The Saga of Colm the Slave

by Mike Culpepper

  Thorgeir, the godi at Ljosavater, was Lawspeaker that year. He stood above the crowd but no one was listening to him. People milled about and shouted at one another so that it was difficult to hear what anyone was saying. In the middle of all this, a man came running to say that a volcano had erupted and that a farm had been wiped out by lava.

  “You see,” said someone in the crowd, “The gods are angry and send molten rock down to punish us!”

  “Nonsense!” said Snorri. He stamped on the rock beneath his feet. “Who was it that angered the gods when this place was melted rock?”

  Things began to quiet a little and then Gizur and Hjalti addressed the crowd. People were amazed that an outlaw was permitted to speak from the Lawrock. Truly, the world had changed! Hjalti preached to the crowd and he and Gizur repeated the words King Olaf had given them to say: Iceland must become Christian. There could be no more blood sacrifice. The eating of horse-flesh must be forbidden. Unwanted infants could no longer be exposed. The pagans shook their heads; they could not agree to these terms, no matter that there was an implied threat in Olaf’s words. Then both the pagan and Christian parties named witnesses and brought suit against one another. The Christians withdrew from the Lawrock and named Hall of Sida as their Lawspeaker. So now the country was truly split in two.

  Hall went to see Thorgeir and the two of them spoke together for a time. They took the Lawrock together and Hall announced that there would be a judgment on the legal case brought before the Althing about religion. Then he said that Thorgeir of Ljosavater would be the sole judge in the matter.

  The pagans erupted in cheers. One of their own was to decide this case! The Christians took the announcement calmly for they trusted Hall of Sida. Thorgeir withdrew to his booth to consider the matter. He pulled a cloak over his head so that no one would disturb him. This was something men did when they wanted to see into places that were usually hidden. That is, when they wanted knowledge of things beyond the sight of a human eye.

  Thorgeir was still under the cloak when night fell. Colm sat outside Thorolf’s booth watching the stars come out. In the distance, he heard the shouts and chanting where Thorolf and the other pagans were preparing to sacrifice the slaves. They meant to throw them over the cliffs.

  Hallvard came up to Colm. “Not attending the sacrifice?”

  Colm shook his head. “No.” Then he looked at Hallvard. “And you?” he asked.

  “No. I don’t think I will be doing much more sacrificing.”

  “So you are a Christian now?”

  “I am not yet baptized, but I think we all soon will be.”

  Colm was surprised. “Thorgeir is a pagan.”

  “But he is a wise man. He has received gifts from Hall and Snorri as well. That will not buy his decision, but it will help make him decide fairly.”

  “So a fair decision is for Christianity?”

  Hallvard shrugged. “It is the way the world is going. Every place is Christian now, except us.”

  “There is fighting in Norway.”

  “Even so. If the king of Norway is defeated, another Christian will come along to replace him. We are at the edge of the world; the center is all Christian.”

  “So you do not believe that the White Christ is stronger than the gods...”

  “I do not believe it worth fighting over.” Hallvard shrugged. “Whatever gods there are, they are stronger than me. Anyway, it is no use being on the losing side.”

  Colm nodded. This was logic that he understood. There was a great cry in the distance and Colm’s head jerked up. A slave had gone to his doom.

  Hallvard looked toward the sound. “I hope this sacrifice helps Grandfather’s pain. I hope the death of these men accomplishes that much.”

  Colm did not reply. A minute later they heard another slave’s scream. That’s two, thought Colm. He could not keep himself from listening for the sound of the next sacrifice. This went on for a while until all eight had died.

  The next day men gathered around the Lawrock and waited for Thorgeir to come tell them of his decision. It was late afternoon when he came out from under the cloak. He had been there a full twenty-four hours. Everyone was quiet as Thorgeir began to speak. He said, “We cannot have two laws and two peoples; we are one and must have one law and one religion for us all.” Men thought about this and agreed that it was true. If there were two religions, there would always be quarreling, and how could disputes be resolved if there were two laws? Then Thorgeir said, “There are two factions here and we cannot accept the extreme arguments of either one. We must find a compromise that will include both. We must find a compromise that will allow a little to each side but still leave us with one faith and one law. For if we rend asunder the Law, we tear apart the peace.” Again men agreed. “Therefore,” said Thorgeir, “Iceland will adopt the Christian faith, but sacrifice and the eating of horse-flesh may continue, so long as this is done privately. And unwanted infants may still be exposed.”

