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Sometimes the shortest story can make the boldest point. These words are certainly true for Armann Reynison´s vignettes. Vignettes are short stories portraing images or word-pictures so many of us will be familiar with when we read it. In his fourth book, Vignettes IV Armann writes about intimate moments, funny events, exotic locales, and scenes as familiar to you as the view from your kitchen window. Presented in both Icelandic and English, these stories reflect timeless Icelandic folklore traditions as well as today's global citizen's knowledge and interest in the world. But common to all these stories or images, is the focus on moments of real life. Stories that capture the common threads that bind us all together. And sometimes fewer words can create the clearest image.
The midnight sun
The sun gets higher in the sky, to reach its zenith at midsummer. Gradually the days become longer and light temporarily overcomes the darkness. The midsummer sun delicately plays in the firmament and smiles on you as its red glow illuminates the land and people. It calls out to be noticed and gladdens our eyes, skipping before our sight along the horizon as we wake and watch it or walk about. Time becomes relative when the night is bright and young. Children and adults romp and play in the fields. We forget time and place, wishing to stay awake as long as the sun keeps shining. Then, growing tired, we stretch out to sleep, but the play continues into our dream world and its visions of nature. Then the sun begins to get lower in the sky and autumn replaces summer and night resumes its dominion at midwinter. That is how the companions, light and darkness, change places, each to its own task and the season's needs. (Vignettes IV)
To learn more about Armann Reynison and the Vignettes visit his website
