Jón Marteinsson said that in that case there was nothing left to do but open up his bag and hand over its contents as payment or ransom for the hospitality, and he pulled out a large, age-old vellum manuscript and handed it to the woman.
“What am I supposed to do with this?” said the woman, looking contemptuously at this heap of blackened, tattered, and shriveled patches of skin in the faint light of the inn’s coal stove. “I couldn’t use this thing to light the fire under my kettle even once. And I’d be surprised if the plague’s not lurking in it.”
The two Jóns stared wide-eyed at the book: one of them beheld before him the lost chief treasure of his master, and the other felt for sure that what he saw were the parchment pages that had belonged to his blessed mother from Rein. It was the Skálda. Without a word, both of them reached down and removed their shoes.
17
The Alþingi sentenced Jón Hreggviðsson to prison at Bremerholm for having at one time concealed the Supreme Court appeal contained in the royal warrant that had been issued in connection with his case. Arnæus retrieved the old man from the castle at the same time as he concluded arrangements to have the farmer’s original case finally tried before the Supreme Court. His case was contested once again throughout the first winter of the farmer’s present sojourn in Copenhagen and on into the summer. Almost all of the litigation took place behind the farmer’s back, except for once when he was summoned to appear before the judge. He repeated all the answers he had made to the old charges; he wasn’t about to deny anything. He also knew well how to put his wretchedness on display before the court: an old white-haired rustic stands with drooping shoulders, tearful and trembling before foreign judges in a distant land, overcome by the tremendous and difficult journeys of past and present that he’d been forced to make because of a long-past accident that had made him an innocent man to the dismay of the authorities.
The lawsuit dragged on, not because of any prevailing interest in Denmark in the fate of a farmer from Akranes, but rather because it was an essential part of the conflict being waged between two opposing camps within the government, both equally strong in many ways. Arnæus served as litigator on behalf of Jón Hreggviðsson and employed the uncompromising logic and learned pedantry that had always been the Icelanders’ strength against Danish courts. In a lawsuit such as this, in which the indictments were long since obsolete, the grounds banal, and none of the evidence against the accused legally admissible, it was easier than usual for Arnæus to use philosophy and logic to unravel the prosecution’s arguments. The court documents, both old and new, for and against, had become so muddled that nothing was more likely than that they were the incarnation of the Icelanders’ evil propensities for chicanery and quibbling, and it was deemed impossible for anyone to attempt to learn the truth from them as to whether or not the aforementioned Regvidsen had, twenty years ago, finished off his executioner in a black bog on a black autumn night in the black land called Iceland.
For a time during the summer it had looked likely that the case would continue to expand in size, that the two contestants on this field of battle would increase the force of their exertions, and that the old entanglements would be transformed into a matted mass that could never be unraveled. The main reason for this was that the daughter of Magistrate Eydalín from Iceland wanted Jón Hreggviðsson’s case to be made the touchstone for determining her departed father’s integrity as a judge. The knot continued to be hacked at by the highest authorities until the king decreed that the two cases were to be tried separately: the Supreme Court was, as originally planned, to pass judgment in the case of the farmer from Rein, but the Commissarial Court’s harsh judgments against the departed Eydalín and numerous other officials were to be disputed before Iceland’s high court at Öxará.
And now as spring approached and human life in Copenhagen was returning to normal after the fire, news came which many people, the Icelanders least of all, could scarcely believe: a verdict had finally been issued by our Majesty’s Supreme Court in the much-despised and seemingly endless lawsuit against Joen Regvidsen paa Skage.* Due to a lack of positive evidence the man was acquitted of the old charge brought by the magistrate that he had murdered the executioner Sívert Snorresen, and he was therewith released from the burden of any other penalties he had accrued in connection with his case and pronounced free to return home to our Royal Majesty’s country of Iceland.
One day in the spring, Arnas Arnæus, who now resided on Laxagade in the midst of the throng, sends for his woodcutter and hands him a new jacket, breeches, and boots, and lastly places a new hat upon the man’s hoary head, telling him at the same time that they would ride together today to Dragør.
