Viking 2: Sworn Brother

by Tim Severin

  ‘Here,’ Thrand said. ‘Hold these.’

  He sifted through his hoard, picking out the pieces for me to weigh as I told him how much I owed to each farmer. Once or twice, when he could not find a piece of silver that matched the sum, he took out his sword, laid a larger piece of silver on the table, and chopped off the correct weight. ‘That’s how we did it in the old days,’ he commented, ‘when we divided up the spoils. No bothering with coins; a mark of silver is just as good by weight as when it is stamped with a king’s head.’ Sometimes more so, I thought, remembering Brithmaer’s forgeries.

  I was tactful enough not to ask Thrand where he had acquired his treasure and said only, ‘I give you my word that I will repay your generosity when I have the chance.’

  In reply he said, ‘This is a gift, Thorgils. It does me no good locked away here in a box,’ and he quoted the Havamal again:

  ‘If wealth a man has won for himself

  Let him never suffer in need

  Oft he saves for a foe what he plans for a friend

  For much goes worse than we wish.’

  When I had paid off the last of Grettir’s victims, I decided it was time to pay a visit to my sworn brother. I had no idea where to find him, so I set off across the moors in the direction that he had taken when I had saved him from the angry farmers. As it turned out, Grettir saw me coming from a distance away. He had made his lair in a cave on high ground, from where he could keep a watch for the approach of strangers, and he came down the hillside to greet me. He led me back to his cave, the two of us scrambling up a near-vertical rock face to reach his home. He had hung a grey blanket across the entrance, the colour matching the rock so that you did not realise that the cave was there until you were a few paces away. Inside were a fireplace, a place to sleep, where he had laid out his leather sleeping sack, and a store of dried food. He took his drinking water from a small rill that drained at the foot of the cliff. When I commented on a pile of fist-sized rocks that he had stacked near the entrance of the cave, he explained that he had collected them to use as missiles. ‘If anyone tries to storm the cave,’ he said, ‘there’s only one approach, and that is straight up the cliff. I can keep them at bay for hours.’

  I noticed a second leather sleeping sack, thrown in a heap on the far side of the cave. ‘Who does that belong to?’ I asked.

  ‘A man called Stuv Redbeard. He’s an outlaw like myself. He’s gone off to raid for food. He should be back soon.’

  Redbeard returned that evening, carrying a shoulder of dried lamb and a bag of whey he had stolen from an unguarded shepherd’s hut. From the moment that I laid eyes on Stuv Redbeard I was worried. There was a shiftiness about him which put me on my guard. When he left the cave for a moment, I took the chance to ask Grettir about him.

  ‘How long have you known Stuv? Do you trust him?’ I asked

  ‘Not entirely,’ Grettir replied. ‘I know there are men who would kill me for the price on my head. Last autumn a man came to the moor and joined me, claiming to be an outlaw like myself and needing shelter. One night he crept up on me, thinking I was asleep. He had a dagger in his hand, and intended to stab me, but I awoke in time, and managed to grab the weapon from him. I made him confess that he was a professional killer, hoping to win my blood money from Thorir of Gard.’

  ‘Thorir is offering twenty-four marks of silver for your head and Oxenmight’s family have promised to match that sum for anyone who kills you,’ I said. ‘It’s twice as much as the highest reward ever offered for the death of a skogarmadur.’

  ‘Well, that night creeper didn’t get to collect it,’ Grettir said. ‘I killed him with his own dagger, carried his body over to the nearest lake, weighed the corpse down with stones and dumped him in.’

  ‘So why are you now taking the risk of sharing your lair with that Redbeard? He could also be after the reward money.’

  ‘It’s a risk I’m prepared to take,’ Grettir replied. ‘I make sure that I keep an eye on him, but I would rather have company, however suspect it might be, than live here out on the moors by myself. At least after sunset.’

  I remembered that, for all his ferocity and reputation, Grettir was still mortally afraid of the dark. I knew it was useless to try to persuade him that his childish dread was putting his life in danger.

