Online:Ode to the Founding

Book Information Ode to the Founding
ID	6106
See Also	Lore version
Collection	Solitude Soliloquies
Locations
Found in the following locations: In a rowboat north of Black Morass Ritual Site, Western Skyrim (map) Bookshelves in Blackreach: Greymoor Caverns and Western Skyrim

Ode to the Founding

by Elde of the Wells

A call to arms

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[The following transcription stems from the last known performance of Elde of the Wells, who recited this original composition before the Jarl of Solitude on the eve of the hold joining the War of Succession.]

HARKEN, hale of Haafingar, and hear the homages of our hearth;
The sweeping, sky-skimming spine of the city's solitary crescent
Rises from the rigid rock, proud and persisting
Tall against the tolling tides and the trials of interminable time.
Once, o honored audience, our houses were humble.
The Sea of Ghost's [sic] glacial gales, its whipping winds
Forced our forlorn forebearers, fraught and faithful,
To shelter under sheer cliffs that shot up from the shore
And pray to Shor for passage through primal plumes of pummeling winter.

LO, and with the reckoning of Akatosh's revolving hourglass
Our people prospered, and perched upon the roost-stone
Their walls and wells, against the baleful baying of the bitter winds.
Hewing stone with hardened hands, they hefted high towers —
A Dour donjon, and a temple for those dutiful to the Divines.
These foundations, fortress and faith-house, form the fulcrum
Of our city, Solitude, oft-sung in skaldic odes.

NOW built, this bastion on the blasted and buffeted bedrock,
Solitude soared and, surveying its surroundings, seized them;
With unrestrained grasp, and unrepentant gaze
It harried and hammered the hinterlands into the hold of Haafingar.
Many mourned, more demurred, but the moments came to murmurs:
When the Jarl bore forth the wending circlet of his silver crown
Upon which was blazed the wolf, wise and wary —
A symbol of the city, a solemn sigil of the spirit of Solitude.

SO take up swords, sworn sons and dauntless daughters,
And rally around the reign of the wolf-crowned king!
Should our blood be spilled in battle, we can be blessed to know
That we shall doff our helms in the hallowed home, Sovngarde,
Having slew the serpents strangling our Skyrim.
Now rest, my cunning kindred, rest and keen-dream
Of the war that we will win on the morrow's dawn
And the ones that we will win for every morrow due us.

WE are the children of Solitude
WE are the children of Skyrim.