This was the first time that Jón Hreggviðsson had ever been driven anywhere without having to sit up front with the driver. He was allowed to sit inside the carriage next to the scholar from Grindavík, and on the rear seat opposite them sat their lord and master, who gave them snuff and chatted with them pleasantly, though somewhat distractedly.
“Now I shall teach you an introductory verse from the Elder Ballad of Pontus that you have never heard before,” he said.
Then he recited this verse:
“Folk will marvel at the story
There on Iceland’s shore
When Hreggviðsson’s old gray and hoary
Head comes home once more.”
After both Jóns had memorized the verse they all sat in silence. The road was wet, causing the carriage to sway from side to side.
The assessor remained lost in thought for some time, then finally looked at the Rein farmer, smiled at him, and said:
“Jón Marteinsson saved the Skálda. You were all that fell to my lot.”
Jón Hreggviðsson said: “Does my lord have any messages he would like me to deliver?”
“Here is a rixdollar for your daughter in Rein, who stood in the doorway of your farm as you rode away,” said Arnas Arnæus.
“I can’t understand why that devil of a girl let the dog out,” said Jón Hreggviðsson. “Like I hadn’t already told her to keep her eye on it.”
“We shall hope that Rover found his way back home,” said Arnas Arnæus.
“If you should ever hear of anything unusual in Saurbær parish,” said the scholar from Grindavík, “peculiar dreams, trolls, elves, monsters, or any remarkable abnormalities, then please ask my dear Reverend Þorsteinn, and give him my greetings as well, to put it down in letters and send it to me so that I can add it to a book I’ve just begun writing, De Mirabilibus Islandiae: Concerning Iceland’s Wonders. ”
They arrived at the trading station at Dragør. The merchantman to Iceland dawdled at anchor in the harbor, a few of its sails already hoisted.
“It is auspicious to set sail for Iceland from Dragør,” said Arnas Arnæus, and he extended his hand in farewell as Jón Hreggviðsson stepped down into the rowboat that would take him out to the merchantman. “Old friends of Icelanders linger here. Saint Ólafur* was known to loan Icelanders his ferryboat here, after the other ships had gone, especially if he thought it important that they arrive home in time for the Alþingi. If it so happens now that the holy King Ólafur enables you to reach home before the thirteenth week of summer, then I would like to ask you to pay a visit to the Alþingi by Öxará and show them your head.”
“Should it say something to them?” asked Jón Hreggviðsson.
“You can tell them from me that Iceland has not been sold; not this time. They’ll understand later. Then you can hand them your pardon.”
“But shouldn’t I convey your greetings to anyone?” said Jón Hreggviðsson.
“Your old ruffled head—that shall be my greeting,” said the Professor Antiquitatum Danicarum.
The easy breezes from Øresund blew through the white locks on the head of the old Icelandic scoundrel Jón Hreggviðsson as he stood there in the stern of the rowboat midway between ship and shore on his way home, waving his hat to the tired man who remained behind.
/> 18
At one place in Almannagjá the Öxará River turns back upon itself as if in consternation, then breaks crosswise out of the ravine. There it forms the great women’s pool, Drekkingarhylur, and a little further out there is a footpath up between the sheer cliff walls.
Sitting below the footpath upon a grassy patch near the pool were several criminals, rubbing the sleep from their eyes in the morning sun. Nothing stirred in the aristocrats’ booths, but on the plain to the east black horses were being driven toward the bishop’s booth. A man wearing a Danish jacket and a hat, his boots hanging over his shoulder, comes up over the low ravine-slope from the south and is greeted by the sight of the morning sun shining down on the drowsy criminals alongside Drekkingarhylur.
Their eyes open wide. “Can I believe my eyes? Is it really Jón Hreggviðsson come home from the king? With a new hat? And wearing a jacket?”
