Troll and Trylleri

by Joyce Holt

  The smith curled Jorunn into his elbow and bellied up to the watchman. "No one orders me around," he snarled.

  She couldn't break that grip, not by her meager strength – but sometimes weakness can thwart power. Jorunn went limp and hung from his arm, pulling him off balance. In reflex, his fingers loosened. She backed against his legs, and yanked down on his wrists.

  He stumbled forward, flailing, as she wriggled out of his grasp and scuttled away across the packed ice of the houseyard, slinking low like a fox.

  She caught a glimpse of him staggering, whirling about, unsteady on his feet, casting his bleary gaze here and there.

  The guard snarled at Fleinn again, pushed him along – and set off the smith into a fit of rage and blows. Their voices echoed until several of Gunnarr's men came out to see the cause of all the ruckus.

  Jorunn leaned against the side of an outbuilding, out of their sight, gasping, rubbing the wrist he'd grabbed. She nearly retched, and not at the heartache or the pain, though they did their own part in turning her stomach. That horrid stink rose again. She searched around and found another pot reeking of that foul toadstool gruel.

  She leaped up and peered around back of the shed. Had Klump been here just moments ago? Valka would have smelled the tainted lure if he'd placed it earlier.

  Jorunn heaped a pile of snow over the pot to stifle any odor, then molded three balls to sit on top and mark the spot. Come morning she would haul the thing down to the river.

  For now, she crept back to the houseyard and into the hall. She'd lost one of her spare boots along the way. A wretched, holey boot, stuffed with moldering straw meant for tinder on her journey.

  A journey fated not to be.

  Gyda, sleeping deep, made no complaint as her housegirl crept back into bed. Come morning, she said nothing about any midnight troubles. Jorunn's ecstasy and despair had soared and plunged, higher and deeper than mountain and fjord, but for her mistress, it was just another night's rest.

  After firstfare, though, was another matter. "The steward says the night watchman found you out of doors in the wee hours," Gyda snapped. "What were you doing?"

  "Couldn't sleep," Jorunn said, eyes downcast. "Went to talk to Valka."

  "Who?"

  "The goatherd."

  "Øy, no wonder you stink. Go wash up. And don't go wandering at night. Not safe, what with trolls and all. Don't be such a fool."

  The troll's pot must have sloshed when she carted it off. She scrubbed at her gown with the strongest wood-ash soap, but the stench proved as stubborn an odor as weasel spray.

  Valka came sniffing after her. "What you doing still here? I send you off! Give you skis. What, you meet Klump on path? He douse you, huh? – with luscious, scrumptious lure, bedazzle my nose— Ah!"

  Jorunn pried the goatherd's hands from her wrists and pushed her to arm's length. "Another pot. Found it in the night, when I had to come back."

  "Had to?"

  Jorunn choked down a new gulp of wretchedness and told of Thor's goat and the message from the Norns. "What do you think it means?"

  "Klump not giving up."

  "Nei! What does the message mean?"

  Valka shrugged. "No mountain swallows in winter. They fly back in spring. You stuck here! I glad. You be my trap-springer, whisk away scrumptious bait-pots before I lose my wits over delightsome, delightsome, delightsome—"

  Again Jorunn fended off the snuffling nose. "Better stay far from me for a while. And I'd better take far more care picking up your bait-pots."

  Gyda wouldn't let Jorunn in bed for several nights until the odor faded. Jorunn found two more stink-pots. Toli found another, and tormented the spisshunds with the noxious slop until Lingormr ordered him to leave them be.

  Burning with worry, Jorunn spied after Svana. When would the promised hero arrive to shelter her sister? She pictured a warrior like Harald King or Solve Cleft-Chin, tall, handsome, sinewy and swift, a sword at his side and a spear in his hand.

  All she saw was one lad of twelve winters – scrawny, tousled, garbed in rags. Oddleif in his floppy moss-green cap. Vel, he would do until the hero arrived. He brought food to share, and helped Svana collect firewood, and carved her a small figurine. Jorunn's heart warmed, remembering the tiny owl he'd made her a year ago, hidden in the hollow of the aspen tree in Morgedal with her other few treasures.

