Wayward Heroes

by Halldor Laxness

  Queen Astrid said: “It should have been clear to you long ago, Olaf, that we daughters of the king in Uppsala prize tangible realities above promises. It is little to my or my sister’s taste to be wed to kings that have been driven from their realms. I have the choice of many a good man with whom to quaff mead in the evenings, some of them high-born, and governing territories in Sweden as good as all of Norway, even if it were yours. We wed ourselves to kings for the lands that they rule – not for love or the fame augured you by birds. Since my kinswoman Ingegerd refused to marry you because you stood on only one foot in Norway, why should I be true to you when you stand on none, a knock-kneed, potbellied sailor? I demand just one thing of you: that you reconquer Norway before I set eyes on you again.”

  48

  WE MUST NOT wholly neglect to recount the travels of Bishop Grímkell the Englishman from the moment that he was left kingless in Norway with Cnut as his enemy, and the see of Bremen refusing to have anything to do with him.

  As long as Olaf held Norway, no Christian overlord had a say in whom he made his court bishop, and Olaf, like other kings of Norway after him, was little inclined to comply with orders from Bremen in any matter.

  After the Norwegians expelled Olaf from the land, and Cnut had purchased full authority in Norway with English coins and ample promises, and all of the great lords in Norway had become the best of friends with the English, each with his own particular bribe and promise of profit, the friends of Olaf, who, for some reason, had not had the opportunity to betray him – among them Bishop Grímkell – found themselves much beleagured. Cnut’s bishops now confiscated the field that Grímkell had ploughed and sown – with the Bremen clerics taking their share – and all men of God in the North become his vilifiers and foes as quickly as they had become sworn enemies of King Olaf Haraldsson. Most good men wanted Grímkell to be excommunicated, while others preferred to go after him and kill him. With his life in peril from these men of God, Grímkell kept himself hidden in Norway for the time being. Yet when he heard that the king of the Swedes had resolved to bring Olaf back to Norway, he reflected on his situation, before deciding to take passage on a merchant vessel to France, where he joined a group of pilgrims. By Yule, they had crossed the Alps, and at Easter they arrived in Rome.

  Bishop Grímkell was clad as a pauper, staff in hand. The accounts say that he carried in his scrip no treasure apart from an old, fermented cheese – one of those sorts produced in the North that stink most of all things known in Christendom and cause thieves, pilferers, and cutthroats to avoid any pilgrim who carries such an abomination.

  In that age, Rome’s golden crown shone more radiantly than ever before in the distant regions of the world. The apostolic and Catholic faith had spread not only eastward to Poland, but as far into the lands of the North as Iceland, and then west to Greenland. Those who were most remote considered Rome to be nearest Heaven, and dubbed it the White Queen of the world, resplendent with maidenly lilies, as it says in the pilgrims’ song: “O Roma nobilis orbis et domina albis et virginum liliis candida.”

  At the same time as the beauty of Rome shone brightest at the margin of the world, it suffered the bitterest tribulations within its own walls, as recounted by sagacious historians. It had not been long since twelve popes in two decades were laid low by their rivals, poisoned or murdered in some other clandestine way, while others were first beheaded and then hanged by their feet, not counting those who were blinded, had their noses chopped off or their tongues torn out, or ended their lives in dungeons or snakepits, or were paraded backwards on asses in the city streets and torn limb from limb as they rode. When the pilgrims arrived from the north, the Lord Pope happened to be hanging by his feet on a gibbet, his head impaled on a stake alongside, on Monte Malo outside the city walls, where the pilgrims traditionally fell to their knees in prayer in view of the Holy City. By that time, Rome had been under the control of gangs of robbers, foreign and native by turns, for many generations: there were the counts of Campania, Tusculum, and Sabina, all calling themselves consuls and senators of Rome, and there were counts palatine and, after them, Guelfs and Ghibellines, Orsini and Colonna, and numerous other villains. These gangs had done much to the ruination of this city, making quarries out of the ancient temples and arches and monuments and forts and walls, and piling up the stones into breastworks to defend themselves against each other. Lime-burners ground ancient marble and mixed it with lime to make mortar. The temple of Jupiter was used as a stable, and every statue and sculpture in Rome had long since been smashed. Most of the city was nothing but weed-covered ruins and pasture, and whenever there was a lull in the conflict or a brief period of quiet, the livestock – goats, pigs, sheep, and cattle – grazed on the surrounding hills. At such times, too, peasants from Campania could be seen toiling here and there, having been given leave to bear stones away on their own backs and those of their asses, to build cowsheds from ancient temples and palaces. Despite the city of Rome boasting more churches than any other, historians relate that at that time, none of them, apart from the apostolic basilica, possessed a silver chalice until one hundred and seventy years later, when Pope Innocent, the third by that name, gave each and every cathedral in the city a monetary gift to be used to purchase a valuable chalice. By then, all of Rome’s scholars were dead and its schools had fallen into ruin, and not a person was to be found in the city who could play the organ. For the Romans, the finest model for imitation was St. Peter, who had mastered no skill apart from catching fish, yet still held the keys to Heaven’s gate.

