Soktta1 descends the mountain pass,
skating over the rim.
She has evil in mind.
The household is sleeping.
In previous days, peace thrived,
but then died one night.
A mild thaw at midnight
became life-endangering weather by early morning.2
The spring fled winds from the underworld
and wolves from other worlds.
A ghost's path in the small valley,
now death itself is wandering.
Now death itself is wandering.
Frost, you may tether your
fetters to the house walls.
My magic cools partitions,
smothering light and warmth.
Skotta finds shelter,
slithers over a hill.
She goes to sleep in a hole,
hardens the frost with the breeze.
Skotta crouches just above,
as he hurries down the valley.
The frost blows in, bleeding on the side,
he is a bent3 man and tormented.
Through a little crack in the wall
she peeks in from the snow.
A ghost plays next to the boy and girl,
now death itself is on the farm.4
Now death itself is on the farm.
Frost, you may tether your
fetters to the hearth.
My magic cools the glow,
freezes men and women to death.
He wearily carries fire to the hovel,
the farm corridor goes cold.
Strength is gone, stamina broken,
this is their punishment.
I warm myself when men fall,
hatred nourishes a ghostly slave.5
The Skotta can be heard calling:
"Will you light the fire again?"6
Skotta.
Skotta.
1. Like the other three songs on this half of the album, the Skotta is a type of (in this instance, a female) ghost. Here, a Skotta comes to a rural household to extinguish the fire keeping everyone warm, forcing the husband/ father to leave to collect more firewood. On returning he finds his family frozen to death, which the Skotta watches with pleasure.2. Ótta is a time of day according to an old-fashioned way of timekeeping in Iceland. It starts around 3:00am. For more on these times of day, I recommend Sólstafir's album Ótta, which is a concept album about exactly this.3. I.e bent double against the cold.4. This could equally have been 'now death itself is in town'.5. It is unclear to me if it is the ghost that is the slave, or the man. The way the word is constructed hints more to the man for me though, as the genitive form of 'ghost' is combined with nominative form of slave, indicating 'a slave of a ghost'.6. A reference to Ljósið, where the man the Skotta is tormenting here asks this of himself.