  Then one day she saw him tromping up a narrow ravine. Budding brush clung to the steep walls of the gorge, and a stream dashed over rocks. In the south, she realized with a jar to her soul, spring thaw was already beginning, the end of winter travel season since all the ice-roads would now melt to slush. Jorunn's heart clotted into a tight knot. Months she'd have to wait until she could ski home, if ever she gained a new pair.

  What was Oddleif doing, scrambling around, cocking his head? Was there birdsong? She turned her ear to the key, hoping to hear the witt-witt chirping of a swallow.

  No bird calls. Nothing but the rush and tumble of water – and an odd whining sound. It changed pitch, skirled into a melody as haunting as any tune Valka played on her flute.

  She had no time for puzzles. "Show me Skiringssal," Jorunn whispered into the key. Down low on the coast, brown fields already blushed with a haze of new green growth. Winter's end had never brought her such mingled dismay and yearning as now. Greater hardship for travel, barring her way home to Svana.

  Though here at Kvien it still felt like midwinter, Valka brought her flock out to forage in the pinewoods up the dale, giving the young, frolicking kids a chance to learn footing on the bare ground sheltered beneath the boughs.

  The hulder-maid kept her back always to the sun, and her shawl pulled low over her brow, shading her eyes. The spisshunds circled wide around her, heads lowered in wariness, not at all enchanted by the trilling flute. No one else among Gunnarr's household paid her any heed, all unknowing they had a young troll in their midst.

  With brighter, longer days came fewer stinkpots, less threat from the prowling Klump, and ever more hope for the swallows to arrive.

  What knot would appear in Gyda's strand of life? How was a poor cotter's daughter supposed to untangle the doings of the nobility? "When you see the mountain swallow," Jorunn repeated to herself every day, "you will know the path to follow. Come then, swallow. Come then, knot. Be done with it, and let me go home!"

  39 – Mystical Music

  Oddleif tromped up the forested ridge at dawn, checking his snares. A white fox pelt would earn two months' worth of barley for him and his brothers. Two pelts might fetch a short iron dagger to replace his flint blade. Soon, though, the foxes' summer fur would grow in, ruddy red and less of a prize.

  Halfway along his route he paused, listening to the musical rush of meltwater from a cascade somewhere nearby. A silky trill of notes blended with the play of water on stone.

  Mystical. Enchanting. A perilous thing at dawn, the tipping point between night and day, the dangerous time before sunrise. Tusmørke, the murky twilight when roamed the tusse-folk, elves of forest and fjell.

  Someone with much to lose should swiftly tread a path back to safety, and wait for full daylight to return to the woods.

  Oddleif headed for the cascading foss.

  Many a time Jorunn had told him tales of the grims that haunt waterfalls. Like any creature from the mystical otherworlds, the fossegrim could cause much trouble if ill-treated.

  Oddleif meant only to listen.

  Down in the gorge, the water clamored with the joy of early spring. Oddleif picked his way along the bank, drawing ever closer to the main fall. He hardly noticed the water seeping into his worn boots. Far greater than the chill to his toes was the thrill to his heart as music swelled and swirled, leaped and plunged. It wasn't a voice, as he first guessed. The sound was thin as a knife blade, thrumming like a bow string.

  The foss came into sight, a sheet of water plunging from a stony ledge higher than a byre. Oddleif caught glimpse of a dark, half-veiled shape in the waterfall. In respect a
nd awe, he lowered his gaze, settled himself on a damp boulder, drew one leg up and hugged it under his chin.

  The tune ran up and down his spine, scurried along the backs of his arms out to his fingertips, tickled his ribs. He found himself holding his breath in wonder and delight.

  The music spiraled up and up to a note he could no longer hear. The ravine echoed now with nothing but the rush of water.

  Oddleif rose from his boulder, shrugged shoulders with a shiver. He bowed toward the shimmering foss. "Many, many thanks," he said. "Never so glorious a song have I ever heard, or ever will again."

  He hesitated. Words blow uselessly away on the wind. At the water's edge he set his wooden spoon. He'd worked many evenings on that handle carved in spirals and knobs, his best work yet. "Again," he nodded, "many thanks." Oddleif climbed the bank of the gorge and went back to his trap line.

  That evening his next oldest brother gave him a friendly punch in the shoulder. "You can stop now," he said. "I liked it well enough the first few times, but it's starting to dig a hole in my head."

