Guðmundur Grímsson of Grunnavík had reached the age when new acquaintances brought him nothing any more. He had long since grown tired of talking about his books to new people; they were only a repetition of a thousand other people he had known before, and most of them talked in the same way about the books which were his life for a thousand years. It could well be that in his young days he had been the most human of men—nothing was more likely, in fact. No one could know which of his friends he perhaps remembered when the drops dripped from the roof at night, drop after drop. Now he had long since ceased to be a man; he was the sage of the ages, the writer, whom no threat from the elements could force to lay aside his book and his quill pen; this massive face which was the unconquerable face of Iceland. And at this moment Ólafur Kárason felt it had been worthwhile to endure everything in order to have had the good fortune to see this face. Illness of body and soul, hunger, beatings, calumnies, false accusations, misunderstandings, lies, deceit— they all meant nothing. When the visitors walked out into the open air again the boy was so weak and trembling that Reimar thought he had become ill again. But he was not ill; it was only that he had just seen the greatest living master and sage in Scandinavia.
“Now we’ll return the hacks to where they belong,” said Reimar, “and then we’ll get ourselves ferried over to Sviðinsvík.”
The afterglow of sunset lay on the green turf of the place from which they set sail that evening, and on the cliffs and the dead-calm sea. There were two strangers at the oars, and Reimar steered, while Ólafur Kárason sat in the stern. And with that their handsomeprowed boat set out.
The boy looked at the splendid rays of the sunset on the white creamy water, feeling as brave and optimistic as Iceland’s first settler in the morning of time, without experience, new. It was a broad fjord and the shore on the other side was far away. He felt he had died and had awoken to eternal life, and was sailing to the unknown land on the other side. The sun had set; white mist rose from the valleys and nestled against the green slopes of the mountains. It was as if the land were dissolving in one dizzying, elf-like night-vision without reality. The solid and the liquid became one, the sky stepped down and the earth up, an unreal aura of some incredibly distant future or past was over everything, another time over the world. Even the men in front of him in the boat were dissolving into the blue and gold harmonies of color; their rhythmic movements at the oars obeyed the laws of another sphere, a higher seamanship. Then the land disappeared altogether into the mist except for glimpses of the highest cliffs of the mountains away, away up, like a world of trolls we have left behind and which does not concern us any more.
Little by little they approached the shore on the other side. One began to see the gleam of the palaces of the unknown land down by the sea. He stared for a long time at these palaces glittering through the light mist before he dared to believe his own eyes. But finally he could not doubt it any longer—these palaces were all of pure gold. There shone from them the same luster as from the old scholar’s medal. Enraptured, the young poet gazed at the afterglow gleaming on all that gold behind the white, loving mists of the spring night.
And so the boat glided onward, toward the unknown.
BOOK TWO
THE PALACE OF THE SUMMERLAND
1
When the poet woke up in the morning, an old man was standing over him with a stick in his hand, trying to beat him.
“I won’t have sheep in my homefield!” the old man was mumbling, over and over again. But he no longer had much strength, and his blows were fairly harmless.
It was a panelled living room with a sloping ceiling. There was a small cooking stove against one of the side walls; farther in there was a sort of low partition protruding into the middle of the floor, rather like a stall in a barn.
“My homefield!” raged the old man, and went on tapping the boy with the stick.
Only half-awake, the boy did not remember that he had been cured in a supernatural way and was now perfectly healthy, thanks to a miracle; he thought he was still sorely afflicted by several fatal internal ailments, and he replied in his old plaintive tone that he did not feel strong enough to get up because of his prolonged sufferings.
On the other side of the living room a naked man was sitting on his bed; he was ruddy-faced and plump, with jowls down to his shoulders. He slobbered out of one corner of his mouth and said “Vavva-vavva,” over and over again.
“Give me your hand and let me greet you,” said the boy, and tried to shake hands with the old man in the hope that he would stop belaboring him and enter into more amicable relations. But the old man was devoid of all tenderness and compassion, and was beyond all such superfluous courtesies.
“It’s my homefield! My homefield! The Privy Councillor* and I were the same age; it’s not true he stole butter; I won’t have sheep in my homefield, drive them out of my homefield at once!” he said, and was in no mood to shake hands with anyone, either in greeting or reconciliation.
He had a little jutting beard, and one eye closed and one eye open; in the open eye there lurked some weird fervor which the boy did not fully understand. His right hand was withered. At long last he wearied of his efforts to rouse the boy, shuffled over to his own bed and sat down.
The boy wanted to ingratiate himself with the household and promote a Christian frame of mind in the community, and he did not lose heart even though he had failed with the old man; he said Good-morning and bowed politely towards the fat naked man who was sitting there on the bed opposite like some overgrown infant, squinting at the newcomer without altering his rather monotonous conversational topic of “Vavva-vavva.” But when the visitor bade him good-morning, he was so surprised that he stopped saying “Vavva-vavva.”
