Wayward Heroes

by Halldor Laxness

  “You have made great headway with the butchering, and now it is time that you rest and head home, and let others have their turn.”

  Gils Másson replies that he is little inclined to leave the whale, but that they will not stop others from joining them. The whale had stranded on the Commons, meaning that every man is entitled to take from it what he can cut.

  Þorgeir says that the whale will be shared between them, both what is cut and uncut.

  Gils Másson replies: “We will not yield to you what we have already cut. Who are you, for that matter?”

  Þorgeir states his name and says that they are no cowards – neither he nor his men will tolerate intimidation or taunts. “You have chosen the worst course,” he says. “We will now give you the option to fight – and then we will see how long you can keep the whale from us.”

  Gils says: “It does not surprise us that a hero such as you should wish to perform exploits more praiseworthy than chasing that cow-sucker and well-pisser who is the most despicable of all vagabonds ever to roam the Vestfirðir – particularly when you cannot even catch him. Right now, folk all over Iceland are laughing at how the hero let a measly wretch make a fool of him. That man, they say, must be downright stupid.”

  Þorgeir says that as far as his stupidity is concerned – as with anything else – weapons alone would be the true judge.

  “That is fine by me,” says Farmer Gils.

  Now both sides arm themselves and make ready to fight. Þorgeir chooses to fight against Gils, who has a reputation as a formidable combatant. “And I am eager,” he says, “to show you my mettle.” He warns the others not to involve themselves in their fight, and sends his men off to the stony ground north of the whale’s mouth to fight with Gils’ men.

  It was an old Norse custom, much practiced in Iceland by men engaged in combat, to be sure to strike the first blow. The man who managed to impale his enemy or slice off his head before he had his guard up was considered most doughty. At that time, people never slew each other for sport, but rather, for their own profit, and they judged a conflict by its outcome. Long afterwards, it became fashionable for French minstrels in their chansons to reserve highest praise for killings that were carried out with artistry and courtesy. That was in the age of chivalry – when Icelanders were pummeling each other with rocks.

  In war, a man is hardly ever fortunate enough to catch another unawares or murder him in his bed. It may also happen that troops are unable to avoid each other on open ground in broad daylight, leaving them no choice but to fight. In Iceland, battles were conducted according to an old Norse practice: men would pair off and hammer away at each other as long as their strength lasted, using shoddy, blunt little axes, for the Norsemen were poor smiths, forced to use poor-quality metal. Nor did they have any skill in wielding swords, though rich men in Iceland bore such arms for the sake of pride. Yet if men wielded their axes doggedly in battle, and especially if they went into a rage, these weapons constantly proved more effective than excellent swords forged in the Southern Empire,1 or in France or the British Isles.

  In combat, it was crucial to come at one’s opponent from the side, or better yet from behind, and strike him a blow where he was vulnerable. The exchange of blows was continued until one of the adversaries fell exhausted or fled. The man with more stamina to endure the pounding generally had the better of it – the first one winded was knocked senseless or had his head cracked open where he sat, lay, or crouched. Although some books state that the Norsemen had axes so sharp that they could cleave men from head to toe, the way wooden rafters are split, or cut men’s heads off and slice their limbs off their bodies without needing a chopping-block, or halve a fleeing enemy with one blow, making him fall to the ground in two parts, we believe all this to have been dreamed up by people who actually wielded blunt weapons.

  Farmer Gils Másson was past the prime of his life, and he wearied quicker than Þorgeir Hávarsson – nor was he endowed with the same Þórr-like strength as Þorgeir, by dint of his youth. The farmer chanced to lose his footing on the gravel, and Þorgeir hoisted his ax and cracked the man’s skull, causing blood and brains to well from the wound. It was an old Norse custom that if a man wounded his enemy so badly that his spirit ebbed out of him and it seemed unlikely that he would get up again, he was to cease all hostilities, and instead, comfort the man as he took his dying breaths and treat his body respectfully. This was deemed valiant. Þorgeir now did the same. He sat down next to the man and cradled his head on his knees, until death overcame him.