He had arrived in Eyrarbakki the day before, and when he heard that there was only one day left in the assembly at Öxará he had someone in Flói make him some shoes, then he slung his boots over his shoulder and walked all night.
It seemed to him that his old friends’ luck, if it could be called that, had taken a turn for the worse, since the lawbreakers now had to lie around under the open sky. Years ago, when he had spent a night here just like them, the king had lodged him in a tent imprinted with the crown and the king’s servants had brought him tea.
But they weren’t complaining. The Lord had been as merciful to them now as always. Sentences had been passed at the Alþingi yesterday. The new madam at Skálholt, the wedded wife of the bishop-elect Sigurður Sveinsson and daughter of our dear departed magistrate, had during the previous summer inveigled royal permission to have her father’s case retried before Iceland’s high court: yesterday Beyer, the regent at Bessastaðir, was convicted along with the vice-magistrate and twenty-four other authorities involved in the case. The departed magistrate Eydalín was acquitted of all charges brought against him by the royal envoy Arnæus and the deceased’s name was exonerated. His estates, amongst them the sixty farms that the king had seized, were restored to him and thereby made the lawful inheritance of Snæfríður, the bishop’s wife. The so-called Commissarial Verdict in the case against the magistrate was declared null and void, and the commissary himself, Arnas Arnæus, was ordered to pay pecuniary penalties to the crown for his violence toward and desecration of the law. Most of the people acquitted by Arnæus were once again convicted by the high court, excluding Jón Hreggviðsson, who had been granted beneficium paupertatis* to appeal his case before the Supreme Court in Denmark. Eydalín’s judgments in the so-called execrable cases, which the commissary had annulled, were either reinstated or pronounced unfit for hearing by any worldly court, amongst them the case of the pregnant woman who had sworn that she was a virgin: such cases were left to the spirits to pursue. The only other verdicts annulled were the ones that the blessed magistrate had pronounced in cases that in reality lay beyond the bounds of his jurisdiction.
“God be praised that a man has someone to look up to again,” said the old sorrow-bitten criminal who several years ago had lamented seeing dragged before the court some of the good bailiffs who’d ordered him flogged.
The saint who’d stolen from the poor box said:
“No man is blessed but the one who has served his sentence—”
“—and the one who’s recovered his criminality,” said the man who’d been deprived of his criminality for some time.
This man had been a criminal for ten years before the authorities ruled that it was an entirely different woman and an entirely different man who had had the child that his sister had been drowned in the pool for having had with him. Up until then everyone had given him alms. But after he was acquitted of the crime he was scorned throughout all of Iceland. Not one person ever threw him a single bite of fish. People sicked their dogs on him. Now the case had been retried before a new judge: he had unquestionably committed this hideous crime and was once again a true lawbreaker before God and man.
“Now I know that no one in Iceland will laugh at me any longer,” he said. “The dogs won’t be sicked on me, and they’ll throw me bits of codfish. God be praised.”
The blind criminal who’d been sitting silently on the outskirts of the group now spoke up like the others: “Our crime is that we’re not men even though we’re called men. What does Jón Hreggviðsson say?”
“Nothing except that I plan to walk over Leggjabrjótur today, home,” he said. “When I came home from my first trip my daughter was lying on her bier. The daughter who was standing in the doorway when I left for my latest trip might still be alive. Maybe she’s had a son who’ll tell her grandson the story of their grandsire Jón Hreggviðsson from Rein and his friend and lord, Master Arnas Arnæus.”
Now the sound of hoofbeats came from beyond the eastern wall of the ravine, and when the criminals walked out through the rocks they saw a man and a woman riding in a great group of horses and attendants along the earthen pathways over the plain toward Kaldidalur, the boundary between the country’s quarters. They were both darkly clad and all of their horses were black.
“Who’s that riding by?” asked the blind man.
They answered: “Snæfríður Iceland’s sun rides in black; as does her husband Sigurður Sveinsson the Latin poet, bishop-elect in Skálholt. They’re on their way west to appraise her inheritance, which she recovered from the king.”
