The Long Ships

by Frans G. Bengtsson

  The principal guest was King Harald’s son, King Sven Fork-beard,1 who had arrived from Hedeby with a large following. Like all King Harald’s sons, he was the child of one of his father’s concubines; and there was little love lost between him and his father, so that in general they avoided each other as much as possible. Every Yule, though, King Sven made the journey to Jellinge, and everybody knew why. For it often happened at Yule, when the food was richer and the drink stronger than at any other time in the year, that old men suddenly died, either in bed or on the drinking-bench. This had been the case with old King Gorm, who had lain unconscious for two days after a surfeit of Yuletide pork and had then died; and King Sven wanted to be near the royal coffers when his father passed over. For many Yules now he had made the journey in vain, and each year his impatience increased. His followers were a rough crew, overbearing and quarrelsome, and it was difficult to keep the peace between them and the men of King Harald’s household, all the more so now that King Harald had turned Christian and many of his men had followed suit. For King Sven still clung to the old religion and made spiteful mock of his father’s conversion, saying that the Danes would have been spared all this folly if the old man had had the sense to know when he had lived long enough.

  He did not trumpet his opinions too openly when he was at Jellinge, however, for King Harald was easily roused to anger, and when this happened he was liable to do anything to anybody. They wasted no words on each other once they had made formal salutation, nor, from their seats of honor in the great hall, did they toast each other more than the conventions of politeness absolutely required.

  There was a snowstorm on Christmas Eve, but it passed, and the weather grew calm and cold; and on Christmas morning, while the priests were singing Mass and the courtyard of the palace lay shrouded in good steam from the preparations afoot in the kitchens, a great long-ship rowed up from the south and made fast to the pier, its sail tattered and its oars glazed with ice. King Harald was at Mass, but they sent a messenger to inform him. Wondering who these new guests could be, he went up the stairs to look at the ship. It was steeply built, with a red dragon’s head poised arrogantly upon a curved neck at the prow, its jaws caked with ice from the cruel seas it had passed through. They saw men climb ashore wearing garments barked with ice, among them a tall chieftain in a blue cloak and another, of equal stature, clothed in red. King Harald scanned them as closely as he could from where he stood, and said: “It looks like a Jomsviking or perhaps a Swedish ship, and it is boldly manned, for its crew approach the King of the Danes with no shield of peace upon their masthead. I know of but three men who would dare to come thus: Skoglar-Toste, Vagn Akesson, and Styrbjörn. Moreover, they have brought their ship alongside without removing their dragon-head, though they know well that the trolls of the mainland do not love dragon-heads; and I know of but two men who do not care what the trolls think, and they are Vagn and Styrbjörn. But I see from the ship’s condition that its captain disdained to seek shelter from last night’s storm, and there is but one man who would have refused to bow to such a tempest. It is my guess, therefore, that this must be my son-in-law Styrbjörn, whom I have not seen these four years; one of them wears a blue cloak, moreover, and Styrbjörn has sworn to wear blue until he has won back his inheritance from King Erik. Who this other with him may be, the man who is as tall as he, I cannot surely say; but Strut-Harald’s sons are taller than most men, all three of them, and they are all friends to Styrbjörn. It cannot be Jarl Sigvalde, the eldest of them, for he takes little pleasure in Yule celebrations now, because of the ignominy with which he stained his name when he rowed his ships away from the battle at Jörundfjord; and his brother Hemming is in England. But the third of Strut-Harald’s sons is Thorkel the Tall, and it may be that this is he.”

  Thus King Harald surmised in his wisdom; and when the strangers reached the palace and it became evident that he was right, his spirits rose higher than they had been at any time since King Sven arrived. He bade Styrbjörn and Thorkel welcome, ordered the bathhouse to be heated for them at once, and offered mulled ale to them and all their men.

  “Even the greatest of warriors,” he said, “need something to warm themselves after such a voyage as you have endured: and there is truth in the old saying:

  Mulled ale for the frozen man,

  And mulled ale for the weary:

  For mulled ale is the body’s friend

  And makes the sick heart merry.”

  Several of Styrbjörn’s men were so exhausted by their voyage that they were hardly able to stand: but when tankards of mulled ale were offered them, their hands proved to be steady enough, for not a drop was spilled.

  “As soon as you have bathed and rested,” said King Harald, “the Yule feast shall begin: and I shall go to it with a better appetite than if I had only my son’s face to look at across the table.”

  “Is Forkbeard here?” said Styrbjörn, glancing around him. “I should be glad to have a word with him.”

  “He still cherishes the hope that some day he will see me die the ale-death,” said King Harald. “That is why he has come. But if I ever should die at a Yule feast, I think it will be because I am sick of looking at his misshapen face. You will have your chance to speak with him in good time. But tell me one thing: is there blood between him and you?”

  “No blood as yet,” replied Styrbjörn, “but as to the future I cannot say. He has promised me men and ships to help me against my kinsman in Uppsala, but none have yet arrived.”

