The Ice-Shirt

by William T. Vollmann

  Eirik lay beside her with open eyes until Rising-Hour. Then he was on his way.

  "Your red cow?" said Valthjof "No, I have not seen her. You may be sure that I would have told you if I had, for I have no meadows to spare for my neighbors' strays."

  Eirik answered not a word. He svmng himself onto his horse and rode home.

  The cow was never found, and presently the famine lifted. A year went by; and one day Valthjof let his cows graze on Eirik's grass. Eirik said nothing, but had his slaves drive the cattle back into Valthjof's pastures. The next day

  the cows were back again. Eirik went in and told Thjodhild about it. - "Will your kinsmen support us if I give Valthjof what he deserves?" he asked her. - Thjodhild was churning butter. She did not look up at him. "You do what seems best," she said. - Eirik stood gazing at her for a moment. "I see no reason why I should endure this slight to my reputation," he said at last. He had his slaves drive the cows back to Valthjof's stead again, and this time he gave instructions that they were to whip them. That evening Valthjof met Eirik at the boundary between their property. - "Well, Eirik," said Valthjof, "I see you have been disturbing my cattle as they graze. Since you have few friends in this district, I advise you to suffer whatever fate intends." - Red Eirik leaned upon a fence-stone very thoughtfully. "Well, Valthjof," said he, "the world holds nothing that can be had without a struggle." - The next day Eirik's slaves started a landsHde that destroyed Valthjof's farm. Valthjof was killed. His kinsman Eyjolf Saur, being honor-bound to take revenge, killed Eirik's slaves at Skeidsbrekkur, so Eirik killed Eyjolf Saur and his oath-brother, Hrafii the Dueller. - It is, alas, the way of the world that the more people one kills, the more kinsmen become exercised. Eyjolf Saur's kinsmen set a case against Eirik and got him oudawed from all Haukadale. - "Anyhow," said Eirik carelessly, "I have no wish to stay here."

  The Dream of the Biack Hands

  When he left the district, he had no idea where he should go. His kinsmen must support him against his enemies, that was their obligation; but he had strained their patience. His father-in-law did not come to see him away. -Slayer-Styr, at least, was there; he slapped Eirik on the shoulder and said, "Come now, Glumgrim, it is no great matter to be oudawed, as you know from old experience!" at which Eirik smiled somewhat, and Thjodhild laughed, saying, "You are crazy, Styr!", and Styr had even made a little wooden sword for Leif to distract him from his parents' troubles, for he was a very considerate man despite his name. - The child was delighted v^th his toy. He rushed hither and thither with it uplifted, shouting, "I'm going to kill my enemies, like you, father!", and Eirik shook his head and said, "Well, it seems the lad has some heart in him." - "So you have enemies already, do you, little man?" said Styr indulgently. "And who might they be?" - "I'm sure I don't know," Thjodhild answered cuttingly before Leif could say anything. "We never see anyone." - After that, no words were spoken until the horses and oxen were loaded.

  That night, Eirik and his family were guested by their friend Thorbjom Vifilsson, who owned a farm in Laugarbrekka. There was plenty of room at Thorbjomstead, since his wife Hallveig had recently died in childbirth; the infant, a girl named Gudrid, had lived and been sent out to be fostered. Eirik had been a wimess to her water-sprinkling, and thought her a promising baby. He asked his host how she did, and was told that she thrived. - "It may well be that I could be a good foster-father to one of your sons," said Thorbjom. - "Yes, that may be," said Eirik, a little shortly.

  The boys were put to bed; and for once they did not fight among themselves, but made no noise, for which Eirik was grateful. He sat up late into the night talking with Thorbjom about what he should do, while Thjodhild gazed dully into the fire. - "No one has taken possession of all the islands in Breida^ord," said Thorbjom. "There you will find good pasturage, as I know, for I have fished thereabouts. I think you should lay claim to an isle or two." - "You had best do it, Eirik," said Thjodhild. - "Well," said Eirik, "since you are both united in your plans for me, so shall it be." - They lay dovm by the fire and slept, but everyone in the room was soon awakened by Eirik's groaning in a dream. - "Let him sleep," said Thjodhild. "However difficult his dreams, he wdll not thank us for waking him now."

