The Völva on Vestdalsheiði

I remember her.

Long before your time, before roads and electric pylons, I flowed wild and unshaped through the valley. I was young then, a stream born from deep in the rock and fed by snowmelt and rain, my rocky bed flanked by lichen and birch.

I knew the silence of the heath, only broken by the croaks of ravens and the whispers of the wind, I knew the weight of snow in winter and the release in the spring. I knew the sorrow of loss and the joy of birth. But of all the shapes who came and went, I remember her the best.

She came alone.

In late summer. The sun still high but the shadows growing longer and the wind tinged by the first threat of frost. She climbed the heath without haste, her jewels casting rays of colour onto her path as if strewn with petals of gold and yellow and green, a bride without a groom, a queen without a king.

She did not pause often. But when she did, she knelt. Not to rest, but to touch the earth. She spoke soft words meant for the rocks and the lichen and the spirits.

She followed my course up and up until she stopped. She had found her place, right by my side.

She was a völva, a woman that can turn inward and outward at the same time, carrying in her the weight of knowledge not written but felt

I watched her

She lit no fire but sat on a ledge by a small cave, eyes open to the sky. Night came and the stars blinked like the old gods stirring. She closed her eyes only once, and then, not to sleep.

This was her útiseta. The old practice. The sitting-out. The ancient silence that draws spirits near. A ritual so old even I barely recall the first of them. She sat still, beyond the need to move, letting the stone beneath her speak.

She had come to the height of the land to sit where the voices are clear. To meet those who walked with her once.

The wind pressed at her sides. The ground cooled beneath her bones. Her breath became slow. She was not praying. She was listening.

Through the night, the veil between this world and the other thinned. Even I, bound in water and stone, felt it draw close. As the mist curled along my surface, I knew she had done this before. Many times. But never quite like this.

In the morning, she was still. She had simply stopped moving. As though her breath had slipped into the earth.

I sang louder for a time, though no one was there to hear. I traced my course more slowly, feeling the weight of her absence and the truth of her passing. But a woman like her did not vanish. She merged.

Years passed. Moss crept along the stones, . Birds nested nearby. Her colourful beads rolled one by one into my riverbed and I held them close.

For thousand years No one came for her

For thousand years I watched over her.

Then, one day, others decided to follow my course. to find where I was born,

I pushed the beads into their path and they glistened gold, yellow and green.

And so, They found her. Where she had sat for thousand years. They Measured her bones. Counted her beads . Took notes. Asked questions.

"Who was she?" "Why here?"And I tried to answer. But how do you speak across centuries? How do you say: she came to

listen.You call her a mystery. I call her a memory. I still carry her in my current. In spring, when the

melt runs fast, I run with her heartbeat. In winter, when I freeze in stillness, I echo her vigil. She is gone. But she is not absent.The river remembers.And I do not forget her.