Still Water

Fimbulvetr: in North mythology, the three-year Long Winter that precedes Ragnarok, the war between the gods, the end of the world.

Loki was captured, and with no thought of mercy he was taken to a cave and bound onto the tops of the three stones. Skadi took a poisonous snake and fastened it above Loki so that its poison dripped onto his face…He convulses so violently that the whole earth shakes. He will lie bound there until Ragnarok.

First will come the winter called Fimbulvetr…
-from the Prose Edda


With a mighty shove, the fisherman launches his boat and takes three running steps before leaping in.

His younger son is already working the oars, building speed as they break through the thin layer of ice and head out to open water. The red-cheeked youth’s breath is visible as he sings heartily into the spring air.

Not that it feels like spring, not yet. The thaw is late this year, and the frosted tree branches glisten silver against the overcast sky. But some trick of geography, of currents and hot springs, keeps their little inlet from freezing over completely. It’s their secret, their way of starting the fishing season early. Besides, the fish keep their own schedule.

The fisherman’s elder son will not be joining them this year. That son was wedded at the end of the last harvest season and joined his new wife’s clan in the north. The fisherman was sad to see his son go, of course, but he celebrated the union of the clans and the love the two young people found.

He hopes the fishing will be good this season. If the first catch is large enough, he will send part of it north, a further offering of harmony between the clans. 

The fisherman thinks it’s been a month since he’s seen the sun. He worries briefly that the clouds above are an omen, a sign of the gods’ displeasure over some perceived slight or–perhaps more alarmingly–an indication of conflict between the gods themselves, but he quickly dismisses the thought as superstition.

However, he glances over his shoulder at the mountain that rises unchanging behind their cabin, lifts his eyes to the milky sky beyond, and says a prayer, as he does on the first fishing day of each season, asking the gods to bless the coming year.


War will rage across the land and brother will kill brother. The bonds of family will be shattered…it will be an age of axes and an age of swords, an age of winds, an age of wolves. It will lead to the ruin of the world.
-From the Prose Edda


The thaw did not come. The moon has waxed and waned a dozen times, and the trees remain silvered with frost.

The crust of ice on the inlet pond is thicker, and the fisherman has to work harder to get his boat into open water. He has no one to help him this year. No thaw meant no crops; no crops meant hunger; hunger meant raids, and now there is outright war. Covenants have been forgotten as each clan fends for itself, and his younger son–able-bodied and strong from years of working the oars–is away fighting.

Even the alliances of matrimony between clans mean nothing now. The fisherman knows that his sons are on opposite sides of this conflict, and he despairs that they will meet in combat.

He holds onto the desperate hope that he can find enough fish to prevent starvation, though he does not even know if the fish are running this year, if they have kept to the cycle that the seasons have forgotten.

As he glances back at the towering mountain, he prays to any gods who will listen that the world be set right again.


The whole earth, together with the mountains, will start to shake so that the trees will loosen from the ground, the mountains will fall, and all fetters and bonds will sever and break. Then the mighty wolf will break free…he will open his great maw so that the upper part of his jaws touches the sky, while the lower part rests on the earth. From his eyes and nostrils flames will flare and burn…
-From the Prose Edda


For three years now, there has been no thaw.

The little inlet pond has frozen through. The ice stretches as far as the fisherman can see. Even if he could get his boat to open water–which he can’t, not by himself–the fish have gone.

Hunger has become famine; famine has become pestilence. Life has become death.

He holds his elder son’s dagger in his hands. His son’s bride had sent it to him a month ago, wrapped in a black cloth of mourning. It was right, she had written, that the dagger be returned to her late husband’s birth clan.

The mountain has been spitting smoke and ash for the last three days. In the ground beneath him, the fisherman can hear a faint rumbling, like the low growl of a great beast readying to spring.

This morning the fisherman held tight to his younger son as the boy lay on the sweat-soaked bed, and he clenched his jaw and tried to force away the tears as his son’s fever-bright eyes closed and the wracking breaths left his body for the last time.

The earth’s growl is building. He can feel it reverberating in the air around him. He is tired of waiting.

The mountain behind him explodes with a roar, flames leaping into the air.

He falls to his knees on the ice, the dagger in his hands an offering, and he prays that he will see his sons again soon as fire rains down from above.