  My fears were well-founded. Over the next few weeks I was rarely at my father-in-law’s farm as I was spending most of my time on the moor. I brought Grettir regular deliveries of food and clothing, and the two of us would sit for hours at the entrance to the cave, looking out across the moor as I relayed to him news of what was happening in the outside world. Grettir’s family and friends had been negotiating with Oxenmight’s people in an attempt to settle their feud, and the two sides had agreed that the deaths of Oxenmight and Grettir’s brother Atli should cancel each other out. Grettir’s supporters even collected enough money to offer a heavy compensation to Thorir of Gard for the death of his sons. But Thorir refused to be placated. Nothing less than Grettir’s death would satisfy him.

  It was on one of these visits to carry supplies to Grettir that I found the cave unoccupied. It was a warm day and I guessed that he had gone to the nearby lake to bathe and wash his clothes. Leaving my parcel of food, I started off across the moor to find him. The lake lay on the far side of a low rise in the ground. As I came to the top of the slope, I found myself looking down on a shallow expanse of water fringed with reeds and with one or two small islands in the centre. From my vantage point I could see Grettir in the water, far out from the shoreline. Much closer to the bank was his fellow outlaw, Stuv Redbeard. Clearly they had both decided to go for a swim, stripped off their clothes and left them on the bank. I watched Redbeard wade out of the water, return to his pile of clothes and get dressed quickly. There was something about his hasty movements which was suspicious. I saw him pick up his sword, unsheathe it and then slink back to where he could crouch down among the reeds in ambush. The distance was too great for me to shout a warning to Grettir, who was now approaching the landing place. I saw him reach the shallows, stand up and begin to wade towards the bank, pulling at the reeds for support as his feet moved through the slippery lake bottom. He was naked and I realised that this was the moment that Redbeard had been waiting for, perhaps for months. He had Grettir at his mercy.

  Even as I watched, I saw Redbeard suddenly rise up from his ambush and the flash of his blade as he slashed at Grettir. Grettir’s reaction was astonishingly swift. He must have sensed the blow coming, for he flung himself backwards into the water with a tremendous splash, and the sword stroke missed. Redbeard immediately raised his sword for a second strike. But Grettir had disappeared. The ripples still spread out from where he had flung himself back into the water, and Redbeard stood poised, head thrust forward, watching for his prey to surface, his sword at the ready. He watched and watched, and both of us became increasingly puzzled as Grettir did not reappear. For a moment I wondered whether Grettir had been caught by the tip of the sword and drowned. It was too far for me to see whether there was any blood floating to the surface. The water of the lake was a dark peaty brown, and the only sign of the struggle was the broad patch of dirty yellow where Grettir’s feet had disturbed the mud as he fell backwards. This opaque patch was my sworn brother’s salvation. As time passed, Redbeard concentrated his gaze in that area.

  Then I noticed the reeds quiver a short distance to Redbeard’s left. From my vantage point I saw them bend and stir gently: their movement was tracing a line from the water’s edge to where Redbeard was standing. I realised that Grettir must have swum underwater to the bank, hauled himself out and was stalking his prey. In his eagerness Redbeard stepped forward, wading up to his knees in the water, still holding his sword with the point downward, ready to stab. But now it was Redbeard who was edging into danger. He was facing the lake, ready to pounce, when Grettir burst from the reeds behind him. I was reminded of the way that the boar had charged from the thicket when I was hunting with Ed
gar in England. Once again the charging animal was lethal. Grettir, stark naked, flung himself out of the reeds and onto Redbeard’s back. The force of the impact knocked Redbeard into the lake. I saw Grettir reach forward right-handed, and pluck the sword from his attacker’s hand. Then with his left arm, Grettir spun Redbeard over in the water, and plunged the sword in the man’s belly. By then I was running down the slope, heart pounding, until I slithered to a stop beside Grettir and clasped him to me. Redbeard’s body lay face down where he had intended my sworn brother to die.

  Again, I was more badly shaken by the attack than Grettir. He was so accustomed to violence and assault that he recovered quickly from the ambush. Nevertheless, seeing him so narrowly escape death made me distraught. I was shaking with relief as we walked back together to the cave, leaving his would-be killer’s body drifting on the surface of the lake for all to see. ‘It will be a warning to others,’ Grettir said. ‘My whereabouts is not a secret any longer.’

