Vænø in Glænø

Besedilo

Vænø in Glænø

Once, off the coast of Zealand, opposite Holsteinborg, lay two wooded islands, Vænø and Glænø, with their church villages and farms. They lay close to the shore and close to one another; now only one island remains.

One night a terrible storm arose. The sea rose higher than anyone could remember; the gale grew fiercer and fiercer. It was like the Day of Judgment, with a sound as though the earth were splitting apart; the church bells began to swing and rang without a human hand to move them.

That night Vænø vanished into the depths of the sea; it was as though the island had never been. Yet afterwards, on many a summer night, when the water was calm and clear at low tide, a fisherman out spearing eels by the light of a flare in the bow of his boat could, if his eyes were keen enough, make out Vænø far below him, with its white church tower and high churchyard wall. “Vænø waits for Glænø,” said the legend. He saw the island and heard the church bells ringing down below, though in that he was mistaken: the sound surely came from the many wild swans that often gather here on the water. They murmur and lament as though one were hearing bells ringing far away.

There was a time when many old people on Glænø still remembered that night of storm quite clearly, and how, as children, they themselves had driven between the two islands at low tide, just as people nowadays drive over to Glænø from the coast of Zealand, not far from Holsteinborg; the water reaches only halfway up the wheels. “Vænø waits for Glænø,” people said, and it became both legend and certainty.

Many a little boy and girl lay awake on stormy nights, thinking: Tonight the hour will come when Vænø carries Glænø away. In their fear they said the Lord’s Prayer, then fell asleep and dreamed sweetly—and next morning Glænø was still there, with its woods and cornfields, its pleasant farmhouses and hop gardens; the birds sang, the fallow deer leapt, and the mole could smell no seawater, however far it burrowed.

And yet Glænø’s days are numbered; we cannot say how many remain, but numbered they are, and one fine morning the island will have vanished. Perhaps only yesterday you were down here on the shore, watching the wild swans on the water between Zealand and Glænø. A sailing boat with its sails spread wide glided past the dense woods, and you yourself drove across the shallow ford, for there was no other way; the horses splashed through the water, and it washed about the carriage wheels.

You have gone away, perhaps to travel a little way into the wide world, and after some years you return. Now you see the woods here enclosing a broad stretch of green meadow, where the hay smells sweet before neat farmhouses. Where are you? Holsteinborg still stands here in all its splendour, with its gilded spire, but no longer close to the fjord: it lies farther inland. You walk through woods, across fields, down towards the shore—where is Glænø? You see no wooded island before you, only open water. Has Vænø carried off Glænø, for which it waited so long? When was the night of storm in which this happened, when the earth shook so hard that old Holsteinborg moved many thousands of cock’s strides inland?

It was no night of storm; it happened in the bright sunshine. Human ingenuity built a dyke against the sea; human ingenuity blew away the enclosed waters and bound Glænø to the mainland. The fjord has become a meadow of luxuriant grass; Glænø has grown fast to Zealand. The old manor stands where it always stood. It was not Vænø that carried off Glænø, but Zealand, reaching out with its long arms of dykes, blowing with the breath of its pumps and chanting the magic words, the words of marriage; and Zealand received many acres of land as a bridal gift. It is the truth, duly entered in the land register; you can see the proof of the tale for yourself: the island of Glænø has vanished.