Antarcticus
This article makes me wish we were still an etiological myth-making culture while we were exploring the world with scientific precision. I can only imagine the story that might be produced to explain Antarctica’s bleeding glacier.
Here’s my suggestion:
There once was a massive giant. He was badly wounded in a fight with the gods and fled to the bottom of the world. The giant lamented this indignity and wept great rivers of tears at his pain. These rivers ran down over the wound, and the cold wind froze the water into an enormous glacier that dams up the giant’s blood to this day. Only a trickle of it can now be seen pouring out from under the ice.
But one day soon, at the end of all things, his wound will burst through the glacier, sending a great torrent of blood out over the world…
The god who wounded him was named Arcticus. Men call the giant Antarcticus because of this enmity.
If there’s one thing I’ve learned from Medieval Studies, a myth just isn’t a myth without a eschatological unease and a bogus etymology!
(My thanks to @james_arsenault for sharing this link!)