  So it was. The Christians were pleased that their faith was adopted. The pagans were mollified that they would still be able to practice their rites. Those who prized peace more than religion were the most pleased, for they could see that there would be no fighting now. There were more of these last than of the other two factions, as Thorgeir had seen. That was why he appealed to them instead of to either group of believers.

  Thorolf sat with head bowed. “There will be peace now,” said Hallvard.

  Thorolf nodded. “Yes, we have peace, but everything will be different now.”

  “You will still be able to hold sacrifices.”

  “But only in private. As though it were a secret, shameful thing to do. There will be no more celebrations, no more feasting.” He looked at Hallvard. “And this will change your task as well. You will be replaced by a priest and only have responsibility to make laws. Your power will wane.”

  “Grandfather, you are still godi here.”

  Thorolf shook his head. “No. I am done. You are godi now. Anyway, I have not much longer to live. This pain in my guts grows stronger every day and I am spitting my life out on the ground.”

  “Don’t speak so, Grandfather!”

  “There is no use denying a fact. I have taught you that.” A thought struck him. “Listen, Hallvard, one last bit of advice: name your brother Ahmund a priest. Always have a priest nearby that you can trust! And build a place on your farm where you Christians can perform your rites. Then people will still come to you as if you had feasting and sacrifices.”

  “Grandfather...” Hallvard was weeping.

  Thorolf waved a hand at him. “Hush. It is my time.” He turned to Colm. “See that I am buried in the old way.”

  Hallvard said, “I will follow your wishes, Grandfather!”

  “No, you must be a Christian. Do not let others accuse you of performing unlawful acts! You will lead Christians; you must be a Christian!”

  So Colm was charged with burying Thorolf. On the way home to the Trollfarm, he was baptized like everyone else. Some men complained that they did not want to be baptized in cold water, but the priests just smiled and agreed to baptize them at the hot springs.

  A month after the Althing, King Olaf was killed and the Jarl of Lade, a pagan, took over in Norway. He paid tribute to the King of Denmark and became a Christian to please him, though he never practiced that religion nor tried to spread it as Olaf Tryggveson had done. These events had no effect on Iceland. Fifteen years later, Olaf the Large became king and drove out the Danes. He converted every pagan that he found. After that, Norway remained Christian. Erik the Red tried to keep Greenland a pagan place and some heathens sought refuge there, but Erik’s own wife was converted. She built a small church at Brattahlid and refused to sleep with Erik because he was a pagan. Erik, it is said, was not pleased. There were a few places in back-country Sweden that kept the old religion but everywhere else people became Christian.

  No one was surprised when Thorolf died the winter after the Althing. Colm ha
d a grave dug for him. Once there was a time when a man of his stature would be buried in a ship, but ships were hard to come by in Iceland. Colm could have used a boat but he did not want to fold Thorolf’s body into a small mockery of the old idea. Instead he found wood, good boards, that he used to build a small structure in the grave. They laid Thorolf inside with some weapons and personal belongings. Once a slave would have been killed to accompany the body and now some wanted to kill a horse or even a dog and lay it in with Thorolf, but Colm decided not. He had become uninterested in sacrifices. So they roofed over the body and filled the grave with earth. Then Colm had stones laid about the grave in the shape of a ship. Hallvard attended the funeral. “I will not abandon my grandfather now,” he said. He did not join in the chanting, though.

  Now Hallvard took up the duties of a godi. He sat in the middle at the Logrettta and Colm kept his position above him. Hallvard’s brother-in-law Orm sat below. Orm was proud to be part of the Logretta. He did not complain about the new religion and only held one secret sacrifice, the winter before he began sitting below Hallvard. Marta kept her peace. She did not practice the old rites any more. She still spoke to the land-spirit in the stone, though, and sometimes put out food for it but she kept quiet about it. Many who had received baptism as Christians did similar things.

