Date:	1839-44.
Form:	Seven stanzas of eight three-stress lines rhyming AbAbCDCD (the translation rhymes AbCbDeFe) and with the alliteration pattern 2222.
Manuscript:	None surviving.
First published:	1845 (8F22-3; image) under the title "Óhræsið!"
Sound recording:	Anton Helgi Jónsson reads "Óhræsið!" [2:38]

Commentary:        This poem was read to the Fjölnir Society on 26 October 1844 (33Eim185). Hannes Hafstein claimed in 1883 that it is based on a true story from the east of Iceland (B396). Recently published evidence suggests, however, that the incident underlying the poem occurred in the north of Iceland, at Láfsgerði in Reykjadalur (Suður-Þingeyjarsýsla), probably sometime in the early 1830s. It was witnessed by a young boy named Sigurjón Jónsson, whose memory of it was later transmitted via his son and grandson to the latter's wife, whose father committed it to print in 1977:¹

The incident described by Sigurjón happened to him when he was a child living with his parents at Einarsstaðir. . . . Once in wintertime he was sent on an errand up to Láfsgerði, which is only a short distance away and which he had often visited before. Nothing unusual occurred on this trip until he came into the kitchen of the woman who lived there, whom he found sitting not far from an open window. Suddenly he saw a ptarmigan fly through the window and land in the woman's lap, while a hawk screamed outside. The woman was quick to seize the ptarmigan and "wring its naked neck."

"That's when I started crying," Sigurjón said.

Sigurjón is also quoted as saying that he related this incident to Jónas when the latter was travelling in this part of Iceland in July and August 1839. Sigurjón was about fourteen, then, and may have served as a guide for Jónas. It is evident that the only reason the story of the ptarmigan was remembered by Sigurjón's descendants was because of its supposed connection with Jónas's poem.² (On all this, see the essay by Hannes Pétursson cited in the bibliographical note below.)

Jónas's feelings of tenderness and compassion toward animals are vividly on display in this winter's tale of a starving little ptarmigan who escapes a pursuing hawk, the "hungry wolf of birds," only to fall into the clutches of a hungry wolf of a different species — which is of course the key to the poem's outraged title.

The following piece of Icelandic folklore is relevant:

Once upon a time the Virgin Mary summoned all the birds into her presence. When they came she commanded them to walk through a fire. The birds knew she was Queen of Heaven and tremendously powerful, so they didn't dare disobey her orders. They all immediately leaped into the fire and waded through it — all except the ptarmigan. Afterward the feet of all the birds were featherless and scorched to the skin and have been that way ever since. That was the birds' reward for walking through fire for Mary.

But the ptarmigan, the only bird that had refused to walk the fire, didn't fare any better. Mary was angry and laid this curse on her: that she would be the most harmless and defenseless of all birds, yet would be so terribly persecuted that she would always live in fear, except at Whitsuntide; furthermore that the hawk — who in the beginning was supposed to be her brother — would constantly torment her, killing her and living off her flesh.

Mary granted the ptarmigan one mercy: she would be able to change colors with the seasons, turning completely white in winter and grey-brown in summer, so the hawk could less easily pick her out from the snow in winter or the heather in summer. That has never failed since; nor has it failed that the hawk persecutes her, killing and eating her and not recognizing — until he gnaws at her very heart — that she is his sister. This is why, every time he kills a ptarmigan and eats to its heart, he is so filled with remorse that he screams miserably for a long time afterward. (2Íþs27)

The attitude of Icelanders toward hunting ptarmigans is complex and ambiguous. Folk wisdom asserts: "There is always hunger and hardship in a home where many ptarmigans are hunted" (2Íþs525). And Jónas Jónasson writes: "Because the ptarmigan, a completely innocuous bird, is so widely persecuted, hunting her has long struck people as an unlucky thing and not at all commendable. They have felt that ptarmigan-hunting is always an ill-starred enterprise and it is not unlikely that traces of this belief still linger today. Even so, however, hunting ptarmigans in winter has been very widely practiced" (Íþh193-4).

Bibliography: Hannes Pétursson's chapter "Línur í Óhræsinu" ("Some Lines in 'The Beast!'"), in his book Kvæðafylgsni (Kf), addresses important points in the poem's background and interpretation.