{"id":5052,"date":"2013-08-07T13:18:25","date_gmt":"2013-08-07T19:18:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.jerseydevilpress.com\/?page_id=5052"},"modified":"2013-08-07T13:18:25","modified_gmt":"2013-08-07T19:18:25","slug":"sigrun-susan-lane","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"http:\/\/www.jerseydevilpress.com\/?page_id=5052","title":{"rendered":"Sigrun Susan Lane"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>White Land (Hvritanannaland)<\/strong><br \/>\n<br \/>\n<em>\u201ca land promised to the saints, west across the sea which knows neither death nor decay, only simple joys going perpetually on without care.\u201d  Navigatio Santi Brendani Abatis, Ninth Century<\/em><\/p>\n<p>1.  The Monks<\/p>\n<p>Beyond Greenland they found a vast listening post<br \/>\nwhere prayers passed up to heaven<br \/>\nthrough clear air, souls rose like smoke.<\/p>\n<p>Irish monks fled the dragon ships,<br \/>\nhunkered down in the Faroes. Uprooted,<br \/>\nchased to the sea, they scaled Iceland\u2019s cliffs.<\/p>\n<p>The Norsemen followed, dragging<br \/>\ntheir noisy cows, set out farms and fish nets.<br \/>\nNo place for a monk.<\/p>\n<p>The white-robed monks parade for warmth.<br \/>\nTo lift their spirits they shout prayers<br \/>\nin God\u2019s huge ears, raise lurid banners in a freezing wind. <\/p>\n<p>Alone at last, the only sounds their voices,<br \/>\nthey scream at heaven, sing in praise<br \/>\nand benediction of God\u2019s chill wilderness.<\/p>\n<p>Imagine in mid-stride, in a shrieking ave,<br \/>\na priest turns to see flashing oars,<br \/>\nstriped wool sails, red and blue<br \/>\nagainst a tossing sea, a curved dragon<br \/>\ntaunting him from the bow,<br \/>\nlike the devil himself.<\/p>\n<p>2.  The Vikings<\/p>\n<p>It was not for gold they went,<br \/>\nbut for the taste of grapes,<br \/>\nthe smell of fresh cut wood.<\/p>\n<p>In Vinland they found wild wheat,<br \/>\ngrapevines, fields of fine tall grass.<br \/>\nAll left behind.<\/p>\n<p>By now the skraelings<br \/>\nhave taken the birch palisades<br \/>\nthe settlement stones.<\/p>\n<p>So many of them&#8212;<br \/>\nwith their catapults,<br \/>\nthongs of hide and flint.<\/p>\n<p>Wave after wave of them.<br \/>\nThey stung like hornets<br \/>\nand were gone.<\/p>\n<p>Thorfinn Karlsefni lashes the ship\u2019s side-rudder,<br \/>\nwatches the sails fill with an off-shore wind.<br \/>\nSoon Greenland will loom with its lichen and birds.<\/p>\n<p>The women unroll pallets on the deck,<br \/>\nmurmur as they settle to rest,<br \/>\nwatch the sky for Arctic puffin.<\/p>\n<p>They have heard of land nearby<br \/>\nwhere men in white robes carry poles<br \/>\nwith bright cloth, cry out to an empty sky.<\/p>\n<p>But their ship turns homeward in the waves<br \/>\nleaving the Irish to mutter and sing,<br \/>\nto their devotions under an alien glacier,<br \/>\nto their bleak paradise.<\/p>\n<p><strong>SIGRUN SUSAN LANE<\/strong> is a Seattle poet of Icelandic descent. Her poems have appeared in national and regional publications, most notably <em>Albatross<\/em>, <em>Crab Creek Review<\/em>, <em>Malahat Review<\/em>, <em>Mom Egg<\/em>, <em>Rain City Review<\/em>, <em>Seattle Review<\/em>, <em>Sing Heavenly Muse<\/em>, <em>Spindrift<\/em>, <em>The Journal of the American Medical Association<\/em>, <em>Melusene<\/em>, <em>Pontoon<\/em>, <em>Ekphrasis<\/em>, <em>Still Crazy<\/em> and others. She received awards for poetry from the Seattle and King County Arts Commissions.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>White Land (Hvritanannaland) \u201ca land promised to the saints, west across the sea which knows neither death nor decay, only simple joys going perpetually on without care.\u201d Navigatio Santi Brendani Abatis, Ninth Century 1. The Monks Beyond Greenland they found &hellip; <a href=\"http:\/\/www.jerseydevilpress.com\/?page_id=5052\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"parent":5034,"menu_order":18,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","template":"","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-5052","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/P15duy-1ju","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.jerseydevilpress.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/5052","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.jerseydevilpress.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.jerseydevilpress.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.jerseydevilpress.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.jerseydevilpress.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5052"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"http:\/\/www.jerseydevilpress.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/5052\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5193,"href":"http:\/\/www.jerseydevilpress.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/5052\/revisions\/5193"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.jerseydevilpress.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/5034"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.jerseydevilpress.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5052"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}