  “There must be no fighting in my house during the holy festival,” said King Harald. “You must understand that at once, though I know that you will find it tedious to keep the peace. For I am now a follower of Christ, who has been a good ally to me; and Christ will tolerate no strife on Christmas Day, which is His birthday, nor on the holy days that follow.”

  Styrbjörn replied: “I am a man without a country, and as such cannot afford the luxury of being peaceful; for I would rather be the crow than his carrion. But while I am your guest, I think I shall be able to keep the peace as well as any man, whichsoever gods are presiding over the feast; for you have been a good father-in-law to me, and I have never had cause to quarrel with you. But I have news to bring you: namely, that your daughter Tyra is dead. I wish I could have come with more joyful tidings.”

  “That is sad news indeed,” said King Harald. “How did she die?”

  “She took it amiss,” said Styrbjörn, “because I found myself a Wendish concubine. She became so wrathful that she began to spit blood; then she languished and, after a time, died. In all other respects she was an excellent wife.”

  “I have noticed of late,” said King Harald, “that young people cling less keenly to life than old people. But we must not allow this grief to weigh down our spirits during the Yule feast; and in any case I have more daughters left than I know what to do with. They are a fine-spirited bunch and will not marry any man who is not of noble birth and high renown; so that you need not remain a widower for long if you should find any girl among them who takes your fancy. You shall see them all—though I fear that, when they hear that you are single again, they may have some difficulty in keeping the Yule peace.”

  “Something other than marriage is uppermost in my mind just now,” said Styrbjörn, “but we can speak of that later.”

  Many glances were cast at Styrbjörn from doorways and loopholes, as he went with his men to the bathhouse; for he rarely accepted hospitality, and was held to be the greatest warrior that had been seen in the north since the days of the sons of Ragnar Hairy-Breeks. He had a short, fair beard and pale blue eyes, and men who had not seen him before murmured with surprise at finding him so slim-built and narrow-waisted. For they all knew that his strength was such that he cleft shields like loaves of bread and split armed men from the neck to the crotch with his sword, which was called Cradle-Song. Wise men said that the ancient luck of the Uppsala kings was his, and that it was this that gave him his strength and success i
n every enterprise he undertook. But it was also known that the curse of his family and their ancient ill luck had in part descended on him, and that it was because of this that he was a chieftain without a country; and that it was for this reason, too, that he was often afflicted with a great heaviness and melancholy. When the fit attacked him, he would shut himself away from all company and sit sighing and mumbling darkly to himself for days on end, unable to endure the presence of any of his fellow beings, save for a woman to comb his hair and an old harpist to give him ale and play him sad music. But so soon as the fit passed from him, he would be eager to go to sea again, and to battle, and then he would bring the strongest of his men to weariness and despair by his recklessness and his bad weather-luck.

  So he was feared as no other chieftain in the north was feared, almost as though something of the power and majesty of the gods dwelt in him; and there were those who believed that some time in the future, when he reached the zenith of his might, he would sail to Miklagard and crown himself emperor there, and voyage in triumph along the round edge of the earth with his terrible navies.

  But there were others who claimed that they could see it written in his eyes that he would die young and unlucky.

  At length everything was ready in King Harald’s great dining-hall for the Yule feast, and all the men were assembled there in their numbers, seated on benches. No women were allowed to be present at so tremendous a drinking-bout, for it was difficult enough, King Harald thought, to keep the peace when men were by themselves, and it would be many times harder if they had women to brag to in their cups. When everyone was in his place, the groom of the bedchamber announced in a gigantic voice that the peace of Christ and of King Harald reigned in the hall, and that no edged implements might be used except for the purpose of cutting up food; any cut, thrust, or open wound caused by weapon, ale-tankard, meat-bone, wooden platter, ladle, or clenched fist would be reckoned as plain murder, and would be regarded as sacrilege against Christ and as an unpardonable crime, and the miscreant would have a stone tied round his neck and be drowned in deep water. All weapons apart from eating-knives had been left by order in the vestibules, and only the exalted personages who sat at King Harald’s own table were allowed to retain their swords; for it was felt that they would be able to control themselves even when drunk.

  The hall was built to hold a good six hundred men without crowding, and in the middle stood King Harald’s own table, with the thirty most eminent of the company seated at it. The tables for the other guests stretched down the length of the hall from one end to the other. Styrbjörn sat on King Harald’s right hand, and Bishop Poppo on his left; opposite them King Sven had Thorkel the Tall on his right, and a red-faced, bald old jarl from the Small Islands called Sibbe on his left. The others sat according to their rank, King Harald himself having settled each man’s place personally. Orm, though he could not be reckoned as one of the great chieftains, had yet been allotted a better place than he could have expected, and Toke likewise, for King Harald was grateful to them for their gift of the great bell, and was an admirer of Toke’s poetry. So Orm sat three places from the Bishop, and Toke four; for Orm had told King Harald that he would like, if possible, to sit next to Toke, in case the latter became troublesome through drink. Facing them across the table were men of King Sven’s company.