  When Farmer Gils was dead, Þorgeir looked around for his fellows, whom he had sent to fight Gils’ men in the scree north of the whale’s mouth. He found the men all safe and sound, having done little battle. They all sat there by the whale, sharing the provisions brought by the men of Húnavatn, cutting big slices of smoked lamb flank and munching cured shark. Þorgeir declared that there was not one single example in the old stories of such miserable slaves attending doughty men. The lives of such recreants should be forfeit – filling their bellies while their masters fought! From the very beginning, it had been the pride of serving folk to lay their lives on the line for their leaders.

  Belching loudly, they asked how it had gone. They had been so hungry that they could not be bothered to follow the contest between their betters. Þorgeir said that Farmer Gils Másson was dead. This news took the wind out of the sails of the slaves from Húnavatn, and they got up, cheeks stuffed, and went and laid at Þorgeir’s feet the axes and short swords and other cutting tools that they had used to butcher the whale. Þorgeir said:

  “As it happens, I am not in the mood to kill such no-accounts as you, though it would be right. Take your boat this minute and row back to Húnafjörður, and take the corpse of your master Gil with you, but leave all the whale meat here.”

  They replied that they were obliged to do as he bade them.

  Þorgeir and his men now turned to the whale and claimed all of it for themselves, cut and uncut. None who dwelt in Hornstrandir dared come near – nor did they get any of it. Þorgeir and his men procured kettles and rendered blubber in them over driftwood fires, and traded what was left of the whale carcass to farmers in exchange for homespun.

  18

  AT THE CLOSE of winter, Þorgeir and his men set off from Hornstrandir, hiking over the mountains to the Jökulfirðir to retrieve his ship and pay a visit to Þormóður Kolbrúnarskáld. Þormóður could not yet bear the light, feeling as if even the faintest glimmer would completely undo him. Nor could he bear the voices of living things – they were like to drive him mad. He could only eat food intended for small children – a little piece of halibut or baked starry ray – and he drank only lukewarm milk. Mistress Kolbrún concocted for him every sort of elixir known in the Jökulfirðir and Djúp. Throughout the winter he confined himself to his bed-closet, with the curtain drawn, the smoke-hole shut, and the door tightly closed. The mistress never left his bed, night or day. During the day she sat in the darkness at his bedside, working her spindle as quietly as she could. Most of the time, he could hardly bear his own state, except when she wrapped her arms around him, like a distressed child.

  Þorgeir and his men fit out their craft and launched it. As they worked, a huge seal cow lay there on the sandbank, watching them with its man’s eyes, which lacked even the slightest glint of friendliness. They then rowed their craft over to the homefield, by the foot of the hill named after the ogress Fljóð. The seal cow now lay on a rock on the beach and did not take its eyes off them. They were convinced that this seal was evil.

  They came across Slave Loðinn and stopped to question him. Þorgeir asked where Þormóður Bessason was. The slave replied:

  “How am I to know what curs might be hiding in the corners of the mistress’s pantry? Go find out for yourselves, instead of pestering other people.”

  When Þorgeir pushed open the door, letting in sunlight, they found the skald wrapped tightly in Mistress Kolbrún’s embrace. Over the
winter, Þormóður had lost the robustness and color of youth, and was now shriveled, weak, and pale, while the mistress was plumper – she was an even fleshier woman than before, with a rosier complexion. At the visitors’ arrival, she stepped from the bed, covered the skald with the blanket, and took up her spindle.

  “How low you lie, brother,” said Þorgeir Hávarsson.

  Þormóður said: “Greater men than I have lain as low.”

  “I shall lie so when I am dead,” said Þorgeir Hávarsson, “but never for a woman.” At these words, he tore both yarn and spindle from the mistress’s hands and flung them to the floor.

