Look down that Lonesome Road, Before you Travel on

Been awhile. Haven´t really been writing a lot of letters either. Apologies to everyone for that. Been sort of a combination of feeling very anti-social, and being busy, and failing to be efficient with my time, and thus become exponentially more busy. And then eating some expired blue cheese, getting sick, and thus becoming ever more anti-social and inefficient.

But in brighter news, I got my application to Oxford in, for an MPhil in Medieval English, in hopes of becoming fantastically in debt (for a good cause) and widening my field of academic inquiry before trying out my PhD and dramatically narrowing it back down for the dissertation. I also think I have far too many romantic ideas about England not to attempt to disillusion them at least a little: it worked out pretty well for Iceland.

Snow is falling out the window. I think these last few days have been my first experience of snow in March. For all its fickleness, of wind then rain then sun then snow, Iceland has a pleasant sort of consistency to it, at least this year: the window lasts for a very, very long time. The only difference is the returning of the light, and the snow looks better in daylight, anyway.

Translating Strengleikar right now, an Old Norse translation of a collection of Lays of Marie De Franch (or most of them, anyway, I think). There's something delightful about the idea of translating a translation: and it might just be some sort of linguistic placebo, but the syntax seems very Latinate; it's been so long since I did some proper Latin translation, there's a sort of nostalgia to really messing around with the word order. After that there's Geoffrey of Monmouth scholarship to read, and German scholarship comparing the pseudo-historical translations and the riddarasögur, and grand piles of Saxo scholarship (and the last seven books of the Gesta Danorum, and an outline to write), then a test in Old Norse Religion on Monday to study for, and no doubt there are many things I'm forgetting. But at least there's a nice lecture tonight comparing Landnámabók and Ynglinga saga to look forward to, and a session afterwards.

Went out to look for caves on Saturday. Found one, a great big glittery thing with a tiny, almost unnoticeable entrance. Went out to see Hugo with Johanna on Sunday. I expected it to be decent, and entertaining, and it turned out better: a sort of rambling plot that got trying at points, but kept it from being too predictable (though the ending itself was, of course, the only way that it could have ended). Best of all, it pulled off a sort of Inglorious Basterds thing, where it turned into metafiction halfway through (while remaining everything else that it was before), and commented on the whole genre of strangely pretty, fantastic film. And it was, in fact, damned pretty.

Anyway, no words are really coming to me today. So back to the translations.

Some pictures of Iceland for you all to enjoy.