  Tradir

  Eirik was a man who tmsted to islands. On islands he would not be surprised by his enemies. Considering Thorbjom Vifilsson's advice to be sound, he sailed down Breida^ord and took possession of Brokney Island and Oxney Island. He burned the fires of consecration; he made a little temple to Thor. Because the autumn was too far advanced for him to raise his house, however, he took his family south to Tradir for the winter. Tradir was far away, beyond the mountains, past the silver geysers and the yellow sulphur-springs that trickled from the volcanoes down through the yellow grass, behind the snow and lava and ice; and since he must ride there quickly, Eirik left behind everything that he would not immediately need. - In Tradir they lived with Thjodhild's kin, and though Eirik worked with a will at any chore to be done, he felt unhappy in his mind that he must always be indebted to them, it seemed, for his living.

  "Yes, we have served your tum well enough," said Thjodhild with a laugh of anger.

  "What would you have me do?" cried Eirik.

  "Perhaps I would have you divorce me," replied Thjodhild, "and take up kinship widi the trolls." Such was the bitterness in her face that for a moment he could not look at it. He was silent, and stood twisting his fist in his palm. He might have struck her, but he could not; he remembered only too well how she had stood stiff above him that night in the bridal chamber, when he had been lost in his dream of snow and ice.

  In the spring they returned north to Breida^ord, and Eirik built a stone house on the isle of Oxney.

  1

  Oxney Isiand 1987

  Those who worship symbols will be titillated by the fact that Oxen Island appears at first to be E-shaped, E for Eirik, but it is not, and Oxen Island did not quite fit Eirik. - Puffins bob in the inlets. The island is very green. It smells of sheep manure. A cormorant cries petulantly. All around, the sheep, who have inherited the island from the oxen, bleat, but their bleats are as faint and far away as the hummings of flies. The sea is so grey as almost to be white beneath the clouds. From a high rock can be seen a little white house, wdth a dilapidated shed beside it. The path goes past the kitchen window, in which stands a bottle of vodka, and then across a series of rotten foot-bridges over bogs and streams and pawed-up mud. Then one can leave the trail, and strike out across the hard grass-hummocks until, on a sloping field that ends in a low sea-cliff, one comes across the stone foundation of Eirik's sheep-pen (all grass-grown now). The stone wall that Eirik built begins there, running down in the direction of the white house, and then left. It seems longer than it is, because Oxen Island's edge has become a spurious horizon for it to pretend to stretch to. Brown and black horses graze by this wall, and purple flowers grow on the stones of it. One horse mounts another, and then they both graze again. After awhile, the horse-herd raises its half-dozen heads and canters away, over Eirik's wall. A chilly breeze blows. Birds call faint and querulous against a cloud. A semicircle of pink moss campion smiles from a stone.

  The Bmcfi'Boards ca. 380

  Eirik meanwhile had begun to puzzle over the bench-boards as his dead father Thorvald had done. One night he cleaned them so that he might see

  them better, and Thjodhild got a cloth to help him, and later brought a bit of tallow and polished them, for which he was grateful, and she said, "Are you homesick for the place where you were bom?", which startled Eirik, for she was not wont to ask him such questions, and he answered, "Somewhat, I suppose. But little enough; it is no matter." - Seeing that he was in no mood for talk, she left him. He brought a candle closer and studied the figures. Something was not right. He knew very well the place where he was pictured, for since his father had pointed it out to him it seemed that his eyes most often wandered to it. There was the man standing behind Grape-Plucker, drawing his cloak tightly about him with one hand
, and reaching with the other for some treasure that would never be known, because the cruel Carver had hidden that arm fi-om the wrist dovmwards behind Grape-Plucker's shoulder (and with a very strange stirring Eirik realized that Grape-Plucker must be his son Leif); but beside his own image was something that Eirik was certain had not been there before, not even at Haukadale. For one thing, it was at least twice as tall as any of the other figures; surely he would have noticed it before. In outline it seemed less a man than a mountain, for it was very broad up to the shoulders, narrowing abruptly into a sort of peak of darkness or blankness; for it had no face. In one hand it held a knife; in the other, a sword whose blade widened outward from the handle, so that it almost appeared to be a great icicle gripped by the point. The knife-hand was drawn in to guard the figure's left side, the haft snug against its cloak. The sword-arm crossed the breast, though what there was to guard there was a mystery, for the very heart of this strange being was exposed in a cave of rune-bones like latticework. Or perhaps there was no heart, but simply a jewel or crystal; what it was was diflficult to discern. - Eirik liked this figure exceedingly ill.

