The Ice-Shirt

by William T. Vollmann

  arrow; stiU she must believe her dreams). She fled up ledge to ledge, and in due time she reached another wide glacier-shelf, which wound round and round the mountain as before; once again that was her road. Now there were places of a hundred ells' width where the glacier was punctured by great sharp boulders, between two of which she spied a hollow lined with rocks, lichen and snow, which might aflford a litde shelter. The stones in it were round and blackish-green. Many of them were set into mud and moss, so that Freydis had no difficulty in prying them loose. But as soon as she began to erect her skin-tent, the wind screamed and knocked it down and tore at it and snatched it into the air, beating it and shaking it even as it buflfeted her, and almost tearing it from her grasp. With all her strength Freydis held to one comer and slowly, slowly drew it down to her, pulling during the weaker wind-breaths, and at other times merely waiting, for she could do no more. Her hands were muddy and bloody. Moment by moment she struggled to reclaim what was hers, dragging her tent out of the wind's fists and clutching it to her heart, ell by ell, as if it were her most darling treasure - as indeed it was, for without it she might well not live. So at last she was ready to begin again. - By now it had begun to rain. It was a cold, heavy, stinging rain. The raindrops struck her face like nails. When the wind-gusts momentarily abated, Freydis weighted down each comer of the skin-tent with a stone so heavy that she could barely roll it into place, but in doing so she stripped the moss away and left wounds in the raw mud, which the rain soon washed away until the smooth ice showed beneath like bone, and then the roaring wind rolled the stones away on the ice and bent its wooden poles until they snapped. - Freydis was soaked and filthy. The rain had tumed to sleet, and presendy became snow, pelting her cmmpled tent until it was a white drift. Then the wind lashed it, and it twisted and writhed, but the snow clung to it as the snow clung to her; for she was now so weary that she could scarcely bmsh it oflf. - Freydis understood at last that she could not hope to raise her tent. There was nothing to do, tired though she was, but continue on her miserable way. It took her half an hour to roll the tent around the poles again, such was the wind. There was no chance of rest. She tightened the drawstring of her hood as much as she could; then she must raise her face to the storm once again, and at once her cloak-ends began beating her face, and she staggered upward through the fog and wind, with snow piling up on her elbows and head and shoulders.* The mist had thickened to such a

  * What straits she was in cannot be imagined by those who have not been alone and at the mercy of an Arctic storm. The edge of the sharpest and most cunning word is dull in comparison to a knife of wind.

  degree that she could barely see her own feet. Although she did not know it, diis saved her from many vertiginous dangers, for there were now several places where die way was but a hand's breaddi wide, on either side of which waited destruction from crevasses, but because the Nothing was filled widi fog she could not see it, so it could not draw her down. Freydis clambered up the stony ice, gasping for breath, and her breadi-clouds mingled with die fog. Often she thought diat she must have to abandon die attempt, but had she done so there would have been no hope for her, and that was the only reason that she staggered on, pulling herself up by means of icy slabs she could barely see, sobbing words of praise to Blue-Shirt for His road that guided her up His great ice-wall; and whenever she was compelled again to embrace the ice while working her way up from a narrow ledge she rested her ear against it and listened for the drumming sound she craved, as one might put ear to a mother's belly to hear the movements of the fetus in her womb; though Freydis could not be sure that she heard anything, yet somehow doing this comforted her, and blindly, faithfiiUy, with her head sunk almost upon her breast, she followed Blue-Shirt's road - first, as a baby follows its mother's face with its eyes; then, as she continued on in that hellish white darkness, the drumming came into her heart again, and she followed that crag-way with mature and steady purpose, as was her duty; but then hailstones rattled down on her and broke open the skin of her frostbitten face in many fresh wounds and the wind slowed her steps and aged her; and finally, as she pulled herself from ledge to ledge, her own dear drumming faded as her last strength left her, and when she came to another shoulder on the ice she hobbled as slowly as a crone, praying to Blue-Shirt: "Please let me die!" - So she called on Him a second time. (Never before or after in her life did she say these words.) Then it seemed that He was satisfied, for all at once she reached a sort of cave formed by two great slabs of stone leaning against each other on the hillside. She crawled inside that cold dead womb and fell down upon the stone. There she fainted, and slept out the storm, her strength returning by degrees as she slept (and the drumming once again grew loud and confident in her ears), so that at last, when after many hours the sky became sunny and icy-blue, she awakened, and her intention was frozen harder than ever in her. - Freydis was one of the bravest women in the world. She had to be, because she had only herself Or so it seemed to her. - Thus she clambered up the Ice-Mountain, which was sheer, and every foothold was slippery with ice. She climbed seven thousand ells. At last she could see the summit rising in a snowy wall that was sometimes silver, sometimes blue or gold, depending on the mood of die Sun, and up this wall Freydis went, cutting steps with

  her double-bladed axe, ascending through light and clouds and light and clouds with not a shadow on that metallic snow whose colour could never be defined: - it was not blue, not really.

