Tuesday 31 December 2002

Pic of the day: Winter has the land in its icy grip.

Niflheim

I expected bus routes to be as usual until the afternoon. But when I arrived at the bus stop, the bus was not in sight. As usual I was there just in time. But even had I been a little late, I should be able to see the bus disappearing in the distance. (That's happened more than once too.) There was no sign of it, and half an hour till the next.

The Vikings (presumably my ancestors ca 1200 years ago) believed that Hell was cold. Actually, to confuse things further, the word "hell" is derived from Hel or Hela, queen of the dead. She reigned in a shadowland also often called Hel. (The name Helheim, Hel's home, is still understood by most Norwegians.) It was not a hell, or even strictly speaking a place of punishment. It was a dreary place, dust and shadows, much like the Greek kingdom of death, Hades. And like Hades had its Tartaros, so there was also a worse place than Helheim. Niflheim. It was a place of eternal frost, numbing the body and the soul. Rivers of weapons ran through it. Only the frost giants could feel at home in such a place; for humans it would mean torture or annihilation.

These cheerful thoughts came to me vividly as I walked up and down the hilly road between home and bus stop. I walked as fast as I could without losing my breath, and in this way I managed to keep reasonably warm. But the cold kept seeping in through my skin and into the muscles of my legs, I could feel them slowly stiffening. Half an hour is approximately enough time to walk from the bus stop to home and back again. But since that's a rather pointless thing to do, I walked up and down the hill instead.

The sun came up, but it shed no warmth, only light. Was this the burning orb that had baked me only a few months ago, so even the lightest of clothing felt too much? The cold light reminded of theologians without the Holy Ghost. I was most grateful for a warm bus to step into, and it was even a couple minutes early.

***

The distance is not long from one Hell to another. As the bus came closer to the city, it slowed down. Thick gray smoke billowed in front of us, and soon we saw cars from the fire department. A house was on fire, water was being pumped in through the broken windows in the upper floor. Someone has to celebrate the New Year without their home, I guess. The walls still stood, even though they were made of wood; so the fire must have been discovered fairly early. Still, it was not a pretty sight.

I am burning some of my large stock of candles myself, now, at home, trying to keep the cold away. I've also turned up the electric heating. There is no oil or wood heating in the flat. It was built at a time when the government encouraged electric heating to save the environment. Now we don't have enough water for all our hydroelectric needs, so we must import electricity made from fossil fuels. And our electricity, once among the cheapest in the world, is now either the most expensive in Europe or close to it. Well, that's market economy for you. There certainly is a market for heating right now.

***

The Vikings did not worry about the "greenhouse effect". They feared the Fimbul-winter, three winters in a row without any summer, which would mark the beginning of Ragnarok, the end of the age of their gods. (The word is derived from Regin, those who reign, their name for gods. The usual translation is "twilight of the gods".) The Vikings had good reason for their fear: Not only was there signs scattered all over the landscape from the time when glaciers had covered our country. But they also lived in a time when it was growing steadily colder. Not rapidly, but inexorably. Roots of large trees were found in the mountains where now only heather and grasses grew. But even so, the Vikings lived in a slightly warmer age than we. Since the end of the stone age, where wild boars frolicked in our woods, the cold has been seeping back in. Slowly, slowly, slowly. Only in the last century has the trend been reversed. Perhaps.

I notice that there has been very little talk about greenhouse effect this year. I wouldn't mind a little bit more of it right now.