Longing for the Hot Tub

This morning I went back to town to have 23 staples removed from my hip— remarkably painlessly, I should add.  I am hoping the staple removal will serve to accelerate healing and mobility.  I am now walking mostly with a cane.

I’m still not allowed to use the hot tub, or in fact any tub.  I long for a hot tub beyond all reason.

The hot tub in this photo is in Iceland, and was built by the great 13th Century poet and historian Snorri Sturluson, author of The Prose Edda and Heimskringla.  (A history of the kings of Norway.  Norwegians wouldn’t know their own history if Snorri hadn’t written it down for them.)  Snorri is also believed to have written Egil’s Saga, though the attribution isn’t 100%.

Snorri also seems to have invented hot tubs.  (Or reinvented them, since the Romans had them.)  He noticed a hot spring a distance from his house and constructed a pipeline of hollowed-out logs to this neatly laid-out bath.  The door opens to an underground tunnel that led to Snorri’s house, which was more or less where the white modern house is now.

Snorri was also murdered in that tunnel.  He was a powerful politician in a period in which politicians’ behavior resembled that of Mafia dons, and one of his rivals sent a 70-man hit squad to attack Snorri’s house at night.  Snorri was in the process of escaping via his secret tunnel when he was killed by a henchman named Arni the Bitter, who was himself murdered a dozen or so years later.

Snorri’s bath was quite inviting and I was tempted to disrobe and jump in, but not knowing local laws about defacing historical monuments, I managed to overcome the impulse and moved on.