The Ice-Shirt

by William T. Vollmann

  In time, the saga goes, he had killed a dozen Kings under the cloak of peace, for which he was called Ingjald the Evil-Worker. And yet it was not his fault, for he would never have worn the Wolf-Shirt had it not been for Svipdag. Now he went his wicked way, although, truth to tell, he could easily have eaten a dove's heart and become mild; or he could have gone a-Viking to Africa to get the heart of a crocodile, so that at least he'd be able to shed tears over his victims - but, being a wolf, he was but driven mad by thoughts of doves; and that, too, was not his fault. - By his weeping wife Gauthild he had a daughter named Aasa, who was as wicked as he. When she came out of her mother's womb, she was already covered with coarse dark hair, and she snapped her teeth and glared. - "How perfect she is!" cried Ingjald, smacking his lips over the infant. "She is meant to be my playmate, and by ODIN I swear that I will marry her when she is big enough. As for that old bitch she came from, to the kennel with her!" He let the child run naked in summer and winter to harden her. "Hurry, Aasa my girl," he'd say, "grow up and bum out the world! Then it will never turn its face from you." - But by the time she was of marriageable age King Ingjald was growing grey, and Aasa showed a disposition to hunt afield. For

  gain he married her to Gudrod King of Skaane. She soon enticed her husband to murder his brother Halfdan, the father of Ivar Vidfavne; then she did Gudrod to death also, and breathlessly returned to her father, who kissed her full in the lips, with his wolf-fangs fastened on her mouth. - "I suppose you know me better than my Gudrod did," she said. Her arm was about his neck. - "Let us have ale!" cried old King Ingjald. "I now take my daughter to wife!" When Ivar's army came upon that incestuous pair in their feast-hall, they, seeing doom, burned themselves and their followers alive as they had burned so many others - a deed for which they were highly praised. Ivar's men, raking through the ashes in hopes of booty, presently came upon two skeletons breast to breast, and inside each one a frantically beating wolf's heart.

  King Harold Fairhair ca, 870 - ca. 940

  After the Yngling Kings were broken, their descendants fled the country for fear of King Ivar, and so came to Norway, trading white birch-forests for fields of white com. The Changers raged everywhere. Their lives grieved them now, so that their purpose became to grieve all others, except the young sons who kissed their hands. Between King Ingjald and King Harald Fairhair now passed seven generations, in which Bear-Kings were spear-thrust, Wolf-Kings went a-Viking, and the ringing of shields told the hour more reliably than bells, for these had not yet been invented. Yet everything was congealing. The Bear-Shirts were wearing out, and the Changers were only men. - One day as he sat in his high-seat in Vermeland, King Olaf Tree-Feller, the son of Ingjald, heard a skald sing of the times of King Egil, who could change himself into a grizzly without any shirt, and the skald finished his song and said, "Reward me for my labor, O great King!", but Tree-Feller stood up impatiently and cried, "Out of my house, you liar! No one but ODIN could do the deeds you claim!" - The skald looked at him with mildness. - "It does seem so in these times," he said, and then he took his leave. Tree-Feller sat down again with his chin in his hand and his house-carles were silent, he thought at first because they were not certain of his temper; they heard the skald close the gate behind him and his steps died away in the forest. Tree-Feller said, "Men, could it have been as he said in the old days?" and the men remained silent. Tree-Feller said, "Men, was I unjust then in refusing him payment?" and an old carle said, "Yes, Lord, you ought to have given him something," at which Tree-Feller took a piece of silver from his pouch and said to a messenger, "Run, boy, and bring him this!" and they sat listening

