There is no other Úa than the one who has always lived with me and never gone from me for a single moment. She is closer to me than the flower of the… - Halldór Laxness

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.

Was all human endeavor then, even the beautiful of the world, of so little consequence compared with murder?

When I discovered that history is a fable, and a poor one at that, I started looking for a better fable, and found theology.