  The mistress rose rather slowly from her chair and said: “I expect that you, Þorgeir Hávarsson, shall be laid lowest by men so utterly contemptible that no vengeance shall ever be wrought upon them. Yet to you, Þormóður, my friend and skald, I wish to say that even if you let this hero drag you from my arms today, and you chance to become a lucky man or skald to a king, we agreed this winter that you will never again find refuge anywhere but in the arms that I have wrapped around you.”

  Saying this, the mistress gathered her things from the floor and left the sleeping room.

  “We would do well to kill this witch, who has been sucking your blood for far too long, Þormóður,” said Þorgeir. “Open up the doors, lads, and cut the turf from the smoke-hole, and go and harpoon the seal that was lying there below the homefield and bring it here to the bedside, alive.”

  After his men harpooned the seal and dragged it inside, Þorgeir ordered them to puncture one of its veins and let the blood run into a bailing pail. Then they gave Þormóður the seal’s blood to drink, and as the skald felt the warm blood running down his throat, the haze cleared from his eyes and strength returned to his legs, and he dressed and grabbed his weapons. Þorgeir Hávarsson led him to the boat. The moment that the skald drank the seal’s blood, he forgot all about women, and his thoughts returned to weightier tasks. They boarded the boat, hoisted the sail, and sailed out of the Jökulfirðir, doubled Rytagnúpur and set course for Horn. The story goes that no sooner had they hoisted sail than Þormóður Kolbrúnarskáld’s head cleared so completely that his mind re-opened to poetry, whereas throughout the winter, he had found himself tongue-tied every time he tried to compose a verse. Reliable sources say, however, that on this voyage, he restored the lay that he had composed for Þórdís of Ögur to its original form, dedicating it to Kolbrún, his nurse, in payment for the bed and care she provided.

  Some learned men have named the period that the sworn brothers now entered their “golden days.” It is said that during this time, their guardian spirits were more favorable to them than ever before or after.

  One day, Þormóður was walking beneath some cliffs, searching for birthing stones.1 The sun shone brightly, making his head grow heavy, and he sat down on a rock on the beach. He noticed that the cliff face stood open, and sitting there in a cave were two women, so preoccupied with something that they heeded naught else. These women were most imposing: one was dark of brow, the other bright of visage. It looked to him as if one was an ogress, and the other a Valkyrie. These women were busying themselves tossing a little egg back and forth, without stopping, and reciting this verse as they did so:

  Freely we fling

  from damsel to damsel

  dear to the skald,

  Þormóður’s life,

  each with her half:

  two to his one.

  “What will you portion him?” asked the dark woman, who inhabited the abyss.

  The other, who bore the hue of the sun, replied: “I shall portion him a homestead: the most splendid place in Djúp, farmhands and beasts, houses and servants, all the best bounties in Iceland. I shall bear him two daughters: one shall be fair as the moon, the other as a star – whereas I myself shall be the sun to him. What will you portion him?”

  The ogress said: “I will portion him the greatest poverty one can suffer at the outskirts of the world, and by him engender daughters most akin to death, whose names are Night, Silence, and Desolation. Yet at my knee he will know such a wonder as neither heaven nor earth can match or augment or surpass, until the world ends and the gods are dead.”

  At these words, this woman stood up and walked into the cliff face, taking with her Þormóður Kolbrúnarskald’s life-egg.

  19

  THE SWORN BROTHERS had their men fish, hunt, and forage, and they berthed their boat in little inlets in the evening. They never strayed far from the boat. They took great pleasure in the sport of searching cliffs for seabirds and their eggs, lowering themselves on ropes from the brinks of the cliffs and ransacking the ledges and crevices for spoils. The cliffs that men descend for seabirds can often be a hundred fathoms or more, and those who forage them feel safer after they have abandoned their footholds entirely and dangle freely in the air than they do inching themselves over their edges. This task is one of the most enjoyable of any done on Hornstrandir.