  At that time, Rome was so plagued by disease that in some years only a few, and sometimes none, of the pilgrims who journeyed to the Holy City from distant lands managed to return to their homelands. The city festered with more foulness, rottenness, leprousness, corpse-stench, and starveling-stink than any other place in the world. Learned men, however, are of the opinion that the foul odor from the cheese that Bishop Grímkell brought with him from the North did little to bring relief to the Romans’ nostrils, but rather, the opposite.

  In those days, an all but impossible fish to catch for a penniless man was an audience with his Apostolic Lordship. None but those with bags full of coins – open ones, at that – had the slightest chance of obtaining a letter from the Pope or his Curia. It soon became apparent, too, that the cardinals sitting in council with the Lord Pope had more pressing obligations than to pave the way for a wandering bishop from the North. The Pope’s doortenders gave this bishop’s request for an audience with the apostle Peter a flat “No!” for an answer – the bishop being of such low esteem that he had not even hired a company of soldiers to protect him against highwaymen and criminals, not to mention the fact that he smelled no better than the city’s rubbish heaps, where the lifeless bodies of plague-stricken people were dumped.

  It is said that Grímkell’s presence made most people stare: he was tall and gracefully built, with the kind of visage that one often sees in depictions of God’s holy men and saints. He had flowing black hair and a noble, melancholy pallor, while his eyes gleamed like the black gemstone carbunculus, which skalds call a wonder of the world. He still directed his gaze rapturously toward Heaven, as he had done in his youth when standing by the blessed Archbishop Ælfheah’s side.

  After making many fruitless trips to the Apostolic Palace, to be met only with bluster from the guards, Grímkell returns to the palace door one day and opens his scrip, releasing its stench. From it he pulls a bright silver penny that he hands to the doortender, while announcing that his name is Grimcetillus, court bishop to King Olaf Haraldsson of Norway, and that he seeks an audience with the Pope. Then he walks away.

  Several days later, while Grímkell is sitting in his lodging, chanting and weeping with deep, heartfelt compunction, as was his wont, a messenger from the Lord Pope’s palace turns up and announces that Bishop Grímkell is granted the opportunity, that very day, to appear before the vicar of Christ and successor of Peter – Pope John, the nineteenth of t
hat name – in the Apostolic Lord’s Palace of the Lateran, and to make his petition there.

  Pope John the Nineteenth, whose worldly name had been Romanus, was a Roman layman from a line of Tusculan counts. Besides being head of the Church, he was also the highest secular authority in Rome, consul and senator. He had never been ordained a priest, nor been to school to learn to read or to sing in Latin, and could converse only in the peasant dialect called lingua volgare, the vernacular. John had gotten hold of the Holy See by means of bribes, with the support of Conrad, the king of Germany. Conrad had pledged to keep other robbers away from John’s throne, and John, in return, to crown Conrad Holy Roman Emperor.

  Bishop Grímkell of Canterbury was led through a succession of chambers in the Apostolic Palace to the Apostolic Lord’s salutatorium, having come to try his luck on this old, smoothly worn stone floor beneath a Roman vault grown with cobwebs full of enormous spiders. He found Pope John sitting on his throne, bedecked in a red cope embroidered with gold and flanked by the venerable cardinals he habitually kept at hand. Sitting motionless in one corner was a German monk, the only man in the papal palace who knew how to use a pen, and who had been appointed by the Emperor Conrad to advise Pope John and manage his affairs, and more especially to oversee the Apostolic Camera, that is, the papal treasury. He bore the title of camerarius.

