Wayward Heroes

by Halldor Laxness

  Þormóður asks: “What man does Kolbrún love above all others at this particular moment?”

  The old fellow looks up, his eyes flashing beneath his shaggy brows. “You will find out soon enough,” he says.

  “When?” asks Þormóður.

  “On the day,” says the other, “when the weapon of the man she loves most, second to you, pierces your heart. What are you searching for in this foul hole, you fool?”

  “Glory,” says the newcomer.

  “I never heard of anyone gaining glory in Greenland,” says the man. “Whom do you plan to kill?”

  “Butraldi,” says Þormóður, “and the lad accompanying him.”

  The man laughs and says: “So you are going after the shrewdest champion and greatest well-pisser ever born in Iceland? I can assure you that he will come off better than all his enemies, as always. In Djúp and on Hornstrandir he got whatever bounty he demanded of people, and was wont to eat dairy food as he pleased. Most years, people and livestock drop dead from starvation in these parts. Butraldi and Lúsoddi soon realized it would not take long for the Norsemen at this fishing station to die out, and that there was little hope of betterment for idlers here. But up near the northernmost glaciers, a race of people enjoys a life of such plenty that they pop seal blubber into the mouths of newborn infants, and of dead men when they expose them to be consumed by birds. Butraldi and Lúsoddi have gone off with the men from Northern Seat to mingle with that race.”

  Nearby, under cover of an overhanging crag, stands a hut made of rocks slathered with seaweed, with doorposts of whale bone. After the old man and the visitor have been conversing for a while, the door of the hut opens, and a woman wearing a bearskin comes crawling out beneath the low lintel. This woman is not only large in stature, but also fuller of bosom and much plumper in the belly and loins than other women. Her eyebrows are black as coal, and her hair wolf-gray. She has a thick neck, powerful-looking teeth, and the largest eyes of any woman. Her skirt is tucked up beneath the bearskin, revealing stouter calves and sturdier knees than most others have, and the sight of her confirms everything the old tales tell of ogresses and sorceresses dwelling on the northernmost promontories, where sea-tossed sailors wash up when their ships wreck. No sooner is this woman out the door of her hut than she comes straight to the hearth and takes both the weapons, the old man’s knife and the newcomer’s sword, each lying on its own hearthstone, and fastens them to her belt beneath the bearskin.

  Þormóður gets to his feet and greets the woman, and she asks him the news, and who he is, and how it happens that such a young, handsome man does not groom his beard in a more gentlemanly manner before presenting himself to a woman.

  He tells the woman that his name is Vígfús,1 and that he has not come to Greenland in order to have his beard trimmed or his hair styled. “I was born and bred in Iceland, in Djúp, where Butraldi Brúsason and his toady Lúsoddi killed my brother. I have spared nothing to pursue them after hearing that they fled hither. I intend to hunt them down and kill them here in Greenland.”

  At this announcement, the mistress of the hut roars so loudly with laughter that it echoes off the cliffs and wakes seals on the rocks. After laughing her fill, she turns to the other fellow, still crouching over the hearth, and says:

  “Away with you now, Slave Loðinn, for I wish to speak privately with this visitor.”

  The slave walks off without a word. He is a broad-shouldered man, somewhat bowed, but otherwise looks every inch the warrior. Þormóður Kolbrúnarskáld walks over to the woman and kisses her.

  Mistress Sigurfljóð addresses him: “Now, Þormóður,” she says, “there is no need to beat around the bush. The woman that so long ago took into her bed the little lad who was supposed to sleep with the dogs is now part of the distant past. Yet I’ve always known you would come here in the end, even if nothing were left to welcome you on this headland but my cairn. How could you forget me for so long?”

  He says: “Not a night have I gone to sleep or woken in the morning without your bird crowing on the roof.”

  “We women are always delighted,” she says, “to hear you men prattle, best of all when we have grown plump and gray. Truly, you and I kindled well together at one time, though I was no great beauty.”

  “You are the woman,” says he, “who has always prevented me from being able to love another. Were I pledged to the fairest Valkyrie, we could never delight in each other’s love with your image standing between her and me.”