And the criminals stood beneath the cliffs and watched the bishop and his lady ride by; and the dew-drenched, black-maned horses glistened in the dawn of the day.
NOTES
The events of the novel take place during the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, at a time when Iceland was severely oppressed by famine, plague, and the Danish monopoly on trade. Most of the characters in the novel, including officials, criminals, scholars, and farmers, are based on actual historical figures. The farmer Jón Hreggviðsson lived at Efri-Reynir on Akranes and undertook almost the same sort of difficulties as described in the novel in order to clear himself of the charge of murdering the king’s hangman (the flogging described here took place in 1683, and he was finally acquitted of the murder charge in 1715). Arnas Arnæus is based on the great scholar and book collector Árni Magnússon (b. 1663); the manuscripts that he collected are stored now at institutes bearing his name in Copenhagen and Reykjavík. Snæfríður Björnsdóttir Eydalín is loosely based on a woman named Þórdís Jónsdóttir, the sister of the wife (Sigríður Jónsdóttir) of the bishop of Skálholt (Jón Vídalín), and the wife of the historical Magnús Sigurðsson from Bræðratunga. The supposed affair between Árni Magnússon and Þórdís Jónsdóttir became the grounds for extensive legal wrangling between Árni and Magnús, similar to how this legal case is described in the novel. The characters whom Jón Hreggviðsson meets in Copenhagen, Jón Grindvicensis and Jón Marteinsson, are based, respectively, on Jón Guðmundsson from Grunnavík and on two or three other individuals who worked for Árni Magnússon (including one actually named Jón Marteinsson). The Great Fire in Copenhagen occurred in 1728, and while it is realized now that the damage to Árni Magnússon’s collection was not nearly as extensive as first thought, it was a tragic blow to him and precipitated his death in 1730.
There were two “official” languages in Iceland during the time when the events of this novel took place: Danish and Latin, used respectively for secular and ecclesiastical affairs. Learned Icelanders often interspersed their own Icelandic with words or phrases from these two languages, as can be seen in historical documents from the time period (such as Árni Magnússon’s letters). Laxness occasionally mirrors this linguistic potpourri in Iceland’s Bell, sprinkling people’s speech with Latin words and phrases where appropriate, or using or having certain speakers use different forms of proper or place names, such as Danish Joen Joensen for Icelandic Jón Jónsson, Icelandic Jes Ló for Danish Jens Loy, Danish Sívert Snorresen (with an Icelandic diacritical
í) for Sigurður Snorrason, Danish Bessested for Icelandic Bessastaðir. Similarly, when Jón Hreggviðsson travels throughout northern Europe, he encounters both a wide variety of languages and people who can speak a wide variety of languages, and his own name is occasionally transformed by various speakers ( Joen Regvidsen for example). The various forms of names have not been specifically noted, but the reader should be aware that the spelling variants are intentional.
p. 3 Þingvellir: The site of the Alþingi, the general assembly that was held for two weeks in June throughout most of Iceland’s history (it was held for the last time at Þingvellir in 1798; after being held in Reykjavík in 1799 and 1800 it was abandoned, until it was reconvened in Reykjavík starting in 1845). Lawsuits were settled and laws enacted beneath the cliffs of Almannagjá, a dramatic ravine formed by the separation of tectonic plates. Öxará is a river that runs partly through Almannagjá and empties into Þingvallavatn, Þingvellir Lake. The area around Þingvellir, to the north and east, was in older days given the name Bláskógar, from the birchwood copse growing there (skógur meaning “copse” or “forest”); in the novel Magistrate Eydalín says that the copse bears the name Bláskógar or Bláskógaheiði, and on maps Bláskógaheiði is the extensive heath running northward from Þingvellir, on the western side of Ármannsfell, toward the passes Uxahryggir and Kaldidalur. Peaks that can be seen from Þingvellir include Ármannsfell, Hrafnabjörg, Súlur or Botnssúlur, Skjaldbreiður, and Hengill.
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