SKUGGA

He walks ahead of the winter

Grey stone, the bear's head set over a serpent knotted into itself. Björn is not his name. It means only the brown one, a way of speaking about him without calling him, because the real word was never said aloud in case he answered to it.

Eaten at dusk, whole by morning

Thor's goats were killed and cooked for supper, the bones laid back in the hides, and by morning both stood up again. One of them limped: a farmer's son had split a thigh bone for the marrow, and the goat carried the mark of it ever after.

The one who arrives before you do

Born with you and never far off, it goes a little way ahead. That is why a household hears the latch, or feet in the snow at the door, some minutes before anyone actually comes.

Rivers run from his antlers

Eikþyrnir stands on the roof of the hall and grazes the tree that grows through it. Water drips from his antlers into the spring below, and every river in the world begins there.

The first man was driftwood

Two logs lay on a beach. Of the ash they made a man and of the elm a woman, and gave them breath, then sense, then the colour in their faces. Everyone since is descended from something the sea threw up.

Caught out by the sun

They keep to the night. The ones who stayed out too long are still there in the fells, sitting where the first light found them, hands on their knees, grown over with lichen.