Jarl’s Wake Youth’s Dream

Bright wake frozen horizon
snow crystals chill heavy cipher.
Still heard hoary ghost glorified voice.
Voice vibrating Viking furied forth.
Hunting on fierce defiant Arctic wind
pacing out time run eternal packed ice.

“Rage destined exile famed
birth right blade Jarl seize.
Strive death, sin stained,
birthmark fate be birth price.

Purposeless, plebeian spilt salt lust,
tempts base shame straw death.
Dying, death bound be outcast
warrior dies dust outsider doomed.

Hurled with savage savoured thrust;
darts, skilled flown, hawk prey, fled throw.
Quiver, between convulsive, rich walls,

[...] Read more

poem by Terence George Craddock
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The Bard's Incantation

The Forest of Glenmore is drear,
It is all of black pine, and the dark oak-tree;
And the midnight wind to the mountain deer,
Is whistling the forest lullaby:
The moon looks through the drifting storm,
But the troubled lake reflects not her form,
For the waves roll whitening to the land,
And dash against the shelvy strand.

There is a voice among the trees,
That mingles with the groaning oak-
That mingles with the stormy breeze,
And the lake-waves dashing against the rock;-
There is a voice within the wood,
The voice of the Bard in fitful mood;
His song was louder than the blast,
As the Bard of Glenmore through the forest past.

'Wake ye from your sleep of death,
Minstrels and bards of other days!

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poem by Sir Walter Scott
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Drowning the Sun

stack the bodies higher

the world’s engulfed in fire

and london bridge is burning down

the ashes fall like rain

acidic layer’s bitter pain

and norway is bleeding profound

massive overload calamity

atrocity breaking reality

and the sun’s flames are being drowned.

poem by Patrick Szwaja
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Our language

Thou, who sailest Norse mountain-air,
And Denmark's songs by the cradle singest,
Who badest in Hald the war-flames flare,
And, heard in our children's joy, gently ringest,-
Thou treasure of treasures,
Our mother-tongue,
In pains as in pleasures
Our home and our tower,
With God our power,-
We hallow thee!

Whispering secrets that Holberg stored,
Thou borest him home to a brighter morning,
Didst serve him with armor and whet his sword
For satire's assaults and for laughter's warning.
Thou spirit all knowing,
Our mother-tongue,
The ages foregoing,
The future now growing,
The present glowing,-

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poem by Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson
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Baltic Fog Notes

Seven days all fog, all mist, and the turbines pounding through high seas.
I was a plaything, a rat’s neck in the teeth of a scuffling mastiff.
Fog and fog and no stars, sun, moon.
Then an afternoon in fjords, low-lying lands scrawled in granite languages on a gray sky,
A night harbor, blue dusk mountain shoulders against a night sky,
And a circle of lights blinking: Ninety thousand people here.
Among the Wednesday night thousands in goloshes and coats slickered for rain,
I learned how hungry I was for streets and people.

I would rather be water than anything else.
I saw a drive of salt fog and mist in the North Atlantic and an iceberg dusky as a cloud in the gray of morning.
And I saw the dream pools of fjords in Norway … and the scarf of dancing water on the rocks and over the edges of mountain shelves.
Bury me in a mountain graveyard in Norway.
Three tongues of water sing around it with snow from the mountains.

Bury me in the North Atlantic.
A fog there from Iceland will be a murmur in gray over me and a long deep wind sob always.

Bury me in an Illinois cornfield.
The blizzards loosen their pipe organ voluntaries in winter stubble and the spring rains and the fall rains bring letters from the sea.

poem by Carl Sandburg
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To Johan Sverdrup

When now my song selects and praises
Your forceful name, think not it raises
The rallying-flag for battle near;
The street-fight shall not reach us here.
If sacred poetry's fair hill
Lies open to assassination,-
Is
this
the newer revelation,
Then I withdraw and hold me still.
Then I the words of Einar borrow,
When southern change of kings brought sorrow,
And Harald's hosts their ravage spread:
I follow rather Magnus dead
Than Harald living thus,-and then
I sail away with ships and men.
Nor therefore do I lift anew
The flag of song just now for you,
Because my spirit's deepest yearning
To you for new light now is turning.

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poem by Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson
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6 degrees Celsius

-6 degrees Celsius.
from my balcony,
yes, the atlas
of my balcony,
with the music
of the masters
pouring forth
from within,
I follow the stars
direction Norway
and Sweden
while around the corner
one looks towards Iceland
and 'those islands'.
Kleve is just across the way
and Paris and Brussels
down the road.
this is my mainland!

poem by John O'connell
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The Leaf

The Leaf.

On my walks I picked up a perfectly formed elm leaf,
the colour of dry tobacco. In Norway, during the Nazi
occupation, people had tobacco plants in back yards.
Perhaps carrots and cabbage had been healthier.
Put the leaf on top of a white wall and took a picture.
The wind came and blew it away. I brief meeting of
equals and a memory

poem by Oskar Hansen
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interpretation of Odin's hanging

Odin hung
& all the following Old Norse mouthpieces of Odin
hung on Hávamál's Speech of the High One's windy
constantly verdant world tree
Yggdrasil

Ygg: 'the terrifying'
one of Odin's epithets
& drasil: 'horse'

hung pierced by a spear like a rider hit in battle
down from the horseback

& at the same time

at the same time like a fetus
for nine days with its head downwards
in a womb

*

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poem by Mikael Ejdemyr
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Hydro Land Oddity

send shark teeth to float
away
i have always been swimming to
no[ ]way
tell the fish to breed
waves
and for anyone’s sake word-feed
Wales
break the coral reef stand in
way
you are riding the seahorse
backwards
i’ m climbing the seashore mountain to
Norway
let the parachuting priest dropp onto his
wage
I wish you every
silence
on your way to the
states

