by Tim Severin
In the throes of calf love, I would go off for hours to some quiet corner and fall into a trance, meditating on how I could spend the rest of my life close to that glorious, milk-and-honey girl. Now I realise that I wanted more than just Hallbera. I was longing to be absorbed for ever into the embrace of a large family, where everything seemed to be in a perpetual state of sunny commotion and bustle, where there were few problems which, when they did arise, were solved in moments by mutual help and support. In short, I was feeling lonely and insecure, and my view of Snorri’s family was a fantasy which overlooked the fact that my darling Hallbera was no more than a thoroughly normal, conventional young woman in the blush of her maidenhood.
The conversation that autumn was all about a local bandit by the name of Ospak, and what should be done about him. Listening to the discussions, I learned that Ospak had plagued the region for many years. He had always been a bully. A brute by nature and in stature, he had started his mischief when he was still in his teens, knocking about his neighbours and generally terrorising them. As he grew to middle age, he graduated to systematic oppression of the people living within reach and a gang of similar-minded ruffians soon clustered around him. On one notorious occasion he and a gang of his toughs showed up when a dead fin whale had been stranded on a beach. By Icelandic law the division of anything washed up on a beach is strictly controlled. Each stretch of rocky foreshore belongs to the farmers who own the driftage rights there. Dead whales, lengths of driftwood, bits and pieces from boat wrecks, are all considered valuable. They are so precious, in fact, that the first pioneers developed an ingenious system of selecting where to build their homes. Sailing along the new-found coast, the captain of the vessel would throw overboard the carved wooden panels that traditionally stand on each side of the high chair in a Norse hall. Later, going ashore, the new arrivals would range the coast looking to see where the panels had washed up. There they built their home and claimed the beach rights because they knew that the sea currents would supply an endless source of bounty at that spot.
On the day the fin whale washed up, the farmers who owned the driftage rights went down to the beach early in the morning to check what the sea had cast up. The previous night there had been a great gale from the direction which normally brought the best flotsam, and sure enough the carcass of the whale, dead from natural causes, was found lying in the shallows. The farmers went home, fetched their cutting spades and axes and began to butcher the dead whale. They had peeled back the blubber and got as far as cutting up large chunks of the meat, stacking it in piles ready to be shared out, when Ospak appeared. He had no driftage rights, but knew the wind and waves as well as anyone and had rowed across the bay with fifteen of his gang, all heavily armed. They came ashore and demanded a share of the meat, only to be told by one of the farmers, a man named Thorir, that if the other workers agreed they would sell Ospak what he wanted. Ospak gruffly told Thorir that he had no intention of paying and instructed his men to begin loading their boat. When Thorir objected, Ospak struck him on the ear with the flat of an axe blade and knocked him unconscious. The rest of the farmers, outnumbered, were in no position to resist. They had to look on while Ospak and his men filled their boat with as much meat as they could carry, and rowed off, taunting their unfortunate victims.
The following year Ospak’s behaviour became even more wild. He and his men took to raiding isolated farms and looting them, often tying up the farmer and his family. They carried off whatever valuables they could find, all spare stocks of food, and drove away the cattle and horses. They operated with impunity because the farmers were poorly organised, and Ospak had taken the trouble to fortify his own farmhouse so strongly that it was dangerous to counter-attack. His following increased to at least twenty men, all desperadoes attracted by the chance of easy pickings. But the more men Ospak recruited, the more he had to extend his raids to obtain them enough supplies. So the vicious cycle continued unabated. Some time before I joined Snorri’s household, Ospak and his men had raided Thorir’s farm, pillaged it and dragged Thorir outside and killed him. The raiders then headed on towards a farm owned by another of the men who had been at the whale kill, and against whom Ospak bore a grudge. Fortunately Alf, known as Alf the Short, was fully dressed and still awake when the raiders arrived, though it was late in the evening when most people would have been in bed and asleep. Alf managed to slip out of the rear of the house as the raiders battered down the front door, and he ran off across the moor, heading for refuge with Snorri, who was one of the few men in the district too powerful for Ospak to meddle with.
