The Ice-Shirt

by William T. Vollmann

  They arrived at last in treeless Lapland; and all winter Harald lived with the Lapps among the snows of that country, where every camp was pockmarked with reindeer-burrows, it being the habit of these animals to dig themselves into deep graves in the snow with their ander-spades, where they could munch grey moss-browse. Too stupid to put on the Bear-Shirt or the Ice-Shirt, they lived their lives in peaceful chewing. As for Harald, he was too stupid to envy them. He stood watching their breath-steam ascending from these holes, and pretended that he was surrounded by hot geysers. - Around the camp rose smooth low snow-hills like bubbles, white against the low white sky; between

  them the wind came shrieking day and night, shaking the Lappish skin-tents until Harald thought that surely they must be blown away, but that never happened, because the Lapps were great wizards and magicians. The women wore blue dresses with red borders, and red kerchiefs on their heads. They had broad short faces; their noses were flat between their eyes. Harald thought them very pretty. Day and night they sat weaving blue shirts in their tents, singing and laughing and shaking their heads so that their long black braids flew, and wolf-dogs crouched beside them, following the motion of those enticing hair-tassels wdth gleaming eyes. As for the men, they amused themselves in conjuring visions in the air: sometimes Norwegian women, at which their wives became angry, and spat at the mirage to dissolve it, sometimes suns so gold and real that Harald almost thought he was warm; and occasionally they made imaginary landscapes of ice, at which the boy gazed with a dull sadness which he could not explain. - "Oh!" the women laughed. "You 5^7/ don't know about the Blue-Shirt, and why it is really red? You don't know about the King with BLACK HANDS? Oh, you poor little Norwegian! - But see, sisters, he has blue eyes!" - At this, Harald was somewhat uneasy in his mind, but as the Lapps were always friendly to him he let it pass. They ate nothing but snow and ice, which wdth their witchery they made into steaming meat-pastries. But Harald lived upon his father's feast all winter. He ate beef, and pork, and venison, and grouse, and sacrificial horse-flesh; he drank as much ale as he wanted. In the spring the Laplanders rewarded him with news, saying, "Your father Halfdan died riding on treacherous ice, and his body was divided into four parts, for the fertility of the four great districts of Norway. You may return home now and claim your kingdom." And the Lappish wizard who had brought him hence guided him south through the fens.

  The Bear-Himter ca, 880 - ca, 890

  King Harald was but ten when he succeeded to his father's power. Five Upland Kings came upon him, but he fought them in many battles and slew them; three he burned like birchwood as they slept. But he did not stop there. - "Since I cannot be a bear like them," he said to himself, "let me destroy them all!" But his mother's brother Guttorm, who served as regent, considered these idle words. And in truth Harald had no idea how he should fulfill them. Although he wore rings and bracelets of gold, he was still no more than a boy. And no one could fmd dead Halfdan's bear-chest, which rusted and rusted somewhere in the woods. - The story says that when King Harald was older

  he wanted a concubine,* so in the autumn he sent his messengers to Gyda King-Ericsdaughter, a handsome girl but somewhat proud, for, combing her hair while she received them, she replied, "King Harald and I both know that I am pretty, but I know something that Harald doesn't - that I will not wed an insignificant King!" - Laughing, Gyda tilted back her head, so that her yellow hair licked against her smooth young face. Oh, how red her lips were! Her face had an inexpressible freshness; her arms were white as milk. - Enraged though they were by her refusal, they gazed at her nonetheless, imagining how she must look unrobed. - "Well, Gyda," said the oldest messenger, "what good do you think will come of your answer? If King Harald's invitation does not suffice for you, do you intend to wait for King ODIN? You might meet us again before then!" - and he rose, saying to the others, "Let us get a larger force. Then we can take her away." And he spat into the fire. - Rising also, Gyda followed them out. "I do not mean to be unkind," she said, "but only to be particular. Now tell King Harald these words: I do believe him to be an untrue Bear-King, for such I have heard from a serving-maid of his mother Ragnhild. Why should I mate with a man who cannot give me strong bear-sons? But no doubt I am a silly girl who understands nothing. In that case, it will be easy for King Harald to slay my fears. Gorm the Old conquered all Denmark; Eric did the same in Sweden. Let Harald give me all Norway as a wedding-gift!" - When King Harald had heard these words, he sat very stiff and silent in his high-seat, and the messengers, deeming him angry, cried, "O King, surely she deserves some great disgrace! Let us bring her to you; then you can do to her as you will!" - But Harald was not angry; he was more afraid than he had ever been. Knowdng now that his inability to be ursine was already common gossip, he understood that he must act to falsely prove it false; else he would be scornfully crushed by some bear-blow. Therefore he rose, and stood looking out the doorway of his hallway at the water rippling on the §ord, and the dark trees beyond, where the other Bear-Kings reigned, and the messengers followed at his shoulder and said, "Shall we take her. Sire?" and Harald turned to them with his blue eyes all mildness and said, "No, I think this girl is right." Thereupon he solemnly swore that he would not cut his hair until he was King of all Norway, and then he pulled his Bear-Shirt on.f

