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We rove with our spirits high,
Our mind is light, our step is spry,
Way up to the heights,—on the mountain,
Deep down, by the foss’s fountain—
The way may lead where‘er it will,
With song and sport we’ll roam our fill!

We’re out in God’s nature, free!
Like a beck untamed in the fell-side scree
We launch on our way in chorus;
The wide-open world’s before us.
So like the bird that joyful flies
We’ll raise our anthem to the skies.

We’re truly a cheerful throng,
We’ve ample voice and we’ve ample song.
Let storms make the fjord one fluster,
Let thunder and lightning bluster,
We’ll wet our whistles, step out well
And greet with song the fjord and fell.
-Henrik Ibsen, “Roving Song”

The first two lines are on a race T-shirt for this weekend’s Norwegian Festival. Very fitting for a road race!

Las estrellas no son sino asquerosos insectos que roen la bóveda celeste.
The stars are merely loathsome insects gnawing the vault of heaven.
—in the short story Gaspar Blondin by Juan Montalvo

“It was a torture device, a science experiment, an ethnographic museum, a work of art. It was a fairy tale – Snow White in her glass coffin, surrounded by dwarves. It was a suspended disaster, a flood waiting to happen.”
-description of Anna Ioannovna’s ice castle built in 1739, The New Yorker