Paradise Reclaimed by Halldor Laxness

In spring no letter arrived, no message, no news at all. The mailboat Diana had come and gone, they heard. The folk at Hlíðar waited and hoped right until summer that perhaps there would come at last a crumpled piece of paper that had been soiled by many a grubby pair of hands, just like last autumn, but nothing came. Not even a single lamb came out of the ewes, as they did on other farms; and not much food either. The cow that Björn of Leirur sent could only just keep them in milk, and things would have gone worse for them if a barrel of rye-meal and a box of sugar had not arrived from an unknown source to eke out their larder.

Their land had been completely stripped of turf by the visit of the ponies the previous autumn, but the hayfield was worst of all; no one thought for a moment that it would take a scythe that summer. It was also terrible to see how much rubble had crashed down into the field that winter. How this trim little farm which had always shone so sprucely by the main track with its immortal dry-stone dykes had deteriorated since the previous summer! The people on the farm felt jaded, but that was nothing very unusual out in the country in spring. Steina in particular complained of distension of the belly, with shooting pains above and below the waist.