Prologue
(Go to the comments for the pronunciation of foreign words)
As the sun peeked through the peaks of the five mountains guarding the sacred valley of the Mymokol island, vikings, farmers and their children started to gather in the great hall, leaving behind trails in the deep snow, that had one last chance to shine under the low-passing sun before finally falling into darkness with the rest of the island.
The sun grazed the horizon and used its last rays to light up shiny scales on a giant dragon, gliding elegantly above the snow as white and glittery as its scales.
The dragon landed on the roof of the building and squeezed its head through the smokehole in the ceiling, followed by the body, which even after hard tightening only barely fit through. People around the bonfire stepped back and drew their children in, just before the dragon landed its four legs onto the ground. It walked off to the back side of the room, followed by screaming children hugging its legs and tail. It laid its head down onto the ground for them to climb its nose and hang on its earfins.
As the sun fell back asleep, the few that hadn’t yet arrived quickly ran towards the building in the last rays of light, now coming from a source no longer visible, as quickly as deep snowdrifts allowed them to move their heavily clothed legs.
Once even the lastest light dimmed into black, the children stopped playing tag around the tables and torches and joined the adults around the large central bonfire, ears ready. They had just woken up to hold up the entire twenty-four-hour night. All children and youth, as well as adults waited silently for the storyteller to prepare himself.
Finally, he began speaking:
“Norsemen and Norsewomen of the South, dear people of Mymokol. We are sitting around this fire tonight to celebrate our gods by their stories, to thank them for bringing us onto this land. Tonight is the night of hafnhrauta, the telling of sagas, each one to celebrate one of our gods. So listen close, don’t let a word escape your ears. These tales were passed down generation after generation, reaching into our original home in the North and beyond that, when there was no home, no north, so long before our lives, that not even Ísbjörg, the mightiest of us all, with well over a century of living, remembers them first-hand.” The dragon grunted in pleasure, hearing her name being appraised.
“Now ready yourselves, for our first saga is about to be told. It is the saga of Autull and how the world came to be.
There once was a man called Autull. Mothered by an icy mist, he was alone in the world of the sentient. And there was nothing around him either, or at least nothing he could see. Majestic in his thoughts, he wanted to see everything there was. Thus, with his might of the firstborn child, he expressed his wish in his almighty voice and a point of everglowing light appeared, shining down onto the Earth. Autull finally saw what the world looked like: sea spanned its entire infinite length and width. He spoke these words:
Ocean when just endless
covers home of Autull,
no purpose has living.
Therefore land shall open
through the flowing blanket,
serve me as a haven.
The Earth, hearing his voice, erupted and lifted a small, rocky island from the seafloor. Autull needed just that to live his life, so he built a small hut and lived there without company.
Soon, however, the water around the island started getting hotter and hotter, until it began boiling away. Autull didn’t like this and hastily tried to come to a solution. He tried cooling the water with icebergs as big as he could lift, but they were always melted down by the overwhelming mass of raging water. He soon realized the sun was the cause of this disaster, so he covered the sky with a large blue blanket he was going to make his shirt from, but the sun shone right through. He got angry at the sun for upsetting the sea below him, grabbed his hammer and gave the sun a hefty blow. Tiny sparks were scattered all over the sky, but they were outshone by the sun’s insurmountable brightness. Long hours did the sun travel down towards the horizon and Autull, realizing what he had done, tried to catch up and stop it from crashing to the ground. But even his long legs couldn’t run as fast as the sun was falling. The sun met with the horizon, but kept going. It didn’t take long for the sky to go completely dark, except for the sparks, daughters of the sun, which we now call stars. At first was Autull mad that he made the only proper source of light perish, but as he groaned on the edge of a rocky cliff by the sea, he, under the stars’ gentle light, saw that the sea was no longer hot. He jumped happily and celebrated until a dim light appeared on the horizon. Autill was suspicious at first, but soon he realized the sun must have swung under the sea and come back! He continued his celebrations with a brand new meaning now.
After many days, Autull began observing that the sun’s path slowly slides across the sky. Sometimes, the sun would stay almost all day up, and anon it would just barely appear before going back to sleep. Autull liked this, as it gave him a way to organize the year.
Many years did Autull spend on his island, and born as a strong man, he grew into a giant. But as his body enjoyed getting bigger and stronger, his mind was plagued by loneliness. He tried accompanying the sun with the moons, the rock with grass, but nothing satisfied him. He longed so much for a sentient companion that he grabbed his axe, stood above the sea and in pain chopped off all his toes. As they fell into the water, they began changing.
