Never did these thanes of hell escape their just deserts. No one ever heard of Harekur or Gongu-Hrolfur or Bernotus being worsted in the final struggle. In the same way no one will be able to say that Bjartur of Summerhouses ever got the worst of it in his world war with the country's specters, no matter how often he might tumble over a precipice or roll head over heels down a gully - "while there's a breath left in my nostrils, it will never keep me down, no matter how hard it blows."
Icelandic author (1902-1998)
Halldór Kiljan Laxness (23 April 1902 – 8 February 1998), born Halldór Guðjónsson, was a 20th century Icelandic author who won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1955.
From: Wikiquote (CC BY-SA 4.0)
Alternative Names:
Halldór Kiljan Laxness
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Halldor Laxness
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Halldor Kiljan Laxness
From Wikidata (CC0)
He swore repeatedly, ever the more violently the unsteadier his legs became, but to steel his senses he kept his mind fixed persistently on the world-famous battles of the rhymes. He recited the most powerful passages one after another over and over again, dwelling especially on the devilish heroes, Grimur Ægir and Andri. It was Grimur he was fighting now, he thought . . . but now an end would be put to the deadly feud, for now the stage was set for the final struggle.
In early times, say the Icelandic chronicles, men from the Western Islands came to live in this country, and when they departed, left behind them crosses, bells, and other objects used in the practice of sorcery . . . In those days there was great fertility of the soil in Iceland. But when the Norsemen came to settle here, the Western sorcerers were forced to flee the land, and old writings say that Kolumkilli, determined on revenge, laid a curse on the invaders, swearing that they would never prosper here, and more in the same spirit, much of what has since, to all appearances, been fulfilled.