by Tim Severin
THE FACTION SUPPORTING the Burners arrived in style. They came as a group, about forty of them, riding those small and sturdy Icelandic horses. They were armed to the teeth because they feared an ambush organised by Kari. Their leader was a local chieftain, Flosi Thordarson. He had planned and organised the incendiary attack, though he did not boast about it as much as several of the other Burners, who arrived at Thingvellir gloating over the death of Njal and bragging that they would finish the job by putting paid to Kari as well, if he dared show his face. By contrast Flosi preferred to work with his head rather than by brawn. He knew that the Burners had a very weak case when it came to defending their actions before the courts set up at the Althing. So he used a classic strategy: he resolved to bribe the best lawyer in Iceland and rely on his legal hair-splitting to get the Burners acquitted.
The lawyer he picked was Eyjolf Bolverksson, generally considered to possess the most wily legal mind in the country. Eyjolf had already set up his booth at Thingvellir when Flosi went looking for him. Flosi, however, had to be careful about being seen negotiating in public with Eyjolf because Icelandic custom dictates that a lawsuit can only be conducted by the party directly concerned or by a deputy with a recognised relationship such as kinship or a debt of honour. Legal advice is not meant to be for profit or hire. Eyjolf had no prior connection with the Burners, and it is very unlikely that he believed in their innocence. But Eyjolf had a reputation for avarice and, like many lawyers, he was perfectly willing to sell his skills if the payment was high enough. So initially he rebuffed Flosi, telling him that he would not act on his behalf. At most he was allowed to act as a friend of the court and give impartial advice. But when Flosi quietly took him off to one side and offered him an arm bracelet of solid gold, Eyjolf accepted the bribe and agreed to act for him, assuring Flosi that no one else knew so intimately the twists and turns of the back alleys of Icelandic custom and that he would find a way which would allow the Burners to escape punishment.
I know all this because, by then, I had been set to spy on Flosi.
Four days before the Burners arrived at the Althing, Kari Solmundarson slipped quietly into Thingvellir. I would not have guessed from his appearance that Kari was the formidable warrior of his reputation. He was only of average height and rather slim, and he scarcely looked as if he could heft a battleaxe to good effect. He had a narrow face with a long nose above a small mouth, and his brown eyes were rather close set. Unusually for a fighting man, he kept his beard very neat and trim and tied back his hair with a browband of dark grey. Only when he was ready to do battle did he remove the browband and his magnificent head of hair become a warrior's mane. But if you looked past the sober style of Kari's dress, his movements gave him away. He was as supple as an athlete, always quick and fluid, and constantly alert like some sort of hunting animal. A bystander pointed Kari out for me just as Kari was about to enter the booth of one of his potential allies. I walked up behind him, out of his line of vision. Yet he sensed my presence, suddenly whirled about to face me, and dropped his hand to the hilt of the short sword in his belt. When he saw only an unarmed boy, he relaxed.
'Are you Kari Solmundarson?' I asked.
'I am,' he replied. 'Who are you, lad? I don't think I have seen you before.'
'I'm Thorgils Leifsson, though perhaps it might be more accurate if my name was Thorgils Thorgunnasson.'
He looked more than a little startled. 'Thorgunna the w—' He stopped himself. 'Thorgunna, who came from Ireland to Earl Sigurd's court?' he asked.
'Yes, I grew up in Greenland and the west, and only arrived here recently. I was hoping you could tell me something about my mother.'
"Well, well, you're Thorgunna's son. I did know your mother, at least by sight, though we exchanged only a few words,' Kari replied, 'but right at this moment I don't have time to spend chatting about those days. I've got much to do here at the Althing, but if you want to tag along with me, perhaps there will be a moment when I will be able to tell you a little of what you want to know.'
For the rest of that day, and the next, I followed Kari as he went from booth to booth, talking to the godars who had known his murdered father-in-law. Sometimes he was successful in enlisting their support for the case against the Burners, but just as often he was told that he would have to look after his own interests as the Burners were too powerful and anyone helping Kari would be victimised. In one booth we found a tall, rather gaunt man, lying on a bed with his right foot wrapped in bandages. The invalid was Thorhall Asgrimmsson, Njal's foster son.