  These authorities of the Lord sat on tall-legged chairs fashioned in the ancient Roman style, with high backs and narrow seats. Along the walls stood stone vessels and wooden shrines, besides goblets and drinking bowls from Constantinople. Next to one wall there was also a lectulus – a small canopied bed draped with a Saracen cloth of gold weave. Behind the throne stood a copper crucifix, a gift from Ireland after iniquitous men had destroyed all the images and statues in Rome. On this cross, legends of the saints were beautifully embossed, and in the center the Lord was depicted in his imperial vestments, his hands raised in blessing. His head was in Paradise, where angels stood on each of his shoulders, while his feet were on Earth, where they were flanked by a godly pair: the apostle John and the Sancta Virgo, the two who loved the Lord best and grieved most at his departure from the world.

  Now, at one and the same moment, Grímkell’s saintly visage appears to those in the Curia, and their nostrils are assailed by a horrendous stench. Grímkell falls to his knees before the Pope and reverently kisses his foot. The Lord Pope bids his guest have his say, and Bishop Grímkell addresses the Most Holy Father and the Curia in these words:

  “I, Grimcetillus, most wretched of clerics in God’s Christendom,” says he, “would first ask of my Apostolic Lord that he recall when evildoers pelted clerics and priests to death on the banks of the Thames. That day, I pleaded with the saintly old Ælfheah, whom I served in my youth, as bones and horns battered his feeble body: ‘Will not my master allow me to step forward and receive the blows intended for him?’ – and that is the beginning of my story. After that, for fifteen years I toiled in the service of the Lord at the fringes of the world, namely in Norvegia, as court bishop to King Olaf Haraldsson, who formerly ruled that country. None versed in chant had ever gone to those parts before we ventured there to preach Christianity to the rabble that shares the lairs of wolves and dragons. My king is now exiled, and I wish to beseech my Most High Lord Pope that those poor servants of the Lord who once put most faith in God be not driven into the wilderness to dig roots and gnaw bark. I also beg that other men of God be not allowed to endanger the lives of their brethren who have, year after year, battled wild beasts and dragons pro Christo. I beseech my Apostolic Lord to bear in mind that King Olaf and I baptized more people in Norway in two summers than the bishops of Norway under the episcopal see of Bremen did in a hundred and fifty years. We built three hundred churches, and King Olaf gave Christ land and abundant riches in Norway, together with his heart, his soul, and his body. My first prayer and supplicatio is for safe-conduct, and following that, I beg the Lord Pope to grant me a letter conferring on me the same rank and authority as the bishops of Bremen in Norway, in the places where I have preached the gospel.”

  During this address, His Apostolic Lordship gives a great yawn, scratches himself, spits, and snorts, before saying in his dialect:

  “My goodness, this man stinks. What is this churl harping on?”

  The Pope and his cardinals now confer for a time, and the Lord Pope does not seem very well disposed. Eventually, the cardinal who is the Pope’s closest confidant, says that Christ certainly did not consider the fact that the churches in Norway were granted logging and hunting rights much of a windfall. Great offerings could hardly be expected from the monsters and dragons of the Norwegian woods, against which this man had battled for fifteen years. “The Pope finds it rather bizarre,” says this cardinal, “to hear of Norway being ruled by a king other than our friend Cnut, king of the English, who inherited Norway from his father. As far as we know, no other king has been named in connection with that realm. Our Apostolic Lord declares that he will never betray his friend Cnut, who holds sway over Norway, nor lend an ounce of support to any disreputable pretender to Cnut’s throne. Never shall Pope John let it be forgotten that when he crowned his friend, Conrad the German, Holy Roman Emperor, Cnut was the only king of any distinction willing to do us the honor of journeying to Rome in our support. Once he was in our presence, we bestowed a plentitude of benefices on Cnut for his bishops, and he in return pledged us ample tribute from throughout his realm, which he has in fact always paid punctually. We would never do Cnut an ill turn – such as might jeopardize our collection of Peter’s Pence from England.”

