Eisfiguren und Ursprung

There is a whole series of great glacier lake shots, of which this is one of the wry ones taken by Carmen, A Flickrite who has a wonderful sense of photographic composition – especially in Nature. Go here to see what I mean.

But the real stars of the show are the bold and baldly elemental ice, water, gravel, rock and sky. One can see where the Beowulf and Grendel tales come from. I can well imagine the tales and stories that permeate Skandinavian and particularly Norwegian folklore must have strong primitive motifs in them. In German, Ursprung means origins or elemental beginnings and the ice, glaciers and rock shields/mountains of the North have all the basic mixture for some strong folklore.

I also can’t help think of the Finnish Kalevali tales as well – though they are distant both in geography and ethinicity. The common bond is the glacial ice and continuing cold climate that caps Skandinavia.

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