  ‘You’ll have to find another refuge,’ I told him. ‘Staying on the moor is getting too dangerous. Sooner or later, you’ll be trapped here and find yourself outnumbered.’

  ‘I know, Thorgils,’ he answered. ‘I need to find somewhere so remote that no one will plague me, a place where the landowner is discreet and willing to ignore my presence.’

  ‘Why don’t we consult your mother? She may know someone who will offer you the hideaway you need. Until we get her answer, come and stay with me. Gunnhildr, my wife, is hardly ever at home. I can smuggle you into the house and you can hide there until we can pick the moment to travel to your mother’s place.’

  As matters turned out, Grettir stayed with me for more than two weeks. Redbeard’s body was found and Oxenmight’s friends assembled to make a sweep of the moor nearby, looking for Grettir. They eventually discovered his cave, and I had a feeling that they suspected that I was harbouring the fugitive, for more than once I thought I saw a watcher on the hillside above my house. Only when the hunt had been abandoned did I think it safe for Grettir to make the journey to his mother’s home, and even then I insisted that I accompany him in case we encountered trouble on the road.

  My caution was justified. We had gone only half a day’s travel when we came face to face on the path with a man I recognised. He was one of Snorri Godi’s sons, a tall, well-set-up man in his thirties by the name of Thorodd. I remembered him as a rather quiet, decent fellow. Yet as he drew level with us, he suddenly stepped right into Grettir’s path, drew his sword and announced, ‘Guard yourself, skogarmadur.’ I must have gaped with surprise, for I did not remember Thorodd as being the least belligerent.

  ‘What are you doing, Thorodd?’ I blurted. ‘Don’t you recognise me? I’m Thorgils. We used to know one another when I lived at your father’s farm.’

  ‘Stay out of this,’ he snapped back at me. ‘Everyone knows of your association with Grettir. I’ll attend to you later. Right now I intend to deal with the outlaw.’

  ‘Don’t be mad,’ I insisted. ‘You’ve got no quarrel with Grettir. Let us pass on peacefully. Just forget you’ve seen us.’

  For his response, Thorodd struck me hard in the stomach with the pommel of his sword, knocking the wind out of me. I sat down abruptly on the roadside, clutching my guts.

  Grettir had not moved until he saw me hit. Then he drew his own sword and waited for Thorodd to strike the first blow. I could see from the way Thorodd advanced on Grettir that he was a competent fighter. The speed and accuracy of the hilt blow that had knocked me down was impressive and I guessed that Thorodd had received enough weapon-training to deal with the average farmer. But Thorodd was not fighting an ordinary opponent. He was attacking the man reputed to be the strongest in Iceland.

  Thorodd launched his first blow, a high cut that, if it had landed, would have separated Grettir’s head from his shoulders. Almost nonchalantly Grettir raised his small wooden shield and deflected the blow as if he was swatting aside an insect. Thorodd recovered his balance and launched a second stroke, this time aimed at Grettir’s legs in the hopes of laming him. Again Grettir warded off the blow, using his sword to block the attack. The two sword blades met with a ringing clash. For his third stroke Thorodd tried using all his strength to swing back-handed at Grettir’s right side. Without even moving his feet, Grettir moved his wooden shield across to stop the blow. Thorodd, now panting with exertion, tried a direct stab. He lunged, with the point of his sword aimed at Grettir’s belly. Again, the shield blocked the attack.