  Hallvard put up a small turf chapel near the old temple which he pulled down. The idols were broken and thrown into the sea. Ahmund was sent away to Frankia to learn to be a priest. Meanwhile, Hallvard invited Ljot to preach at his church. Ljot said that he would, at least for a while, but that he had promised Snorri godi that he would be a priest in the church that Snorri was building at Thorsness. Ljot was known to be intelligent and an adept scholar. Though he had only a little time in Frankia, he had learned to read and write Latin. Snorri wanted him to train other men to read Latin and set them on the way to being priests. There weren’t enough priests to fill all the churches that people were building. It was said that places in Heaven would match the places available for worshippers in church. So everyone wanted to build churches and make Heaven larger.

  There was mostly peace in the land now, at least in religious matters. Some pagans muttered and complained but most took to the new religion, though they sometimes practiced magic or called on the old gods in time of trouble. After a few years, when sacrifice and the eating of horse-flesh were forbidden altogether, no one complained about it. Nor did they raise objections when the exposure of infants was banned.

  Women took to the new religion very quickly and created their own set of rules as to how worship should be conducted, what clothes people should wear to services, and so on. People began wearing various religious objects. Colm bought a little holy book from a trader and gave it to Gwyneth. She carried it everywhere with her, especially when she attended church. She could not read it but understood that it was an object of great power and significance. The book was only a few pages of what had once been a longer volume. Some calamity, a raid perhaps, had caused the book to be broken into pieces. The pages that Gwyneth owned were rebound with hard leather covers tied with a ribbon. There was one small picture of a man sowing seed. The priests said that it illustrated the Parable of the Sower and Gwyneth had them tell that story to her many times. They would open their missals and run their finger along the words, translating the Latin into Norse as they read. Gwyneth nodded as she heard the story. It seemed to her a great and obvious truth that some souls were never nurtured and that many people fell by the wayside. She tried to speak of this to the priests but they became impatient and said that she did not understand, that the parable was about people’s willingness to hear God’s word and accept his grace. Gwyneth always nodded then and smiled to show that, now, she understood.

  Other than the picture there were some psalms and a few prayers in Gwyneth’s book. Sometimes she got Ljot or one of the other priests to read a section and tell her, in Norse, what it said. She had them repeat a passage several times until she remembered it. Later, she would run her fingers over the page and recite the priest’s words as she recalled them.

  Every Sunday, Gwyneth would travel to the church where Ljot was preaching. Gunnora attended these services, too, proud to see her son behind the pulpit. Women still whispered about Gunnora but most people thought that she was past the age to cause difficulties to anyone’s marriage.

  Stein-Unn also attended these services. She had a number of children with Thrain and that farm was doing well. Gunnora still treated her with contempt and laughed at her hare-lip.

  One day, Ljot took Gunnora aside. “You shouldn’t mock that woman in the Lord’s house, Mother.”

  “Why shouldn’t I? God made her to be mocked.”

  “No, she was born a pagan and her gods did not protect her from affliction. But now she is a Christian and God may punish you for your mockery.”

  Gunnora made no reply to this but smiled in a sneering way. A few days later she suffered a stroke and one side of her face was paralyzed. People said that her sneer had frozen on her face. Behind her back they called her Gunnora Twist-Face. They said that it was God’s justice and were well-satisfied.

  35. The Robber Gang

  After Skeggi, the cow herd who had lost Mikla-Tit, was sent away by Ketil, he wandered about Iceland, taking work here and there. The older he got, the less he got along with his employers. Finally, he could not find work at all. He had some trouble and was outlawed in the East Quarter. He fled to the North Quarter and began robbing people’s houses there. Other men joined him and the gang became quite a nuisance. Some of the godis in the North sent men after the robbers, but couldn’t catch up to them. After a while, though, they made things so difficult for Skeggi that he left and moved into the West. He made a place for himself across the bay on a little spit of land and built a turf wall across it spiked with sharpened posts. So, when people came after him, if Skeggi saw that he was outnumbered, he had his men go out the back and take to the boats. They would row away to another place and wait for the force to leave, then row back and repair the wall and go on as before.

