by Tim Severin
Grettir and I worked out Ongul’s stratagem only after it had failed and it was a narrow escape. We saw the ten-oared boat approaching from a great distance down the fiord, and watched as it slowly drew closer. Soon we could see the four or five men aboard and the dozen or so sheep. Haering himself was not visible. He must have crouched down and hidden among the animals. Ongul was at the helm and steered for the landing place at the foot of the ladder leading up to the summit. But he took a slightly unusual course and, at the time, we failed to understand why. There was a short interval when the boat was so close under the cliffs and passing round the end of the island that it was lost to sight from anyone standing at the cliff top. This was the moment when Haering must have slipped overboard and swum ashore. Moments later Ongul and his boat reappeared in view, the oarsmen rested on their oars, and Ongul shouted up to Grettir, asking him to agree to let more sheep graze on the island. Grettir called back down, and the negotiations began. Grettir, usually so alert, was hoodwinked. He warned Ongul that the moment anyone tried to climb the ladders, the upper ladder would be withdrawn. Meanwhile, with a great deal of deliberate fumbling, the men in the boat began to get the sheep ready to be hoisted.
Unknown to us up on the summit, Haering had begun to climb. The young man was inching his way up the cliff face by a route which no one had attempted or even imagined possible. It was, by any standards, an extraordinary feat of agility. Unaided, the young man managed to find one handhold after another. He hauled himself upward past the ledges of nesting seabirds. Sometimes the rock face leaned out so far that Haering was obliged to cling on, hanging by his fingers as he searched for a grip, then clambered upwards like a spider. His feet, to prevent them slipping, were clad only in thick woollen socks, which he had wetted to give them a better grip.
I know about the wet socks because it was I who first saw Haering after he had hauled himself over the topmost rim of the cliff. It was the old grey ram which alerted me. Grettir, Illugi and Glaum were clustered at the top of the ladder, looking down at Ongul and his farmer colleagues as they discussed the landing of the sheep. Their attention was completely distracted. By contrast, I had deliberately stayed back from the cliff edge so I could not be seen from below. No one apart from the farmer who had brought me to Drang knew that I was on the island, and it seemed a good idea to keep my presence a secret. So I noticed the sudden movement among the sheep grazing near the cliff edge opposite where Grettir was standing. The animals raised their heads from grazing, and stood stock still, staring out into space. They were alarmed and I saw them tense as if to flee. The old grey ram, however, trotted confidently forward as though he expected to be petted. A moment later I saw a hand rise over the cliff edge, as if from the void, and feel around until it found a grip. Then Haering’s head appeared. Slowly, very slowly, he eased himself over the rim of the cliff until he was lying face down flat on the grass. That was when I saw the wet socks and noted that, to lighten himself for the climb, his only weapon was a small axe tied with a leather thong to his back.
I gave a low whistle to warn the others. Grettir and Illugi both looked round and immediately saw the danger. As Haering got to his feet, Grettir said something to Illugi, and it was the younger man who turned and advanced on a now-exhausted Haering. His older brother stayed behind in case his great strength was needed, with Glaum’s help, to haul up the wooden ladder.
Poor Haering, I felt sorry for him. He was utterly spent by the spectacular climb, and instead of finding Grettir and Illugi alone on the island, he now found himself confronted by four men, and without any advantage of surprise. He unslung the axe. He may have been a superb mountaineer, but he was an inexpert warrior. He held the axe loosely in from of him, and when Illugi struck at him with a sword the axe was knocked spinning out of his grasp.
Haering offered no further resistance. There was something manic about Illugi’s headlong rush at the unarmed young man. Illugi may have felt that his refuge had been violated, or maybe he had never killed a man before and was desperate to finish the job. He ran at Haering wildly, swinging his sword. Unnerved, the Norwegian turned and fled, running in his socks over the turf. But there was nowhere to go. Illugi chased his prey grimly, still cutting and slashing with his sword as Haering dodged and turned. He ran towards the boulder which masked the entrance to the dugout. Perhaps he was seeking to shelter behind it, but he did not know the lie of the land. Beyond the rock the ground suddenly fell in a steep slope at the far end of which was the edge of the cliff. From there to the sea was a sheer drop of four hundred feet. Haering ran headlong down the slope towards the precipice. Perhaps he thought his speed would carry him far enough out. Perhaps he panicked. Maybe he wanted to die by his own hand and not on Illugi’s sword. Whatever his intention was, he ran straight to the edge of the cliff and without hesitating flung himself outward . . . and continued running, as though still on solid ground. His legs and arms flailed as he dropped from view.
