#1979 - for the women drowned at Þingvellir

 

1979

6.153

2.vi.25

for the women drowned at Þingvellir

 

it was out of a book far few had read

swap common wealth for punishment

 

the branding of thieves

and the burning of witches

eternity for hell

all here

 

there’s scaffold cliff

the block and the drowning pool

 

all come to marvel abomination

 

eyes made of death

verdict of church or some banishment edict

voices of judgement all gathered

 

here’s guilt chained to the rattly wagon

the wheel’s come off again – but wrathward!

a two weeks track to verdict foregone

 

old men scarred with

every second thought your death

their own not far

 

the cleansing list to forestall

earth shakes and the mountain comes down

 

they’d ring the bells for it

nights sleep sat up in a short bed

 

fear is a place with a name

 

who was it dared to know God’s will?

 

you’d hear the voice of the stream and the stone

how mildly the old gods thunder

incest innocent to them

but now the righteous are in charge

 

we forget beginning

forget how we’ve survived

 

held down in a woolen sack till still

 

in this the merest whim of a land

and these the freshest flowers

 

Seventy-two people are known with certainty to have been executed at Þingvellir from 1602 to 1750: 30 males were be- headed, 15 hanged, and nine burned at the stake. Eighteen women were drowned here in Drekkingarhylur.

1618 - Þórdís Halldórsdóttir úr Skagafirði

1618 - Guðbjörg Jónsdóttir að austan

1647 - Björg Jónsdóttir úr Húnaþingi

1650 - Sigríður Einarsdóttir

1678 - Margrét Símonardóttir úr Árnessýslu

1684 - Helga Gunnarsdóttir úr Strandasýslu

1684 - Guðrún Jónsdóttir úr Gullbringusýslu

1687 - Borgný Brynjólfsdóttir úr Ísafjarðarsýslu

1695 - Þuríður Bjarnadóttir úr Ísafjarðarsýslu

1697 - Jóreiður Þorgeirsdóttir úr Árnessýslu

1703 - Katrín Þorvarðsdóttir af Akranesi

1705 - Kolfinna Ásbjörnsdóttir úr Kjósarsýslu

1705 - Ólöf Jónsdóttir úr Snæfellssýslu

1705 - Ragnhildur Tómasdóttir úr Strandasýslu

1708 - Hallfríður Magnúsdóttir úr Múlaþingi

1709 - Helga Magnúsdóttir úr Skaftafellsþingi

1738- Kona úr Ísafjarðarsýslu

1749 - Guðríður Vigfúsdóttir úr Snæfellssýslu