Snorri heard Alf’s tale and his plea for help. But though he gave Alf shelter for as long as he wanted to stay, Snorri waited several months without taking any action against Ospak. For this Snorri was criticised by many, but it was typical of his style. Snorri never did anything in haste, and only after he had made meticulous preparations did he reveal his hand. He wanted more information about Ospak’s defences, and asked if I would visit Ospak’s fortified farm. Ostensibly I was calling to look for work. In reality I was, once again, a spy and – as Snorri made this request just when I was in the full fever of my passion for Hallbera and badly wanted to impress her – I accepted without hesitation.
It took me two days to walk across country to Ospak’s strong-hold, and as I approached his farmhouse I could see that he had built a tall palisade made of timber and closed the entrance to the stockade with massive double gates. Round the inside of the palisade ran an elevated walkway, which would allow the defenders to stand at the rampart and hurl missiles down at any attackers who came too close. Even more daunting was the garrison. I saw at least twenty heavily armed men, including one ugly specimen who affected the old-fashioned style of weaving his long beard in plaits, which he arranged in a mat down his chest. Snorri had already told me about this flamboyant villain, who went by the name of Hrafn the Vikingr. He was a simple-minded, lumbering sort of oaf who drank away his spoils and was already under sentence of full outlawry for committing a random murder.
I also laid eyes, for the first time, on a second, rather more intriguing outlaw at Ospak’s farm. When I walked in through the massive wooden gates I saw a young man sitting in the farmyard on a bench, moodily carving a piece of wood with his knife. I remember he was wearing a brown tunic and blue leggings, and that he seemed to control a repressed fury. The pale shavings were curling up from his knife blade and jumping into the air like nervous insects. Only the breadth of his shoulders, his long arms and powerful hands gave a hint of how he had earned his name, Grettir the Strong. I was interested to meet him because he was only two years older than myself, yet already infamous throughout Iceland. He was not a member of Ospak’s band but visiting the fortified farm with his sister, who was betrothed to Ospak’s son. All sorts of stories were circulating about Grettir the Strong. Even as a young boy he had been uncontrollable. He wilfully disobeyed his parents, refused to help on the family farm and spent most of his time sprawling lazily in the house. When forced to get to his feet and carry out any chore, Grettir made sure he did it in such a way that he was never asked to do the same job again. Sent to lock up the poultry for the night, he left the chicken-shed door ajar so the birds escaped onto the moors. Told to groom the prize stallion, he deliberately scored its back with a sharp knife point so the wretched animal was invalided. He was an impossible youth, wayward and perverse. Nor was he affable with his contemporaries. He was always picking fights, quarrelling and brawling, and he made few friends. I had first heard his name mentioned that winter when I and several of Snorri’s younger children were out on the frozen fjord, playing an ice game. We had divided into two teams and were using shaped sticks to hit a small ball through a mark. One of my team lost his temper and rushed at an opponent, threatening to smash him on the head with his stick. It was called ‘doing a Grettir’. I found out that Grettir had famously attacked an opponent during the ice game and nearly killed him when he hit the boy so hard that his skull cracked
. Three months later Grettir killed a man in a quarrel over, of all things, a leather flask of skyr, sour milk. After that brawl, Grettir was sentenced to lesser outlawry, and when I met him he was in the second grace year, preparing to leave Iceland and seek service with the King of Norway. At that time I had no inkling that one day Grettir would become perhaps my closest friend.
Ospak bluntly turned me away, saying that he had no work for me. However, in the few hours I spent inside his stockade I was able to glean enough information to report on Ospak’s force and defences to Snorri when I got back to Saelingsdale.