“Good-morning,” said the boy again, raising his voice to show he was in earnest. There was silence for a while, until the fat naked man could not contain himself any longer and started to giggle with peculiar throaty noises.
“That’s Jón Einarsson the heathen,” explained the old man. “Don’t pay any attention to him; he doesn’t know how to cross himself. Get up at once, because there are sheep in my homefield!”
The sloping ceiling was black with damp, with patches of white mildew here and there like splashes of whey. The air in the house was foul. “I’ll try to get up,” said the boy, and began to try to get up. But he had grown so much taller in the last two years that he did not realize how much room and time each movement took; he had grown unaccustomed to moving at all, and had forgotten how to put his clothes on. The old man kept harping on about his homefield being full of sheep.
At last the boy managed to get up. He looked out of the window. There was a road, and on the other side of the road there was a little cottage with a turf roof and timbered walls and an open door and a girl leaning against the doorpost, and other little cottages here and there, and little homefields, and a large homefield that stretched far up the mountainside.
“Which is your homefield?” asked the boy.
“I own all the homefields; they’re all mine, the Upper homefield, too; no one has any right to have sheep in my homefield,” said the old man. “I was confirmed with the Privy Councillor!”
“Eh?” said the boy.
“Homefields!” said the old man. “My homefields!”
“Vavva-vavva,” said the heathen, talking loudly now and trying to assert himself in the conversation.
“But there aren’t any sheep in the homefield,” said the boy.
“I’ll complain to the sheriff!” said the old man.
“Yes, but there aren’t any sheep,” said the boy, raising his voice. “You perhaps think there are sheep, but there aren’t any sheep. There are buttercups. There are acres of buttercups.”
“Drive them out, quick!” said the old man. “The Privy Councillor and I!”
“They’re buttercups!” yelled the boy, now convinced that the old man was not only blind but deaf as well.
“Vavva-vavva!�
� bawled the heathen, who was also getting excited now and wanted to get worked up over this like the others.
But just as it was becoming obvious that these people had the greater difficulty in understanding one another the more they talked together, something unforeseen occurred and they had to break off the conversation. From behind them came a hoarse and hissing howl, like that of some nameless animal, so that the newcomer to the company, Ólafur Kárason, gave a start and was scared. When he turned to look, he saw a face peering round the side of the partition, pallid and drawn, with black hair, black eyes, and black teeth. The face went on peering into the living room for a while with irrational malevolence and uttering those awful cries, each more terrible than the last.
“Don’t pay any attention to her; she’s a monster,” said the old man; he was determined to keep on discussing his homefields.
But the boy could not tear his eyes away from this ghastly apparition which came creeping out from behind the partition; first came a shoulder, then the doubled-up torso of a woman, until eventually a half-naked creature had crawled out onto the floor, all in a heap. The boy felt sure it was heading in his direction.
But Ólafur Kárason was not the only one to be frightened; the heathen had stopped giggling and working himself up, and had lain down on the bed and begun to wail piteously. The old man was the only one who was not taken aback; while Ólafur Kárason thought it best to crawl back into bed again, the old man got to his feet and brandished his stick at this crouched, four-legged human creature. Happy the one who never set foot in that house!
The old man’s first puny blow had just landed on the monster when the door opened and in came an old woman with a small face and sunken cheeks, and a thin nose peeping out from under her knitted cap; she was carrying a red codling.
“Poor wretches,” she piped, like the soughing of the wind, and yet with a certain kindness, as when one is talking to hens. She put the codling down and went over to the creature and said, “Poor dear”; she certainly did not think of hitting her, but shooed her gently back behind the partition and helped to bed her down again. As soon as she had done this, the heathen got his courage back and sat up in bed and resumed his simple conversation at the point where he had broken off. The old man’s warrior zeal also abated gradually; he sat down with his stick, and squinted at everything and nothing with that weird peering eye of his, full of senile malice. Ólafur Kárason got out of bed again.
Then the old woman said to him, “Are you out of bed, too, my poor wretch? Have you taken leave of your senses?”
The boy pointed to the old man and said he had ordered him to drive the sheep from the homefield, but there was nothing in the homefield except buttercups.
“He’s got an obsession about it,” said the old woman. “Don’t pay any attention to it. Go back to bed and tuck yourself well in.”
But this young man no longer wanted to lie down and tuck himself in; he had had quite enough of that. Certainly, God had struck him down for a time, but at the same time had granted him the special privilege of allowing him to lie on a sickbed at Fótur-undir-Fótarfæti for a mere two years; yes, it had been a fine and blissful life, even magnificent and splendid now and again. At Fótur-undir-Fótarfæti, people had been just like ordinary people. But here, in this nameless house, even a dead man would have risen up in indignation and walked out
“I am in good health,” said Ólafur Kárason of Ljósavík.
“No,” piped the old woman, “you’re ill, and very ill at that. The parish council doesn’t make mistakes like that.”
“I swear it!” said the boy. “I was cured in a supernatural way; there was a miracle. It was the elf doctor, Friðrik.”
