The Prophets of Eternal Fjord  (Paperback)

The widow has come up here of her own accord, no one has forced her. She has beaten the lice from her finest clothes and put them on. She has washed her hair in the urine tub of the communal house and tied it up. Silently observed by her heathen cohabitants, she scraped the sooty grease from her cheeks and consumed the good meal that had been put out before her.
Then she came up here, carried along by a lightness of step. Now she sits on the brink of happiness, expectant and with warmth in her cheeks, at the edge with her legs tucked decorously beneath her in the way of all widows, the way she sits at home on the little side bench under the window opening. In one hand she clutches the crucifix and feels comfort in the solid warmth of its gold.
Far below her, a drop of at least a hundred fathoms, she hears the waves as they break, the sea colliding with the cliff, dissolving into white spray, retreating with a rush. But she sees it not, for she has closed her eyes, turned her gaze inwards.