World Light

by Halldor Laxness

  Gradually the young foulmouths dispersed, but in their place came two drunks who asked why these damned peasants were hanging around here. No doubt they were waiting to waylay the merchant to trick some work out of him which belonged by rights to honest folk and good Kaldsvíkings; they said they would live and die for Kaldsvík, and invited the strangers to the sort of trial of strength in which one or other, but not both, would live to tell the tale. Jason the lighthouse keeper fought them both and put them both down and sent them home and told them to go to bed, while the prisoner stood in the lee of the wall of the house and blew into his hands and stamped his feet to pass the time.

  “Well, then,” said the lighthouse keeper when he had put the Kaldsvíkings to flight, “it was a stroke of luck to get these damned ruffians to warm oneself on. By the way, aren’t you getting hungry, lad?”

  “Oh, just a little, perhaps,” said the poet.

  “Have you brought anything with you?”

  “I’ve got some slices of bread in my pocket, certainly,” said the poet. “But I thought it perhaps wasn’t appropriate to start eating, the way things are with me at present; at least, not without permission.”

  “Of course you must eat, whatever the circumstances!” said the guard. “Nothing ever made Halldór Snorrason* lose his appetite. None can act on an empty stomach. As your guard I give you full permission to eat.”

  It was a matter of honor for Jason the lighthouse keeper to carry out his custodial duties most conscientiously, but not without tempering justice with mercy.

  The poet took the bread out of his pocket without stopping shuffling and stamping his feet; his hands were so numbed that he had to hold the bread between his clenched fists when he bit into it. He became a little warmer when he started chewing. A few gulls came gliding in from the sea over the yard, and the poet broke off some pieces of his bread and threw them to the birds. The guard had some food in a kerchief, better and more of it than Ólafur Kárason had, and he gave the prisoner a slice of smoked lamb. They sat down on the steps of the merchant’s house and ate in the frost, and there was a ring around the moon. There were lights in all the windows of the house and sounds of great revelry from within, loud arguments, funny anecdotes, nose-blowings by the bailiff, singing, the clatter of cutlery, the clink of glasses. Now and again they caught the fragrance of roast, coffee and tobacco smoke.

  When the prisoner and his guard had fed for a while, the latter broke the silence anew.

  “Well then, lad,” he said. “You’re a poet, and that’s why I want to know what you think about Gunnar of Hlíðarendi. Don’t you think that Gunnar of Hlíðarendi is the greatest man who ever lived in Iceland?”

  “Oh, I wouldn’t say that,” said the poet. “But he was undoubtedly one of the great men in many respects.”

  “Oh, he was a great man in every respect, man,” said Jason the lighthouse keeper. “And, he was the only man in the Sagas of whom it was said, clearly and explicitly, that he jumped his own height forwards and backwards wearing full armor. It even gives the place and the time: if I remember rightly it was out east in Estonia, in the battle with the brothers Hallgrímur and Kolskeggur on the occasion when Gunnar won the halberd. He leapt backwards over a boom on the ship to avoid a lethal spear-thrust, and saved his life thereby.”

  “Yes,” said the poet. “And here we sit outside other people’s doors.”

  “Eh?” said the guard. “Who was saying anything about that?”

  “No one,” said the poet. “But all sorts of things can come to mind.”

  “Gunnar of Hlíðarendi comes to my mind on many occasions,” said the guard. “In moonlight like this, it comes to mind that he was one of the few Icelanders who have composed just as good poetry after death as when they were alive. It was on a night like this that he turned in his cairn, looked at the moon, and said:

  “ ‘Hogni’s generous father,

  Rich in daring exploits,

  Who lavishly gave battle

  Distributing wounds gladly,

  Claims that in his helmet,

  Towering like an oak tree

  In the forest of the battle,

  He would rather die than yield,

  Much rather die than yield.’

  “I regard that as the best verse that exists in the Icelandic language even though it was composed by a dead man. And it’s a great spiritual inspiration for someone from the Outer Nesses to think back to the time when the nation really could be called a nation and lived in the land. There’s no fighting in Iceland any more, except when infamous poltroons and wretches molest innocent folk in a drunken frenzy.”

  Then Ólafur Kárason said, “And here we sit on someone’s threshold shivering in the night, you a hero and I a poet: two beggars.”

  “What? Are you out of your mind?” said the guard. “When was I ever a beggar? If you’re cold, here’s some twelve-year-old shark-meat—or rather, thirteen-year-old.”

  “Many thanks,” said the poet. “I’ve no doubt that shark-meat is wholesome food, but unfortunately I cannot stand either the smell or the taste of it.”

  At that the lighthouse keeper became impassioned, and said that this was these damned modern times all over: to prefer to die rather than smell. “It’s a scandal and a disgrace to call such people Icelanders who are ashamed of smelling of shark-meat!”

  “I hope you won’t be angry with me, my dear Jason, if I put one question to you,” said the poet. “I must emphasize that you don’t need to answer it if you don’t want to. Do you think that Kjartan Ólafsson ate twelve-year-old shark-meat on the day he proposed to Guðrún Ósvífrsdóttir?”*

  “I can’t be sure about that,” said the lighthouse keeper. “But I do know that the men of old had nothing at all in common with the present band of leaders who despise the common people. And Guðrún Ósvífrsdóttir wasn’t ashamed of doing her washing in a stream even though she was a great woman: and she spun twelve ells of yarn on the morning Kjartan was slain.”