“Yes, the devil was also given power to heal the sick in the beginning,” said the old woman, “but what’s that kind of healing worth? Go back to bed at once and tuck yourself in, for you’re bound to have a relapse anyway before you know it. I’ll be bringing you all a drop of warm water in a cup soon, my poor little wretches.”
“But I can stand upright,” the boy insisted, his voice shrill from vehemence and with almost a sob in his throat; and the old woman watched the way he got to his feet and stood upright, and obviously had difficulty in believing her own eyes.
“No,” she said finally, “I simply don’t understand the parish council any more. Or the nation as a whole.”
“I can’t help that,” said the boy apologetically. “No one lies ill in bed longer than the Almighty decides.”
She went on looking despairingly at the way the boy managed to stand upright. Then she began to tend the fire.
“It’s now three days since my best-loved wretch, bless him, was carried from that bed you slept in last night,” she said in a cold, God-fearing and solemn tone of voice, like wind soughing through an open fish shed, “and what a very difficult patient he was! So it’s no wonder I was beginning to hope to God that I would now get an easier patient, something like my dear heathen, and preferably the sort of patient who would survive me, because in the end one can get so tired of seeing them all die off. And then the parish council sends me a perfectly healthy man!”
“Oh, it’s not really the parish council’s fault,” said the boy, with his tireless urge to excuse those who had done no wrong or had been wrongly blamed for something; but it was no use. Words and excuses had no effect in this place; the old woman could not forgive the parish council. On the other hand she tried to bear it stoically and said, “I’m not complaining. I have my children whom God has given me around me here, even though the parish council sends me a perfectly healthy man. Those who are in distress are my children. I have always been a fortunate person.”
“I own the whole estate!” protested the old man angrily, and waved his left fist in the air.
“Yes, yes, Gísli dear,” said the old woman kindly. “You own the whole estate.” Then she added in explanation to the boy, “This is old Gísli the landowner, you see.”
“Does he then also own the big homefields below the mountain here?” said the boy.
“I’m the same age as the Privy Councillor!” said Gísli the landowner. “I own the Upper homefields, too.”
“Yes, dear,” said the old woman. “The Upper homefields, too. Why shouldn’t you own everything like anyone else, since no one owns anything any more!”
“Does no one own anything any more, then?” asked the poet.
“No. No one owns anything any more. The whole basis of our existence has disappeared completely here. When our Privy Councillor went away, everything went. The Regeneration Company, that’s death.”
The longer the conversation went on, the more new and unknown factors were introduced. “Forgive me for asking, but I’ve been ill in bed for so long, you see, even though I’m fully recovered now, and I was told so little, that’s why there’s so much I don’t understand. What is the Privy Councillor? And why did the Privy Councillor go away? And what is the Regeneration Company? And what’s the difference between the two?”
“The difference?” said the old woman, amazed at such ignorance. “I suppose you might say it’s the difference between a thick felt hat and a bare bald head! What’s the Regeneration Company? It’s Pétur ríhross Pálsson, to say nothing worse. But the Privy Councillor? Now that was a man, yes, a true man, what’s more! Next to the Lord himself he was our life, and in his day no one had to live on seaweed and water; and besides, there were young and cheerful and able-bodied people here on the estate then. He provided everyone with food and housing and work, and he minted money himself; yes, everyone here had enough money in his time; yes, and he even imported honey to the township for a time; but the most fortunate ones, perhaps, were those who were allowed to drown in his ships, luckier at least than the ones who survived. Why did the Privy Councillor go away, you ask? The Privy Councillor went away when he had made enough money, of course, because naturally he had no obligations to anyone here, and besides the fish had all vanished. But it’s all the same where the P
rivy Councillor is, God will guide the Privy Councillor wherever he goes, and reward the Privy Councillor, and forgive me.”
“I don’t see how there could have been much well-being to speak of, since it was better to be drowned,” said the boy after careful thought.
“I won’t have rats in my cutter!” said Gísli the landowner.
But the old woman said the poet was being stupid, and stubbornly insisted that it was a blessing to be drowned. “It is a sweet death, drowning,” she maintained. “And those who are allowed to lose their dear ones to the sea may thank God compared with those who have to watch their young ones wasting away on dry land, like my daughter who has to watch her children withering away from consumption. I have lost my three sons to the sea, stalwart men and Vikings every one, and yet I was never one of those who said that the Privy Councillor’s ships were leakier than any other ships afloat, and to the best of my knowledge the cutter Júliana had been taken over by the Regeneration Company, which was supposed to keep everything afloat, when she sank with my son-in-law, Jón, who left a widow and seven children. No, I certainly haven’t been more unfortunate than many other women here in the village, far from it; everything has turned out well for me. God has given me three patients and sometimes four in place of what I have lost; but you I can’t keep, since you can put your clothes on without help, because it’s not the responsibility of the parish to keep anyone alive except those who are bedridden or at the very least paralyzed down one side.”
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