The curious notion that one should not discover a dead thing and then leave without doing it some small service

Lehtisaari, 2013

In Halldór Laxness's 1935 novel Independent People, Guðbjartur Jónsson discovers the body of his son Helgi in the thawing snow. As the corpse is already in an advanced stage of decay, he could not recognise him. Out of a curious notion that one should not discover a dead thing and then leave without doing it some small service, Bjartur removes his right glove and throws it onto his son's body. Afterwards, he goes to his mother-in-law and asks her to knit a new one, and no more needs to be asked.

The idea of honouring the anonymous dead in this way came to mind again when I wandered the Helsinki suburbs one Summer afternoon. It was in the middle of the bike path at Lehtisaari where there lay a formless mass of bones and feathers. On the top of the pile lay a flower stalk. This arrangement had most likely not arisen by chance; I like to think that a passerby had placed the flowers over what was left of the bird, simply so that they would not be forgotten.

At the same time, in another forsaken corner of the world, Bjartur chances upon the faceless, nameless remains of a young man, and pay his homage with his right glove.

And since that time I have noticed the same practice repeated again for many of the times when I chance upon the carcases of a certain dead animal, in my own country no less. Only two weeks ago in school, at Mochtar Riady, I found what until recently used to be a bird with a very handsome green plumage. It lay, motionlessly and unobtrusively, at the base of the hedge. Here again someone had picked a handful of ixoras and scattered it over the creature. I picked a modest trumpetflower and added it to the shrine, and there these would stay until the rain or the janitors arrive.

Written 14 April 2015