'Thank the Gods that you managed to get here,' said Kari, obviously pleased.
'The travelling was painful, but I managed it by taking it in slow stages,' Thornhall replied. 'The infection is so sore that I can hardly walk.'
He pulled aside the bandages and showed his right ankle. It was swollen to three times its normal size. In the centre of the swelling a great pus-filled boil seemed to pulsate with heat. In the centre of the boil, I could see the focus of the infection: a black spot like an evil fungus ringed with a fringe of angry red.
'The court case against the Burners will probably be called the day after tomorrow. Do you think you will be able to attend?' asked Kari.
'I doubt it, unless the boil bursts by then,' Thorhall replied. 'But even if I can't attend in person, I can follow the case from my bed here and offer advice if you keep me informed of the details of each day's proceedings.'
'I'm really grateful, and can't thank you enough for coming to the Althing,' Kari said.
'It's the least I can do,' Thorhall said. 'It was your father-in-law Njal who taught me nearly everything I know about the law and I want to see justice done to his murderers.' He paused and thought for a moment. 'In fact, my disability could be useful. Very few people know that I am here, cooped up on this bed, and I think that it should stay that way. We might work a surprise on them.' He glanced at me. 'Who's this youngster?'
'He's just come from Greenland, grew up there and in a place called Vinland.'
Thorhall grunted. 'What do you know about the arrangements Flosi and the Burners are making for their defence at the trial?'
'It's said that they are going to try to get Eyjolf Bolverksson to lead their defence.'
'Officially he shouldn't be taking the case,' said Thorhall, 'but knowing how greedy he is for money, I expect he will be bought. If he is lining up against us, then it would be helpful to know.' His glance fell on me. 'Perhaps this lad could make himself useful. I doubt if anyone around here knows who he is, and he wouldn't stand out in a crowd.'
Then, speaking directly to me, he asked, 'Could you do something for us? If you had Flosi and the chief Burners pointed out to you, do you think you could stick close to them and report back to us how they are getting on in their campaign to recruit allies for their court hearing?'
It was the first time that anyone had ever showed such confidence in me and I was flattered. Equally important, Thorhall's suggestion appealed to my sense of identity. Odinn, as I mentioned earlier, is the God of disguises, the listener at the door, the stealer of secrets, and the God whose character and behaviour appeals to me most. Here was I, alone in a new country, being asked to spy in a matter of real importance. To accept the invitation would be a homage to Odinn and, at the same time, it would be a way of earning the confidence of the man who could tell me about my mother.
So it was that, three days later, I was crouching in a cleft of rock, barely daring to breathe. Not ten paces away was Flosi Thordarson, leader of the Burners, together with two of his leading supporters, who I would later learn were Bjarni Brodd-Helgason and Hallbjorn the Strong. With them was the eminent legal expert Eyjolf. He was easy to recognise because he was a dandy who liked to strut around the Althing wearing a flashy scarlet cloak and a gold headband, and carrying a silver-mounted axe. We were all a short distance behind the lip of the Almmana Gorge, out of sight of the meeting place below. Clearly the four men had come to this isolated spot for a private co
nference, thinking it an ideal place to talk freely, after they had left their retainers to keep a lookout. I had seen the group leave the cluster of booths at the Althing and begin to walk along the path leading to the clifftop, and I had guessed where they were going. Scrambling up ahead of them, I flung myself down on the grass so I was not visible against the skyline. After catching my breath and waiting for the pounding of blood in my ears to cease, I raised my head cautiously and looked to my right. A moment later I was wriggling backwards anxiously and trying to burrow into cover. The four men had chosen to sit down alarmingly close to me and begin their discussion. Fortunately the Thingvellir cliff is made of the rock the Icelanders call hraun. It oozes from the ground as a fiery torrent when the Gods are angry and, when it cools and hardens, develops cracks and slits. Into one of these clefts I slid. I was too far away to hear anything more than the occasional scrap of conversation when one or another raised his voice, but it was clear that some negotiations were going on. The outcome must have been satisfactory because the next thing I saw as I peeked cautiously from my hiding place, was Flosi pull off his own arm a heavy gold bracelet, take Eyjolf s arm and slip the bracelet onto it. I could tell that the bracelet was valuable from the way it gleamed briefly in the watery sun, and Eyjolf lovingly ran his finger over it. Then Eyjolf carefully slid the bracelet farther up his arm, under the sleeve of his coat where it would not be seen.