I told Snorri what I had seen, and as usual he made little comment. He had been talking with the local chieftains about organising a unified attack on the brigands, and he was prepared to wait until all his allies were free to join him, and also for an excuse to assemble them without arousing Ospak’s suspicions. The one person he did summon to Saelingsdale in advance of his attack was a former member of his household who had now set up as a farmer on his own account – Thrand Stigandi.
Thrand was the sort of person who causes people to lower their voices nervously when they catch sight of him. A head taller than any other man in the neighbourhood, he had a leathery, competent air and was known to be handy with sword and axe. He also looked formidable, with a craggy face, a great prow of a nose, and bushy eyebrows that he could pull down in a ferocious scowl. Anyone facing Thrand in a quarrel would have second thoughts about resorting to physical violence. But within moments of Thrand walking into Snorri’s house I knew that there was another, hidden reason why Snorri had summoned him. When Thrand entered the main hall, I was standing slightly to the left of the entrance, and as he came into the room, he glanced to one side and caught my eye. The moment that happened he paused in his stride and waited for the space of a heartbeat. In that instant I recognised the same cool, calm look I had seen eighteen months before in Vinland, on the day I had stumbled across the two Skraelings in the forest. It was in the eyes of the Skraeling shaman when I blundered into the sick man’s shelter. I guessed at once that Thrand was a seidrman, and my intuition was confirmed when Snorri and Thrand went that same evening to Thor’s temple and spent many hours there. Thrand, I was sure, was communing with the God.
Thrand’s arrival had the same effect on me as when I saw the blood-stained shirt in the company of Thorodd’s mother, or when I saw the ghost of my dead uncle with Gudrid. The presence of someone who could also see into the spirit world aroused the spirit energy within me. On the second night after Thrand’s arrival I had my first omen dream.
I dreamed of a farm that was under attack. Half awake, half asleep, I was in a dimness that was neither night nor day. The attackers had surrounded the building and were pressing home their assault with great ferocity, and I was conscious of the shouts of the combatants and the screams of women inside the building. Several times the thud of blows jolted me part awake, though they were sounds that could only have existed within my dream. The first time I woke, I told myself that my nightmare was a memory of all the horrors that I had heard about the Burning when Njal and his family had been massacred. But as I slipped back into the nightmare I realised that the farm I was watching was not being attacked with fire. There were no flames, no smoke, only the figures of men running here and there, occasionally hurling themselves at the rampart. Then I saw that it was Ospak’s farm, and among the assailants was Thrand. His tall form was unmistakable, but he seemed to have an owl’s head, and there was something about the conflict which reminded me of how the Skraelings had fought when they attacked us in Vinland. I woke up sweating.
In the morning I recalled Snorri’s warning about keeping silent about my visions, particularly if they involved death or harm, and I told no one.
Snorri moved against Ospak’s farm some three weeks later and with overwhelming force. Every able-bodied worker from the farm, including myself, joined the expedition. On our march across the moor we met a column of fifty farmers led by a neighbouring chieftain, Sturla, who had brought his people to assist in the campaign. Our joint company must have amounted to at least eighty combatants, though, as usual, there were very few trained fighters among them. Everyone carried a sword or an axe, plus his dagger, but there was a noticeable shortage of defensive armour. A few men wore leather jackets sewn with small metal plates, but most of the farmers were relying on their wooden shields and thick leather jerkins to protect them from any missiles that Ospak and his cronies would hurl at them from the rampart. In our entire war band I counted only a dozen metal helmets, and one of those was an antique. Instead of the conical modern style with its noseguard, it was round like a pudding bowl and the wearer’s face was hidden behind two round eyepieces. I was not in the least surprised that the man who carried that helmet was Thrand.
Ospak’s scouts must have been watching the trail because when we came in sight of the farmhouse the gates were already shut and barred, and we could see his men had taken up their positions on the elevated walkway. Snorri and Sturla held a short council and agreed that to make the best use of our own superior numbers all four sides of the farm should be attacked simultaneously. Snorri found that he was facing the forces commanded by Hrafn the Vikingr, while Sturla and his men attacked the section of the rampart where Ospak led the defence.
