Hekla

Mihi Duracoto nomen est, patria Islandia, quam veteres Thulen dixêre: mater erat Fiolxhildis, quæ nuper mortua, scribendi mihi peperit licentiam, cujus rei cupiditate pridem arsi. Dum viveret, hoc diligenter egit, ne scriberem. Dicebat enim, multos esse perniciosos osores artium, qui quod præ hebetudine mentis non capiunt, id calumnientur: legesque figant injuriosas humano generi; quibus sanè legibus non pauci damnati, Heclæ voraginibus fuerint absorpti. Quod nomen esset patri meo, ipsa nunquam dixit, piscatorem fuisse, et centum quinquaginta annorum senem, decessisse perhibebat, me tertium ætatis annum agente, cùm ille septuagesimum plus minus annum in suo vixisset matrimonio.

My name is Duracotus. My homeland is Iceland, which the ancients called Thule. My mother was Fiolxhilde. Her recent death has set me free to write, as I have long burned to do. While she lived, she took great care that I should not write. She said there are many dangerous people who hate the arts. What they are too dull to understand, they slander, and they make laws that harm the human race. Under those laws, not a few people have been condemned and swallowed up in the chasms of Hekla. She never told me my father’s name. She said he was a fisherman and died an old man of a hundred and fifty, when I was in my third year. He had been married for about seventy years.

Primis pueritiæ annis mater me manu trahens, interdumque humeris sublevans, crebrò adducere est solita in humiliora juga, montis Heclæ, præsertim circa festum divi Joannis, quando Sol totis 24. horis conspicuus, nocti nullum relinquit locum. Ipsa herbas nonnullas legens multis cæremoniis, domique coquens, sacculos factitabat ex pellibus caprinis, quos inflatos ad vicinum portum venum importans pro Navium patronis, victum hoc pacto sustentabat.

When I was small, my mother often took me up the lower slopes of Mount Hekla, leading me by the hand and sometimes carrying me on her shoulders. She went especially around the feast of Saint John, when the Sun can be seen for all twenty-four hours and leaves no room for night. She gathered certain herbs with many ceremonies and cooked them at home. Then she made little bags of goatskin, blew them up, and took them to the nearby port to sell to ship captains. That was how she made her living.