Wayward Heroes

by Halldor Laxness

  Þorgeir said: “Never did Christ or any other sorcerer fashion my mother Þórelfur a soul, yet she bore an unflinching son.”

  “It is written in holy books,” said Jörundur, “that old Loki, whom both learned and lay call Lucifer, he being the loosest – and lousiest – of clerics, used his wiles to entrap souls, beguiling them with falsehoods. And when the souls of men began to entangle themselves in murder, day and night, and wives to double-cross their husbands through adultery, then it was that Christ displayed his full munificence and authority, when, with his overflowing wealth, he ransomed both king and slave at the same price, lifting and straightening the infirm and the bent, teaching them many a bloom-bearing hymn.”

  Þormóður now said to Þorgeir: “Would it not be better for us to lie with your kinsman Þorgils’ bitches and lap up slops than to stay here with this foul rogue and listen to his night-time nonsense?”

  “You speak soundest of all men,” replied Þorgeir, who had gotten to his feet, fully armed. “And we have been done no small disgrace, to have been lodged with a feeble fool who places the gallantry of good men and the wickedness of slaves on equal footing.”

  Þormóður said that it would serve Þorgils right to kill his priest.

  “That we shall not do,” said Þorgeir, “for it would break all my bonds of kinship with Þorgils and put us outside his protection. Someday, before it all ends, we may find ourselves in need of a place of refuge here in the Vestfirðir. But that will not stop us from chastising this cleric.”

  They now seized Jörundur and pulled off his tunic, but because the man was weak and poor, wearing a hairshirt patched many times over, they did not have the heart to beat him long into the night. Besides, whenever they touched him, their fingertips stung, as if they had grabbed nettles.

  Afterward, they went out under the open sky. The Vestfirðir night was still and starry.

  8

  NOW, AS YULE drew near, the two comrades took to freeloading from others throughout the Vestfirðir, calling particularly – and always uninvited – on better-off farmers holding feasts. Þormóður did the talking, and in general folk did not find his tales and poems unentertaining, though not all were equally glad of the comrades’ company. They were not easy to please, and took liberties and rattled their weapons.

  Wherever they stayed, it was their habit to challenge men to trials of strength, and in this, Þorgeir took the lead. They invited some to bouts of arm-pulling, yanking them down off their bunks – which was in fact an offense punishable by blood vengeance, though none would have held such a grudge as to pursue it. They challenged others to the game of “rawhide-toss,” which some call “hide-in-the-corners.” Five men play this game at once: one in the middle of the room and one in each of its four corners – the man in the middle is said to be “out.” A wet rawhide is twisted into a ball and tossed from corner to corner of the room, while the man who is out attempts to catch it. It is thus trap-ball and tug-of-war all at once. The game often ends in roughhousing and fisticuffs, or even worse, choking or suffocation, if the wet hide is wrapped around someone’s neck or head – but weapons are forbidden in this game. He who wins the hide is the one left standing in the end, having never been driven to the floor. In this game, the two comrades generally had the best of it. Þormóður was so nimble that he could not be knocked off his feet, while Þorgeir was so strong that he could shove nearly every other man down, and such a tough competitor that the others were often left reeling by his thwacks to their snouts, blood pouring from their nostrils and mouths. That Yule, the sworn brothers spent their time in these sorts of games and others.

  Farmer Bessi, Þormóður’s father, was far from fond of this gallivanting of theirs throughout the district, and sent them word to come take their meals and lodging at Laugaból, instead of imposing themselves upon strangers. The two comrades returned there after Yule. It was a rather unhappy place for warriors to be: the valley lies far from the sea and is rarely visited by others in winter. Its normal occupants are sluggish churls, little given to sports or heroics. The comrades slept until late in the day, and when they woke, they spent most of their time bandying saws, tales, and poems about heroes of yore, or harping on their vows to yield to no foe, to be bested by none, and never to beg mercy of an enemy, but always to fight with every ounce of strength, until the bitter end.

