Burial Rites

by Hannah Kent

only addressing one another to request the spade, or to ask which barrel of salted cod ought to be opened first.

There was only a little barley left.

mutton for the pot. There was no point cutting down any smoked lamb at this time of year, but there was a slice or two of blood sausage left from the winter, very sour but good.

The poems composed as I washed and scythed and cooked until my hands were raw. The sagas I know by heart.

Once, before his mother had died, the church plot had been full of small plants that threw purple blossoms over the edges of the graves in summer. His mother had said that the dead made the flowers sway, to greet the churchgoers after winter. But when she died, his father ripped out the wildflowers and the graves had lain bare ever since.

Why?

His father looked up from the boiling fish and nodded.

We are all God’s children, he thought to himself. This woman is my sister in Jesus, and I, as her spiritual brother, must guide her home. He smiled and brought his horse to a tölt. “I will save her,” he whispered.

Good reverend

These northern days, with their lingering fingers of light, the constant gloaming, unsettled him. He could not guess at the hour of the day as he could at the school in the south.

Skyr perhaps. Or dried fish. She wondered whether she had enough butter to spare,

The dried seaweed in her pillow rustles as she turns her head.

offered a covered plate to Margrét. “Rye bread,”

Ósk Jóhannsdóttir said she had spoken with Soffia Jónsdóttir, whose brother Jóhann is a farmhand at Hvammur, and she said that Blöndal had decided to take Agnes from Stóra-Borg, because they couldn’t risk such an important family being slaughtered—”

LOL!

“Pétur slit the throats of thirty sheep, Róslín. He was a thief.” “But they were noble Icelanders all the same.

LOL!

“Róslín, if I have heard rightly, Natan spent more of his time in the beds of married women than in his Illugastadir workshop!”

LOL. Agnes is Margaret's outcast. Love how she defends her.

foster-mother Inga

I heart Inga

I softly chant the names of all the places I have lived at. It’s like an incantation: Flaga, Beinakelda, Litla-Giljá, Brekkukot, Kornsá, Gudrúnarstadir, Gilsstadir, Gafl, Fannlaugarstadir, Búrfell, Geitaskard, Illugastadir.

He rounded up the small flock of sheep belonging to his father and milked them with exaggerated care,

Toti

but there are tansies, and little bitter herbs

You plaited my sister’s hair and gave us an egg each.”

dinner of dried fish and butter.

The next morning Tóti rose early to milk Ýsa. He pressed his forehead to the cow’s warm flank, and listened to the even rhythm of the milk spurting into the wooden pail.

“Are you hurt?” Steina whispered to Agnes as she walked past. Agnes shook her head, her jaw clenched.

Awww

he is freckle-faced and—I beg your pardon, Reverend—red-headed, a sign of a treacherous nature.

Together they listed the people they had known who had died on the mountains. A bleak conversation to have, thought Margrét, but there was some comfort in talking about death aloud, as though in naming things, you could prevent them from happening.

bags of blood sausage into a pot

two or four spesiurs

Look this up

Geraldine Brooks,

She wrote a book with bubonic plague! I like her