  When they had finished eating they sat on the steps for a little while longer, but the festivities inside the house showed no signs of ending. The guard was beginning to grow uneasy.

  “For my own part it’s obviously immaterial to me what becomes of me, the way things have turned out,” said the poet. “But I wouldn’t be surprised if I had developed pneumonia by tomorrow.”

  “No man could stay in Jómsborg* who lost heart or showed fear in the face of danger,” said Jason the lighthouse keeper. “Take a turn along the shore to get some warmth into your body.”

  The poet Ólafur Kárason now started to flail his arms and jump about in the yard with bizarre gestures; the guard paced to and fro under the merchant’s windows, glowering, but after the twelve-year-old shark-meat he was impervious to cold. Finally the prisoner grew tired of jumping about and came back into the lee of the house.

  “Did that warm you up?” said the guard.

  “I’m afraid not,” said the poet. “I’ve got a stitch in the chest.”

  Jason now found himself in a dilemma. As a veteran public servant in the Taungar lighthouse, he was aware of the importance of carrying out faithfully the duties entrusted to him by the authorities; and according to the letter of the law it was his task to guard this prisoner whatever happened, irrespective of whether the man got pneumonia or died of exposure out here in the yard. But nonetheless, compassion continued to sway in the guard’s breast; the duty of one human being to another is above the law and above public office, irrespective of what is entrusted to us by the authorities, irrespective of whether it concerns a criminal who has disgraced our family, or a good friend and son-in-law.

  “Perhaps the sheriff has changed his mind about taking you to Aðalfjörður tonight,” said the guard.

  “Perhaps he’s forgotten all about us,” said Ólafur Kárason.

  “If you like, I could knock at the door and ask on your behalf, as the party directly concerned, what the sheriff intends to do,” said the guard.


  It was a long time before anyone came to the door. After protracted knocking, a woman opened the door and asked what was going on, was everything in heaven and earth going mad, or what? The guard explained in his best official voice that two men were waiting here outside, a prisoner and his guard, and the former wished to know whether the sheriff was still determined to ride through Gamlafellsdalur that night.

  The woman promised to make enquiries, disappeared into the house again, and shut the door behind her. After a while, someone came to the door once more. The sheriff’s clerk lurched into the doorway, very drunk, and asked, not without arrogance although his speech was thick, who was presuming to disturb the state’s officials at this time of night?

  “The prisoner asked me to ask the sheriff . . .” began Jason the lighthouse keeper, but the clerk interrupted at once and said, “The sheriff says the prisoner can go to Hell!”

  With that the clerk slammed the door in the guard’s face.

  After this brief and pithy message from the banquet, the two cold men of the night went on sitting side by side on the doorstep for a long time without exchanging a word. The surf creamed itself on the glistening rocks and threw its spray against the silk-smooth seaweed in the moonlight, and the drifting snow swept across the ice-covered yard in eddies as in a dance where the dancer whirls round and vanishes in a swirl of snow-white veils. Finally the guard broke the silence anew.

  “You who are a poet,” he said, “and therefore see matters more clearly and profoundly than other people, will you answer me one question? Aren’t you sometimes, when you’re alone, appalled at the oppression which we Icelanders have had to suffer from the Danes down the centuries?”

  “If I’m allowed to see a little corner of the sky,” said the poet, “then I’m prepared to forgive everyone.”

  “My grandmother told me that in her great-grandmother’s day there came an ordinance from the king that all the copper in Iceland was to be taken abroad. They went into every church in the province and made a clean sweep of them all. Candlesticks and chandeliers, all of them choice treasures, were torn away and carried off to ships. But the worst of all was when they took down the church bells in Bervík church, which were famous throughout the land for the beauty of their chimes. They had been there since before the Reformation. These lovely-sounding bells the Danes broke into small pieces so that they were easier to carry in packsaddles and transported them down to the shore. Then the copper was melted down and used for palace roofs in Copenhagen.”

  “I’ve never had a grandmother, a great-grandmother, nor a great-great-grandmother,” said the poet. “I never even had a mother. I have certainly missed a great deal of love thereby, but fortune has compensated me by not giving me the capacity to hate anyone, neither nations nor individuals. If candlesticks and church bells have been plundered from my ancestors, then I’m only grateful that I’m so ignorant about genealogy.”

  “In my family there was a man who farmed a tenant’s cottage near Bervík, who inherited the last six sheets that were found of Korpinskinna, whose every sheet was assessed at a hundred hundreds in land values; and if these sheets could have been kept in the family I would now be the wealthiest man in Iceland and could order the government about. But the king got the pastor at Bervík to wheedle those sheets from my ancestor in exchange for some stockfish, and they were sent to Denmark, where the main part of the codex had already been taken. And now it’s called the greatest book ever written in the North and the finest treasure in the whole Danish empire, and it’s kept in a special palace in Copenhagen; but the Icelanders never got anything in exchange from the Danes, except hunger.”