  The red leaves blew down from the trees, and winter came. King Harald crewed his war-ships with bearsarks; he filled his army with them. He prayed

  * The Norse word is frilla, a pretty word which contains in it the swish of frilly skirts, t Of course it was not a real Bear-Shirt. His father's was hidden so well that he could never have it. But the imitation was, as the saying goes, "good enough for government work."

  to ThoR, and promised to feed Him with blood. Then the horns blew, and Harald rode his white horse across the snow at a canter, pulling back the reins so that it reared and neighed and pawed with its front hoof, and Harald cried, "Become BEARS, all of you!" and rushed on at the head of his army faster and faster until the trees were but a blurred wall of evergreen; and he heard his bearsarks roaring and snariing behind him with the Changing-fit upon them as they rode; looking back, Harald saw not a man remaining; they were all bears, ice-bears and black bears and grizzHes on horseback, with their spears aloft in their claws! - and their teeth grinned as they roared; and King Harald's heart was joyous with cruel lust. Night and day they rode. The snow-trees rose white and thin upon the mountains, and the sky was bluish-orange. Harald led the army along frozen river-roads paved with snow. He went north through the trees, until, says his saga, he came to inhabited lands. He ordered his bearsarks to kill every man they found, and to clothe every farm and town in the Flame-Shirt. Then he led his army north to Orkedal. Here he defeated King Gryting in battle, and made him his prisoner. He killed two Kings in Guldal; then he killed six more. When the whole of Drontheim* was his, he captured Naumadal. Then he sailed south in his war-ships to More and slew two Kings. King after King he subdued; if they swore to become his loyal vassal he reduced them to Earls and let them live to rule their lands in his name; otherwise he killed them. And the lands and districts fell steadily to King Harald, winter and summer.

  Herfoug andRotlaxiq

  Now I remember the story of the brother-Kings Herlaug and RoUaug. For three summers they had been at work raising a mound of wood, stone and lime, and just as they finished, the news was brought to them that Harald was coming upon them with all his army, and there was no hope, but they waited until they could see the trembling of the trees, and then they waited until they could hear the tramping, tramping of Harald's bearsarks, and then they waited until they could see the spear-heads rising around them like narrow silver flames; and then they bade each other farewell, and King Herlaug went into the mound wdth eleven others, and meat and ale were brought inside, and then Herlaug ordered that the mound be sealed up, and they feasted their way to death in that moist earthy darkness. King RoUaug for his part ascended the

  * Trondheim.