At this point I had no idea of the significance of the transaction. When the four men got to their feet and walked back along the path to rejoin their waiting retainers, I waited silently, still pressed to the ground, until I guessed that the others must be gone. Then I slipped quietly back to the booth, where Kari was conferring with Thorhall, and reported what I had witnessed. Kari scowled and muttered something about making sure that Eyjolf did not live to enjoy his bribe. Thorhall, lying on his cot, was more phlegmatic. 'Eyjolf s a tricky customer,' he said, 'but he may not be quite the invincible lawyer that he thinks he is.'
The eagerly awaited lawsuit began next morning before a large and expectant audience. One after another, various members of Kari's faction stood at the foot of the Law Rock and took it in turns to pronounce the accusations. The most eloquent speakers had been chosen, and the legal formulae rolled out sonorously. They accused Flosi Thordarson and his allies of causing the death of the Njalssons 'by internal wound, brain wound, or marrow wound' and demanded that the culprits be neither 'fed nor forwarded nor helped nor harboured' but condemned as outlaws. Further, they demanded that all the goods and properties of the accused be confiscated and paid as compensation to the relatives of the dead family and the people living in their area. It was then that I noticed how the crowd assembled round the law court were standing in separate groups. If I had not been a newcomer, I would have identified much sooner how those who supported the Burners were standing well apart from the band of men allied with Kari and the Njalsson faction. Between them, acting as a buffer, stood a large crowd of apparently neutral bystanders, and it was just as well they did so because both Kari's men and the Burners had come fully armed to the Law Rock and were wearing tokens -ribbons and emblems attached to their clothes - which signalled their loyalty and that they were ready for a fight.
For the moment, however, both sides were prepared to let the lawsuit take its course. The first day of the court case was occupied entirely with Kari's people laying accusations of murder or conspiracy to murder against the Burners. The second and third days saw legal arguments over which court had the power to try the cases, and who should be on the juries. Eyjolf proved to be every bit as slippery as his reputation suggested. He tried every wily trick in law to delay or deflect the accusations, and even came up with several variations which were entirely new. He fastened on tiny procedural irregularities which he claimed rendered the prosecution irrelevant. He discredited witnesses on minor technical points and had so many jurors disqualified for the most arcane reasons that Kari's side were driven to summoning up and enrolling nearly a dozen substitute jurors. Eyjolf bent and twisted the law this way and that, and the Lawspeaker, a man named Skapti, was constantly being called on to adjudicate. Invariably he found in favour of the clever Eyjolf.
At the end of each day the crowd, who greeted each new legal subtlety with a murmur of appreciation, judged that the Burners had the upper hand. But then next morning the spectators had to reverse that opinion because they had not reckoned with Kari's hidden adviser, Thorhall, lying in his booth nursing his grotesque boil. I was kept employed constantly running back and forth to Thorhall to report every latest twist in the. legal wrangling. Thorhall, grimacing with discomfort, red-faced and tears of pain running down his cheeks, would listen to what I had to say, though the legal wording was so ornate that half the time I did not know what it was that I was reporting. Then he would wave me away to return to the law court and wait my next errand while he mulled over the fresh scrap of news. That evening he and Kari would have a consultation, and Kari or his representative would appear before the Lawspeaker the following morning and produce Thor-hall's counter-argument, which would save the day and allow the prosecution to proceed. The Lawspeaker several times remarked that he did not know there was anyone who knew the laws so thoroughly. One little wrangle, I remember, turned upon whether the ownership of a milch cow entitled an individual to sit on the jury as a person of property. Apparently it did.