  The Palace ofAmortortak

  For the wonders of Iceland and Greenland consist in great frost and boundless ice, or in unusual display of flame and fire, or in large fishes and other sea monsters.

  Speculum Regale, X.105

  Atop this mountain was a casde made of ice, like a skull on the mountain's blue shoulders. The walls were fortified with fi-ozen stones and beams of ice seven ells thick. Upon the battlements walked demons and little misshapen Skraelings armed with horn-bows. A ramp ascended to the main gate; down its middle was a set of rails, at the top of which was a wagon loaded with hailstones and boulders. Demons stood on either side of this cart, holding fast to ropes made of walrus-hide. In the event of any attack, the wagon could be let down upon the rails so that it would rush toward the besiegers faster and faster until finally the demons pulled upon the ropes to check it suddenly, and the missiles came flying out upon the men below to crush them. Forty ells below the parapets of Blue-Shirt's castle, guards strutted upon wooden brattices, walking round and round the walls like flies, so that they could see movement fi-om any direction. Atop the ramparts were cauldrons of ice-stones so cold as to bum, feeding upon their own chill; this molten frost could be poured down upon anyone who approached the casde walls, so that he would fi*eeze and fall down tinkling into a thousand shattered pieces. Demons leaned upon great poles of sea-hom shod v^th points of iron-hard ice; these could be cast like spears. In addition, the ice all about the base of the wall was mined and covered with snow carefully raked, so that no one unfamiliar to Blue-Shirt would know where he could safely step, if he were to go off the main path. These mines were deep and narrow pits filled with silently burning flames of cold-fire. Above the casde-roof was constructed a second roof of ice and snow, set upon thick ice-posts, so that an armed host hurling stones over the battlements could do no harm.

  Boldly Freydis approached. In truth Blue-Shirt's fort was a grim place, but she felt such joy and relief to have reached her goal that it held no

  terror for her. - "Certainly they know how to defend diemselves here," she said to herself, "but it may be something worries diem, or they would not take so much trouble over it." - As for die sentries, diey scrutinized her in silence, marching round and round on dieir brattices widi dieir hands on the hilts of their swords. But when she reached die base of dieir ramp, the demons all shouted and grinned at her, and the troll-guards urinated down on her. So well did they know her. - Biting her lip as she suffered diis treatment, Freydis ascended die ramp, at the top of which loomed diat great hailstone-
cart, and the demons made as if to loose the ropes that held it in such steady suspense over her. Once again Freydis affected not to notice. But it was certainly very disagreeable to her to be treated as she treated her own thralls. The demons sniggered. Their repulsive features, which were neither yellow nor black in hue, twitched in their merriment, and their naked bodies shook so hard that their arrows rattled in the quivers. When they blocked her path, Freydis shouldered them aside. - "LOKl's bastards!" she yelled, and they laughed like oafs. - A great troll of a Doorkeeper threw open the gate without even challenging her, and stood aside to let her enter. - Now Freydis was very cautious, recalling the words of ODIN the High One:

  At every threshold, ere you enter,

  you should spy around,

  you should pry around, always hesitating lest some foeman should be waiting.

  So, as Freydis stood almost within that barred gate, she determined to guard her words somewhat. She could never be sure that she was not among foes. Thinking that she hesitated, the Doorkeeper grinned and winked and tittered impatiently. Truly he was the ugliest troll she had ever seen or heard tell of Once Eirik had told her of a far place called THE GREAT Blueland,* where the people were burned almost black by the sun, but they were said not to be ill-favored, whereas he ... He wore a cloak of ice-blue livery, but his shoes were iron. The balls rolled continually in his narrow litde eyes. He licked his Hps with his pointed tongue, and scratched at himself with great yellow claws. When he opened his mouth to yawn, she saw rows and rows of spiked teeth grinning in its darkness, as if he had been some sea-reptile such as her father had often told of finding in his nets when he fished in Iceland. - Seeing her stare, the troll spoke to her for the first time, saying

  * Africa.

  angrily, "Think not to steal the treasures from my belly, for the gold that I swallow would kill you with its venom." And he shook his knife at her.

  - Freydis snatched her own knife from her belt and waved it in his face, crying hotly, "It was never my intention, thrall, to scoop your stinking shit from your guts!" - "No need," said the troll sourly, "since you already stink of piss." - But he put his knife away, and after glaring at him Freydis did the same. She was beginning to learn how to deal with the folk here. - Once again the troll scutded aside on his hairy spider-legs as Freydis came forward undaunted, and so she strode into that dark and icy castle. The troll slammed the gate behind her. - Without a word, Freydis gave him her mande to hold. She took off her gloves, knowing that one must appear before great lords with ungloved hands. She looked at her image in a litde ivory-backed mirror that she always carried (for Freydis was vain) and made certain that her hair was brushed smooth. - The troll laughed and presented her to a pair of demon-hags more ugly even than he. They sniffed at her and wrinkled their noses. - "Oh, my!" they said fastidiously. "You must wash, sister!" they said.

