북쪽 바다의 이상한 이야기 / Weird Tales from Northern Seas (영문판, 삽화 포함)

조나스 라이 지음

아이보리잉크 2025년 06월 16일 출간

작품소개

책소개

* 이 도서는 영어만으로 구성되어 있습니다.
북유럽의 장엄한 풍경과 신비로운 바다 전설을 모티프로 한 요나스 리의 대표 단편들을 한데 엮은 작품집이다. 황량한 피오르와 얼음바람이 부는 어촌을 배경으로, 인간과 자연·초자연이 뒤엉키는 기묘한 사건들이 서늘한 서스펜스를 자아낸다. 이번 영문판은 고전 번역본을 현대 감수로 다듬어 가독성을 높였고, 19세기 목판풍 삽화를 그대로 복원해 당시 북구 해안의 거친 정취를 시각적으로도 체험하게 한다. 특히 영어로 읽음으로써 노르웨이 방언이나 신화적 어휘가 지닌 뉘앙스를 한층 또렷하게 느낄 수 있으며, 북유럽 문화·민속 연구 자료로도 활용 가치가 크다.

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(참고) 분량: 약 19 만자

책 속으로

On Kvalholm, down in Helgeland,1 dwelt a poor fisherman, Elias by name, with his wife Karen, who had been in service at the parson’s over at Alstad. They had built them a hut here, and he used to go out fishing by the day about the Lofotens.
There could be very little doubt that the lonely Kvalholm was haunted. Whenever her husband was away, Karen heard all manner of uncanny shrieks and noises, which could mean no good. One day, when she was up on the hillside, mowing grass to serve as winter fodder for their couple of sheep, she heard, quite plainly, a chattering on the strand beneath the hill, but look over she durst not.
They had a child every year, but that was no burden, for they were both thrifty, hard-working folks. When seven years had gone by, there were six children in the house; but that same autumn Elias had scraped together so much that he thought he might now venture to buy a Sexæring,2 and henceforward go fishing in his own boat.
One day, as he was walking along with a Kvejtepig 3 in his hand, and thinking the matter over, he unexpectedly came upon a monstrous seal, which lay sunning itself right behind a rock on the strand, and was as much surprised to see the man as the man was to see the seal. But Elias was not slack; from the top of the rock on which he stood, he hurled the long heavy Kvejtepig right into the monster’s back, just below the neck.
The seal immediately rose up on its tail right into the air as high as a boat’s mast, and looked so evilly and viciously at him with its bloodshot eyes, at the same time showing its grinning teeth, that Elias thought he should have died on the spot for sheer fright. Then it plunged into the sea, and lashed the water into bloody foam behind it. Elias didn’t stop to see more, but that same evening there drifted into the boat place on Kvalcreek, on which his house stood, a Kvejtepole, with the hooked iron head snapped off.
Elias thought no more about it, but in the course of the autumn he bought his Sexæring, for which he had been building a little boat-shed the whole summer.
One night as he lay awake, thinking of his new Sexæring, it occurred to him that his boat would balance better, perhaps, if he stuck an extra log of wood on each side of it. He was so absurdly fond of the boat that it was a mere pastime for him to light a lantern and go down to have a look at it.
Now as he stood looking at it there by the light of the lantern, he suddenly caught a glimpse in the corner opposite, on a coil of nets, of a face which exactly resembled the seal’s. For an instant it grinned savagely at him and the light, its mouth all the time growing larger and larger; and then a big man whisked out of the door, not so quickly, however, but that Elias could catch a glimpse, by the light of the lantern, of a long iron hooked spike sticking out of his back. And now he began to put one and two together. Still he was less anxious about his life than about his boat; so he there and then sat him down in it with the lantern, and kept watch. When his wife came in the morning, she found him sleeping there, with the burnt-out lantern by his side.
One morning in January, while he was out fishing in his boat with two other men, he heard, in the dark, a voice from a skerry at the very entrance of the creek. It laughed scornfully, and said, "When it comes to a Femböring,4 Elias, look to thyself!"
But there was many a long year yet before it did come to that; but one autumn, when his son Bernt was sixteen, Elias knew he could manage it, so he took his whole family with him in his boat to Ranen,5 to exchange his Sexæring for a Femböring. The only person left at home was a little Finn girl, whom they had taken into service some few years before, and who had only lately been confirmed.
Now there was a boat, a little Femböring, for four men and a boy, that Elias just then had his eye upon–a boat which the best boat-builder in the place had finished and tarred over that very autumn. Elias had a very good notion of what a boat should be, and it seemed to him that he had never seen a Femböring so well built below the water-line. Above the water-line, indeed, it looked only middling, so that, to one of less experience than himself, the boat would have seemed rather a heavy goer than otherwise, and anything but a smart craft.
Now the boat-master knew all this just as well as Elias. He said he thought it would be the swiftest sailer in Ranen, but that Elias should have it cheap, all the same, if only he would promise one thing, and that was, to make no alteration whatever in the boat, nay, not so much as adding a fresh coat of tar. Only when Elias had expressly given his word upon it did he get the boat.
But "yon laddie"6 who had taught the boat-master how to build his boats so cunningly below the water-line–above the water-line he had had to use his native wits, and they were scant enough–must surely have been there beforehand, and bidden him both sell it cheaply, so that Elias might get it, and stipulate besides that the boat should not be looked at too closely. In this way it escaped the usual tarring fore and aft.
Elias now thought about sailing home, but went first into the town, provided himself and family with provisions against Christmas, and indulged in a little nip of brandy besides. Glad as he was over the day’s bargain, he, and his wife too, took an extra drop in their e’en, and their son Bernt had a taste of it too.

작가정보

저자(글) 조나스 라이

요나스 라이(Jonas Lie, 1833 – 1908)는 노르웨이 출신의 사실주의 작가로, 헨리크 입센·비에른스티에르네 비에르손과 함께 노르웨이의 3대 국민 작가로 꼽힌다. 경제적 어려움 속에서 어린 시절을 북구 해안 도시 트롬쇠에서 보내며, 어부들의 삶과 바다 전설을 체험한 경험이 훗날 작품 세계의 원천이 되었다.