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  as the gate opened and closed and the boy's rapid footfalls were swallowed up by the wind in the leaves; then Tree-Feller said heavily, "Yes, I suppose they were better than we, those old Kings." - After him, six generations passed; for Tree-Feller was burned by the Swedes as a sacrifice to ODIN, and after him came Halfdan White-Leg, and then Halfdan's son Eystein, and then Eystein's son Halfdan the Mild, a warrior who never took his Bear-Serk off, even at night, so that his wife. Queen Liv, was in great fear of him, as he foamed and growled in his sleep; when he died at last on a bed of sickness, his son King Gudrod the Hunter stripped that shirt off with such great avidity that it was still hot with father-heat as he pulled it over his head; and the ribs stood out quite pitifully on his father's despoiled corpse so that for a moment King Gudrod felt almost ashamed, but he said, "After all, / did not kill you!" Now the good bear-feeUng rushed through his blood and he forgot everything but himself, as he lumbered into the forest and snuffled up honey and fishes until he came into the meadow of many flowers where the virgins crowned him and bedecked him with flowers. He sat in his high-seat; he read the runes of his bench-boards; he stood up roaring, at which his house-carles rattled their spears with a gladsome shout. Soon thereafter he went a-Viking against the other Kings, but in battle he found that the shirt did not fulfill all his expectations, perhaps because his father had worn out much of its virtue. In any event, he was manly just the same, and carried away his second wife against the wdshes of her father. King Harald Redbeard, so that Redbeard strove against him but fell; then men called him Gudrod the Magnificent; and he said, "I suppose I must cherish my Bear-Shirt after all!" When the new Queen murdered him to avenge her father, came the sixth generation, and that was the reign of King Halfdan the Black. It was Halfdan's son. King Harald Fairhair, who was to subdue the entire country under him, so that the shield-clangs ceased at last. So doing, he overreached the limits of law and doomed ODIN Himself, for gods raise men up for the most temporary of triumphs, in order that from their dead mold other men may grow to fame. When a man's conquest endures forever, how can the Gods satisfy others, who sacrifice without result? - Because King Harald's triumph was more permanent than he, ODIN could no longer be.*

  * Norway was Christianized not much more than a half-century after his reign.

  Hidinq the Bear-Shirt

  It must be recorded of Harald that even as a boy he consorted with Laplanders, and it may have been for this that he was unbeloved by his father Halfdan; then again, it might have been that Halfdan hated him almost as soon as he was bom, for in that moment when the screaming baby was raised before him, with Queen Ragnhild and the guards and the midwife awaiting his pleasure as to whether the infant would live or die, Halfdan saw the Queen's weakly anxious face looking up into his from the bed, and he thought upon the Bear-King enemies who waited for him in the gloomy woods; then he said to himself, "I will teach him how to become a great war-bear!" so he water-sprinkled the boy and named him so that he could not be exposed and left to die as a being without a soul, but as soon as Halfdan had done the thing he regretted it, for it dawned upon him, as it does on all fathers, that his true enemy was this son of his, who, if he lived, must certainly conquer him; so he turned away, feeling the full wretchedness of the expended seed-bag. In his anguish he plucked out great handfuls of his great black beard. He rushed out, and paced among the trees. Then he swore that he would never allow his son to learn how to transform himself - "By FREY, I wish I had not water-sprinkled him!" So said Halfdan, groaning and chewing on his beard. And he kept his Bear-Shirt under lock and key. Queen Ragnhild had never seen it, being a woman (nor, for that matter, had he seen the many cunning serks which she kept hidden in her bridal chest); but he could not trust her not to discover it out of love for her son, so he took his magic trunk, which was wrought of thickest iron, and oiled it and buried it secretly in the forest. - "Ha, ha!" he laughed. "That man-whelp will never best me now!" - The boy was quick to understand his father's hatred, and returned it.

  The Dream of the Bears

  As long as Harald could remember, a sentry had stood outside the door of the hall, waiting among those moonlit trees for something evil to happen, and once when the hall was smoky and he wanted to go out his mother grabb
ed him by the shoulder so tightly that it hurt and said, "Stay by the hearth-fire, for there are bad fires outside tonight!"; and peering beneath her arm the boy saw an orange glow in the sky, and he smelled burning from across the forest, and his mother said bitterly, "The Kings have learned their lessons from old Ingjald Fire-Wolf!" - and that night Harald was afraid to dream, but he dreamed that it was spring, the forest thus being wide and open so that he could run away