I joined Illugi at the cliff edge, crouching cautiously on the ground and then crawling forward on my belly, so that my head looked out over the vast drop. Far below, the cliff climber’s body lay broken and twisted on the beach. To my right Ongul’s people had seen the tragedy and were already rowing to the spot to retrieve the corpse.
No other attempt was made to dislodge us from Drang during the next three months. Probably Haering’s death had shocked the farmers who supported Ongul and anyhow they had their summer chores to do. Grettir, Illugi, Glaum and I stayed on the island. The friendly farmer visited us only twice, bringing us news from the mainland. The main event was the death of Snorri Godi that winter, full of years and honour, and his son Thorodd – the man whom Grettir had spared – had succeeded to the chieftainship. I wondered if Thorodd had also inherited charge of my fire ruby which I had left in his father’s safe keeping and if Snorri had told him of its history.
My sworn brother reacted glumly to the news of Snorri Godi’s death. ‘So vanishes my last hope of obtaining justice,’ he said to me as we sat in our favourite spot near the cliff edge. ‘I know that Snorri refused to take up my case at the Althing when we first arrived back in Iceland and you went to see him on my behalf. But as long as Snorri was alive, I nursed a secret hope that he would change his mind. After all, I spared his son Thorodd when he tried to kill me and win his father’s approval. But now it is too late. Snorri was the only man in Iceland who had the prestige and law skill to have my sentence of skogarmadur annulled.’
After a short pause Grettir turned to face me and said earnestly, ‘Thorgils, I want you to promise me something: I want you to give me your word that you will make something exceptional of your own life. If my life is cut short at the hands of my enemies, I don’t want you to mourn me uselessly. I want you to go out and do the things that my ill luck has never allowed me to do. Imagine that my fylgja, my other spirit, has attached itself to you, my sworn brother, and is at your shoulder, always present, seeing what you see, experiencing what you experience. A man should live his life seeking out his opportunities and fulfilling them. Not like me, cornered here on this island and becoming famous for surviving in the face of adversity.’
As Grettir spoke, a memory came back. It was of the day when Grettir and I were leaving Norway, and Grettir’s halfbrother, Thorstein Galleon, had said goodbye. He had promised to avenge Grettir’s death if he was killed unjustly. Now, sitting on a cliff top on Drang, Grettir had taken me one step further. He was asking me to continue his life for him, in remembrance of our sworn brotherhood. And behind the request was an unspoken understanding between us: neither Grettir nor I expected that he would live out the full twenty years of outlawry and reach the end of the sentence imposed upon him.
The conversation had a remarkable effect on me. It changed my perception of life on Drang. Previously I had been despondent about the future, fearing the outcome of Grettir’s seemingly endless difficulties. Now I saw that it was better to enjoy whatever time there was left for us together. The change of s
eason helped my pessimism to lift. The arrival of the brief Icelandic summer wiped away the memory of a dank and melancholy winter. I watched the tiny island change from a remote, desolate outpost to a place full of life and movement. It was the birds that did it. They arrived in their thousands, perhaps from those distant lands which Grettir dreamed of. Flock after flock came in until the sky was filled with their wings and their constant mewing and screaming mingled with the sounds of the sea and the wind. They came to breed, and they settled on the ledges, crevices and tiny outcrops of the cliffs until it seemed that there was not a single hand’s breadth that was not occupied by some seabird busily building a new nest or refurbishing an old one. Even in Greenland I had not seen so many seabirds clustered together. Their droppings ran down the cliff faces like streaks of wax when a candle gutters in the draught, and there was a constant movement of fluttering and flight. Of course, we took their eggs, or rather we took a minuscule portion of them. This was when Grettir was at his best. With his huge strength he lowered Illugi on a rope over the cliff edge so that his young brother could gather the eggs from the ledges while the angry gulls beat their wings around his head, or if they stayed on their nests, shot green slime from their throats into the face of the thief. Perhaps the proudest moment of all my relationship with Grettir was when he turned to me and asked if I would go down the precipice on the rope and I agreed. As I dangled there, high above the sea, swinging in space, with only my sworn brother’s strength to prevent me falling to my death like Haering, I felt the satisfaction of utter trust in another.
