Valkheim

  I remember dark and icy woods, masking endless somber peaks. A rim of cruel mountains, slope beyond slope, marching on and on, each dull with sullen trees and bitter snows. Grey clouds in an everlasting leaden vault. Dusky rivers swallowed hungrily by The Throat. And tireless winds that howl down from the North to bend the world before them. It was a gloomy land that seemed to hold all winds and clouds and dreams that shun the sun.   Leafless and dying Valdryssil stood brooding over all, The Tree That Made the World, which makes squat shadows out of both gods and men.   A land of axe and spear, of snow and wind.   They called it Valkheim, land of Cold and deep Night.