Timeline - Waterpolo 3, by Mario Arroyave, 2013. © Mario Arroyave, courtesy the artist and Artemisa Contemporary Latin American Art, New York.

Water

Volume XI, Number 3 | summer 2018

Miscellany

Valhalla, the mythical hall for slain Norse warriors, is said to cater a nightly feast of boar meat but to offer no water to wash it down. According to the chief speaker of Snorri Sturluson’s Gylfaginning, the warriors would have received a disappointing reward for their agonizing deaths in battle if served merely water. The menu instead includes mead supplied from the udder of a she-goat named Heidrun.

Rain is grace; rain is the sky condescending to the earth; without rain there would be no life.

—John Updike, 1989