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poem by Christos Rodoulla Tsiailis
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Mario Parodi

it is now
mario
with his
parody
again
guitar strings
guitar strums
so
so spanish
my ears
jump
with joy
my ears
have kangaroo
feet
jumping with
joy
to the
skies
to the

[...] Read more

poem by Ric S. Bastasa
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A New Pilgrimage: Sonnet XXXI

Yes, Italy is wise, a cultured prude,
Stored with all maxims of a statelier age;
These are her lessons for our northern blood,
With its dark Saxon madness and Norse rage.
With these she tempers us and renders sage,
As long ago she stayed the barbarous flood
Surging against her, and her heritage
Snatched from the feet of that brute multitude.
Calmly she waits us. What to her shall be
Our fevers of to--day, who erewhile knew
Caesar's ambitions? What our pruriency,
Who saw Rome sacked by the lewd Vandal crew?
What our despair, who, while a world stood mute,
Saw Henry kneel in tears at Peter's foot?

poem by Wilfrid Scawen Blunt
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Parole

Par excellence!
The worst criminal in the world was pardoned
and he comes again into this uppish new world?
Half of his life he has spent
in the Government's boarding house.
Still in his forties but almost forgotten
how to approach a girl properly.
The hypocritical handsome politicians all over the world
search his whereabouts and offer him lot of new profitable contracts.
This illegitimate & ill-mannered person idles again at toll gates
with his new identity.

Dedication to the Norwegian peace brokers in Sri Lanka

poem by Nimal Dunuhinga
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Christmas House

On the second day of Christmas
we left the white house
which had enveloped us.
Ice-crisp evenings
we waited for the train;
the black, shining giant
that took us away
from Christmas.

The lights from the house
winked safely laughing
in white window-frames,
peacefully,
always the same.

Our fingers were freezing,
and we stared enthralled
towards the house
where Christmas dwelt,
not wanting to go away,

[...] Read more

poem by Aase Faugstad
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I think the Hemlock likes to stand

525

I think the Hemlock likes to stand
Upon a Marge of Snow—
It suits his own Austerity—
And satisfies an awe

That men, must slake in Wilderness—
And in the Desert—cloy—
An instinct for the Hoar, the Bald—
Lapland's—necessity—
The Hemlock's nature thrives—on cold—
The Gnash of Northern winds
Is sweetest nutriment—to him—
His best Norwegian Wines—

To satin Races—he is nought—
But Children on the Don,
Beneath his Tabernacles, play,
And Dnieper Wrestlers, run.

poem by Emily Dickinson
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Valleys Of Valhalla

Take me to heaven
On this cold norwegian night
My skin is unleaven
Untouched and so unsanctified
Feel the flame that burns my pegan soul
This sacred ingression
Is a sooth-said rhapsody
This carnel connection
Ignites my flesh with fantasy
A holocaust of love is rising now
Feel the fire
You inspire
Mesmerizer
Take me to the valleys of valhalla
A holocaust of love is rising now
Feel the fire
You inspire
Mesmerizer
Take me to the valleys of valhalla

song performed by Gino Vanelli
Added by Lucian Velea
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Battle Of Brunanburgh

Athelstan King,
Lord among Earls,
Bracelet-bestower and
Baron of Barons,
He with his brother,
Edmund Atheling,
Gaining a lifelong
Glory in battle,
Slew with the sword-edge
There by Brunanburh,
Brake the shield-wall,
Hew'd the lindenwood,
Hack'd the battleshield,
Sons of Edward with hammer'd brands.

Theirs was a greatness
Got from their Grandsires--
Theirs that so often in
Strife with their enemies
Struck for their hoards and their hearths and their homes.

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poem by Alfred Lord Tennyson
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The Norse Gods

Beyond the snow tipped mountains,
where the Norse Gods never speak.
The guardians of winter lay fast asleep.
The endless night has fallen,
upon each sleepy head.
The virgin wilderness lay silent,
without a whisper said.
A sky of many colours,
stretches on forever.
Across this mystic land,
with its silent splendour.
Never touched by human hand.

A writer and a painter,
recluse of I know not where.
Find solace in the conclusion,
that no one will intrude there.
Mind open to the wonder,
that nature has performed.
Imagination has no motive

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poem by David Harris
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The Old Warrior, dode

(dode: Norwegian...died)

For thirty days his body fought
bribes many, temptations spurned
the warrior had simply chosen
his final act of courage

The end came in the night.
The gentle hand that led him forth
to lands where soldiers dwell
left his mask of death…at peace

Buried with honors, the guns did sound.
Respects were paid, off sped the lives
Then the final bookend of life did come
neatly printed and parchment too

Computers require their labels neat.
Dementia, progressive, reason given
Those that knew, knew this not true

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poem by C.H. Sund
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Iona: The Graves Of The Kings

I wish not to lie here.
There's hardly a plot of earth not blessed for burial, but here
One might dream badly.

In beautiful seas a beautiful
And sainted island, but the dark earth so shallow on the rock
Gorged with bad meat.

Kings buried in the lee of the saint,
Kings of fierce Norway, blood-boltered Scotland, bitterly dreaming
Treacherous Ireland.

Imagine what delusions of grandeur,
What suspicion-agonized eyes, what jellies of arrogance and terror
This earth has absorbed.

poem by Robinson Jeffers
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