  It was customary each winter, as the sun began to climb higher, for young men from the district to meet to play games on the lake at the lower end of Laugadalur, near Laugaból, and this they did now. The weather was mild, chilly at night but sunny by day, and the ice was firm. The young men engaged in various sports: wrestling, horse-fighting, trap-ball, and tug-of-war. Many a grown man was there with his son, seeing to it that the players followed the rules. Young women had also come to watch, sitting on the bank of the lake or the flat ground above it, taking the midday sun. Some wore linen hoods on their heads, and were accompanied by their mothers or nursemaids, or else had bondwomen to look after them. During a break in the game, Skald Þormóður walked over to these girls, greeted them, and began chitchatting and jesting with them. There was one girl with pretty eyes and a fairer hue than most of the other women. She regarded this visitor of theirs with interest, yet remained somewhat guarded, as if she preferred to wait and see how things would unfold before revealing too much. Nor were her eyes and replies entirely free of humor, as though she were amused by this slender, well-spoken sportsman, without trusting him too deeply. Now shouts were heard from the ice, calling for Þormóður and another man to join the game. Just as he was about to take his leave, Þormóður turned back to this young woman and asked whether his eyes were deceiving him. “Is this,” said he, “my neighbor from Ögur?”

  She laughed and said yes, but then expressed her surprise at how long it had taken him to tell her from the others.

  He took her hand, drew her away from the group of women, and, while her back was turned to the assembly, said: “You are the only woman to whom I would wish to address a lay.”

  She abruptly stopped laughing, fear filled her eyes, and her cheeks turned red.

  “You will dare no such impropriety,” she answered tersely, in a rather low voice, and with a tear in her eye. “My slave Kolbakur would kill you. He is sitting on the bank over there, watching as we speak. Rumor also has it that you had your platter full composing your lay for Kolbrún.”

  “I shall make you a longer and better lay,” said he.

  “I will be shamed throughout the district,” said she, her eyes now blazing.

  “Then I will come to meet you another time, but alone,” said he.

  She replied: “How astonishingly bold you are to say this to my face in plain sight of all, giving them cause to raise a hue and cry about us.”

  “Then next time I will speak with you hidden from others’ eyes,” said he.

  “I have no say in your comings and goings,” said she. “But do not endanger yourself any more than me, now that spring is coming and the nights grow brighter. Yet I will be no man’s concubine.”

  “Sudden death alone could keep me from coming to you.”

  At these words, Þorgeir Hávarsson shouted out for Þormóður to come rejoin the game. When Þormóður Kolbrúnarskáld heard his sworn brother’s voice, he left the girl at once.

  At that time, many a man skilled in the games lived out west in Djúp. These men were little pleased to be bested by outsiders who turned up for their contests, such as Þorgeir Hávarsson, and they played against this interloper as fiercely as they could. Nor did Þorgeir himself hold back. They jostled on the ice, and Þorgeir knocked some of them senseless. Several farmers’ sons urged the others to grab their weapons and face down this man. Respected, well-intentioned men, however, stepped in and managed to stave off further trouble between Þorgeir and the local swellheads.

  Chieftain Vermundur of Eyri had been enjoying the games that day, but when he felt that the younger men’s roughhousing was getting out of
hand, he made ready to leave and called to his kinsman Bessi to ride with him to his boat.

  He said: “I think it might be a good idea, kinsman, for your son Þormóður not to seek his cronies in other districts, lest he find in those places no other men than the kind we have driven out of the Vestfirðir for their thuggery, or that have sentences of outlawry for manslaughter hanging over their heads. I would be quite happy if you sent Þorgeir Hávarsson away. He is scarcely less of a troublemaker than his father was, and no good influence on your son Þormóður.”

  At the conclusion of the games, Þormóður went back over to where the women were sitting to continue his conversation with the girl, but she was gone. He asked where he might find Þórdís Kötludóttir from Ögur.

  They said that the slave Kolbakur had led her horse thither, lifted her into the saddle, and taken her home.

