Hōfn

The omens and warnings of Anything Can Happen and In Iowa ensure that the mere mention of natural phenomena in decline awakens fear of global threat. The first-person speaker recounts a personal experience flying above the massive glacier behind the town of Hōfn in south-east Iceland. Heaney toured Iceland in 2004 with piper  Liam O’Flynn on a joint poetry/ music venture; en route to their next destination Heaney overflew ‘ this stony grey scar of ice …we learned that the ice is actually melting. As a ‘child of earth’ I’ve rarely felt more exposed’ (DOD p.411) Heaney writes his headline: an ice mass of huge magnitude is thawing: The three-tongued glacier has begun to melt.  The Icelanders foresee a bleak […]