  “It remains to be seen,” says she, “whether the woman you find here has the strawberry mark that might still elicit verses from a true skald.”

  “I have been called the greatest husbandman in Djúp,” says he. “At my side stood the choicest of women, whose wealth and beauty made me the envy of most of the leading men in the west. Yet one midsummer, on a heath, when the sun of my life shone brightest on this skald, and the earth breathed its headiest perfume, I could no longer bear it. I ordered my servants to ferry me out to Snæfjallaströnd, and did not stop until I had reached the darkest and most rugged of all the fjords in the Jökulfirðir. There I sat on a grassy wall, listening to the stream as it gurgled past the ruins where your bower once stood. Year after year, at the height of midsummer, I sought out the cold fjord beneath the dark cliffs where I had writhed, sick in your arms, through those long winter nights.”

  “On the first day you came to me,” says she, “I enjoined you and Þorgeir to go kill my lover – and indeed, no woman could do her husband a greater favor.”

  Þormóður says: “I am father to two little maids with the fairest eyes and softest hair in both Strandir and Djúp. Ever in my mind are their little toes as they lay suckling at their mother’s breast.”

  The woman says: “Less toilsome days would I have had, Þormóður, after old Vermundur, my former friend, banished me to Greenland, if you and I had been granted a son. I must tell you that if I had loved myself more than you, I would never have allowed you to leave the Jökulfirðir for Djúp. Yet when I gave you to another woman, I had full possession of your love and the power that goes with it.”

  “That woman loved me no less than you. Whereas you called on me to kill your lover, she went by night to her slave’s bed, enabling me to pull on my shoes and depart for the freedom that begets heroes and skalds.”

  40

  TWO DIFFERENT accounts are commonly given of how long Þormóður remained in Greenland: one says that he was there for three winters, and the other, seven half-years. No decision regarding this will be made in these pages, though surely it is hardly fitting to measure in years, rather than hours, the time spent together by a man and woman after he has searched for what seems like ages before finally finding her. It may be, moreover, that to some learned men, seven half-years’ cohabitation with a woman seems no longer than three winters does to others. Yet most books agree that by the time Þormóður Kolbrúnarskáld was finally rescued from Greenland, he was a grizzled old man, whether his stay there was long or short.

  It is said that at the beginning of Þormóður’s stay on the headland, some of his days were agreeable, despite his present life being so unlike his previous one, and despite the glorious deeds he had long yearned to accomplish being postponed. It is also said that Mistress Sigurfljóð left little undone to distract her guest from the stench of the liver-works there on the headland, amidst the kettles, hearths, and casks. After Þormóður’s arrival, the mistress brought out her tapestries and textiles and hung them up to decorate the inside of her hut. She draped a curtain before the bed and led her guest to his high-seat on a weathered whale vertebra flanked on either side by carved and painted pillars. She had fires lit on the floor and water heated for baths. When the household made itself ready for bed, the mistress spoke harshly to Slave Loðinn, saying that his night quarters were to be outside with his oil buckets, or else in the sheds where they hung blubber or fish, and if this was not to his liking, he was free to stretch out by the stone cairns wh
ere seabirds or shark-meat were cured. When winter arrived, it seemed quite proper to the guest that Slave Loðinn, who was little given to heroism or the poetic arts, should rise at nightfall from his seat near the doorpost and drag his sleeping bag out to a shed, to sleep amidst the dried fish and whale meat.

  As time went by, however, Skald Þormóður fell ill from lack of dairy foods, an illness that afflicted most Norsemen in Greenland, and which was compounded by a grainless diet, lacking, as they did, even bread of unthreshed grain – and when they baked and ate food made with wild seed or lymegrass, they hurt their teeth. Long-lasting intestinal complaints were common, and led to anemia, emaciation, and palsy. It was a sign of Mistress Sigurfljóð’s exceptional knowledge, as well as her fluency in speech-runes, that the longer Þormóður dwelt with her, the more eager he was to hear her wondrous discourses – for him, her runic lore in Greenland the Dark filled the place of the bounties he formerly enjoyed as a man blessed by kind fortune in bright Djúp.

