Sjon - From the Mouth of the Whale

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The year is 1635. Iceland is a world darkened by superstition, poverty, and cruelty.
Men of science marvel over a unicorn's horn, poor folk worship the Virgin in secret, and both books and men are burnt.
Jonas Palmason, a poet and self-taught healer, has been condemned to exile for heretical conduct, having fallen foul of the local magistrate. Banished to a barren island, Jonas recalls his gift for curing "female maladies," his exorcism of a walking corpse on the remote Snjafjoll coast, the frenzied massacre of innocent Basque whalers at the hands of local villagers, and the deaths of three of his children.
"Achingly brilliant, an epic made mad, made extraordinary." — Junot Díaz
"Hallucinatory, lyrical, by turns comic and tragic, this extraordinary novel should make Sjón an international name. His evocation of seventeenth century Iceland through the eyes of a man born before his time has stuck in my mind like nothing else I’ve read in the last year." — Hari Kunzru
Sjón
The Blue Fox
Dancer in the Dark
Biophilia

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‘It’s going out, I tell you, it’s going out!’

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OLEANDER: a poisonous plant which grows by the Lagarfljót River, between Grænamó and Jórvíkurrimi. If livestock graze on it, they die instantly and their bodies swell up. If rubbed, oleander turns yellowish green in colour and feels somewhat moist to the touch.

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I first glimpsed my future wife by the will o’ the wisp light of the eclipse. At the very moment when the sun was halved, Sigrídur captured my gaze with her eyes — eyes that were a haven of peace amidst the storm of madness that raged on the farm. For I was as bewildered as the dogs that howled, the cats that hissed, the ravens that crawled along the ground, the cows that wandered dazed in the fields. I was as unfortunate as the rest, as unmanned by dread of what catastrophe this eclipse might bring, what terrible tidings it might portend, what loss of life, what pestilence would now wash up from the sea on to our rock, what heresies, what insanity; indeed, I was as confounded as those who ran weeping round the yard or pressed their faces to the muddy paving slabs, tore off their clothes and any hair they could grab hold of, many vomiting in mid-prayer. Yes, I was so terrified that even the marrow of my smallest bones quivered like the wings of a hoverfly — for mankind was helpless, trapped in the midst of the scene that the Apostle Mark had painted in words and the ministers in their Good Friday sermons had branded on our minds as if with a red hot poker; the last hour of the Saviour’s life, the ninth hour when darkness fell at noon, when in his torment he doubted the existence of the merciful Father. If even His favourite, ever-blessed son was filled with dread, how could we poor sinful humans fail to lose our minds with fear? And lose them we did, all except Sigrídur. From inside the farm came a shriek:

‘A miracle! A miracle! He is risen again!’

Shortly afterwards three men burst out of the front door carrying the old man’s body between them. They swung the corpse’s mottled limbs back and forth until it appeared to be raising its wizened arms to heaven, its head thrown back, the jaw falling slackly open to reveal the swollen blue tongue for all to see. It did not take a great physician to realise that the old man was as thoroughly dead as he had been but a short time before. People now began to crowd around the threesome with their pathetic puppet. One held its neck and left arm, the second its waist and right arm, the third and strongest stood behind the corpse, throwing both his arms round the bloated belly and lifting it so that it appeared to be proceeding in little hops to the intended destination, which was the roof of the living quarters. Here is another manifestation of insanity: people are united in actions which they would neither have known how to do nor dreamt of doing until seized by madness. And afterwards they are none the wiser about how to perform those deeds that madness rendered easy. While the servants were forcing their way on to the roof with the old man’s body, Sigrídur took me aside. She had already taken precautions to save me from being caught up in the pandemonium. Without taking her eyes off me she stepped forward and took my hand, and when my gaze seemed about to falter and return to the compellingly infectious behaviour of the others, she followed me, taking another small side-step so that I was looking at her, not them. Thus she lured me step by step into her state of serenity, until she could lead me away. Once we were a good distance from the farm, she told me that she had known a solar eclipse was due, not precisely when, of course, but that one was in the offing. I froze in my tracks, my mouth felt dry and a cold sweat broke out all over my body. Smiling at me, she told me to follow her and we passed out of sight of the farm buildings where the herd of lunatics was trampling the fallow winter turf of the gable, raising the cadaver aloft in silhouette against the grey sky. Once sheltered from view, she sat me down and took a seat facing me across a flat piece of ground. Having gathered some pebbles in her hand, she began to arrange them into a planetary model, laying the largest stone in the middle and calling it Earth, then placing next to it the moon and sun and five planets in a straight line away from them. After this, she began to move the heavenly bodies round the Earth according to their familiar orbits until the sun and moon stood face to face.

‘Here there will be an eclipse of the moon.’

Using a slender heather stalk she drew rays extending from the sun to Earth, then showed how the Earth in this position must cast its shadow on the moon. Next she counted several times on her fingers, muttering the names of the months and diverse numbers. She was calculating when the next lunar eclipse would take place and told me the date.

‘You’ll see; wherever you are in the country you’ll discover it’s true — weather permitting.’

Now Sigrídur moved the pebbles once again, saying meanwhile in her bright girlish voice:

‘On the other hand it’s impossible to predict solar eclipses accurately, though we can assume one will take place after a certain period, more or less. I’ve been waiting a long time for this one.’

By this stage I was not so much listening to the words that fell from her lips as staring at the lips themselves, at their ever-changing shape. I moved closer to examine them better. Sigrídur stopped talking and, taking a piece of blue glass from her apron pocket, raised it to her eye and looked at the sun. The chirping of small birds was stilled, the baying of the dogs was silenced, the people on the turf roof ceased shaking the corpse, a hush descended on the countryside and I felt suddenly cold. High above the Earth the disc of the moon completed its shape on the orb of the sun and in the same instant something was completed inside me. Neither Sigrídur nor I looked up when the gable gave way with a loud crack beneath the weight of the corpse-bearers. Our courtship was one uninterrupted conversation about the origin of the stars, the nature of land and sea, the behaviour of beasts great and small, and although it was not conducted in Hebrew or in the angelic tongue as it was with Adam and Eve, it was nevertheless our hymn to Creation. We sat together into the early hours, investigating the delightful puzzles of light and shadow, such as what happens to the shadow of your hand when the shadow of mine falls upon it? Have they become one? Or has yours disappeared temporarily? And if so, where to? We could talk like this for days, but no more. She fell silent when my enemies, no longer content with abusing me, began their persecution of our son, Reverend Pálmi Gudmundur. The boy was stripped of his habit and his calling. He is now forced to wander from farm to farm like a beggar, his wife constantly with child, like his father — alas. It grieves me just as much as it does Sigrídur to know how little my resistance achieved.

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DIACODUS: this stone has many useful properties. If it is placed in water, a host of spirits appear in it, apparelled like men, and one may ask it to foretell the future. The stone has been found in Iceland. Exemplum: when we lived at Uppsandar my wife Sigrídur happened to be walking beside the sea at the place where the mountainous shore is known as Fellshraun. On a certain flat rock over which the waves broke, she spied something round floating in a pool. When she picked it up, she thought it looked like a stone with magic properties. There was a pink dot high up in the middle and it was girded about with crimson, while the part under water looked green. She took it over to another smaller pool and dropped it in. All at once she saw countless human shapes appear in the water. Seeming to remember that I had read of such a stone, she reacted quickly, intending to put it in her glove and bring it home to me. But before the diacodus could find its way into her mitten, it fell on the shingle with a sharp crack and instantly vanished from sight. Sigrídur would never tell me what she learnt from the spirits but I assume she must have asked them her fortune.

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