Read "Under the Glacier" by Halldór Laxness online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
To pick up where we left off, when three winter-pasture shepherds had arrived here from far-off nations: the undersigned caught a glimpse of them yesterday when they got down from Jódínus Álfberg's twelve-ton truck and sat down round Hnallþóra's calf in the homefield. It is not the undersigned's job to keep an eye on bearded men. The bungalow and its people don't belong to my field of investigation.
As I stand there at the head of an inlet where the homefield ends, with a view of the cliffs to both sides, it seems to me that a shower of stones breaks over the middle of the bird colony. Stones are being hurled from the edge of the cliff west of the inlet towards the eastern face of the cliff, where the population is densest. Some of the stones miss their mark, but eventually a bird is struck and falls injured from a niche in the rock, is unable to save itself, and dies in the sea. Two or three birds that sat next to it fly up in surprise but settle again, and the accident arouses no widespread interest on the cliff. And yet a bird has just been killed there. When I look around for the cause of it I see the three men sitting on the cliff-edge.