So the summer weeks passed by: sudden rain showers were interspersed with spells of brilliant sunshine when we stood on the cliff tops and watched the whales feeding in the waters around the island; or we traced the evening spread of white mist over the high moors on the mainland. Occasionally I would go by myself to a little niche on the very lip of the precipice and lie on the turf, deliberately gazing across the void and imagining I was no longer in contact with the solid ground. I hoped to achieve something my seidr mentors had long ago described to me: spirit flying. Like a small bird beginning to take wing, I wanted to send my spirit out over the sea and distant mountains and away from my physical body. For brief moments I succeeded. The earth fell away beneath me, and I felt a rush of wind on my face and saw the ground far beneath. But I never travelled far or stayed out of my body for long. I had brief glimpses of dense forest, a white landscape and felt a piercing cold. Then, like the fledgling which flutters uncertainly back to the branch, my spirit would return to where I lay, and the rush of air on my cheeks often proved to be no more than the rising wind.
The intrusion of awful dread into this pleasant life was shocking. The day was bright and fresh, and the waters of Skagafiord had that intense dark blue into which one could look for ever. Grettir and I were at a spot where the small black and white seabirds which nested in their millions regularly flew towards their nests, a row of tiny fish neatly arranged in their rainbow beaks. As they skimmed low over the cliff, riding updraughts, we would rise from ambush and with woven nets on sticks pull them down from the sky and break their necks. Smoked over our fire, their dark brown flesh was delicious, a cross between lamb’s liver and the finest venison. We had netted perhaps a dozen of the birds when we heard Illugi call out that a small boat was coming down the fiord. We gathered at the cliff edge and saw a little skiff rowed by just one man heading our way. Soon we could make out Thorbjorn Ongul at the oars.
‘I wonder what he wants this time,’ said Grettir.
‘He can’t be coming to negotiate,’ Illugi commented. ‘By now he must know that we can’t be shifted, whatever he offers us, whether threats or payment.’
I, too, had been watching the boat, and as it drew nearer, I began to feel uncomfortable. A chill came over me, a cold queasiness. At first I thought it was an expression of my mistrust of Thorbjorn Ongul. I knew that he was the man from whom Grettir had the most to fear. But as the little boat came closer, I knew that there was something else, something more powerful and sinister. I broke out in a cold sweat and felt the hairs on the back of my neck rise. It seemed ridiculous. In front of me was a small boat, rowed by an aggressive farmer who could not climb the cliffs, floating on a pleasant summer sea. There could be no menace there.
I glanced at Grettir. He was pale and trembling slightly. Not since our shared vision of fire emerging from the tomb of old Kar on the headland had we both been touched by the second sight simultaneously. But this time the vision was blurred and indistinct.
‘What is it?’ I asked Grettir. I did not have to explain my question.
‘I don’t know,’ he answered throatily. ‘Something’s not right.’
The fool Glaum broke our concentration. Suddenly he began capering on the cliff edge, where he could be seen by Ongul in the boat. He shouted obscenities and taunts, and went so far as to turn his back, drop his breeches to his ankles and expose his buttocks at the Ongul.
‘Stop that!’ ordered Grettir brusquely. He went across to Glaum and cuffed him so hard that the vagrant was knocked backwards. Glaum scrambled to his feet, pulling up his breeches, and shambled off, muttering crossly. Grettir turned back to face Ongul. He had stopped rowing and was keeping the little skiff a safe distance away from the beach.
‘Clear off!’ Grettir bellowed. ‘There’s nothing you can say that I want to hear.’
