Out & About …

… on the North York Moors, or wherever I happen to be.

The thaw begins

With the forecast expected to top 11ºc later today the thaw is well and truly underway leaving the tracks of Cliff Rigg Wood a lethal sheet of ice. Apparently, glocken is a Yorkshire term for the thaw, when the snow clears, a word derived from Old Norse. The modern Icelandic word glöggur, to become clear, comes from the same root. This is a new one on me, maybe it’s more West Yorkshire, rather than North Yorkshire. Down south, in Northamptonshire and Bedfordshire, ungive is used to mean to thaw or to melt suggesting, according to Robert Macfarlane, that ice and snow are a gift to a landscape and is taken away when thawing. This is a similar construction to the Flemish word ontgheven, to fail, and the Dutch ontgeven to yield or desist. All too deep and poetical for me.




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