Tímarit Máls og menningar - 01.02.2004, Side 19

SOME OUTLINES OF A MOTION PlCTURE ...
trip around the coast buying fish everywhere. Through his bino-
culars, the captain catches sight of some dark, moving spot in the
horizon. They look at it, conferring about it. Finally the captain
gives orders to change the course. On a rock, the top of which is
just hidden under the surface at high-water, Salka Valka is seen half
in water, clinging to a vertically upstanding oar on the end of
which sways a piece of cloth. She has lost consciousness.
She wakes up from her oblivion in a beautiful room in the fish
merchant’s house, where she had been once before as a girl.
The end.
Angantyr makes proposal to marry her. Again she has the choice
between her old pants and the position of a queen.
The gossip in the village tells that the woman in pants is going
to marry the young, rich merchant.
In the night, however, Salka Valka escapes out of the same
window she has fled once before. She walks to Arnold’s hut and
wakes up Arnold’s old father. She asks about his horses. The old
man tells her that they look miserable, because he must econo-
mize on the hay. She remarks: „I will bring all the hay they can eat
tomorrow.“
She goes into the stable and feeds the horses abundantly from
the scanty supply. She caresses them passionately. Then she enters
the hut again and makes coffee for the old man. Surprised by all
this, he remarks that they all say that she is going to marry the
young fish merchant.
She acts as if she did not hear him, and makes herself at home
here. She fingers with Arnold’s things as if they were her own. Re-
joicing, she reads his puerile poetry, which is written in grotesque
handwriting and full of orthographic faults. She tears calmly and
resolutely to pieces some photographs of girls she happens to find
in his drawers.
Then she catches sight of his beautiful Icelandic whip on the
wall. She takes it down, then she turns to the old man and says:
„What I am going to do? I am going to stay in this house until
the owner comes and chases me out with this whip.“
TMM 2004 • 1
17