  Gunnar had a friend named Alf who lived near the bay. He had foreshore rights on the beach below his farm, though his godi, Snorri, had a claim on a certain amount of the driftage. One day a whale was stranded on Alf’s beach and he sent for his friend Gunnar to come share in the butchering.

  Alf’s men made a good start on the whale and had cut away a large amount of meat when one of them looked up and saw boats rowing toward them from across the bay. They knew that it was Skeggi and his gang. One or two of them took fright and Gunnar yelled to them, “Come on, we’ll fight them together!” But they ran away.

  Skeggi landed on the beach. “I see you’ve butchered a whale for us.”

  “Not for you,” growled Gunnar. He was unarmed but picked up a stone and threw it hard. One of Skeggi’s men ducked and the stone struck the man behind him, who dropped to the ground. The first man raised his head and Gunnar said, “Don’t worry. I’ve got your share right here!” and threw another stone.

  Skeggi rushed forward and struck Gunnar with the hammer of his axe. Gunnar was stunned and fell to the ground. When he came to his senses, Skeggi and his men were halfway back to their place, boats full of whalemeat.

  Gunnar said to Alf, “I thought you had more courage than that.”

  Alf said, “They outnumbered us two to one. I’m going to report this to Snorri godi.” He grinned. “Snorri does not take kindly to being robbed. I think we’ll be taking a boat trip soon.”

  “All right,” said Gunnar, “And I’ll tell my godi, Hallvard, that I’ve been attacked. I’ll fetch my weapons, too. Then we’ll all meet back here.”

  When Hallvard heard what had happened his expression turned grim. “I’ll send for all the men around and we’ll teach this Skeggi a lesson!”

  So Hallvard gathered the men in the district. Colm, Thrain, Gunnar, Ketil, and some others all gathered above the beach. The younger men -- Orm, Styr, Frosti --- were th
ere as well. Altogether about twenty men rode with Hallvard.

  Hallvard was grinning and Colm said, “You seem cheery enough.”

  “This is the kind of event you hope for. You can’t make it happen; you just have to be ready when it occurs. Grandfather taught me that.”

  “Why would you hope for robbers to invade our district?”

  Hallvard said, “Because driving them out will give us a task that will draw people together. We need something like this to make every man value his neighbor a little more.”

  “Doesn’t the thought of facing these ruffians bother you?”

  “No. I think they are no match for us. And this is just what we need to get all the prople to pull together. We will defeat these thieves and then men will be able to talk about it after; they will tell tales over their beer. It will be a good thing for the community.”

  “If all goes well for us,” said Colm.

  “Of course it will,” laughed Hallvard. “Don’t I have the best fighting man in the area riding beside me right now?”

  “I would never call myself that.” Colm never thought of himself as a fighter. Now he had developed a belly that hung over his saddle. It came upon him without warning; one day he woke up and realized that he was no longer lean and hard.

  “You are a modest man,” said Hallvard.

  “No. I have seen great fighters and I do not want to be numbered among them. They were good for little else.”

  “All right,” said Hallvard. “Then let me say, great fighter or no, I would not prefer any other man beside me and I know Grandfather felt the same way.”

  Colm said nothing but he worried about the fight ahead. He would never welcome an event like this. He would never lead men into violence and say that it was a good thing. Colm realized he was not a leader. I have found my place, he thought, free and with some status, but only so much. For a moment his thoughts were tinged with bitterness but he stifled that line of thinking. Long ago he had learned to discipline the emotions that might doom him. Geirrid! He thought, Geirrid had a mind like Hallvard, seeing men from a distance, measuring them, using them. But Geirrid could never be a leader here. He was only a slave's son.This was the way of things and there was no possibility of shifting Fate.