The Water Cycle

The people of the Rune Poem were farmers and seafarers living in a wet country, and they had a much closer relationship with weather than we have. We can spend whole productive lives indoors, deep indoors, climate controlled, insulated, where rain cannot penetrate, and we might wonder sometimes is it windy outside? The Rune Poem singers did not need to go outside to find out: they felt the wind in their homes and their bones. Their houses were much more porous, and if the wind wants to send hail smashing down upon their roofs, crops, heads, they would feel it bitterly. If the storm lashes the sea all around their boats, they’ll be stuck in it terrified, buffeted by waves, riding it out. And they would ride it out. Sometimes the wind brings tempests, but all storms become calm water.