Read "Salka Valka" by Halldor Laxness online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
It is strange that anyone in a village could feel bad on a tranquil Sunday in May, when the slopes surrounding the mirror-smooth fjord are turning green.
Salka Valka was on her way home with people's illnesses in her heart, along with various other worries: low wages, unemployment- and the fact that soon, credit at the store would be cut off to all but bigwigs. Of course, thanks to her having both a share in a boat and vegetable patch, she was now rather highly placed in society, despite not yet being such a bigwig that she could accept at face value every Christian doctrine cooked up and served to those who had it worse than her. It was not for nothing that she was the daughter of the late Sigurlína of Mararbúà°, whom God and men abandoned when she needed them most, precisely because she had put her trust in God and men; early on, this girl had lost the ability to see beyond so-called reality- that is, fish- and even before her confirmation, she had become convinced that neither God nor men can help people in trouble; they must help themselves.