  As for Mistress Sigurfljóð, she was too heavily shrouded in mystery for anyone in Greenland to deem her a woman of rank, mainly due to her acting like a witch and wrapping herself in skins like a troll-woman. It was also rumored that she had been forced into exile from one land to another for persecuting her lovers, until she was finally marooned in an oil-making encampment on a headland in Greenland. Although she lacked most domestic comforts, however, including the clothing that the Norse women in that land weave from wool, it was no secret that she had spent the fruits of her and her slave’s labor on valuable items of trade, and would one day find opportunity to travel back to the North to visit her old home and haunts.

  Holy Scripture says that the man who is fettered to a place by his flesh, and who feels as if everything around him is orchards and roses, will one day go walking and notice that the orchard is naught but burning desert, offering neither water nor shade, only barren rocky wastes where there is not a single blade of grass for a bunting’s beak. Whether such wisdom comes gradually, or is revealed to a person at a single moment one day, will not be debated in this little book.

  Greenland’s short summers appear to have grown shorter or even to have dwindled to nothing, and the farmer who once lived in Djúp, where good fortune grows with the flowers, hears his own voice ask amidst the cold crags of Ánavík, where no flower will ever grow: “Why am I here?”

  One morning as he is lying in his and his mistress’s bed, his eyelids part to reveal a monstrosity next to him, bigger and more bloated than any other creature that has ever taken on a woman’s form, and in his drowsy state, he feels as if he has strayed into some hidden quagmire, whence no path leads back to the abodes of men, much less of kings, while his ships are burning behind him. His mind now roams from the brink of despair to distant places where kings heap glory on men, and when he rises from the bed, he finds himself saying:

  “What might King Olaf be telling his skalds today?”

  She wakes and asks: “What does it matter to you?”

  “Might not the king be wondering,” says he, “why I have not kept my vow? Þorgeir remains unavenged, preventing me from concluding my lay to warrior and king.”

  “Do you wish then that I were no longer dearer to you than anything else – including Þorgeir’s revenge and praise of kings?” says she.

  He replies: “These nights, I lie down to sleep with my heart full of grief, knowing that you are the woman who distracts me from my obligations – as the old saying goes: ‘Voice of council or king.’”2

  “What can idiotic kings and their worthless gifts do for you?” says she, “or the twaddle of peasants at assemblies?”

  “We skalds must never let it slip from our minds for even one day,” says he, “that heroes make kings, and kings rule lands.”

  “Do I not rule you, then, skald?” says she.

  “Even if you do, my sworn brother is unavenged – and it is but a pitiful possession that you rule while such a binding task remains unfulfilled. I will never be able to stand before King Olaf Haraldsson with my head held upright until the deed is accomplished.”

  “How lamentable it would be to let that king cut you to pieces for hounds and ravens rather than dwell in the kingdom that is mine,” says she.

  He says: “How lamentable it would be to have forsaken both the woman in Iceland who had more of the sun’s radiance than any others, and my little daughters, whom I called my Moon and my Star, only to lie here until my dying day in this desolate hovel, filthy with whale oil and postponing my end with fox flesh and dulse. A life void of exploits is foul indeed, yet fouler still is a death void of glory – and I shall spare nothing to find Þorgeir’s killers and slay them, before going to meet a death befitting a skald in the service of a king, according to the fate spun for me.”

  “In Norway,” she replies, “I have a greater and better kingdom than Olaf Haraldsson.”

  “What kingdom is that?” says he.

  “A kingdom supported by an even greater number of nobler champions, eager to fight for me according to my will.”

  “I never knew,” says he, “that you had your own warriors to defend you, apart from Slave Loðinn.”

  “Three twisted narwhal’s tusks lie hidden in my bed,” says she, “two of which I had intended to use to secure passage for Loðinn and me to Norway. The third was reserved to purchase us a dwelling place in the Fjord district, where I was born. In my dreams I have beheld a hall there in the heather. My slave, Loðinn, has in truth been the man bound to me longest in faithful love, so that the worse I treat him, the more certain I am of his dedication and forbearance – and when I treat him worst, then is he most devoted. In brief, I have never had a better man than him, nor will I ever. It is up to you now, Þormóður, to go and kill Slave Loðinn, and I will provide you with a weapon to do so. Then you and I will go home together to Norway, where you will see what pillars support my high-seat in the heather. You will then have the benefit of my magic to make you the most renowned hero in the North.”

