Ætt 2 · Pos. 3
Name
Ice, frozen water: the sheet laid over lake and river.
Meaning
The poems see ice as something built: a floor laid over the water, a bridge across it, a hard skin on the rivers. It shines like glass and jewels, and it gives no grip at all. In the Viking Age the waters were the roads: people and goods moved by boat. Ice turns that over. What was a way for keels becomes ground for feet and sledges, while the water still moves underneath. It holds until it doesn’t. Hávamál keeps the caution: praise ice only once you are across. Ice is winter itself, the time when the world stands still.
The poems
English Rune Poem
Ice is very cold,
slippery beyond measure;
it glistens clear as glass,
most like to gems,
a floor wrought by frost,
fair to look upon.
Icelandic Rune Poem
Ice is the bark of rivers,
and the roof of the wave,
and danger to doomed men.
Norwegian Rune Poem
Ice we call the broad bridge;
the blind must be led.
Swedish Rune Poem
Ice is the broadest bridge.
