Message In A Vessel: Words Of Wisdom In Times Of Chocolate

Comparing literature to the finest confectionery truffles was for many years the go-to analogy of literary critics in this country. It eventually became obvious enough for them to notice it themselves and turn to other less visually striking clichés (which we have neither time, space nor peace of mind to get into). A book and a box of chocolates, however, remain a yuletide pairing as classic as malt and appelsín, ptarmigan and potatoes. The book, to be received as a present from someone who loves you, should be long enough to last ’til New Year and the chocolate, which you’re allowed to buy on your own, should be high-quality, melt-in-your-mouth fabulousness served in doses of about 10 grams apiece.

But that’s Christmas. Come Easter, you flip these proportions around for a chocolate egg as large as you can afford, filled with as much candy as the egg can structurally tolerate, and then the pièce de résistance, a strip of flimsy paper with a proverb: a single line of classic literature, something true and tested, a rich and rank miracle of wordsmithery.

The tradition of eating chocolate eggs for Easter comes to Iceland through Denmark and dates back to the forties. It’s not known exactly when or why Icelandic chocolatiers started inserting proverbs and sayings into the eggs, though there are precedents in Europe dating back to the 1600s. In those days the eggs were mostly made of actual egg and mostly decorated with winged words on the outside, although inserting folded messages – religious, amorous – into hollowed eggs was certainly known.

Suffice to say, stuffing Easter eggs with chocolates and a proverb has been a tradition in Iceland for the best part of a century now and receiving a proverb and discussing it with your immediate friends and family remains for many an important part of the festival. The traditional proverbs are generally composed with a sense of poetry – rhythm, alliteration and vivid imagery – and their contents can range from pretty basic, “The baby will grow, but the pants will not”1; to slightly confounding: “The nose is close to the eyes”2; to biblical: “Pride goes before destruction“3; to gruesome: “Scissors will blind a child, while a knife will leave them one-eyed”4; to Eddic: “The nation knows, when three know”5; to culinary: “The cabbage has not been eaten, just because it’s in the ladle”6; to fiscal: “Money makes of many man a monkey”7; to urinal: “Pissing in your shoe provides brief comfort”8; and even to fecal: “Shit is to be expected from an ass”9.

Debating the general meaning of any of these, or just their meaning to one’s personal life, is for some what makes Easter Easter. Does “No one gets fat on pretty words”10 mean that words alone are not juicy enough to provide proper sustenance, or does it mean that words are a safe option in a world of obesity? Is the Easter egg saying I’m fat? Is it saying I’m skinny? Should I be reading more? Less? Should I be using/reading/writing uglier words? Prettier words?

About ten years ago some of the chocolatiers in this country decided, in a bout of conceit, that they were funnier, wiser and more inventive than ten centuries of domestic skalds and a few millennia of world literary titans, and began crafting their own “sayings”. “Yo momma’s a proverb“ and “I’m not a proverb, I’m an unemployed Facebook status” were not met with love, and neither were motivational quotes from the likes of Mother Teresa and Deepak Chopra11. Please misunderstand me correctly: I am not against the writing of new proverbs or even post-modern self-aware experimental Easter-egg textual experiences. But this is not a genre to be engaged with lightly – it may be printed on throwaway paper, but it is not throwaway literature.

One of the things missing from these witticisms and banalities was, unsurprisingly , the sense of wonder – of sheer WTF?-ery. In short they left no room for the reader. No room to guess or question, no room for irritation, discussion, enchantment. Nor did they roll off the tongue when spoken – there was no song in them. I’m not sure everyone contemplating their proverbs, arguing with them, laughing, cussing, pronouncing them out loud, finally getting them (or finally not) was aware of the fact that they were engaging in serious literary reading – or that this is in fact what they were enjoying about it – until, perhaps, the chocolatiers started taking it away and replacing it with inferior product, which did not lend itself to such ambitious reading.

In a world of rapidly deteriorating literacy where most people hardly ever see a book of poems, or indeed take the time to dissect any single sentence with their friends or family, this tradition – which sadly has been losing some of its cultural momentum – should not only be encouraged but treasured. Because it’s fun and games, because it’s enlightening and because enginn veit hvað átt hefur fyrren misst hefur12.

1 Barnið vex en brókin ekki.

2 Náið er nef augum, from Njals saga – in short, the slave Þjóstólfur has killed Þorvaldur, for beating up his wife, Hallgerður, and Þjóstólfur’s father, Ósvífur, goes to Hallgerður’s father, Höskuldur, to ask for compensation – Höskuldur answers that it was not he, who killed Þorvaldur, to which Ósvífur replies: The nose is close to the eyes. Meaning, he cannot distance himself from the slaying, because Þjóstólfur used to be his slave.

3 Dramb er falli næst, Proverbs 16:18.

4 Skæri gera barnið blint en hnífur eineygt.

5 Þjóð veit þá þrír vita – originally in Hávamál as “þjóð veit ef þrír eru”.

6 Ei er kálið sopið þó í ausuna sé komið.

7 Margur verður af aurum api.

8 Það er skammgóður vermir að pissa í skóinn sinn.

9 Skíts er von úr rassi. It’s something you’d pronounce loudly after, say, an hour and half of someone’s State of the Union address.

10 Enginn verður feitur af fögrum orðum.

11 “To think is to practice brain chemistry” and “To give until it hurts. This is the true meaning of love” respectively.

12 No one knows what they’ve had till it’s gone.