  He went and roused his wife, who had lain dovm, and made her inspect his discovery, which she did in no good temper. - "Have you seen this before?" he asked her.

  Thjodhild curled her lip. "I have little time to be straining my eyes over half-rotten wood," she said. "There is enough for me to do with making a home in all these places that you bring us."

  Eirik would have replied to this, but just then the boy Leif, who had been awakened by his parents' talk, came out from his bed and peeped at Eirik from behind his mother. With a sudden pang, Eirik wondered if his son were afraid of him.

  "Come here," he said.

  Thjodhild looked at him in surprise. "You know diat he should be sleeping, Eirik," she said.

  "Yes," he said. "But I want to show him something first. - Leif, do you see this carving, here, the man picking grapes?"

  "Yes, father."

  "You will be that man when you are older. You will help me, if I fail, and gain our rights. Do you understand? You are the eldest son."

  The boy's face flushed. "I understand," he said. And he kissed his father's hand.

  These things had happened at Haukadale. When he was outlawed, and had to take his wife and children south to Tradir as quickly as he could, travelling light, he left the bench-boards with his neighbor Thorgest for the winter. -"The workmanship on these is very fine," said old Thorgest fussily. "Yes, I will keep them for you." - But when Eirik returned to Oxney Island, Thorgest did not return them, and he rode over to Thorgest's farm to see about the matter and Thorgest asked to keep them just a little longer, for he had found that they became the farmstead; he was often complimented on them, he said. The summer went by, and still Thorgest would not return them.

  Once when Thorgest was drunk he started boasting about all the fine possessions he had. "My farm-house is the envy of my neighbors," he said (this was true). "My cow-byres and grain-houses are full. My wife is the best hus-freyja of any. My sons are my strong arms. And I will keep my luck! In fact, I have even more of it, for the bench-boards of that young Eirik Wolf's-Head now belong to me."

  "A wolf's-head I am, am I?" said Eirik. "A Valhalla you have, do you? Well, remember the hour when ODIN will meet the Wolf."

  Thorgest flushed with rage at this, and began to rise, but men restrained him, saying that after all he had been in the wrong to say what he had said in front of Eirik. And Eirik took to his horse, and rode away to where his skiflT awaited him on the coast of Breida^ord. And he returned home.

  He ate his meat in silence, so that Thjodhild stared at him, and his children also were anxiously silent, and presently he went out past the sheep-pen and up the grassy hill, until he came to the edge of the island. He stood there for a long time looking to the southeast, where Breidabolstead was a low field of ochre-green, underlining that blue-grey wall of snowy mountains that Eirik so often set his gaze to, following them, peak to peak, until his eye came to the great white shining of Snaefellsjokul, beyond which nobody had gone; but now he turned his eyes to the line of ochre-green where old Thorgest the Yeller had his farm. - "It is certainly unendurable to bear such insult," he said to himself, "and a man of no reputation is doomed. If I go and take my bench-boards back, my honor will be increased." - At length Thjodhild

  came out of the house to see what ailed his mind, and when he told her of his resolve, she used dissuading words, but Eirik said, "I hear your warning, but no weeping, by which I deduce that you can be convinced. Convince yourself, then, and leave off troubling me." For, after all, they had scarcely married for love.

  The Dead Dream

  That night, Eirik dreamed that he had a hairy bear-face with long narrow jaws full of teeth, and he sniffed the air with his wet black nostrils and scented Breidabolstead and came at a lumbering run and smashed the house in with a single blow of his claw - but when he awoke he was not a bear anymore; the age of the Bear-Kings was long past, and no man would ever become a bear again.

  Wearing the Bhxc Sftirt*

  He was wearing blue clothing and carrying an axe in his hand

  Hrafnkel's Saga (ca. 1260)

  Eirik jumped on his horse and rode towards Breidabolstead. He had fifteen men with him, all resolutely armed. Slayer-Styr was there, and so was Thorbjom Vifilsson, who was very fierce and imposing (although, as they all knew, he was but the son of a freed slave). Thorbrand and Eyjolf and all the others were there with their thralls, waiting on his word. It was his intention to take Thorgest by surprise. Because Thorgest was old, he often slept until after Rising-Hour, but his sons were men in the height of their strength, and saw to most matters. For this reason Eirik set out when the moon was still rising in the sky, and when they came near the farmstead he led his riders a cunning course between ridges and grassy mounds, so that they were usually hidden in the cold moonshade. When they came in sight of the farmstead, Eirik reined

