Hwæt! What is this muttered mumbling -
whispered words, like distant rumbling
with inflections slowly crumbling, vowels withered, clauses creased?
It's the ghost of tongues forgotten,
lingos lost, with bodies rotten,
ancient sounds from burial mounds, departed language, tongues deceased!
Mediaeval, obsolescent, unintelligible beast -
does it matter in the least?

Nobody desires more tales
told in tongues as dead as doornails -
all this lost, forgotten lore fails to be relevant, you know.
There is a direct collision
with our glorious modern vision:
Superficial imprecision is what makes us bloom and grow.
If you manage simple chit-chat in a reasonable flow,
a degree we will bestow.

But behold! A mad Norwegian
from the untamed Tysfjord region
disregards the daunting legion of good reasons to desist,
and quite wild and wilful waxen
launches furious attacks on
syntax-problems Anglo-Saxon looming through the ancient mist,
granted, now and then pissed off, but never to be thrown off-piste,
clenched of teeth as well as fist.

Is her mission doomed and hapless,
and her phrasal trees all sapless,
as she charges, bold and mapless, in among them, out of view?
No - the syntax trees of Kristin,
far from dead, are pure and pristine,
for the language they exist in is the root whence English grew -
is the depth beneath the surface modern students don't see through,
learning being thought taboo.

Kristin - light of linguists' lunches,
queen of stinging verbal punches,
bouncer-back from all the crunches of a thesis-writer's life -
ended are your tribulations.
You have met our expectations -
now accept congratulations for your fruits of strain and strife,
for your thesis, for your singing, for your wit's sharp-cutting knife!
Admiration now is rife.

Now, the menu you selected -
from the salmon we dissected,
with a herbal sauce perfected for the salmon's final dive,
through this feast which you have hosted,
through the lamb with relish roasted
and the wine in which we toasted and which made us bloom and thrive,
to the lemon mousse which yet again could appetites revive -
all has kept our tongues alive.

                                                                     Helge