Memory of Otternes

Otternes Farm, Flåm Valley, Sognefjord, Aurland, Norway

When I sit here, I have sat here before. I am hobbit-like and living. In my sense of belonging, I know: I know this place.

Families are thin, thin on the ground, of the mountain. Long line of families in the mountains, dug in, right into its rock and earth and grass. There are long deep roots which hold us in place. Some say if you chop too many the whole mountainside will slide with us into the brakk below.

Yes here I belong, and feel I always have and if it is so and I have visited before it would have been in ancestral time a momentous occasion.

I still feel, when I stand there now, the haunting presence of one unallowed to love, ghostly appearance in the corner of story. Even with a broken heart one can still…