  The men kindled fires beneath overhangs and sometimes under the open sky, for plentiful firewood was found there on the beaches, and they slept in tents on the land when the weather was fine. When the weather took a turn for the worse, they went to farms and offered to fight for lodging, though the farmers would give up their beds to them without a word. Young men stared at the heroes, captivated, and in their presence, other men seemed of little moment. Young women stared as well; some offered to wash the heroes’ clothing, and others to rub their heads with soap. As for slaughter and plunder, they achieved little, for the farmers had a natural defense in their poverty and paltriness.

  The sworn brothers often sat on bright evenings in calm weather on the grass-grown clifftop of Horn, which looks northwest over the sea toward the end of the inhabited world. They watched for the wakes of great fish on the surface of the sea, and the columns of spray from the spouting of whales. Dolphins leapt and seals frolicked, and a pod of porpoises headed due north to the heart of the ocean. More than once, they discussed how any man with the strength to capture these creatures, and to take their blubber and tusks, would have the means to trade for a longship and make war on more people than those who inhabit Hornstrandir. Swans would also fly in from the sea, stretching their necks and sounding in flight. Then the heroes would sit silently, for they knew that these were the dísir of the Lord of Hosts, women superior to any other, who select champions for Valhöll and turn their backs on cowards. The sworn brothers declared it the highest wisdom in the world to be able to understand the din of such birds and to interpret their flight.

  One day as they sat at the edge of the clifftop, watching their men fishing at the base of the cliff, their conversation went as follows. Þormóður asked:

  “Are there any two men in all the Vestfirðir who live as contentedly and cheerfully as we?”

  “That I do not know,” said Þorgeir. “It seems more remarkable to me that no one has ever heard of two equally doughty men sharing such fraternity, either in the Vestfirðir or elsewhere – and may the hour never come when either of us begs for life or mercy from any man.”

  Þormóður Kolbrúnarskáld said: “Can a better place exist than the one we inhabit now? None dare oppose us, and all as one give us whatever we demand, without a word, while women ask us our leave to hunt out our lice.”

  Þorgeir said: “I think that any place where we might make enemies worthy of death at our hands, or of cutting us down with their weapons, would be better than here.”

  “Yet it is hard to forget that Egill Skallagrímsson, the greatest hero ever to have lived in Iceland and its best skald, died in his kitchen in the company of crones,” said Þormóður.

  “No man is a hero who is well married and has beautiful daughters, as Egill did,” said Þorgeir. “A hero is one who fears neither man nor god nor beast, neither sorcerer nor ogre, neither himself nor his fate, and challenges one and all to fight until he is laid out in the grass by his enemy’s weapons. And only he is a skald who swells such a man’s prai
se.”

  Þormóður said: “Are there two men living anywhere whose friendship is so strong that nothing could ever diminish their concord and sworn brotherhood?”

  Þorgeir replied: “Truth to tell, there is no firmer friendship than when two men are such great champions that neither need look to the other in anything, until one of them is slain – at which point the other shall do all he can to avenge him.”

  Growing on the cliffs that rise from this sea – the outermost of all seas – high up on their faces, on narrow, hard-to-reach ledges, is a certain herb, whose like in fragrance, nutriment, and healing potency is not found in hayfields or gardens. This herb has a hollow stalk nearly as tall as a man, and its upper part is pliant and sweet and a cure for most ailments. Due to this herb’s enticing sweetness, heathens have named it “cravewort,” whereas Christians have given it the Latin name angelica, after the angels and archangels seated nearest the throne of Christ in Heaven.

  In late spring, the sworn brothers often climbed down to cliff ledges to gather cravewort. One fair-weather day as they were enjoying themselves in this task, Þorgeir was cutting stalks so enthusiastically, yet heedlessly, that the edge of the narrow cleft where his feet were wedged crumbled beneath him, and he lost his balance. The cleft’s surface was so loose that all it took was the weight of one man to break it. Since the hero had not yet been claimed by Hel, however, he was able, as he fell, to grab hold of a cravewort stalk growing out from a tuft of grass in a crevice in the cliff face, and hang onto it. Below him was a drop of a hundred fathoms, whereas above, only a few fathoms separated him from a narrow path leading to the cliff’s brow.