  Grímkell then says that King Olaf Haraldsson is expected to return from the east that summer, leading an invincible army to conquer Norway. The land’s defenses will be scarce, he adds, since Cnut has left to govern England. “Where,” says Grímkell, “shall the bishops of Bremen and Cnut’s men find refuge when King Olaf comes to avenge his woes? Would it not be beneficial for one who both bears letters from the Pope and is a faithful friend of Olaf to step in and attempt to allay the king’s wrath when he sets about stringing up his foes?”

  The cardinals discuss the situation for some time, inquiring of each other what sort of man this Olaf is, who presumes to usurp the throne of King Cnut Sweynsson, and whose court bishop this pilgrim claims to be. None of the Curia have ever heard of King Olaf Haraldsson, and they are at a loss as to how to respond. Finally, the German monk speaks up – he who has a better knowledge of papal business than any other cleric in the Lord Pope’s household. He says:

  “This Olaf belonged to a band of Scandinavian pirates that foreign kings hired to fight for them. He was among those enlisted by the Duke of Normandy to burn Chartres Cathedral. Then he brought fire and destruction to Norway for a long time, but fled to a tributary of the Emperor in Constantinople and the Patriarch, our enemy, to consort with heretics. For his conduct, he is excommunicated by the laws of God. Moreover,” says the German monk, still addressing the Pope in the vernacular, “this little fellow Grimcetillus, who has just come rather close to blaspheming Christ, received his miter and crosier from Armenian schismatics behind horse rumps in Rouen.”

  When His Apostolic Lordship hears this, he pounds on the arms of his throne, declaring that any viper in clerical garb, ordained by schismatics, is to be boiled in the same cauldron as forgers. “And,” says the Pope, “that stuff in this imbecile’s bag – is it the flesh of the venomous beasts and dragons he has been slaughtering for fifteen years in Norway?”

  The cardinal translates the Apostolic Lord’s words for Bishop Grímkell, as follows:

  “Our Apostolic Lord has heard,” says he, “that Gregorian schismatics from Armenia ordained you too near to horses’ rumps in France, O Grimcetille, and any cleric ordained by a wandering bishop is excommunicate. What do you have to say to free yourself from this predicament, my son?”

  A wise English cleric has written that neither logic nor rhetoric nor a just cause are of any use when speaking to a depu
ty of Christ, let alone to Christ himself. For Christ is not only the intellection of all creation, but also the beginning and end of all logic and rhetoric, and what Christ requires of men is not their wisdom and mastery of dialectic. In the eyes of Christ, it is the value of our gift, measured in struck silver or some other sort of earthly wealth, that matters – and naught else. It would seem that Bishop Grímkell had acquired this wisdom somewhere – for, after being reprimanded by the cardinals for some time and prescribed sackcloth and ashes as penance, this pilgrim speaks up once more, saying:

  “If,” he says, “dust and ashes may again be so bold as to address their Lord, in the same way that Patriarch Abraham was permitted to do so, it must first be pointed out that no one knows where the esteemed Lord Peter the Apostle – at whose feet I shall soon grovel in the dirt – went to school, or where that blessed fisherman received his tonsure. It is hardly any secret to the world that when the supreme defender of Christianity was elected and elevated to the Apostolic See, the Holy Spirit had gone for a walk.” Bishop Grímkell now falls flat on the stone floor at the feet of the Lord Pope, supplicating with tears and sighs, until he rises to his knees with these words: “Here we see evidence of the holy doctrine and teaching which says that the Lord is extolled highest and his omnipotence most exalted in those points of grace least comprehensible to human understanding. He who lacks tonsure and schooling has become most noble in word and deed of all the popes since the passing of Gregorius Magnus. Therefore, I beg my Apostolic Lord and venerable gentlemen in the Curia to bear in mind that this wretched acolyte, who received his ring and crosier in the midst of horses, with no holy relics at hand apart from Cabbage-Christ and Onion, still was able to convert King Olaf Haraldsson to the holy faith, and thereafter all of Norway.”

  At these words, Bishop Grímkell lifts his cheese from his scrip, lays it on the floor at the Pope’s feet, and swiftly sticks a knife into it. A flood of gold and silver pieces pours from the cheese, like a swarm of maggots. The coins are both fair and bright.