  mound
and commanded that his throne be erected there. He seated himself upon that highest of seats, there in the sky where he would never be again, and he looked into the sky-horizon, which was bluish-white and curved with the curvature of the earth, above which the sky was a blue of indescribable lightness, and below which the clouds floated like icebergs, while below them, upon the farm-seas and the forest-seas, ponds gleamed like lost pennies in the sun; and then he threw himself and his kingship down the mound, so that he rolled into the bench called the Earls' Seat (which he had previously had his retainers strew with feather beds, for, since he had already sacrificed his dignity to his body, there was no reason to injure that, too), and he called himself an Earl. - A dusty Earl he must have been. - Now he met King Harald meekly beside the mound of his still living brother, and King Harald fastened a sword to his belt, bound a shield to his neck, and led him back to his Earl's seat, naming him his faithful Earl. (Would you, reader, have rather been a Herlaug or a Rollaug?) Then Rollaug served two sovereigns, for Harald was his King, and his Queen was Queen Misery, who ruled inside his chest as Herlaug did inside the mound; and when after three days the noises inside the mound died away, then at night Queen Misery invited those dead mound-dwellers to visit her and feast on Rollaug's heart, so until he died Rollaug dreamed of black skeletons and grey-green skeletons dancing inside him, working their sharp bone-fmgers in his head; and his brother-skull opened his jaws in a sharp-toothed laugh at the pleasantries of Queen Misery, and poor Rollaug ached in his chest at that laugh. - It was no surprise to men that he administered Harald's territories faithfully, for had he not become an Earl of his own accord? Equally faithful was he to Queen Misery, walking at nights round and round his brother's forest-mound, from which sometimes came a blue glow of brother-light, treasure-light, corpse-light to light his way, and though the mound was shunned by others. Earl Rollaug wore a wdde path around it, until at last he was named the Earl of Sadness. - Never now could he become anything else. In Norway the King-Shirts and Bear-Shirts were ruined, and he knew of nothing else.

  Gyda!s Reward

  After ten years, ruddy-faced Harald conquered all Norway, and wore a brown bear-cloak. His shaggy locks were like a curtain drawn upon his face, which made men fear him the more, and King Harald knew this and made use of it, but now that he had plucked the golden fruit of kingship he became vain, and

  wished men to admire his golden hair as well. At a feast given him by one of his tame Earls in More he had his hair clipped, so that his sycophants rushed to call him Harald Fairhair. - "Oh, yes!" men cried, trembling with hope that he might smile upon them. "There is the greatest truth in that surname." - It is written that he took Gyda to him then, with his weapons-carles all around him, but he took also a number of Queens before and after her, so, like many a youthful inspiration, she found herself but pinned between the pages of his woman-album.* At this time he was also married to Swanhild Eysteinsdaughter, Aashild Ringsdaughter, and Ragnhild the Mighty. (This last was a Queen of especially fine blood, as was proved when she bore him his favorite son, Eric Bloody-Axe. - Yes, she had a rare shape! When he married her, he put nine other vdves out of doors. As it proved, this was needless trouble, for she lived but three years.) Later he even took to himself the Lappish witch Snaefrid, for by her art she made the lust-fires bum in him when he touched her hand. - Was proud Gyda happy among that crew of Queens? King Harald's saga does not say. It might have been best if, like Ragnhild the Mighty, she died young. As for him, not having the ambition to conquer the world, he sat in peace, his sons not yet grown to quarrelling-age, and all through his kingdom the crops grew.

  The Fdgfit of the EorCs ca. 890

  Of course, because King Harald did what each would have liked to do, his rule was perceived by some as harsh. - Too bad. - (No doubt the dissatisfaction has been exaggerated in the historical accounts, since spoilsports cry out loudly, while on the other side good losers are silent, being dead.) Highborn men longed to oppose him, for they had been Kings, and now must be content with earldoms if they stayed. Their bear-swords lay idle in their white hands. So they fled the country under cover of cloud and darkness, bringing their multitudes with them. It was their intention to people the uninhabitedf lands to the west, of which there had lately been much discussion; for now that the old pages of the Flateyjarbok were written dark and dense with Harald's stories that the Earls did not care to read, how whitely wonderful seemed the sand-pages of virgin beaches! Islands - so many islands! - lay upon the waves unwritten-on, in reams and realms and quires. Rocky skerries offered

  * Being a vigorous man, he set her to much bed-work under his belly, and so had by her Aalaf, Rorek, Sigtryg, Frode and Torgils. t Except by Irishmen, who did not count.

