Ice Palace (Young Puffin)

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Ice Palace - Penguin Books UK The Ice Palace - Penguin Books UK

It is precisely in this sombre setting, full of darkness lurking in recondite corners, reinforced with this sharp writing style, where the main character of the novel is presented: The eerie giant structure formed by a frozen waterfall up in the lake, called The Ice Palace. Either sanctuary or mausoleum, it arises as the eternally snow covered bridge that defies death, guilt and angst, linking Siss and Unn forever. There’s only one thing to ask in exchange for this everlasting token of friendship: A promise. Siss must never forget.In making it a childhood passage where purity is overlaid on violation Vesaas writes a chapter that is almost unbearable in its poignancy. When a few dotted lines can cuff my heart into a promise and bind my palms over it in sombre armory, keep me lain in its pristine shadows for hours and yet freeze the time in crystalline imagery, I beam at the prospect: the prospect of living in that promise; that promise which lights up with the chandeliers of frosty realizations hanging from the ceiling of dreams and a sea of incomplete chances freezing my being. It seems almost easier to become heavy with cemented boots. To allow icy water to numb, and then, oddly warm, slip down with surprising ease to the bottom of your grief. You can’t bind yourself to her memory, and shut yourself away from what is natural for you. You would only be a bother to yourself and to others, and no one will thank you for it, far from it. You’re already making your parents unhappy". Esta es la historia de una amistad que se forja fugazmente, con una intensidad puramente inocente y genuina entre dos niñas de once años. Sucederá algo que cambiará radicalmente lo que pudo ser pero no fue, pero no por ello quedará en el olvido. Cobrará importancia el palacio de hielo que se forma cuando la cascada se hiela en invierno, sus enormes salas dotadas de vida y los seres que habitan en los bosques harán de este un lugar mágico y simbólico.

Ice Palace (1987) directed by Per Blom - Letterboxd ‎Ice Palace (1987) directed by Per Blom - Letterboxd

Siss is eleven years old and the most popular girl in her school. An only child, she is also the center of her parents' attention. One day her feelings toward everyone around her change when a new girl named Unn joins Siss' class at school. A lonely girl by nature, Unn is ignored by everyone in the class, except Siss. The girls decide to meet at Unn's house after school on one darkening autumn evening and commence on an electric friendship. Unn reveals to Siss that her mother died of an illness six months earlier and that even at eleven years old she does not know who her father is. Coping with these feelings swirling inside of her, Unn has yet to openly discuss her station in life with anyone, that is except for Siss. Despite being the leader of everyone at school, Siss is at heart lonely as well. It seems divinely ordained that the two girls have been brought together, and now they share a deep secret that not even Unn's Aunt or Siss' parents are privileged to know. Together, the girls appear to be on the cusp of navigating through their teenage years without much angst.

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But whereas Sally Carrol’s headstones mark where the dead lie peacefully at rest (another nod to the ‘sleepiness’ of the South), the underground caverns of the ice palace have the potential to disturb the dead, as the ghostly appearance of Margery Lee suggests. Tarjei Versaas was a runner up for the 1964 Nobel Prize for his work on this hauntingly beautiful novel. When I think of an ice palace, the first thing that comes to mind is Elsa's creation in the Disney version of Hans Christen Andersen's Elsa the Snow Queen. Elsa's construction designed as a boundary between herself and the world, and Versaas' ice palace is similar both physically and emotionally. His prose in describing the ice is chilling yet full of beauty, which is the image I see with the untarnished snow on the ground before me. I had never read one of Versaas' novels before, and The Ice Palace is a poignant introduction to his work, which also includes the 1952 award winning The Winds. An ode to Norwegian nature and adolescent friendship, Versaas' work is one that will stay with me for a long while.

Ice Palace - LEGO Elsa’s Magical Ice Palace - LEGO

I’m a worthless creature,’ said Auntie shortly afterwards, when they were nearing her house, nearing the end of the evening. She began again: ‘Worthless. The people here have done everything for me during this misfortune, and now I’m going like this when I ought to take my leave properly". Second of all, wrap up warm. Even though you can be sunbathing at the cable car station in the valley, you will be cold within the ice cave. Sounds obvious. But you never know… What to Wear in Austria’s Ice Palace

While you can find a waterfall close to the Hintertux Glacier, my favourite spot was the small but gentle hike from the Seetal Alpin Family Resort near Kaltenbach. From here we have in Vesaas’ meditative poetry in verse, a world in its pristine simplicity. Through this simplicity, without ever referring to it, naming it, the reader is presented with realities so large, so awesome, that I’ve never known anyone who to some degree does not shrink away from them.

The Ice Palace by tarjei vesaas PDF - Free PDF Books The Ice Palace by tarjei vesaas PDF - Free PDF Books

While you will find plenty of accommodation options right at the foot of the Hintertux Glacier cable car, there’s one hotel among all hotels which I absolutely have to recommend. In simple, poetic language it tells a fairly simple if devastating tale of friendship and childhood. Create a plot using drama (record plot ideas with partner and act out the scenario using new character) Only one fatal meeting is granted by the author between the two girls. Inside Unn's closed bedroom, through a looking glass, they spot the connection that occurs from their common nature, they undress to further justify their mutual attraction and proceed no more because of guilt and their inability to find the right words to describe what is happening to them: Many years ago (decades even) I watched this movie on television about the life of American poet Maya Angelou. The details of the story have long ebbed away but there’s this one scene that I recall vividly. In it a sort of teacher figure is telling the young Maya about how beautiful words can be, how wonderful it is to love them. I guess this conversation remained with me because at the time I didn’t understand it. I loved reading books already, I loved the stories they told and the adventures I could vicariously experience but words in themselves? That didn’t make sense to me yet. Over the years I have come to know differently. I’ve learned to read and love poetry, to read it aloud and enjoy the resonance of words painstakingly chosen. I now know that words can be used to evoke happiness or heartbreak, fear or foreboding, they can create sounds and even music for those that can hear it. And they can be used to build otherworldly palaces made of ice of a beauty that is both extraordinary and deadly:

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This is not a confession of a woman that is tormented by guilt for failing to save the life of the child that was entrusted upon her. Auntie is not comforting Siss to help her overcome the grief after losing a loved one. This is a declaration of a woman trapped in a chronic condition that forces her to act against her nature, living in an emotional, physical, mental and ontological self-exile. An ailing human. A broken human. Auntie poses as an example of what should be avoided. Spas and sunshine in the morning and a snowball fight in the afternoon? Who can resist the duality of that?