Independent ​People 3 csillagozás

As the steaming jet curved down into the coffee-pot, the first words of the day were heard in the croft: the prelude employed by his grandmother to conjure Asta Sollilja from her depths of sleep. This ceremony was repeated morning after morning in accordance with an unvarying rule, and though to Asta herself it seemed every morning equally strange, the boy knew it well enough to remember it his whole life through.
“Merciful heavens, what an awful sight! Just look at her lying there, a half-grown woman, fast asleep at this time of day! When in the name of heaven will they ever begin to show some sense?”
Was his grandmother really so silly as to believe she could wake anyone with a feeble, quavering rigmarole like that? It was for all the world as if she were just gabbling away to herself in between her morning hymns. Anyway, Asta Sollilja slept on, her head in the corner, mouth open, chin up, and head back, with one hand under her ear and the other half-open on coverlet as if she thought in her sleep that someone would come and lay happiness in her palm.

151., Book one, Part 2 - Winter morning (Random House, 1997)

“God knows, and Jesus Christ, that if there’s anything I regret it’s not having had them all instead of marrying a man that worships dogs and sets more store on sheep than he does on the human soul. I only wish I had had sense enough to turn back today and go home to Father and Mother.”
“Oh, I knew all right it wasn’t the old ghoul you were afraid of,” he said. “I can see a bit farther than the end of my nose, you know. And there’s no need to question you; it doesn’t take much to see through a woman. This is how you work it usually: you love those who are fine enough gentlemen to kick you out when they’re sick of you, then you go off and marry someone you despise.”

34-35., Part 1 - Secrets (Random House, 1997)

he knew that women are even more to be pitied than ordinary mortals.

35-36., Part 1 - Secrets (Random House, 1997)

Bjartur stood gazing at them for a while in obvious commune with his soul, then declared with great conviction:
“Yes, it’s all settled,” and touched the babe’s face with his strong, grimy hand, which had battled with the spectral monsters of the country. “She shall be called Asta Sollilja.”

110., Book one, Part 1 - Life (Random House, 1997)

So the old man wept the Lord’s Prayer, without ceasing to tremble, without lifting his head, without taking the handkerchief from his eyes. More than half the words were drowned in the heaving of his sobs; it was not so easy to make out what he said: “Our Father, which art in Heaven, yes, so infinitely far away that no one knows where You are, almost nowhere, give us this day just a few crumbs to eat in the name of Thy Glory, and forgive us if we can’t pay the dealer and our creditors and let us not, above all, be tempted to be happy, for Thine is the Kingdom”

129-130., Book one, Part 1 - Bearers (Random House, 1997)

“… Now, one day in summertime, shortly after war broke out, it so happened that I had occasion to visit the District Medical Officer on some small business connected with the animals’ physic, and while we were sitting over a cup of coffee he brought out a most interesting foreign book and showed me some pictures of these two countries, France and Germany. I should like to make it clear that I examined the pictures as closely as circumstances allowed. And I came to the conclusion, after minute scrutiny and conscientious comparison of the pictures, that there is no fundamental difference between France and Germany at all, and that they are actually both the same country, with not even a strait between them, much less a fjord. Both countries have woods, both countries have mountains, both countries have cornfields, and both countries have cities. It is at least impossible to see any difference in the landscapes. And as for the inhabitants of these two countries, I am not afraid to declare that they are neither more stupid nor more vicious in appearance than any other folk, and certainly no more stupid-looking in the one country than in the other. To judge from the pictures, they would appear to be quite ordinary people, except that whereas the Germans are said to keep their hair close-cropped, many of the French are supposed to stick to the old custom of growing beards, much the same as in out own parish for instance, where some people keep their hair short while others prefer to grow a beard. The truth, I imagine, is that both the French and the Germans are just ordinary sort of folk, fellows of a decent harmless sort of nature such as we find so many of around here, for instance, That is why I have arrived privately at the conviction, and I am fully prepared to maintain it in public if need be, that the aforesaid disagreement between these men sprang from a misunderstanding. And that the cause of it is that each things he is better than the other, when as a matter of fact here is no real difference between them except perhaps some trifling variation in the manner of wearing the hair.”

377-378., Book two, Part 2 - When Ferdinand Was Shot (Random House, 1997)

Few things are so inconstant, so unstable, as a loving heart, and yet it is the only place in the world where one can find sympathy. Sleep is stronger than the noblest instinct of a loving heart. In the middle of his mother’s agony the light began to grow dim. The kettle’s gurgling receded; the crackling of the fire, the bustling of his grandmother, her muttering and grumbling, her snatches of forgotten hymns, everything dissolved into fleeting half-wakeful dreams that no longer had beaks or claws, dreams empty of passion and suffering, blithe and desirable as the lives of the elves in the crags. The drowsiness of midnight, so sweet, so heavy, began again to flow through his limbs; and little by little, like a hundred grains of sand, his consciousness filtered down into the abyss of his sleep-world until oblivion had one more filled it full.

147., Book one, Part 2 - Winter morning (Random House, 1997)

“My dear Olafur,” said Bjartur indulgently, “for goodness’ sake don’t let anyone think that you take all that sort of thing seriously. You should beware of believing things you see in books. I never regard books as the truth, and least of all the Bible, because there’s no check on what they can write in them. They can spin lies as big as they like, and you never know, if you haven’t been on the spot. […]
“The story can say what it likes for me,” said Bjartur sceptically, “but what I’d like to know is this: Who saw Jesus rise on a Sunday? A bunch of women, I expect, and how much can you rely on women and their nerves? There was a woman from the south in service at Utirauthsmyri a year or two ago, for instance, who came in yelling that she had stumbled over an exposed baby on the landslides there, one late summer evening it was, and she swore it let out a wail. But what do you think it was? Nothing but a blessed wild cat in heat, of course.”

64-65., Part 1 - Shepherds' Meet(Random House, 1997)

And if Bjartur heard them complaining about the damp, he would reply that it was pretty miserable wretches that minded at all whether they were wet or dry. He could understand why such people had been born.

219., Book one, Part 2 - The Tyranny of Mankind (Random House, 1997)

“What do they call you?” he asked, and her heart stood still.
“Asta Sollilja,” she blurted out in an anguish-stricken voice.
“Asta what?” he asked, but she didn’t dare own up to it again.
“Sollilja,” said little Nonni.
[…]
“Now I know why the valley is so lovely,” said the visitor.
She hadn’t the faintest idea what to say – the valley lovely? For weeks afterwards she racked her brains. What had he meant? She had often heard people talk about lovely wool and lovely yarn, and most of all, lovely sheep – but the valley? Why, the valley was nothing but a marsh, a sodden marsh where one stood over the ankles in puddles between the hummocks and deeper still in the bogs, a stagnant lake where some people said that kelpie lived, a little croft on a low hillock, a mountain with belts of crags above, very seldom sunshine. She looked about her in the valley, looked at the marsh, the evil marsh where all summer long she had lifted the sodden hay, soaking and unhappy; the days seemed to have had no mornings, no evenings to look forward to – and now the valley was lovely. Now I know why the valley is so lovely. Why then? No, it wasn’t because she was called Asta Sollilja. If it was lovely it was because a wonderful man had come into the valley.

231-232., Book one, Part 2 - The Visitor (Random House, 1997)