  - "I'm no sister of yours!" cried Freydis. "My tits don't hang to my knees, and I don't stink after I wash!" - "Oh my, oh my," the demon-hags grumbled. "It seems we have a Queen to wait on." Then they led her through the channels and bowels of the castle, whose corridors were shored up everywhere with beams of iron and other ignoble metals. - "Don't breathe so hard," said the hags peevishly. "You'll melt the ceiling." - They hobbled groaning down a winding flight of slippery blue ice-stairs, and so brought Freydis presently to a cellar that smelled of saltpeter. In a comer were many diverse ice-casks, which the hags now proceeded to prise open one after the other, looking for the right kind of snow for Freydis to wash herself with, and arguing all the while in such disagreeably screeching voices that she wished she could have killed them. At last they found what they sought, and shoveled a bushel of it into a pail. Then they made her strip herself and scrub with it. It seemed to Freydis no different from any other snow she had seen, but she said nothing, because she considered any words she might utter to these monsters to be words wasted. - "Very well," they said to her when she had finished. "Now we'll take you to people of rank, and we hope they kick you back downstairs, stinking whore that you are!"

  Now at last Freydis was introduced to folk more after her liking, for, while goblins they were, they inhabited the loftier ice-rooms of the upper storeys, and wore grand blue robes. Though it was quite dark in the heart of the casde where they lived, the Ice-Lights illuminated them tolerably well, especially when they nodded slowly and earnestly at something that she had said

  and she could see the smooth white moon of a cheek or a chin rising in the darkness; and their eyes glowed with ice-fire, and there was a greater darkness in their mouths. Sometimes the ceiling creaked when their King paced heavily in the room above, and then their faces rose slowly toward the sound, like a dozen rising planets (for I like to think that they were the guests of the Sun and the Moon, who, once their hosts had abandoned them for the skies, became in time hungry and anxious, and so fell into Blue-Shirt's orbit). - They did not abuse her as the thralls had done, but greeted her civilly, for her father's sake; they asked her for news about the lower parts of Greenland where men lived, and hospitably refreshed her with sugar-ices. - These were Blue-Shirt's house-carles. Freydis in her tum cultivated their friendship, and, as her dream had told her to do, she asked them for advice.

  "You must avoid the indulgence of your spiteful desires which once satisfied the purpose of your life," they replied, "for now, my girl, you have more important things to live for. You must keep a watch over your tongue, and say only what will please others, for that way you will better be able to please yourself You must also keep a watch over your behavior. If our King exalts you, then many people will tum their eyes upon you, and if your deportment is petty or dishonorable then they will become weary of you, and that will make them difficult to manage. Even a milkmaid speaks lovingly to her cows, and soothes them, though not out of love, as perhaps they imagine, but simply because cows believing themselves loved are more easily milked."

  (But at this, Freydis smiled, remembering how she had always whipped her cows when there was no one to watch her.)

  "Be sure only of this," said the trolls, "that you show proper conduct to Flim, as befitting a King."

  "I thank you for your counsel," said Freydis gravely, "and will do as you suggest."

  She walked forward with her head erect; the demons whose fiiendship she had sought walked before her. So they led her into their Master's presence.

  Amortortak

  They tell me here that human flesh tastes quite as nice as bear-meat; but that you can always read in a person's face if he has eaten it, and that those who have been compelled to do so shrink from speaking about it.

  Lindsay (1932)

  Amortortak sat atop a slanting wall of ice. He had cold and cloudy temples. His beard was frost. He wore a helmet of bluish-white ice. His hands were quite black. - When Freydis came into the demon's presence she was well received. She declared her errand, explaining her disposition to Him frankly and asking for His help and friendship in attaining her ends.

  "I am sure you know," said Blue-Shirt, "that I already appropriated to Myself all rights in Greenland ages ago. The Screechers* hold the country only as a fief The same goes for you Icelanders. You are all bonded to Me by virtue of your blue eyes. When your father first wintered here alone, I made him acknowledge Me and become My man. Now I will give you this condition, Freydis: if you also swear and declare your vassalship - for a willing servant is more valuable to Me than a dozen of the other kind - then I will enrich you here and in Wineland, and we will see what can be done in the two kingdoms to increase your power. But I tell you frankly that you will never be greatly loved if you follow Me."

  Freydis considered carefully. Although she was well aware that there was much to be said both for and against the demon's oflfer, in the end she chose to deliver herself into His power. Then Blue-Shirt was well pleased, and claimed her body and many rich presents besides, and she became His vassal under oath. As she was preparing to return homeward out of the rock. He saw that she was somewhat dow
ncast, as indeed it was only natural that she should be after the bargain that she had made, so Blue-Shirt smiled and touched her with His BLACK HANDS and said, "I at least will always love you, as long as you continue to fulfill My demands," but this answer pleased Freydis even less than before.