The Bergark
The Ice-Ark of Halvard · Vessel of the Great Whiteout
The Bergark (the “berg-ark”) is the great vessel of ice and timber built by Halvard the Hoary at the Cold’s command before the The Great Whiteout — the world-burying snow sent upon a warm and rotting age (c. 3000 B.F.). Into it Halvard gathered his household and a remnant of every cold-bearing creature, that life might be kept through the deluge of snow and melt, and so it floated upon the white flood while the warm world drowned.
The First Keeping and the Covenant
When the snows ceased, Halvard loosed a pale owl from the Bergark to seek the first bare ground; on its return with a frost-sprig he knew the world had been kept. Emerging, he raised the first altar of the new age, and the Cold set the Aurora-Bow in the sky as the sign of the Covenant of Rime — the promise never again to unmake the world by flood. The Bergark is thus the great Elder image of the church (the Drift) as the vessel of keeping, riding out the world’s ruin.