  By the time the lighthouse keeper had recalled a few more instances of Danish oppression, and the humiliations the Icelanders had had to suffer at the hands of that race, he was in a towering rage. The party inside the merchant’s house was at its height: singing, laughter, and other sounds of revelry came pouring out in waves into the night into the still assembly of stars where these two eternal Icelanders sat, the poet and the hero. At last the guard stopped talking and was gazing up at the window with a not-very-amiable expression on his face. It was already long past midnight. Finally he made his decision, went up to the front door for the second time, and started knocking. No one showed any sign of coming to the door. He knocked with increasing force. Eventually the door was cautiously opened, and the same woman as before peered out and asked what on earth was going on in the middle of the night.

  “I’m the one who is knocking at the door,” said the man. “My name is Jason Gottfreðsson, farmer and lighthouse keeper from Taungar, and tonight I was deputized by the sheriff to guard a prisoner while he was having his meal. It’s now almost morning and the sheriff has been eating all night, and I refuse to hang around here any longer and I demand to know what is to be done with the man.”

  “The sheriff certainly won’t want to attend to any official business now,” said the woman. “He’s a private citizen tonight.”

  “I insist on talking to the sheriff, or else I shall renounce all responsibility for the prisoner,” said Jason the lighthouse keeper.

  The woman went back into the house and shut the door, but after a short while someone came to the door again. This time it was the groom; he was extremely drunk.

  “I demand to speak to the sheriff!” said Jason.

  “You’ve got a nerve, being cheeky to the authorities!” said the groom.

  “As the guard of this prisoner, I demand to speak to the sheriff!” repeated Jason.

  “The sheriff says the guard can go to Hell!” said the groom, made a grab at the door-handle as he staggered, and slammed the door as he reeled backwards.

  The man on the outside shook his fist at the windows with appropriate curses, and said that without any doubt those who were quickest to condemn others deserved the gallows most of all; he said he spat on all justice in Iceland, and stamped off in a rage. Such was his abrupt parting with his prisoner. Ólafur Kárason gazed after his guard for a while, but soon lost sight of him in the darkness and drifting snow. But when he showed no sign of returning, the prisoner became uneasy and set off into the village to look for him. “Jason!” he called out. “Jason Gottfreðsson, where are you?” But it was all to no avail. Perhaps the man was already on his way home? What was Ólafur Kárason to do? There were no lights in any windows, and he had no friends here he could expect to give him shelter for the night—least of all the way things were with him now. He was left standing there alone in the depths of the night, a prisoner without a guard, and the drifting snow swirled around him mournfully in the blue moonlight.

  9

  When the sheriff woke up next morning, he was somewhat bad-tempered and not feeling too well in the head. He drank a few raw eggs and turned his face to the wall again; but then the clerk arrived, who was feeling even more fragile, and said that the prisoner had escaped during the night and had probably killed his guard and hidden the body.

  “Hidden the body?” said the sheriff, and sat up again.

  One thing was certain; neither hide nor hair of the two men was to be found. No one had seen them since late the previous evening when a few girls had taken a stroll down to the yard to have a look at the criminal. The sheriff now forced himself to crawl out of bed and ordered a posse to be raised in the village to hunt for the prisoner. People were sent out to the surrounding districts, and a search was also made along the shore for the guard’s body.

  But luckily it quickly came to light that all this alarm was just a mild attack of delirium tremens in the sheriff’s immediate entourage. At breakfast time the prisoner was found sleeping in a little cottage half an hour’s walk from Kaldsvík. He had woken up the people there in the early hours of the morning, more dead than alive from cold, and begged for help. When the authorities’ searchers arrived, he was sound asleep and dreaming dreams. But it was not long before he was disturbed from this congenial occupation, dragged out of bed, and handed over to the sheriff ag
ain. The sheriff and his clerk, as well as the groom, were still in a state of feeling afraid of their own criminals, and were therefore convinced that a man like Ólafur Kárason would stop at nothing. The sheriff ordered the prisoner to be tied to the tail of a horse to ensure that he did not run away, and since most of those involved turned out to be unfamiliar with this technique, he supervised the work himself and gave instructions as to how it was to be done. First the man’s hands were tied behind his back, then a rope was passed under his armpits and round his chest and shoulders, and then securely fastened to a horse’s tail.

  At a certain point a man ceases to care, and in its place there comes another capacity which is at once a more effective weapon and a stronger shield: the capacity to endure. The fish wriggles on the hook, it is said that the sheep is begging for mercy if it bleats in the slaughterhouse, the cat shows its claws in the snare and spits in its murderer’s face; but no one can deny a man his last shred of dignity and personal liberty with impunity. There comes a point when no act of violence can hurt a vanquished poet’s pride any more. Ólafur Kárason of Ljósavík had an invisible friend whom no one had ever succeeded in naming. Not only did he dull the feelings the more, the sharper the weapons that were used, but he also laid life’s healing balm on every wound. He lent the face of the humiliated a majesty which was beyond life’s fortitude, so that even the most powerful enemy appeared trivial.