After four labyrinthine days, the case finally ended with a verdict. Despite all his twisting and turning Eyjolf had failed to get the case thrown out and the Burners were found guilty by the forty-two members of the jury. At that moment Eyjolf produced his master stroke: the verdict was invalid, he pointed out, because the jury was too large. It should have had thirty-six members, not forty-two. Kari and his faction had fallen into the trap that Eyjolf had set right at the beginning. His strategy had been to challenge repeatedly the composition of the jury, until he had lured Kari's faction into agreeing to an excess of jurors. On this technicality, the case against the Burners collapsed. Promptly Eyjolf turned the case on its head. He announced that Kari's prosecution had been malicious and that he was indicting Kari and his followers for false accusation and demanded that they, not the Burners, should be pronounced outlaws.
Kari came with me this time as we hurried back to Thorhall's booth to report the disaster. It was just past noon, and we left a crowd of onlookers clustering round Eyjolf and the Burners and excitedly offering their congratulations. Kari pushed past the door flap and summarised the situation in a few words. Thorhall, who had been lying back on his cot, swore loudly, sat up and swung his tender foot onto the ground. I had never seen a man look so angry. Thorhall groped under the cot and pulled out a short stabbing spear. It was, I remember, a particularly fine weapon, razor sharp, its blade inlaid with some fine silver work. Lifting up the spear with both hands, Thorhall brought it plunging down on the enormous boil on his ankle. There was a sickly squelching sound and I could almost hear the pus and blood as it burst out. A fat gob of pus slopped on the earth and there was a splatter of black blood across the earth floor as the putrefaction exploded. Thorhall let out a brief moan of pain as the boil was lanced, but a moment later he was on his feet, spear in hand and with bits of his own flesh still on the blade, striding out of the door, not even with a limp. Indeed, he was walking so fast that I found it difficult to keep up with him. I noticed that Kari, who was matching Thorhall stride for stride, had pulled off his browband, shaken out his hair, and had clapped a helmet on his head.
Thorhall came barging into the back of the crowd loyal to the Burners. The first person he encountered was one of Flosi's kinsmen, a man called Grim the Red. One look at Thorhall's furious expression and the spear in his hand, and Grim raised his shield to protect himself. Barely pausing, Thorhall rammed the spear into the shield with such force that the shield, an old and badly maintained wooden one, split in two. The spear blade carried right through Grim's body so that the point came out of his back between his shoulders. As
Grim dropped to the ground, someone from the far side, from Kari's faction, shouted out, 'There's Thorhall! We can't let him be the only one to take revenge on the Burners!' and a furious melee broke out. Both sides drew their weapons and flung themselves at their opponents. So I saw what, in the end, is the deciding factor of Icelandic justice.
I also understood how Kari had got his reputation as a fighter. He came face to face with two of the Burners — Hallbjorn the Strong and Ami Kolsson. Hallbjorn was a big brute of a fellow, heavy-boned and broad-set. He was armed with a sword, which he swung at Kari, a low scything sweep at his legs, hoping to cripple or maim him. But the big man was too ponderous. Kari saw the blow coming. He leaped high in the air, drawing his knees up to his chest, and the sword swept harmlessly under him. Even as Kari landed, he struck with his double-bladed battleaxe at Ami Kolsson, a hit so shrewdly directed that it caught the victim in the vulnerable spot between shoulder and neck, chopping through the collarbone and splitting open his chest. Mortally wounded, Ami fell. Turning towards Hallbjorn, who was getting ready to take a second swing at him, Kari sidestepped and used his axe backhanded. The blade glanced off the lower edge of Hallbjorn's shield and carried downward, severing the big toe from Hallbjorn's left foot. Hallbjorn gave a howl of pain and hopped back a step. One of Kari's friends now rushed in and gave Hallbjorn such a shove with his spear that the big man toppled backwards in a heap. Scrambling back to his feet, Hallbjorn limped back in the crush of people as fast as he could set his injured foot on the ground. With each step he left a small splash of blood.
Next I witnessed something I have seen only four or five times in my life, even though I was to take part in quite a number of battles. Standing a little behind Kari, I saw a spear came hurtling at him, thrown by one of the Burners. Kari, who was not carrying a shield, sidestepped and caught the weapon left-handed in mid-air. At that instant I realised that Kari was ambidextrous. He caught the spear, as I say, left-handed, turned it and flung it back straight into the crowd of Burners and their supporters. He did not take aim, but threw as a reflex. The spear plunged into the crowd, killing a man.