  from his father; joyously he sped across a carpet of golden caribou moss that he could throw himself down on whenever he wanted to rest, and the trees were so widely spaced that he almost forgot that he was taking flight, and thought he wandered through some endless golden orchard where he would never want for anything; and the trees cast their long shadows on the moss, so that it was striped black by them like a warm and sunny tiger-skin, into which he sank to the ankles as he ran, farther and farther away until he thought his father could never find him. But in the moss he left deep footprints that widened effortlessly to mark his trail, like ink-spots in blotting-paper. Presently the trees tightened around him, and then there were trees and trees and trees, rising dark and high as he came into the realms of the other Bear-Kings, where the tree-shadows, from having been merely refreshing, became mellow, then melancholy, then anxious, and at last rushed together into one grim darkness through which Prince Harald must run, trembling with the sensitivity of an animal. He heard chilling silences behind the inky tree-crowds; he felt watched from every clammy root-cave; he screamed when he ran through spiderwebs. Gradually the conviction came upon him that something wicked was scanning him with its eyes, then (such is the foreplay of fear) he began believing and not beHeving (as his life beat trembling in his veins) that he heard steps behind him. As in lightless depths a grave-beetle beset by moles scuttles through forests of mildewed bone, so Harald sped his weary frightened way among the grey trees trying not to hear, but hearing, trying not to think of the wretched moment not too far ahead when he could run no more. Nor did he look over his shoulder, because if he saw the Face of his fear in darkness he would be lost. (He did not know whether matters would be worse if the pursuer were his father or not his father.) The fat, pale leaves shuddered on the trees like moths. - The moment came when he heard more than one pair of steps behind him. Now striving in his fright to run faster than his eyes could see, he threw himself among the mountains where stream-courses foamed down narrow gorges over which he must leap, because he could hear the padding of paws behind him; so he panted through steep ravines overgrown with birch trees and a horn sounded and the Bear-Kings came after, and he ran terrified through the grey gloomy fir-forests, and the Bear-Kings came roaring after, and glaciers sparkled upon the flat-tops of mountains, and reindeer moss clothed the trees in grey shirts, and he struggled through spruce-bogs, desperately trampling purple lupine flowers whose hair-leaves and hair-stalks were so silvery with water-droplets as to seem frosted; and he forced his way through crackling brushwood and the Bear-Kings came easily after, swiping dead shrubs aside with their claws, until at last he came upon a wide river fi-om which a crowned Bear-King had

  just finished drinking, his fur still wet, his brown head raised, his eyes like darkly glowing jewels; and this Bear-King scooped a fish out of the stream and ate it and blinked at the sun; and then he rose so slowly, slowly up on two legs, the wide murderous forepaws stiffly at his sides until he chose to strike Harald down; and this Bear-King (which of his two natures was the greater Being inside him?) snorted and sniffed disdainfully, and his ears rose until they stood straight up upon his head; and leisurely he turned his very serious whiskered face upon Harald and opened his maw to growl and Harald saw the yellow teeth there; and now the other Bear-Kings came out of the trees and they all advanced on him, striding upon their hind legs; and every one of them wore a crown of gold, and their claws were studded with gold rings, by which their dignity was maintained; but, uniform as were these emblems of their estate, they were very different in appearance, their fur being the hue of their hair when they were men, so that Harald recognized the black pelt of his father. King Halfdan the Black, who was bent now on soothing his anguish in Harald's blood; there stood growling also great King Eystein with his yellow mane-shock - he had fought King Halfdan on Helgoen Island and later made alliance with him, so that now he must join Halfdan in destroying his son; a little behind the others stood an elderly Bear-King with silver fur and shaking claws, who snapped his jaws sidewise in a cunning bite, showing thereby his greed to drink deeper of blood-guilt - he was King Gorm the Old, who ruled Denmark, and made it his habit to support the other Bear-Kings in everything that did not threaten his own tyranny; and now a granite slab rolled crashing down the hill, disclosing a fetid cave from which a fearsome bear-skeleton emerged, shaking its massive skull from side to side and clacking its teeth; it too was gold-crowned, and there was an arrow rattling in its ribs by its left foreleg, so that Harald knew this Skull-Bear to be dead King Sigtryg, whom his father had killed, and who now came forth fi-om the tomb to vent his enmity on the son; and the bears all grinned scornfully upon him, living and dead, and raised their claws against him. Would they tear his head off with their claws or would they hug him to death? - If only Harald could become one of them and fight them! He strained and strained, but no hair burst out on his palms; no fangs blossomed in his mouth . . . "Ho, ho, ho!" laughed the bears.

