From the Mouth of the Whale

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I was on my way home from the hunt. In my right hand I held my net, in my left a lantern, and in the pack slung over my back was my prey, a wild boar with tusks of steel; a colossal beast that had run amok in the lands of the north, wreaking havoc until the alarm was raised and I was charged with hunting it down. It was not the first of the North Wind’s monstrous brood that I had laid low — the wolf that wept tears of milk, the one-footed water hare, the bull elk with the golden pizzle and the queen of the shag-haired trout had all made acquaintance with my net — but this huge-tusked boar was without doubt the most savage brute the north had ever snorted from its icy nostril.

Instead of leaving the carcass on the bloody field as the laws decreed, I brought it with me, intending to cast it at my brothers’ feet. Then the Father would see which of his sons laboured hardest to keep our world in check: those who never stirred from the all-encompassing paternal abode where they occupied themselves with administrative business (such was the euphemism for courtly life), or I who flew far and wide, dispatching monsters.

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