Swan's Path

by Asotir

  * * *

  FAR BELOW THE glacier on its southward side, set in a hill over the fields, was Hof. A lamp burned outside the men’s door of the main hall, but there were no folk in the home-field. Only one small figure walked outside the wall, going round it against the sun’s path.

  Swanhild stopped at the front fence and said, ‘Nine.’ Then she settled her cloak upon her shoulders and went in.

  The hall within was still, even with its many guests. For the even-meal only cold curds were given out, with a bit of bread in each trough beside the bowl. The guests sat about on the benches round the walls, with little talk. There was no great cheer there that night. Gudruda had bidden the thralls heap wood on the fire. The flames cast black shapes against the walls, over the hangings and carven wainscotting; and men’s shadows danced there like an army of trolls, big-limbed and mis-shapen. In the midst of the hall the highseat, all carven over with scenes of the old gods’ tales, stood empty.

  They had buried Olaf that day.

  Early that morning, Swanhild had ridden with Skarphedin up on Svinafell. The hay there was bending and bowing beneath a strong south wind. Rank was that hay, unmown and ungrazed: that was the howe-yard of Olaf’s kin. The hilltop rose up beneath the hay in round mounds. Beyond the mounds the upper heights of Svinafell’s bleak face covered half the sky.

  ‘My father often brought me here,’ Swanhild said. ‘Then my mother’s mound was new; and my father would say, that no ghost ever wholly leaves its howe. And old Orvar-Odd told me that if I should put my ear to the ground here a’nights, then I should hear them all a-drinking, putting cups together and boasting. That was a windy night and my hair blew all about, when I came here: but I heard the wind and not a voice from there. Since then I learned, that the earth is still as any corpse.’

  She went among the mounds; but Skarphedin stayed on his pony outside the yard.

  Swanhild pointed: ‘There is Sigurd, my father’s father: he was wounded on the holm by Odd the Strong, and brought back here to die. There is Olaf, my father’s father’s father: he was so stout that he might not fit in the highseat; he was put here with two horses and a cart, that he should not be too wearied on the Hel-Ride. That one there, that is the best: it holds Hardbein Oxen-Hand; and he would rather be a free man here than a lord in Norway, and King Harald’s lackey. He fell, burned to death in his first hall here. Olaf the Stout and his brothers Kari and Thorleif, along with their mother’s brother Thjodolf Nine-Fingers, paid back his killing and built the hall below. But the door and the highseat did not burn: they still show the smoke.’

  Then she stopped and said, ‘Here will we lay my father: with Olaf his grandfather to one side and my mother to the other. He must have meant this, that he left such space between the two. His horse will lie here, and there we will put his best-loved meat and drink.’ She smiled then, and then Swanhild was lovely, so that there was not another woman in Iceland, maybe, who was fairer. She seemed happier then than she had while her father yet lived.

  She walked about there somewhat more. Her gown’s hem was dark with the rank grasses’ dew, and the stuff of it was heavy and burdensome, so that once she all but stumbled. Then she halted, and stood before the broadest mound, and beneath it somewhere was Hardbein Oxen-Hand with all that they had lain away beside him, and him face down atop his sword. Swanhild stooped and took hold of the grass, like some child that tugs his grandfather’s beard.

  ‘Old one,’ she muttered, ‘I go now hence much like you came hither. But I saw none of my father’s luck walk up to me that night when he died. Send me yours instead.’

  But all those plans came to nought, for Gudruda buried Olaf in the graveyard beside her new church, in spite of all Swanhild’s sharp words.

  ‘It was my father’s will that he should lie in howe alongside his kinfolk up by the Svinafell,’ she said: ‘he picked the spot himself.’

  ‘Long ago, maybe,’ answered Gudruda: ‘but this year, I seem to mind that he was baptised into the one true faith. He scorned the false heathen ways you cling to. And as for your folk, I have heard little good of them, save that they spent their days killing men.’

  So the thralls dug a hole nearby the church before all men: narrow and little it was, two ells long and one wide, and a fathom deep into the darkness. Some there stood silent, but others pointed at the shiny new church and spoke lowly. And there were all the friends and household supporters of Olaf Sigurd’s son in that quarter, but Njal Thorold’s son had not come, nor had Thorgrim Thorleik’s son.

  Gudruda stood at the head of the hole, flanked by the priest and Erik her son. Deep and grim were Gudruda’s eyes, and her cheeks were all puffy and sore. Erik’s eyes were very bright; still, it could not be said he wept. Apart to one side, well away from all those others, stood Swanhild. She was so dressed, that she had on a scarlet kirtle, a coal-blue dress, and her mother’s silver. She wore no wimple, but let her braids hang down to where she had them tucked into her belt. She was smiling, but that was no kindly smile.

  The thralls wrapped the body in sailcloth and put it into the hole; and after that filled in the hole, tramping down on the dirt until it was almost of a level with the ground thereabout. The priest said some words none of them could understand, and then led them up into Gudruda’s church, and there was much singing there.

  But Swanhild rode with Skarphedin by that place where the old temple had been. There was little left of that place now: only some stones to mark the corners, and holes where the posts had been pulled from the ground.

  Swanhild looked about that place sadly.

  To that side before where the doors had been, there was the blood-well, deep as the waist of a big man, and set with stone. In the middle of that was the blood-stone; and that was stained brown, and not even all the rains might wash that clear again. Midways of the temple were deep holes: there the gods had stood, Odin to one side, Frey to the other, and Thor in between, with a bright nail in his forehead. And there had the doom-ring been kept, that the godi should wear, and whereon all binding oaths must be vowed. And there had been the blood-sprinkler, to spray the gods and walls with blood; and there had been that fire, that should never once be let go out, come cold or wind or hardest rain. Now it was told that the last worshipers made secret offerings up by Svinafell, as though that were a shameful deed.

  Swanhild said, ‘That that was my mother’s saying, that Odin and Thor had taken Freyja and the Norns’ rule over, and that in spite of that their rule should not last long.’

  She knelt then beside the blood-well and stretched out her arm to touch the blood-stone. She touched it, but straightway a shudder took her and she stood up straight as though burned. ‘This is now a luckless place,’ she moaned, and cast her eyes about. ‘Skarphedin, what would the gods think if they saw us here.’

  But Skarphedin shrugged: ruins he had seen aplenty. ‘The gods think what they like,’ he answered.

  Then Swanhild looked upon the stones and sang a stave:

  ‘I longed for some thing once

  Some thing once I trowed I had

  Some thing once I looked to have

  Some thing I deemed was owed to me.

  ‘Then that thing I did not have

  Then that thing I did not see

  Then that thing I did not find

  Then that thing I did not know

  Then that thing I doubted me

  And black and bitter ran my blood.

  ‘Then that thing I knew again

  Then that thing I found.

  Then that thing I saw once more

  Then that thing once I had.

  ‘But too swiftly now draws the year to winter,

  And no offering has yet been made,

  And I wonder, and I wonder still.’

  Thereat Skarphedin had looked somewhat askance at her. ‘That runs like some Finn’s-song, and not like skald-work at all.’

  She had looked up at him long, but she answered him no word.