  King HaifdarVs TuXe-Feo^t

  When Prince Harald was nine years old, a Lapp stole away the entire contents of a Yule-feast by magic, leaving nothing on the table but gently rattling

  spoons, so that the guests must return home hungry as King Halfdan leaned upon the end of the banquet table, disgraced and dumbfounded. The long-fires burned as brightly as they had before, and smoke rose to the sooty ceiling-rafters, bearing with it the smell of meat that no longer existed; Ragnhild still stood beside the ale-cask, in which was nothing but a few rattling pebbles; and trenchers of venison lay in convenient reach by the men's benches and the women's cross-bench, but they were empty, and so were the benches now that the guests had risen muttering and departed; and the thralls stood stupidly with their arms still full of wood - oh, the futility of it! - Which Lapp could it be?, so Halfdan interrogated himself (for there were several of them in his hall). Well, there was one, a little dark man in a hairy reindeer-shirt, who seemed so "particularly knowing" that Halfdan tortured him repeatedly to get his secret; and the Lapp screamed upon the fire until his eyes were only whites, and Harald begged his father to stop, but Halfdan would not, so in the night Harald freed the Lapp and ran away with him into the snow-roofed woods, for he knew better than to trust to Halfdan's forgiveness. - The night was very dark and cold. The black trees rose straight and tall, like bars. -"Fm afraid!" Harald cried, remembering his dream (and yet at the same time this seemed nothing like his dream), so the broad-faced Lapp bemused him with conjuring tricks as they went deeper into the darkness, so that candles budded from every tree-branch and lit the way, although they did not warm the shivering boy, and then the Lapp raised his arm and a thousand grinning trolls peeped around the trees and contorted their faces to make Harald laugh (but what Harald never saw was that other trolls loped doggishly behind them in the darkness, sweeping away their footprints in the snow); and snow fell from the dull dark sky as they went north to Lapland, and it got darker and colder and a wind sprang up and blew sleet down Harald's back, and Harald cried, "I'm cold!", so the Lapp clapped his little brown hands, and a shower of snow fell down on Harald's shoulders and piled up around his face, and it seemed to him that he was wearing a fine white cloak lined with fur, although really he was no warmer than before; and for hours they kept walking through that dark snow-forest as the wind sang songs among the trees and the snow fell deeper and deeper until the boy began to tire, and it seemed to him that the Lapp was taking longer and longer steps and he was afraid that he would be left behind to die and so cried out, "I'm tired!", but the Lapp only smiled and shut one brown eye, and at once
Harald fell into a deep sleep and thought that he was dreaming comfortably in a bed of white feathers when he was actually walking toward Lapland with his eyes open, getting more exhausted with every step, so that in his dream it appeared to him that he was ascending the white

  slopes of some immense Ice-Mountain in a shiver of dreamy fear; higher and higher, treading stairs of stone so thick with ice as to be glass-smooth; and he staggered on, his dream no worse than his waking, since he still trudged unknowingly behind the Laplander, but he thought he saw before him a great blue wall of ice! - ice far higher than ever rose in Norway; and until his dying day Harald never learned the meaning of that dream. (But a hundred years later people knew.) - Harald walked on that night and all the next dark day and late into the following night, for the Lapp did not dare to let him stop, for fear that the boy would be frostbitten; and the wind grew fiercely cold, so that he looked at Harald sadly and shook his head; and colder still, until he himself was compelled to pull his furry hood tight around his face. But it was the will of the Gods that Harald come to no harm. When he awoke they were still in the forest, but the trees were somewhat lower, and the sky was like a great white plate of frost above him. Seeing that plate reminded him of food, and he cried to the Lapp, "I'm hungry!" At this the wizard laughed very kindly and said, "Well, we can feast as we go!" - and suddenly a great hot joint of roast meat appeared in the air! Harald seized it and gnawed it to the bone as he walked beside the Lapp. How good it tasted! When it was gone, another appeared. But his companion never ate anything. At last the boy said, "Are you kin to your trolls, that you need no food?" - "Harald," said the Lapp, "never mind about me. This feast is yours." Then Harald, being only a boy, troubled not at all for his friend and ate his fill. Steaming meat fell into his hands whenever he wanted it, and the hot grease sizzled down into the snow. He ate and ate. The meat was done to a turn. How the wizard laughed to see him try to lick the salt juice from his chin! And so it went until he was full - and though falsely warmed and falsely rested, he really was full, this being Halfdan's Yule-feast, the only patrimony that the boy ever got (aside from a title which he had to make good himself and enlarge by cunning); so north he went with the Lapp, eating all the venison, drinking all the ale he wanted.