  * "It should be noted," says an authority, "that the Icelandic word for blue (bld-r) had a much wider range of meaning than its English cognate and counterpart. It denoted every shade of blue and black, and was used to describe not only the colour of the clear sky, but also of the raven. This was the colour particularly associated with Hel, the Goddess of Death, which may partly account for the literary convention of dressing killers in blue."

  in his horse and said, "I don't intend to harm Thorgest or any of his people. I won't support any of you who kill unprovoked. If possible, we should simply take the bench-boards. That will be the most elegant humiliation we can inflict. If they choose to follow us, however, let us kill as many as we can." - They dismounted, and crept through the grass. It was still long before Rising-Hour. When Eirik raised his hand, they smashed the door with a log-ram and rushed inside.

  The Outcome

  Eirik killed two of Thorgest's sons.

  The Supporters of Thorgest

  After this, the two enemies were forced to maintain bands of armed men at home, for each feared the other. The men sat polishing their axes; they walked about in the wet field-stubble, never alone and never easy in their minds; they stroked the hot necks of their horses. - Thorgest was supported, so we read, by Thorgeir of Hitardale, Aslak of Langadale and his son lUugi, and the sons of Thord the Yeller. I know not a tittle about any of them.

  The Supporters of Eirik

  As for Eirik, he was supported by Slayer-Styr Thorgrimsson, who was known not only for his skill at opening skulls but also for his word-craft; by Eyjolf of Svin Island, who owned much property; by Thorbjom Vifilsson, whose daughter Gudrid will play a large part in this history, and by the sons of Thorbrand of Alpta^ord, about whose utiHty I know nothing. Most likely their arms were as strong as those of any young men. - The value of this crew to Eirik was immense; his to them was dubious. Why then did they associate themselves wdth this desperate wolf's-head, whose enterprises had three times now come to nothing? - The answer can only be that they
belonged unknowingly to the League of the Ice-Dreamers. At night they closed their eyes and drifted into a purple darkness, which presently reddened like water colored by seeping blood, and then eagerly they pulled on rich blue dream-shirts and dreamed themselves into the ice-maze that so obsessively

  baffled them; yet each night they thought that they were closer to finding what they wanted in the ice (although the truth was that each night diey were only a night older). From a distance the floes appeared to be almost diamond-shaped, so that the §ord was a chessboard seen end-on - an effect enhanced by the fact that the dark leads were sometimes diamond-shaped - and yet they were not any shape, really, and neither was the ice; and so the mind realized that it had been tricked, and, bewildered, let the ice be as it was. - Because they ice-dreamed in spring, they walked a fi-ozen ^ord riddled with leads and channels that led them on vast detours so that they wandered over an agony of sloping ice-ridges, suntanned and dazed, with dirty water trickling to the right of them, to the left of them, and under their feet. These great ice-chips they must walk would soon be shattered and thrust against the shore like so much driftwood, there to melt, or at best live on ignominiously for a month or two. But even when the sun was hot, ice lived beneath the moss, and ice lived in Jotunheim to the north; and in time a wedge of darkness would be driven into the previously unriven day; and this darkness would let in cold and wind and ice and more ice, until winter could rush across the §ords and harden the ice to bear the weight of the most ambitious dreams; then the Ice-Dreamers could skate directly to whatever called them; and they would be laughing and their eyeballs would be rolling and swirling like the falling snow.

  The Third Outlawry ca. 381

  That spring, Thorgest and the sons of Thord the Yeller brought a case against Eirik for slaughter at the Thorsness Thing. It was a very crowded Thing. Thorgest had brought many armed men with him, and the sun was bright on their spears. Because Thing-time was truce-time, Eirik felt somewhat secure; nonetheless he avoided Thorgest as much as he could. Of his supporters, only Slayer-Styr was present. - "You must stay in your booth as much as if you were a prisoner," Slayer-Styr cautioned his fiiend. "Certainly Thorgest has cause for anger against you." - "That I know," said Eirik, grinning. (But when he sat in the booth by himself, he looked somewhat more cast down.) - As for Slayer-Styr, he drew away from Thorgest all the men that he could, but the balance was still against Eirik, so Styr went into the booth of Snorri the Priest, who officiated at the Thing, and talked with him privately, praying him not to set on Eirik as soon as the Thing had closed. - "We both know that he's nothing but a wolf's-head," said Snorri the Priest somewhat snappishly, and