue cape and with a wide-brimmed hat. He is also described as a horseman with a spear, crossing the earth and sea, astride his eight-legged horse Sleipner.

And next to Odin, but not as high, is the figure of Balder. Balder, the white god, who had bad dreams and who was killed by Hod, the blind man. Balder, who returns from Hell after Ragnarok (the end of the world) and who is the son of Odin and Frigg, according to the Eddas. But his story is long, and so, even now, the figure of Odin is the one that is easiest to remember. Odin, so great, with that exhaustive, shrewd and valiant magnificence of verbal expression.

And the voice of the God of War was a reliable and bitter omen when he said: "Everyone dies, cattle die, friends die, thyself also must die: but I know one thing that never dies: the dead man's renown..."

Odin, who wore sharp-eyed crows on his shoulders and who also thought: "the bad friend lives isolated, even though his house is down the road; but towards the good friend, even if he lives far away, the roads seem to shorten."

 

Winona State University