Hild Quotes

She knew them by their thick woven cloaks, their hanging hair and beards, and their Anglisc voices: words drumming like apples spilt over wooden boards, round, rich, stirring. Like her father's words, and her mother's, and her sister's. Utterly unlike Onnen's otter-swift British or the dark liquid gleam of Irish. Hild spoke each to each. Apples to apples, otter to otter, gleam to gleam, though only when her mother wasn't there. ~ Nicola Griffith

Hild fetched a lump of grey salt for Mildburh and mortar and pestle to crush it in. She loved the gritty crunch and thump under her hand. It sounded like a cat eating a bird. ~ Nicola Griffith

You do like them thin, don't you?" Pyrlig said, amused. "Now I like them meaty as well-fed heifers! Give me a nice dark Briton with hips like a pair of ale barrels and I'm a happy priest. Poor Hild. Thin as a ray of sunlight, she is, but I pity a Dane who crosses her path today. ~ Bernard Cornwell

A three-day-old baby is a saint?'
Willibald flapped his hands. 'Miracles happen, lord,' he said, 'they really do. They say little Rumwold sang God's praises whenever he suckled.'
'I feel much the same when I get hild of a tit,' I said, 'so does that make me a saint? ~ Bernard Cornwell

KRÁKUMÁL

[...]

25. We struck with our swords!
My soul is glad, for I know
that Balder's father's benches
for a banquet are made ready.
We'll toss back toasts of ale
from bent trees of the skulls;
no warrior bewails his death
in the wondrous house of Fjolnir.
Not one word of weakness
will I speak in Vidrir's hall.

26. We struck with our swords!
The sons of Aslaug all would
rouse the wrath of Hild here
with their ruthless sword-blades,
if they fathomed fully
how far I have traveled,
how so many serpents
stab me with their poison.
My son's hearts will help them:
they have their mother's lineage.

27. We struck with our swords!
Soon my life is ended;
Goinn scathes me sorely,
settles in my heart's hall;
I wish the wand of Vidrir
would wound Aeelle, one day.
My sons must feel great fury
that their father is put to death;
my daring swains won't suffer
in silence when they hear this.

28. We struck with our swords!
I have stood in the ranks
at fifty-one folk-battles,
foremost in the lance-meet.
Never did I dream that
a different king should ever
be found braver than me -
I bloodied spears when young.
Aesir will ask us to feast;
no anguish for my death.

29. I desire my death now.
The disir call me home,
whom Herjan hastens onward
Ben Waggoner

In winter I like sprawling novels, full of conflict and intrigue, and during the bleakest, coldest days of December I holed up with Nicola Griffith 's Hild, a book of love and sex and war and religious upheaval, and I recommend it even over the warmest pair of Sorels. ~ Maud Newton