“But it is lovely here,” Alma went on. “So grand and wonderful—the rocks and the sea and the snow spreading everywhere, and the desolate fields—barrenness and abundance at once. It is like looking at the stars in the sky—emptiness and yet so rich....”
“A bit of good rich pasture land would be more to my taste,” objected Ketill teasingly.
“I suppose it would. Really, I think I feel more at home here than you do yourself.”
“Well, I’m glad you do not find the country altogether forbidding. Many people do, you know.”
“Forbidding? I feel as if I were under a spell. No will of my own, just a thing in the hands of Fate. And I love the feeling that there are great and distant powers that have taken my life into their hands.”
“You had better be careful, or you will be growing superstitious—it is a common failing among the people here. They believe in all kinds of spirits, portents, omens, fate, and all that sort of thing. Look at that gravestone there—the one with the granite pillar. A young poet was buried there. Somehow the top of the stone got broken off. And folk lay it to the charge of the powers of darkness—he killed himself, you know.”
“Yes.... A broken soul beneath a broken stone....”
“I don’t think the powers of darkness trouble themselves much about the gravestones in our churchyards.”
“A poet, you say? And he killed himself? How—why?”
“Threw himself over the cliff into the sea. You can see the spot—over there. It falls sheer down into the fjord.”