  "Stop what?" Oddleif asked.

  "That tune you're whistling. Enough!"

  He hadn't noticed that he'd picked up the fossegrim's song.

  That night he woke with a shriek. "Stop it!" he cried at his brothers. "Let go!"

  They grumbled at him. "Who's doing what?"

  "Let go my hands! You'll break my fingers!"

  "We're not doing anything," his oldest brother said. "Sit up. Let me feel. There's nothing."

  "It hurts! Twisting, yanking, ei-ei-ei!"

  "There's nothing here. You've a cramp, that's all."

  "In all fingers at once? Both hands? Blow up an ember and look," Oddleif pleaded. "Something's wrong!"

  Light flared. His brothers bent over his hands. "No splinters. No bruises. Not swollen. Not bleeding. Go back to sleep."

  Oddleif sat wrapped up in his blanket and rocked through the rest of the night, aching hands tucked into his armpits.

  The next morning he trudged along his trapline. His fingers no longer hurt, but his head spun with bewilderment and lack of sleep.

  At his first snare, Oddleif found not a thrashing fox or hare but a stiff leather case in the shape of a teardrop. There were no footprints in the dirt other than his own from the day before. He crouched, studied the pebbly leather, then unlatched the two bronze buckles. Gingerly he lifted the upper half.

  Inside lay a curious piece of woodwork, studded with pegs at the tip of its long tapered end. From the pegs, three strings of goat-sinew stretched taut across the flat-topped teardrop shape to its rounded belly where a small chunk of wood wedged under the strings, raising them a finger's width above the instrument.

  Oddleif touched one string. Strung tighter than a bowstring. He plucked it. The catgut quivered, pealing the same knife-thin zing as he'd heard in the waterfall.

  Was this some kind of harpe? It didn't look anything like Jorunn's telling from the sagas. He wiped his hands clean, then lifted it from the case, surprised how light it felt. Was it hollow?

  Oddleif peered into one of two half-moon openings on the flat surface. Hollow, indeed.

  Grinning, he plucked the three strings one after the other. Low tone, middle, and high. The fossegrim had played many more notes than just these three. How had he done it? And some of those notes had strung out across many heartbeats.

  The fossegrim, grim of the waterfall, had gifted him a magnificent return for one spoon and that simple word of thanks.

  40 - Tanglehair

  Up and down the dale of Kvien, streams and becks gushed with snowmelt. Low-growing coltsfoot bloomed at the verge of fields. Valka led her goats on the long trail up to high summer pastures.

  Jorunn felt a pang whenever she passed the empty goat shed. Man delights in man, the saying went, yet the only friendship she'd found here at Kvien didn't spring from mankind at all. A slinking, secretive hulder-maiden.

  The sheep were still lambing in their shed, and cows a-calving in the byre. The steading bustled with folk tending the births and plowing the barley fields. Jorunn had fewer chances to look after Svana, for the falcons went into molt. Gyda would go hawking only rarely until the new feathers had all grown in. The stream of travelers over the Keel dwindled with the coming of spring, for now travel reverted to the trudgery of foot-treks or the jolting of horseback instead of the swift ease of runners and skis.

  One messenger came trotting a lathered horse from the west, bearing news from Eirikr about Harald's latest conquest. King Tanglehair had defeated the last alliance in Trondelag, four kings and their shieldwall failing to hold the rising tide. At reports of Harald's unkempt hair, Gunnarr laughed in scorn, but Jorunn saw the smile that tweaked at Gyda's lips and heard the triumph in her footsteps. Four kings falling before a hero striding into legend! And all at her doing.

  Harald Tanglehair. The nickname given in scorn would soon add to his fame.

  Jorunn had already spied with the key upon Harald in the north, not once but several times. His hair had grown lank, dark and snarled, and could pass for that of a penniless beggar – yet he sat a magnificent carved chair, its pommels gilded with gold. His cloak was trimmed with ermine, and he wore gems on his fingers and heavy golden armrings on his wrists. Other richly-garbed men waited on his every word. In sword practice he still wielded the blade forged by Dondstad's smiths, and triumphed over every opponent.

  Gunnarr listened to the rumors, and fortified his ridgetop refuge. More than once he muttered his relief at dwelling so many leagues from the coveted coastline.

