by Asotir
* * *
NOW FIVE DAYS are told. Now all the folk of the Side know of Skarphedin’s death. Erik Gudruda’s son sends men out to look after Swanhild. But Erik finds her himself.
That even he rode upland from Hof, and went up on the Skaftafell. But the shieling there was dark and none were in it, for Kol slept at his own home. Then Erik rode up on the Swine-fell; he found Swanhild there.
She was sitting on a stone before the howe-yard of her kin. She looked at him.
He looked at her, and saw all the blood over her dress: saw too how weak she was with fasting and weariness. He knew her will. She would that some men might lay open one of those howes and lay her face-down alongside some one of her kin. It seemed to him very odd then, that men had ever deemed her fair. And he shivered under his shirts and his wool cloak.
‘Swanhild,’ he called. ‘Swanhild, now you must come back with me. You must take meat and drink. You must live on afterward.’
She looked at him, and he shuddered.
Again he called to her, and again. At length she stood. Then her thin arms seemed to him like bird’s legs, and very frail. Erik went down off his horse to offer it to her; she would not have this, but still, he would not go back on horseback while she went afoot.
So side by side, the young man and woman walked that black night off the Swine-fell and down again to the hall of Hardbein Oxen-Hand.
Afterword
THESE THINGS BEFELL at summer’s end in the year 996 of our age. But at the Althing four years later, under pressure from the Norwegian crown, Iceland became Christian. Then it was the law that all men should be baptised as Christians and refrain from heathen practices. Thingvallavatn was too cold, so the baptisms took place in nearby Laugarvatn, on the way home. If a man should eat horseflesh or give offerings to the home gods in secret then it was allowed; only if done openly was it punishable. Child-exposure and slavery were also forbidden, though they lingered long after. It was a heathen, Thorgeir Tjorfi’s son, of Lightwater, who made that law; and the conversion was handled without bloodshed.
That same summer, young King Olaf Trygvi’s son was attacked at Svold off the Danish coast by the armies of King Svein of Denmark, King Olaf of Sweden, along with Jarl Erik Haakon’s son. And there King Olaf Trygvi’s son lost his rule and, some say, his life. But some say the King got off with his life out of that battle and made his way to the Thrand-law in northern Norway. But the bonders there heard of the King’s defeat and cast out the Christian priests; and they would not let the king back into the land. Therewith King Olaf Trygvi’s son sailed off and was never seen or heard from again, though some said he went east.
King Svein Forkbeard shared out Norway with Jarl Erik, and Jarl Erik ruled in Thrandheim as Jarl Haakon his father had done before him, and built up the old temples and blood-offerings. Later Jarl Erik went with King Knut the Mighty of Denmark when he put under him England: that was in 1016. Jarl Erik was there when they took London, and was made jarl of Northumberland; but he died there of excessive blood-letting.
Fourteen years later a second Olaf, the Saint and King, came from raiding in the East and took the cross back to Norway with his armies. He was the fourth king in sixty years to try to convert Norway, and this time the old ways did not linger. That was the end of the Viking Age.
A time of peace and wealth followed throughout the North, and lasted from 1030 to 1170. The Icelanders, shepherds and fishermen, put behind them their little feuds. A small number of the greater chieftains won for themselves much of the wealth of the island; much more land was willed to the Church, and it became the greatest landowner. Men worked its lands as tenants, and the bishops and greater chieftains grew very rich, so that a greater gap opened between the wealthy and the poor than ever had before.
Then the land grew crowded, and national warfare, hitherto unknown, swept the republic for ninety years. Individual chieftains schemed for greater power and sought the help of the Norwegian crown: that was the end of it, that in 1262 Iceland was made to render tribute to King Haakon IV of Norway. In 1387 Denmark subdued Norway, and took with Norway Iceland; in 1602 the Danish royal house instigated a commercial monopoly over the island. Iceland did not win back her independence until June 17, 1944.
Vemund sued Njal for outlawry for having sheltered Skarphedin, an outlaw; but Njal reversed the suit on a flaw in Vemund’s proceedings, and had Vemund outlawed, though later they were atoned. From this Njal won more honor than ever, and afterward many came to him and paid him for advice and suit-counsel. At the Conversion of Iceland, Njal’s fame and influence grew even greater than before, so that he was said to be the third greatest lawyer in the land.
But at the Yule-feast after the Conversion, even at his wedding-feast, then Njal fell sick, lay long abed, and in the end died. And swart was his corpse, and when men went to move it, then the flesh opened up, and all manner of worms and flies burst out of it: the stink of it drove all men out of the hall for three nights, and that was the end of it, that there was scarcely anything left to bury. So it was the thought of all men that he had been poisoned. So it was found: at the spring Thing they bound a bag over the head of Ragnhild the Foul and drowned her for the crime. And that was the ninth season, summer and winter, since Skarphedin’s death.
Swanhild Olaf’s daughter lived on to a very great age. Erik Gudruda’s son sheltered her at Hof as one of his dependents. Rannveig offered Swanhild shelter at Gudruda’s old farm because things went so ill between Swanhild and Gudruda; but Swanhild would not have that. But every summer she went up to live in the shieling, wherefore she was sometimes called the Skaftafell Witch. The hall men had been building for Swanhild and Skarphedin was let fall away to rot; but years later a new hall was built on those foundations, and there dwelt one of Erik’s sons. From Erik many well-known folk were descended.
Swanhild still lived when Erik’s grandson Olaf was born; and before she died she saw the installment of Isleif, Gizur the White’s son, in Skalholt as the first native-born Bishop of Iceland. That fell out in 1056. The little children came to fear her, and named her Swanhild the Foul. She was never wed again. Her corpse was given sacrament and buried in the cemetery of Gudruda’s church, a few plots away from where her father and Gudruda lay together.
But in the summer after Skarphedin’s death, Swanhild was delivered of a beautiful child, of blue eyes and red hair. In the minds of many there was a question of the bairn’s rights, since Skarphedin had been unable to enter on any lawful agreement when he wed Swanhild, but that was never fully settled on. The day after giving birth, so soon as ever she got back her strength, Swanhild went up the Skaftafell, over the heath and under the wall of Vatnajokull, and left her daughter there to die.
Θ
