Sofdu Unga - This is my slightly jazz-bluesy take on a trad lullaby which dates back more than a hundred years. And I must tell you right of, our trad songs of old are not sugary-sweet and filled with love & pink fluffy clouds, not even the lullabies!
This one was used in a play early in the 1900's. The play was, in turn, based on the very real lives of one of our most known outlaws, Eyvindur, and Halla his girlfriend, who fled from captivity and roamed the harsh nature of our country, from ashes of erupted mountains to freezing blocks of glaciers... but at a terrible cost. You see, before he was outlawed, the couple had had a child, which they kept with them on their flight (parents of young children may want to stop reading here).
So the scene from the play where this lullaby is used, is where they're in grave danger of getting caught and Eyvindur is considering parting from his loved ones for they slow him down. In a terrifying moment of desperation, facing the possibility of losing her lover & protector, Halla sits herself and her infant down near a waterfall and sings this lullaby to her child, (in my crude non-rhyming translation):

Sleep, my sweetest, dearest young.
Hear, the rain is weeping.
Mommy keeps your trinkets close,
gnawed sheep bones and box of stone.
We shall not stay awake when nights are falling.

There is much the darkness knows,
heavy thoughts within me.
Oft I saw the black sands blow,
burn the greenest grass of old.
From cracks of the ice, I hear the dead ones screaming.

Sleep, my angel, sleep so tight.
Late shall be your morning.
Misery would be your life,
fast the dimming days go nigh.
And all man can do is love and lose with mourning.

And with that, the baby sleeping at last, the young woman rises - and drops her child into the waterfall, never to look back...

There's only one thing to do in crisis like this - Sleep on it!
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BBox 2022 Audiophile, Mac Pro Intel, OSX 10.6.8, 800x600 (TV VGA)