  From the east on a round-about journey came a travel-worn youth bearing word from Gunnarr's brother Eldjarn, with surprising tidings. Great-uncle Eldi in Trondelag had joined Harald's host, and thought to rally his kin to the same side. An earldom could be had for coming early to the conqueror's cause.

  Gunnarr treated the young warrior well, but gave him a clear message to take back. He had heard about the jarls sprouting up in Harald's wake, imposing taxes and skatt to raise funds for the wars. He'd heard how folk now had to pay for the right to remain on lands their ancestors once held free and clear. He would not join in the fleecing of the Nord-folk.

  No one but Jorunn saw Gyda pull the messenger aside on his last evening at Kvien. The young woman murmured a message of her own to take to her great-uncle. Jorunn could not hear the words, but she didn't doubt her mistress was voicing support for Harald's cause.

  Another weary party from the west arrived several days later. They brought gifts for Gyda from Solve Cleft-Chin – and a proposal. The message he sent offered her the chance to sit at his side one day on the throne of North Møre.

  "If that petty little kingdom survives next year's battles," Gyda scoffed under her breath.

  One warrior in the group had come from Eirikr's court, and gave Gyda a message from her father saying he smiled upon Solve, and hoped she would give serious thought to his wooing.

  "I shall heed my father's wise counsel," she told the emissaries from Solve. "I will give the matter deep thought. I have no other response to send back with you at this time, other than my thanks to your lord for the fine silks and silver spoons." Jorunn heard underlying scorn at those last drawn-out words.

  Dagmær launched into a rant about how fitting such a match would be. Gunnarr and Lingormr backed up her view and argued Gyda should give more encouraging a reply.

  "I am not free to consider these other suitors," she said. "I gave my challenge to Harald, and he took it up. If he fulfills the task I laid upon him, then I will go to his side."

  The ensuing furor lasted the rest of that long day, but Gyda would not swerve from her course.

  "Come winter," Gunnarr growled at table that evening, "I just might toss you into a sleigh and take you back to Eirikr's court. Let him marry you off to his own choice of ally. I don't need this foolishness at my hearth. You speak praise for the man I see as foe."

  "Marry me off?" Gyda bristled. "I claim the noblewoman's right
of refusal!"

  "Øy," Lingormr said. "You pick and choose which ancient traditions to follow. If you throw out land rights, why not bride rights as well?"

  Dagmær cried, "Foolish girl! The troubles you bring upon us. You stand alone in your folly!"

  Aslaug rose and came to stand at her daughter's shoulder, and stared down her sister, brother, father. "Not alone. You challenge Eirikr's honor. He made her a solemn vow the choice would be hers."

  "You don't even like the man," Dagmær said with a snort.

  "Nei, but I respect him. And I respect my daughter's will."

  From her spot behind her mistress, Jorunn saw Gyda's upward glance, the surprise and the brief sheen of tears in those icy eyes. Gyda grasped her mother's hand where it rested on her shoulder.

  "What are you saying, Sister?" Dagmær blustered, but for that moment mother and daughter paid heed to no one else. The portly woman lurched up from her seat, and made to close in on Gyda's other side.

  Jorunn stepped forward to block that path, as if playing the part of shieldwall under enemy attack. Dagmær snorted in rage and slapped her hard across the cheek.

  Jorunn reeled, but Gyda's hand steadied her and she took her place once again, she and Aslaug like guardsmen beside their king in battle.

  Gyda rose to her feet. "My father will honor his word, and I will honor mine." She swept like a Valkyrie from the high table, with her mother and Jorunn as rearguard, trooping to the cousins' bedchamber.

  Jorunn halted in the doorway, unsure whether to enter. Gyda and her mother stood wordlessly together, hands touching, gazes not quite meeting, while voices tumbled about in the hall. Gyda at last lowered her head to Alaug's shoulder.

  Jorunn turned aside, but not before she heard the voice, soft and quavering with need like an unsure maiden struggling to find her place in the world. "Thank you, Mother."

  * * *

  Gunnarr's brother Eldjarn sent another messenger, an older man who begged his host to speak all in his mind about the turmoil in the land. Eldi wished to hear more fully the opinions of those who opposed his own favorite.