‘I’ll leave when I feel like it,’ Ongul yelled back. ‘I want to tell you what I think of you. You’re a coward and a trespasser. You’re touched in the head, a murderer, and the sooner you’re dealt with the better it will be for all decent men.’
‘Clear off! ’ repeated Grettir, shouting at the top of his lungs. ‘Go back to minding your farm, you miserable one-eye. You’re the one who is responsible for bringing death. That young man would never have tried to climb up here if you hadn’t encouraged him. Now he’s dead, and with your scheme unstuck so badly you’ve been made to look a fool.’
As the exchange of insults continued, I felt shooting pains in my head. Grettir did not seem affected. Perhaps he was distracted by his anger at Ongul. But I began to feel feverish. The day which had begun with such promise was turning heavy with menace. The sky was clouding over. I felt unsteady and sat down on the ground to stop myself retching. The shouting match between the two men echoed off the cliffs, but then I heard something else: a growing clatter of wings and a swelling volume of bird calls, rising in pitch. I looked back towards the north. Huge numbers of seabirds were taking to the sky. They were launching themselves in droves from the cliff ledges, gliding down towards the sea and then flapping briskly to gain height as they began to group together. They reminded me of bees about to swarm. The main flock spiralled upward as more and more birds joined in, flying up to meet their companions. Soon the flock was so immense it had to divide into ranks and squadrons. There were thousands upon thousands of them, too many to count or even guess their numbers. Many birds still stayed on the ledges, but most were on the move. Section by section, breed by breed, the great mass of flying creatures circled higher and higher like a storm cloud, until smaller groups began to break away and head out towards the sea. At first it seemed that their departure was random, in all directions. But then I realised there was one direction which all the birds avoided: none of them was returning to Drang. The birds were abandoning the island.
I dragged myself upright and walked unsteadily to where Grettir stood. My head and muscles ached. I felt terrible. ‘The birds,’ I said, ‘they’re leaving.’
‘Of course they are,’ he answered crossly over his shoulder, ‘they leave every year about this time. It is the end of their breeding season. They go now, and come back in the spring.’
He searched around in the grass until he found a rounded stone, about the size of a loaf. Plucking it from the grass, he heaved it above his head with both hands and let fly, aiming at Ongul in the boat far below. Ongul had imagined he was safely out of range. But he had not reckoned with Gret
tir the Strong who, since boyhood, had amazed everyone with just how far he could pitch a rock. The stone flew far out, its arc greater than I had imagined possible. Grettir’s aim was true. The stone plummeted down, straight at the little skiff. It missed Ongul by inches. He was standing amidships, working the oars. The stone landed with a thump on a bundle of black rags on the stern thwart. As the stone struck, I saw the bundle shiver and flinch, and over the crying of the myriad departing birds, I heard distinctly a hideous cry of pain. At that moment I remembered where I had felt that same chill, the same sense of evil, and heard the same vile cry. It was when Thrand and I had fought the Danes in the sea ambush and I had had a vision of Thorgerd Holgabrud, the blood drinker and witch.
As Ongul rowed away, I was swaying on my feet.
‘You’ve got a bad attack of some sort of fever,’ said Grettir and put his arm around me to stop me falling. ‘Here, Illugi, give me a hand to carry Thorgils inside.’ The two of them lifted me down into the dugout and made me comfortable on some sheepskins on the earth floor.
I had just enough strength to ask, ‘Who was in the boat with Ongul? Why didn’t they show themselves?’
Grettir frowned. ‘I don’t know,’ he said, ‘but whoever it was is nursing a very bad bruise or a broken bone and won’t forget this day in a hurry.’
Perhaps the birds began their migration because they knew that the weather was about to change, or perhaps – and this was my own private explanation – they were disturbed from their roosts by the evil that visited us that day. At any rate that was the last day of summer we enjoyed. By evening the rain had set in and the temperature began to fall. We did not see the sun again for a fortnight, and by then the first of the autumn gales had mauled the island unseasonably early. The ledges on the cliffs were empty of all but a handful of seabirds, and Drang had settled back prematurely into its gloomy routine though the autumn equinox had barely passed.
