Excerpts from
Precious Life: Jørgen-Frantz Jacobsen Illuminated by his Letters
By Jørgen-Frantz Jacobsen
I am lying dreaming and fantasising about my childhood’s rivers and streams,
those babbling springs and thundering waterfalls, all that roaring and pouring
world I went exploring in when little.
What was it they were called, all these streams in and around Thorshavn?
Rættará, Sandá, Havnará., Hoydalsá, áin úti í Horni ...
It is impossible to forget the moment when for the first time I stood face to
face with the great Sandá. A drama set amidst nature, a mighty rushing
river beneath the magnificent bridge, and Kirkjubøreyn, that desolate, rocky
mountain, close by. When I arrived home, it was indeed an experience, an
achievement to talk about. But Carli, who was five years older than I, made it
clear to me that as far as he was concerned it was an everyday happening. He
had been over on the other side of the mountain, and the places where the roads
came to an end were things of no significance, of no strategic importance in
his life of global wandering ...
But for me, the River Sandá long remained the western boundary of all
knowledge. Far, far away to the west lay the ruins of Kirkjubø Cathedral, of
which I had seen a picture in a Norwegian book where the Kirkjubø farmer
Patursson also appeared. And yet this mysterious ruin was not so far away that
I did not at times think I could glimpse it from our steps.
The waterfall in Sandegjerde was also a spectacular natural phenomenon. You
could already hear its mighty voice long before you saw it. You could first see
it glinting from up on the hill where the hospital now lies; that is one of my
most quintessential impressions of nature.
Despite the remoteness and force of the Sandegjerde waterfall, it was
nevertheless a delightful spot. One of the first idylls in my life. Indeed, I
have never really found anywhere since that was more lovely than Sandegjerde,
with sunshine and the rush of the river and the mountain and deciduous trees
and the vast ocean. At the end of the hill there was the gate, and to go through
it was to go from one of nature’s rooms into another.
On the left was the enormous river, on the right the fence surrounding the
manse, with a gate made of branches that fascinated me more intensely than any
lamp or any work of art. But if you turned round, you saw that the great river
in its broad, clean bed suddenly came to an end - and was gone in the abyss.
Here was the waterfall. It was a catastrophe; it took your breath away to see
it from above. With this, Niagara had been experienced once and for all.
The two-part bridge across the River Sandá was also a phenomenon to be seen. A
bold work of human hands in the wilderness. And then to stand on the little
island, half way between the two sections of the bridge!
This was nature, at once grandiose and Elysian. Your first impression of the
outfield - “Hagan”. Greyish white stones, bleached woodwork and radiant
greensward, all in a rainbow of spray from the river and the deafening sound of
rushing water. Yes, this stretch of river, from the waterfall up to the bridge,
what a foundation it laid for one’s appreciation of nature!
Translated by W. Glyn Jones
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