  He says: “I do not wish for things acquired by magic, but only what I gain through my own energy and accomplishment. I would rather fight and die for a king who rules over kingdoms than conquer a place using magic or other craven abominations.”

  She says: “I assure you, I will defeat that king, and you shall gain only what I purchase for you. Know that I am no shieldmaiden whom you can turn into your scullion – in truth, I am the woman who inhabits the Abyss. Through me, all your bright shieldmaidens shall be made widows, and the kings in whom you placed greatest faith shall fall. Though you were to journey to the world’s end, there you would meet only me.”

  That day, the woman is somewhat melancholy. In the evening she tells Slave Loðinn that he may sleep in the hut with them.

  Next morning, when Þormóður rises and goes out, he sees two weapons lying on hearthstones before the door: his own sword and Slave Loðinn’s knife, which Mistress Sigurfljóð had once fastened beneath her bearskin. Without a word, Þormóður Kolbrúnarskáld takes his sword from the hearthstone and walks off.

  41

  NOW SOMETHING must be said of the race called the Inuits, who make their abodes at the heads of Greenland’s northernmost fjords, as well as on headlands, skerries, and islands. In Greenland, the land rises from the sea only to be covered by high glaciers – all the way north to Scythia the Cold, some say – where there is no human life. It is also said that the name this race has given itself means the same as our word for “men.” The Inuits are some of the most peaceable and prosperous people ever described in books. They have no herds, and use the land for neither hay nor other crops, but are such great hunters that their shots never go astray. They catch polar bears in stone traps, and drive reindeer either into pinfolds, where they fell them, or else into the sea, where they harpoon them from boats. These beasts they take mainly for their hides, as well as their tongues and loins. They hunt seabirds with darts, and drive fish onto shoals to spear them. Much of their time is spen
t on sleds, driving their dog-teams over the sea ice – when they encounter an opening in the ice, they lay putrid swim bladders and seal livers at its rim, and when a shark comes to investigate they stab it with salmon-spears. They fit themselves out in skins, which the Norsemen find a contemptible habit, worthy only of trolls, and wear undergarments made of bird skin. They use one-man boats, called kayaks, or “keiplar” in Norse, made with such ancient sorcery that no storm, skerry, or other dangerous obstacle can damage them. They have a second kind of boat, the umiak, made of skins and crewed by women in breeches, and none has ever been reported to have run aground or sunk. These things have given rise to the saying that the Inuit are ignorant of the art of drowning at sea. It is also said that although the weather is harsher in that land than anywhere else in the known world, the Inuits call all weather good, and are fully content with the weather as it is at any given moment. The cold in that land can be most piercing, yet no one freezes to death. Blizzards there blow long and hard, burying the earth in snow and ice and preventing any vegetation from growing, yet we have never heard tell of a single Inuit succumbing to the elements. Nor do the Inuits consider Earth to be one of the elements – yet they call fire their truest friend, second only to the gods in whom they put most faith, namely the man who rules the moon, and the one-handed woman whose realm is the sea, mother of the monsters of the deep.

  Reliable sources say that although the Inuit are great hunters, fowlers, and fishermen, expert with spear and bow, the sight of human blood can bring them to tears. They scarcely understand the forces and instincts that drive other peoples to manslaughter, and have no knowledge of the tools of the trade used by murderous folk in other lands. The Inuit have thick black hair and rather large mouths. When some who had been hunting in the south brought tales of the manners of the Norsemen settled there, and when the Norsemen slew their first Inuit, these people were so utterly baffled by the newcomers’ bizarre, depraved behavior that they named the Norsemen after this characteristic occupation of theirs, calling them “killermen” or “mankillers” to distinguish them from men – genuine men – the Inuit. Just as the Inuit are completely ignorant of warfare, so too are they ignorant of vengeance and other practices pertaining to justice.