Letter in Icelandic from the Ninette San - John K. Samson
“You’ll recall from the sagas, I hope, Grettir’s last stand at Drangey, how his grip on the sword made his enemies cut off his hand? If he’d fled here instead and had tasted this terrible coffee, or read these letters you send, he’d surrender and lay the blade down.”
I love any song that sends me to research the references. Grettir was an bandit of Icelandic lore that was so stubborn in defeat that even after death he wouldn’t release his sword and his hand had to be cut off.
This song is achingly sad. The story of a man giving up on everything as he slowly dies in a hospital. The final lines are a set of instructions to an unnamed sibling of things that need to be done since the singer is incapacitated. Including the final line of “…and don’t write me anymore.”
I don’t know what Ninette San is and wikipedia doesn’t either.