  Þormóður was idling despondently on the ice opposite the group of women when his comrade Þorgeir Hávarsson walked by.

  “Are you looking for someone among these women?” asked Þorgeir.

  “There was a girl here a short time ago, but now she is gone,” said Þormóður. “And I feel as if this day has lost all its luster.”

  “We shall not let luster befuddle us,” said Þorgeir.

  “I wish to compose a lay for this woman,” said Þormóður.

  Þorgeir said: “The skalds of old would have called it unmanly to make verses about beggar girls, the daughters of bumpkins, and not about the women who shine in the sky in swan-likeness.”

  “It so happens,” said Þormóður, “that I am less fond than I was of women that fly through the air.”

  “That, you shall regret most,” said Þorgeir Hávarsson. “He who truckles to a woman is lowest laid.”

  Þormóður Kolbrúnarskáld looked at his friend Þorgeir Hávarsson and smiled. “No need to augur me calamity,” he said, “for when the end draws near, I shall praise your head as beseems it.”

  Now folk made ready to head home from the games. Farmer Bessi Halldórsson led his horse over to where the two comrades were standing. He said to Þorgeir:

  “You played very hard, Þorgeir. Two things are certain: you are quite a daredevil, and great fame awaits you. Yet we here in Djúp scrape by on farming and fishing, and are little inclined toward contests of courage against heroes, simply for the sake of pride. It would thus please us greatly if you would desist from displays of prowess while among us, for it is difficult to see what the result might be should more days come when men’s sons are knocked senseless by outsiders when folk gather for amusement. Now I will offer you this horse and my good cowl, if you head south tonight over the heaths. I ask you to indulge me in this for the sake of your friendship with Þormóður, and thereby to spare me any trouble that I might meet with because of you. In the agreement between our kinsman, Chieftain Vermundur, and your father Hávar, it was stipulated that your family should keep to the south of the great fjords – the result of events that I need not go into now.”

  The two comrades did not think they had the wherewithal to continue swaggering around the Vestfirðir as they had done for some time, especially if it were making the chieftains bristle. Þorgeir accepted the horse and cowl and made ready to ride south. Þormóður said that he would ride with him.

  “What shall we do when the weather warms up?” asked Þormóður Kolbrúnarskáld. “Shall we become summer laborers and hire ourselves out for butter and stockfish?”

  Þorgeir answered: “If we are now to be denied farmers’ hospitality, we would be better off roaming the countryside and demanding whatever we need. But it is likelier that our exploits will be few while we have no ship to sail. It crosses my mind that my father had a fishing boat, which is no doubt rotten and leaky by now. We can repair it, and then assemble a band of vagrant folk and go raiding here in the west. There are numerous narrow fjords in this corner of the country, separated by mountains sheer to the sea, and many a scattered, scantly-manned farm, making it hard to assemble a force against Vikings. We shall procure wares in valiant fashion: claiming stockfish, whale oil, woolen cloaks, homespun, and tusks from farmers, and forcing those of means to buy peace with whatever valuables – gold and silver – they possess. When we have gained ample spoils, we shall kill our men and trade our wares for weapons and shares in a ship, and sail to foreign lands.”

  That night they set out from Laugadalur, riding in moonlight over Þernuvíkurháls Ridge and leading their horses over Kleif, one of the steepest paths in the Vestfirðir, before traversing the snow and ice of Kollafjarðarheiði Heath to Breiðafjörður. They had grand schemes and plans, and grew ever more resolute in their intentions the more difficult things seemed. On the evening of the next day, they arrived at Reykjahólar and were given food to eat, but few folk there passed the cup to them in welcome. They slept through the night, and next morning called people together as witnesses, for now they meant to swear solemn oaths by the Earth. The ground was frozen too deep and too solid for cutting fresh turf, so they took some icy turfs from the stackyard and crawled under those, opened veins and mingled their blood with the soil, at the same time declaring their sworn brotherhood: that from then on, they would both face the world as one and evenly divide all the spoils that they took through bold warring on other men, and that he who lived longer would spare nothing in avenging the other. Christian folk laughed at the ludicrousness of these two frozen-turfers agreeing to go halves on the lice crawling over them, and said that such losers would likely never have any other loot to share.