  opportunities for hunted men to eke out; then westward stretched many ells of ocean, in which was no one knew what. (But ever since King Harald had had the first Ice-Dream on his way to Lapland, men had been dreaming that pale white dream.) - "In the Faroes," the Earls said to one another, "or in the Hebrides, or in Iceland we can wear the King-Shirt again!" (They did not know that what they sought was GREENLAND.) - So they set sail in their great dragon-ships and their snake-ships, surrounded by the flotsam of their tame rabble that went anxiously a-bobbing in every available rowboat or ale-cask, worrying about monsters and whirlpools. To soothe and enthrall them the Earls pretended that this migration was for a short time only, crying, "We shall bring the Bear-Shirt back to Norway!", and all the thralls and slave-carles cheered in the leaky little boats, a hurrah's tiny comfort filling their tiny heads, and they hobbled on over the grey waves like a fleeing log-jam, with only the Earls' great ships to give them dignity. - "Death to King Harald!" they cried (and when Harald's spies reported this to him, he laughed and laughed). But the Earls knew that they were leaving Norway forever. They did not look back at the ^ords in which they had once ruled subject only to the Laws of Claws, and the coastline dvdndled and vanished in a fog and still the Earls would not look back, because, being great men, they were expected to set a high example. With fair winds they swept west over the black water, their living dragon-prows hissing and flickering their tongues to taste the wind, and the Earls stood high between the row-seats so that their followers could take heart in them and their yellow Earl-locks streamed behind them in the wind (for, being of equal birth with Harald, they must be equally fairhaired), and their square sails fluttered like wings, and they flew and flew upon the swan-field* until the hissing prow-dragons arched their necks backward to gape upon the Earls in astonishment, at which the Earls knew to placate them with many bull-sacrifices, giving the dragons cups of blood to sip so that they became resolute again and turned forward to spy out rocks and Swedes and other dangers; and they sped westward in a freshening breeze until at last great green-topped pillars of rock arose, with misty mountains behind them, and so the keels of the Earls' ships made crunching furrows in the blue shell-sand of the Orkneys . ..

  * Kenning for the ocean.

  The War of the Isiands

  They wintered in the Orkneys; in summer they Uimed their shield-hung dragon-ships against the land of their birth, ravaging the coast at their pleasure. Up the tree-walled rivers they sailed, burning farms, raping, robbing and slaughtering; they dyed their white hands red in Norway's blood-reek. The Earls split the skulls of those who had dispossessed them, so that teeth scattered from jawbones like seeds, spilling dovm across the hearthstones where they would never take root. - "That was man's work!" they shouted to each other. But they were answered only by the sound of trickling blood.

  In the islands that they had settled, they thought themselves secure, and wooed long slumbers for themselves (dreaming of something white, so that they thought they dreamed of themselves). Wherever the pillars of their high-seats washed ashore, there they built their homes. They built again the close-packed houses they had known, whose wood-roofs and thatch-roofs rose in peaks. Later they built of peat and stone. They cut the turf and made cornfields out of buttercups. (Never
had they seen such giant buttercups.) Hiding their towns between headlands, they gathered eels and shellfish from the mouths of rivers. The weather was damp, but mild. The grass was green. - But of course King Harald had not forgotten them.

  - "Everyone must be thinking by now," cried shrill Queen Gyda, "that you haven't any hair on your chest. But you'll teach them otherwise, my Lord, won't you? Won't you?" In the Shedands, as the horn sounded and King Harald's men launched fire-arrows into every roof, the people came running out in a throng, expecting to be rallied by their Earls, but, perceiving these lords to be chalky-pale, the people determined to defend themselves against Harald of their own accord; but then, seeing that every street was already walled in flame, they hoped only to retain jurisdiction over their lives, their bundles, their horses and sheep and donkeys; so they went rushing along the log-roads, thinking to escape; few did. "Then," says the saga, "King Harald sailed southwards, to the Orkney Islands, and cleared them all of Vikings."

  - Thus it went also in the Hebrides, on the Isle of Man, and even on the coasts of Scotland. Many times he sailed against them with his fleet, and slew all who did not take to the open sea. Harald destroyed the Earls' men in every quarter. So the Heimskringla tells it; and yet the truth is that the great game of those islands was to last centuries. The Hebrides, the Faroes, the Orkneys, Iceland and even GREENLAND* all fell into Norway's power at