Robin Banks

“KRÁKUMÁL

[...]

25. We struck with our swords!
My soul is glad, for I know
that Balder’s father’s benches
for a banquet are made ready.
We’ll toss back toasts of ale
from bent trees of the skulls;
no warrior bewails his death
in the wondrous house of Fjolnir.
Not one word of weakness
will I speak in Vidrir’s hall.

26. We struck with our swords!
The sons of Aslaug all would
rouse the wrath of Hild here
with their ruthless sword-blades,
if they fathomed fully
how far I have traveled,
how so many serpents
stab me with their poison.
My son’s hearts will help them:
they have their mother’s lineage.

27. We struck with our swords!
Soon my life is ended;
Goinn scathes me sorely,
settles in my heart’s hall;
I wish the wand of Vidrir
would wound Æelle, one day.
My sons must feel great fury
that their father is put to death;
my daring swains won’t suffer
in silence when they hear this.

28. We struck with our swords!
I have stood in the ranks
at fifty-one folk-battles,
foremost in the lance-meet.
Never did I dream that
a different king should ever
be found braver than me—
I bloodied spears when young.
Æsir will ask us to feast;
no anguish for my death.

29. I desire my death now.
The disir call me home,
whom Herjan hastens onward
from his hall, to take me.
On the high bench, boldly,
beer I’ll drink with the Gods;
hope of life is lost now—
laughing shall I die!”
― Ben Waggoner, The Sagas of Ragnar Lodbrok

“I am not going to tell you my name, not yet at any rate.' A queer half-knowing, half-humorous look came with a green flicker into his eyes. 'For one thing it would take a long while: my name is growing all the time, and I've lived a very long, long time; so my name is like a story. Real names tell you the story of things they belong to in my language, in the Old Entish as you might say. It is a lovely language, but it takes a very long time saying anything in it, because we do not say anything in it, unless it is worth taking a long time to say, and to listen to.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Two Towers

“Dostoevsky, too, had lived a dismal and hard life. The czar sent him to a prison camp in Siberia in 1849. Dostoevsky was accused of writing socialist propaganda. He was eventually pardoned and wrote stories to ward off his creditors. Just like in the early '70s I wrote albums to ward off mine.”
― Bob Dylan, Chronicles, Volume One

“I want to be like water. I want to slip through fingers, but hold up a ship.”
― Michelle Williams