The siege of the farmhouse opened with a barrage of rocks and small boulders which the opposing forces hurled at one another. In this phase of the battle, the defenders on the elevated walkway held a considerable advantage, as they were able to drop boulders on any of the attackers who came too close. Their weakness was their limited supply of boulders and other missiles, so Snorri’s and Sturla’s forces spent the first hour or so of their attack making quick feints up to the palisade, shouting insults and throwing stones, then turning to run back as they dodged the counter-hail of missiles. When the defenders’ supply of stones ran low, the attackers began to run right up to the palisade, concentrating on the fortified gateway and attempting to break through by hacking and levering at the planks. This tactic, however, had little success as the gates were too stoutly built, and the assaults were beaten back. The attackers threw few spears because they tended to bounce off the ramparts, or if one flew over the wall and landed in the compound, one of the defenders was likely to pick it up and hurl it back with more dangerous effect. Only a couple of men on either side used bows and arrows because, quite simply, they are seldom used among Icelanders in their quarrels – they much prefer hand-to-hand fighting.
The rather untidy assault had been in progress for a couple of hours when it seemed to me that the enthusiasm of the attackers was waning. It was at that moment that Thrand showed his worth. Wearing his antique helmet, he sprinted forward from our group, ran up to the palisade and, using the advantage of his great height, sprang into the air so that he leaped high enough to hook the blade of his battleaxe over the top of the palisade. He then grabbed the handle of the axe in both hands and pulled himself upwards, so that he got a leg over the rampart and was able to jump down on the walkway on the far side. There he came face to face with Hrafn the Vikingr, who rushed at him with a great roar of anger. Thrand dodged the Viking’s clumsy spear thrust, knocked the plait-bearded warrior off balance, and hacked at the outstretched arm that held the spear. The axe blow was perfectly aimed. It struck Hrafn on the right shoulder and severed his arm from his body. Hrafn reeled sideways, slipped from the walkway and fell with a heavy thud into the compound below. As Ospak’s men looked at the fallen body of their champion in shock, Thrand took advantage of the moment to vault back over the rampart, drop to the ground and run back to rejoin us. His intervention demoralised the defenders. Ospak’s men began to fight with less bravado and, seeing this, Snorri sent me with a message for Sturla, who was attacking the opposite side of farm. I was to tell him to launch an all-out assault now that the defence was in disarray.
I ran round the side of the farm, scrambling over the low sod walls that marked out the home pasture, and reached Sturla just
in time to see him step forward holding a weapon that I vaguely recognised. It was a thin, flat board, about as long as a man’s arm, and I had first seen it when the Skraelings attacked us in Vinland and, most recently, it had appeared in my nightmare. It was a spear thrower. Where Sturla had obtained this device I do not know. But he knew how to use it, for he ran forward until close enough to the rampart to deliver an accurate strike. Ospak must not have known what Sturla was carrying because when he saw Sturla come so close, Ospak jumped up on the lip of the rampart, made an obscene gesture, and raised a large rock above his head with both hands, ready to toss it on Sturla’s head. Ospak was wearing protective armour that few Icelanders could afford – a thigh-length shirt of chain mail, which protected almost his entire body. But the action of raising the rock lifted the skirt of the chain mail and exposed his upper thigh. Seeing his target, Sturla swung the spear thrower in its arc and delivered its projectile. The spear shot upward. The iron head of the spear was long and slender, with two small flanges to serve as wings. Behind it uncoiled a loop of line. The spear’s point passed clean through Ospak’s thigh and, as he staggered, Sturla gathered the line in both hands and gave a tremendous jerk. Like a fish that has been harpooned, Ospak was literally plucked off the wall and pulled down to the ground. Gesturing to his companions to stand back, Sturla ran forward, drew his dagger and stabbed Ospak through the heart.
