Hi friends.
Almost since SSSS started, I've been trying to write a retelling of the comic in English alliterative metre, because that seems to be the nearest thing in English verse to the Kalevala metre. I keep revising more than I write, so I haven't got very far, and even of that I'm really only prepared to show the earliest, most revised bits, but here goes for Prologue 1
Day 0
Dalsnes, rain-dark, double-streamed fjord hithe,
Riven from the land by rocks collapsed
Under ceaseless rain severing the hill-road.
In a harbour café comrades chatter
Of the barred town-link and boats for their need
To reopen trade. Ingrid Pedersen,
Low-effort hippie, longs for the car-way
To shut for ever. Aksel, worrier,
Groans for his kin, grandma alone,
Her sole company a cat to stroke,
Threatened by the sickness. Thrawn, sharp-speaking
Sigrun Larsen would lock the hithe
From the old and the frommed, over-needy.
Her wasp-tongue stings worrier Aksel;
Grandma-anxious Eide grandson
Dashes rain-drenched to Dalsnes pier
And to Gunnar's boat. He begs the skipper
Passage for his nan and her companion cat
To Dalsnes hithe. His doubt relieved
Aksel lingers too long on the staithe
And a whale-big wave whelms the delayer.
Drenched and fallen he finds his companions
Laughing at his downfall as they linger at coffee.
Goran Andersen, awesome-bearded,
In the papers reads of the rash sickness,
Of Iceland’s block on incoming folk
Lest sick workers dissize their wealth;
How its fast spread, deficient care-skills
For oldest and babes forebode danger
Of ill outcoming; Aksel was right
To fear for his kin. But the four comrades
Cosy in the hithe, happy at the loss
Of the land trade-path, look to a time
Of old ways revived, vikings again
For a brief sithe till the sickness ends.
While Gunnar's sea-rider the city reaches
Recovers Grandma and cat to fetch
Safe to Dalsnes in sickness days.