  The Bishop read grace, King Harald having commanded him to be brief about it, and then they drank three toasts: to the honor of Christ, to the luck of King Harald, and to the return of the sun. Even those of the company who were not Christians joined in the toast to Christ, for it was the first of the toasts and they were thirsty for their ale; some of them, however, made the sign of the hammer over their tankards and murmured the name of Thor before they drank. When the toast to King Harald’s luck was drunk, King Sven got ale in his windpipe and had a coughing fit, causing Styrbjörn to ask whether the brew was too strong for his taste.

  Then the Yule pork was brought in, and warriors and chieftains alike fell silent when they saw it appear, and took a deep breath and sighed with joyous anticipation; many loosened their belts, to save doing so later. For though there were those who whispered that King Harald was in his old age less openhanded with gold and silver than he had been of yore, this accusation had never been leveled at him in the matter of meat and drink, and certainly never by anyone who had celebrated Yule in his palace.

  Forty-eight acorn hogs, well fattened, were slaughtered for his pleasure every Yule; and it was his custom to say that if this did not see them through the whole feast-tide, it would at any rate be sufficient to provide a tasty entrée for every guest, and that they could then fill up with beef and mutton. The kitchen servants entered in a long line, two by two, each pair bearing a great smoking pot, except for some who carried troughs of blood-sausage. They were accompanied by boys armed with long forked spits, which, once the pots had been set beside the tables, they plunged into the stew, fishing out large hunks of meat, which they gave to the guests in order of precedence, so that each had his fair share; in addition to which, every man received a good ell’s length of blood-sausage, or more if he wanted it. There were bread cakes and fried turnips set out on clay plates, and at the foot of each table there stood a butt of ale, so that no man’s horn or tankard need ever be empty.

  As the pork approached Orm and Toke, they sat quite still, with their faces turned toward the pot, watching the boy closely as he fished for the meat. They sighed blissfully as he lifted out fine pieces of shoulder pork to put on their plates, reminding each other how long it was since they had last eaten such a dinner, and marveling that they had managed to survive so many years in a country where no pork was allowed to be eaten. But when the blood-sausage arrived, tears came into their eyes, and they declared that they had never eaten a meal worthy of the name since the day they had sailed away with Krok.

  “This is the best smell of all,” said Orm in a small voice.

  “There is thyme in it,” said Toke huskily.

  He plunged his sausage into his mouth, as far as it would go, bit off a length, and slowly closed his jaws; then he swung hastily round, grabbing at the boy’s coat as he attempted to move on with the trough, and said: “If it be not contrary to King Harald’s orders, give me at once another length of that sausage. I have for some years past now fared indifferently among the Andalusians, where they have no food worthy of the name, and these seven Yules I have longed for blood-sausage and had none.”

  “My case,” said Orm, “is the same.”

  The boy laughed at their anxiety and assured them that King Harald had enough sausage for everybody. He ladled out on each of their plates a good length of the thickest that he had; then they were contented and began to eat in earnest.

  For some time now, nobody spoke, either at the King’s table or anywhere else in the hall, except when somebody asked for more ale or mumbled a word between bites in praise of King Harald’s Yuletide meat.

  On Orm’s right sat a young man who cut his meat with a knife that bore an engraved silver hilt. He was fair-skinned and had very long and exquisite hair, carefully combed. He belonged to Thorkel the Tall’s company, and evidently came of good family, for he was honorably placed at the King’s table although he had as yet no beard; besides which his nobility was apparent from his fine clothing and silver sword-belt. After the first flush of eating was over, he turned to Orm and said: “It is good at a feast to sit next to men who have traveled widely; and I think I heard that you and your neighbor have voyaged farther afield than most of us here.”

  Orm replied that this was correct, and that Toke and he had spent six years in Spain.

  “For various reasons,” he added, “our journey took longer than we had anticipated; and many of those who set out with us never returned.”

  “You must have had many adventures worth the telling,” said the other. “I myself, though I have not traveled as far as either of you, have also recently been on a voyage from which few came back.”

&n
bsp; Orm asked him who he was and what voyage he referred to.

  The other replied: “I come from Bornholm, and my name is Sigurd; and my father was Bue Digre, of whom you may have heard, despite your long sojourn abroad. I was with him at Jörund-Fjord when he was killed, and I was captured there, together with Vagn Akesson and many others besides. Nor should I be sitting here tonight to tell the tale if it had not been for my long hair; for it was my hair that saved my life when orders had been given for all the prisoners to be killed.”

  By this time a number of their table companions had eaten their fill and were beginning to regain the freedom of their tongues for the purpose of speech. Toke now joined in the conversation, remarking that what the Bornholmer had just said had an unusual ring about it and promised a good story; for his part, he had always regarded long hair as being more of a handicap to a soldier than an advantage. Thorkel the Tall sat picking his teeth in the aristocratic manner that was now beginning to be fashionable among great men who had traveled widely, with his face turned to one side and the palm of his hand raised before his mouth. He overheard their conversation and observed that long hair had proved unlucky to many a soldier in the past, and that sensible men always took good care to bind their hair up carefully beneath their helmets; however, he added, Sigurd Buesson would show by his story how a shrewd man might take advantage of the length of his hair, and he hoped that everyone in the hall would listen to what he had to say.