  Thorodd stepped back, calculating how he could get past Grettir’s guard. At that moment Grettir decided he had had enough of the onslaught and that his opponent was serious about killing him. In absolute silence, which was more terrifying than if he had given a berserker’s battle roar, my sworn brother advanced on Thorodd and rained down on him a series of heavy sword blows that resembled a blacksmith beating on a forge. There was nothing subtle about Grettir’s assault. He did not bother to feint or conceal the direction of the next blow, but relied entirely on brute strength. He moved forward, striking downward repeatedly on his hapless victim’s defence. Thorodd raised his shield to block the blows, but each time Grettir’s sword struck the shield I saw the arm shake beneath it and Thorodd stagger slightly. Grettir could have swung below the shield to cut at Thorodd’s body, or struck at Thorodd’s head. But he did not bother. He simply hammered on the shield, his blows so fast and so hard that Thorodd was forced to give ground. Step by step Thorodd was driven back, and I saw that Grettir was not even trying to kill his enemy, only to pound him into submission. After twenty or thirty heavy blows, Thorodd could withstand the onslaught no longer. First his shield arm began to droop, then his backward steps became more and more shaky, until he sank to his knees, still desperately trying to keep up his defence. Finally his shield, which had begun to splinter and crack, broke in half, and Thorodd was left kneeling defenceless on the soggy ground.

  ‘Stop!’ I shouted at Grettir, for I had got my breath back. But my warning was unnecessary. Now that Grettir had belaboured his opponent into submission, he stood back. He was not even out of breath.

  I went across to where Thorodd was still kneeling, his body bowed forward in exhaustion. Putting an arm around his waist, I helped him to his feet.

  ‘What on earth possessed you?’ I asked. ‘Did you really think that you could defeat Grettir the Strong?’

  Thorodd was gasping for air. His shield arm was so numb that it hung uselessly. ‘I hoped to win back my father’s favour,’ he groaned. ‘I quarrelled with him so badly that he ordered me out of his house, saying that I had to prove my worth before he would accept me back again. He shouted at me that I had to do something spectacular – like dealing with an outlaw. I had no idea that I would run into Grettir. That was something the Gods put in my way.’

  ‘Go back to your father,’ I advised him, ‘and tell him what happened. The wreckage of your shield should prove that you are telling the truth, and surely he’ll accept that anyone courageous enough to tackle Grettir single-handed has proved his worth. Tell him also that Grettir’s quarrel is only with those who have harmed his family. If he has robbed others or caused them injury, the sole motive has been his own survival.’

  When Thorodd had limped away, Grettir insisted that I turn back to my house. ‘It’s less than half a day’s walk from here to my mother’s place,’ he said, ‘and that is just where my enemies will be on the lookout for me. It will be easier for one man to approach unobserved than for two of us. And after I have spoken to her and decided where I will go next, I will send you word where to find me.’

  ‘I think we should have some way of checking that any message that passes between us is genuine,’ I said. ‘Now I have been seen in your company, people may use our friendship to lure you out of hiding and trap you.’

  ‘You’re always the clever and cautious one, Thorgils,’ said Grettir with a slight smile. ‘Any time a message passes between us, the bearer can begin by quoting one of Odinn’s
sayings. That should keep you happy.’

  I walked back home, worrying that Grettir would fall into an ambush as he approached his mother’s house. But it was I who found calamity waiting at my door.

  I almost walked right past them without noticing. Only when I was level, within touching distance, did I realise they were there. They were waiting for me and, though they were motionless, they were as dangerous as any killer waiting to pounce with a dagger.

  Scorn poles – two of them were planted upright in the ground just beside my front door. I could guess who had erected them there because one was a likeness of myself carved with physical details that only someone intimate could have known. The second wooden pole was less elaborate, but there was no mistaking the broad shoulders of the man it portrayed. To make sure, the carver had scratched in runes the name ‘Grettir’. The two poles were adult height, very obviously male, and both faced in the same direction, towards the door. One scorn pole was placed close behind the other, almost touching. The message was explicit, obvious to every passer-by: Grettir and Thorgils were lovers.

  My initial shock of comprehension was quickly replaced by cold fury. I was outraged. I felt cheated and damaged, my closest friendship defiled. I knew, of course, that Gunnhildr must have arranged for the scorn poles to be carved and then planted for all to see. It was a public accusation, and – worse – in the same way that the sentence of full outlawry can never be appealed against, so the public accusation of man-love can never be effectively denied if it is made from within a marriage. In that regard I now shared Grettir’s fate: he had been found guilty of a crime he did not commit and which he had no opportunity to deny; I had been accused unjustly of acts against which there was no way to defend myself.