  Then the sworn brothers part. Þorgeir Hávarsson goes south to his mother in Borgarfjörður to procure a ship, and Þormóður Kolbrúnarskáld travels back westward to Djúp.

  9

  OF ÞORMÓÐUR’S JOURNEY there is this to tell: he rode the same route back, over the heath, stopping for the night in Ísafjörður and sleeping well into the next day before heading home to Laugadalur. The weather remained calm. That evening he drew near Laugaból, but instead of going all the way home, he turned his horse loose and started hiking up the mountainside. The moon was new. Toward the top of the mountain was a lake, its water frozen. Þormóður was so light of step that he flew rather than walked over the mountain that night. He ran down into Ögurdalur alongside the river that flows from the lake, a path rarely taken.

  The main door at Ögur faced Djúp, whose waters are both a highroad and a field of plenty. Þormóður came down the ravine behind the farm, took a look around and noticed a medium-sized window facing the slope. The window had eight panes of membrane, fastened with sinews. He climbed up to the window ledge, spoke the girl’s name several times, and fiddled with the window. The girl started from sleep, terribly frightened, and asked who was outside.

  Þormóður said it was he.

  “What is on your mind?” she asked.

  “I have composed a lay in your honor,” said he. “Pray let me in.”

  “I am no jarl. Away with you and your piddling lay,” she said. “I will never let scrappers and scamps into my house, nor skalds with their silly love songs for women.”

  “It is the best lay ever made,” said he.

  She said: “There is no chance that I will do my mother the dishonor of heeding your lay at the time of day that can bring greatest disgrace to us women. And now it is proven, as she has always said, that you are a horrible miscreant.”

  “Open your window and see for yourself what sort of man I am,” said he.

  “You will wake Kolbakur with your ruckus, and he will come and kill you,” said she.

  “I fear your will more than I do your slave,” said he. “Or would you rather I deliver your lay outside the window?”

  “Waking my mother and our servants with your gibes will not diminish my disgrace,” said she.

  “Shall I perhaps try my knife on your window-skins?” he asked.

  “It was the foulest of days by far when I first set eyes on you,” said she. “Why did you not leave with your friend, that ni
twit Þorgeir?”

  “Because,” he said, “I love you more than him.”

  She said: “What have I done to cause you, Þorgeir’s crony and Coal-Rump’s delight, to seek me out over mountains by night just to lie to me and make me cry? Away with you forever.”

  “If you let me in, I shall whisper in your ear,” said he, “and wake neither Kolbakur nor your mother nor the household. My lay will lull you to sleep.”

  The girl replied: “Never shall any man say to another that Þórdís of Ögur leaves her window open for visitors at night – and you are a hideous scoundrel to expect a simple maiden to behave like a strumpet.” With these words, she drew back the bolts that Kolbakur had made to fasten her window frame, pulled the frame aside, and let the man into her bower. Images of gods were carved on the bower’s pillars and the stiles and rails of her chair, but they were only half-done – Christianity having come to Iceland before the artist completed his work. The new moon shone on the half-carved jaws of the cats that Freyja drove across the sky. After opening her window, the girl stepped out of her shoes, jumped back onto her bed, and curled up in the corner. When Þormóður had come inside, however, he did not launch straight into his lay – it seemed he had a lot to say first. She declared that she would not heed anything but the lay – “and this is all wretched knavery.”

  He said: “Much seems to us skalds more needful, when we sit near to women, than reciting them verses we made when they were far away. We would rather lay our hands on their knees.”

  “I am no little girl,” said she, “yet I have never heard such an abomination as the one you now speak, that a man should lay his hand upon a woman’s knee, and it is more than base of you to propose such a thing – yet I will allow it for now, and you shall deliver your lay as you do so.”