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straight over the glacier moraines. There are lots of lovely dells up there, full of mosses and heathers. And then, as I am walking over one of the ridges, suddenly I see a brown ram with trained horns standing there on its own, with no other animal anywhere near, and looking up at me from the hollow. I’ve never been so frightened in all my born days, a speechless person, a helpless girl, because I knew that neither this nor any other straight-horned brown ram existed here at Glacier. A golden lustre shone from him. Never in all my born days have I seen such a fleece on any living animal. I felt I was turning to stone. For a long time I couldn’t tear my eyes from this beautiful animal that I knew didn’t exist here in the valley nor down by the shore nor anywhere in Iceland. The ram just stood there and gazed at me. I feel as if I’m standing there this very day and the ram is gazing at me. What was I to do? In the end I had the sense to run out of sight. I made a wide detour down from the ridge and ran helter-skelter along the hollows all the way down to the sea until I reached the main road. Thanks be to God.
    Embi: A fairy ram?
    The woman inhaled her answer in a falsetto, no doubt still with palpitations to this very day: I don’t know.
    Embi: Did anyone ever get to the bottom of this?
    Miss Hnallþóra: No, of course no one ever got to the bottom of it. Everyone knew as well as I did that there were no straight-horned brown rams in these parts. Some lads from the next farm went up to have a look, but naturally they saw nothing. And since then I myself have never seen anything one could call seeing. And nothing has ever happened to me.

6
     
    Morning at Glacier
     
    Your emissary is up and about early. The light wasn’t conducive to sleeping, especially since there was no curtain at the window of the discoloured blue room where Miss Hnallþóra had shown me to bed the previous night after the coffee; in fact it was already beginning to dawn even then.
    The room was on the right-hand side of the passage from the front door, opposite the spare room. The door had only one hinge and you fastened it with a piece of string. It was evident that it had been nailed up during the winter, and would be nailed up again in the autumn.
    The fog was lifting, the homefield very green after the overnight drizzle. The sheep had got into the homefield; nobody bothered to chase them out. There were a few bluebottles at the window. I felt a little queasy after the immoderate consumption of cakes and chicory-coffee. Admittedly I hadn’t managed to finish even the litre and a half the woman had brought me at the first go; but what would she have expected of me if I had emptied the coffeepot twice, as she expected—three litres in all!
    There was a bed in the room, certainly, but that was the only piece of furniture there: no utensils or other fittings or articles. Was it the intention that a visitor who had taken three litres of that coffee should use the bed itself, like an infant? Upon closer examination, there was in the corner a rusty washstand of the kind now much sought after by folk museums, and that I’m told are still to be found in dwellings in England. It’s the kind of stand that accommodates a washbasin, ewer, and soap dish. There is some brownish water in the ewer. Has this water perhaps been used before for washing? How often? Had previous visitors used the ewer for other purposes, after drinking three litres of coffee last winter while the doors of the house were nailed up?
    A ragged towel hung from a nail in the middle of the wall; it reminded one of a work of art, albeit highly abstruse, by Duchamp. It gives rise to some baffling riddles. Why is this paltry object, so frayed and tattered, given such obvious prominence that one could say it dominates the whole room? Is one to understand this shrieking towel as a gambit directed at myself—a symbol? I mustn’t forget to mention that the room had been thoroughly