Prevod

It is wintertime; the earth wears a mantle of snow like marble hewn from the mountain. The air is lofty and clear, the wind sharp as a dwarf-forged sword; the trees stand like white coral, like blossoming almond branches, and all is fresh as on the high Alps. Lovely are the nights, with flashes of northern lights and countless sparkling stars.

The storms come; the clouds rise and shake out swansdown. Snowflakes whirl, covering sunken lanes and houses, open fields and narrow streets. But we sit in the warm room beside the blazing stove, and tales of olden times are told; we hear a saga:

Beside the open sea stood a burial mound, and upon it, at the midnight hour, sat the ghost of the hero buried there. A king he had been; a golden circlet shone about his brow, his hair streamed in the wind, and he was clad in iron and steel. He bowed his head in sorrow and sighed deeply in anguish, like a soul that could find no peace.

Then a ship came sailing by. The men cast anchor and went ashore. Among them was a skald; he approached the kingly figure and asked, "Why do you grieve and suffer?"

Then the dead man answered, "No one has sung of my life's work; it is dead and gone. Song did not carry it abroad through the lands and into human hearts; therefore I have no peace, no rest."

And he spoke of his work and mighty deeds, which the people of his time had known but never celebrated in song, for there had been no skald among them. Then the old bard swept the strings of his harp and sang of the hero's youthful courage, his manly strength, and the greatness of his good deeds. At this the dead man's face shone like the edge of a cloud in moonlight. Joyful and blessed, the figure rose in a radiance of light that faded like a flash of the northern lights. Nothing could be seen but the grassy mound with its stones that bore no runes; yet above it, at the last note of the strings, there soared, as though it had flown out of the harp itself, a little bird, the loveliest of songbirds, with the thrush's ringing notes, with the soulful beat of the human heart, with the voice of home as the bird of passage hears it. The songbird flew over mountain and valley, over field and forest: it was the bird of folk song, which never dies.

We hear its song; we hear it now, here in the room, on this winter evening, while the white bees swarm outside and the storm wrestles with all its strength. The bird sings us not only the hero's lay; it sings sweet, tender songs of love, so rich and so many, of faithfulness in the North. It has fairy tales in music and words; it has proverbs and verses which, like runes laid beneath a dead man's tongue, make him speak, and we know his native land—the bird of folk song.

In heathen days, in Viking times, its nest hung in the bard's harp. In the days of knights and castles, when the fist held the scales of justice and might alone was right, when a peasant and a dog were of equal worth in barter, where did the songbird find shelter and refuge? Brutality and pettiness gave it no thought. In the castle's window bay, where the lady sat over her parchment, writing down the old memories in song and legend, the old woman from the turf hut and the wandering pedlar sat beside her on the bench and told their tales. There, above them, fluttered and flew, chirped and sang the bird that never dies so long as the earth has a tuft of turf for its foot—the bird of folk song.

Now it sings for us in here. Outside are snowstorm and night; it lays runes beneath our tongues, and we know our native land. God speaks to us in our mother tongue through the notes of the bird of folk song. Old memories rise, faded colours grow fresh again; legend and song offer a blessed draught that lifts the heart and mind until the evening becomes a Christmas feast. The snow whirls, the ice cracks, the storm rules; it has the power, it is lord, but it is not the Lord.

It is wintertime, the wind sharp as a dwarf-forged sword. The snow whirls—it has whirled, we think, for days and weeks—and lies like an immense mountain of snow over the great city: a heavy dream in the winter night. Everything beneath is hidden and gone; only the church's golden cross, the symbol of faith, rises above the snowy grave and shines in the blue air, in the clear sunshine.

And over the buried city fly the birds of heaven, small and great; they chirp and sing as best they can, each bird with its own beak. First comes the flock of sparrows, chirping of all the little things in street and lane, in nest and house; they know the stories of houses front and back. "We know the buried city," they say. "Every living thing in there goes cheep! cheep! cheep!"

The black ravens and crows fly over the white snow. "Dig! Dig!" they cry. "There is still something to be had down there, something for the belly, and that is what matters most. That is what most of them think down at the bottom, and a fine, fine, fine opinion it is!"

The wild swans come on rushing wings and sing of the glorious and great things still springing from human thoughts and hearts within the city that rests beneath the layers of snow.

Death is not there; life wells up. We sense it in the music, which swells as though from the church organ, seizes us like sounds from the elves' hill, like Ossian's songs, like the rushing wingbeats of a Valkyrie. What harmony! It speaks to our hearts and lifts our thoughts; it is the bird of folk song we hear! And at this very moment God's warm breath blows from above; the mountain of snow cracks open, the sun shines in, spring comes, the birds come, new generations, with the same familiar notes of home. Hear the year's heroic lay: the snowstorm's might, the winter night's heavy dream! All is released, all rises in lovely song from the bird of folk song, which never dies.