EN049.11 Aldland
Ott 2025
J. At All Burgs 1
b. How Aldland Sank
49.11 How the bad times came:
All summer long, Sun had hidden behind the clouds, as if she wished not to see Earth. Wind rested in his bags,[1] causing smoke and steam to stand like pillars over houses and pools. Thus, the air became dreary and dim, and in the hearts of the people abode neither joy nor pleasure.
In the midst of this stillness, Earth began to tremble as if she were dying. Mountains split asunder, spewing fire and flames, while others sank into Earth's bowels; and where she had once borne plains, she thrust up mountains.
Aldland — that the navigators call ‘Atland’ — sank down, and the roiling sea trod everywhere over mountain and valley, so that all was submerged. Many people were buried by landslides, and many who had escaped the fire later perished in the water.
Not only in the lands of Finda [050] did mountains spew fire, but also in the Twiskland. Forests burned one after another and, when Wind came from there, our lands were covered in ash. Rivers changed their courses and, at their mouths, new islands were formed of sand and drowned fauna.
For three years, Earth suffered like this. But when she had recovered, the people could see her wounds; many lands were submerged,[2] others had risen out of the sea, and half of the Twiskland had been deforested. Bands of Finda’s folk came roaming across the empty plains, and our dispersed people were either destroyed or joined their ranks. This forced us to be twice as vigilant, and time taught us that unity is our strongest bastion.[3]
Notes
- ↑ ‘Wind rested in his bags’ (WIND RESTON IN SINA BÛDAR) — the idea of ‘windbags’, apart from being a figure of speech, is known from Homer’s Odyssey, where Aeolus binds the “blustering winds” (all except the West wind) in an oxhide bag as a boon to the hero (beginning of book 10; the word used is ἀσκος – hide, skin, leather bag).
- ↑ Some people speculate about ‘Frisland’, a so-called ‘phantom island’ that appeared on maps of the North Atlantic from 16th and 17th century, having been submerged in the described cataclysm. A theory about this was proposed by Alewyn Raubenheimer in “Chronicles from pre-Celtic Europe” (2014).
- ↑ ‘bastion’ (BURCH) — lit.: ‘burg’, ‘stronghold’.
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Chapters G, H and J: Sandbach 1876