by Betty Webb
“Angry trolls keep the water riled up.”
I wasn’t certain I heard her right. “Trolls, did you say?”
“Legend says that those big columns in the water are the remains of three fishing vessels the trolls tried to pull out to sea. They could not quite manage it, so to spite other fishermen, they made the water so rough no one has been able to boat near here. Or swim. So whatever you do, do not fall in the water!”
“I’ll try to remember that.”
While we rode along, flocks of seagulls, grebes, and fat-bodied puffins cawed and shrieked against the rising wind. Our horses weren’t bothered by the racket. They were unflappable, and tolted across the black sand as if the sea and the sky had remained motionless.
Casting a look at the darkening day, Bryndis shouted back at me, “If we want to see the puffin rookery, we must hurry. Once the rain begins, the trail up will be too slippery for safety.” She pointed to the top of the cliff, from which the parrot-beaked birds peered down at us.
Surely she didn’t mean for our horses to scale the cliff! I would have shared my concern, but she had already urged her horse forward, and we sped along the black sand at such speed it was startling. A few minutes later we rounded the jutting southern end of the cliff and entered a low, lava-and-grass-speckled marsh at the harbor’s mouth. In the distance I saw the picturesque village of Vik, its green, yellow, and red corrugated iron homes bright against the darkening sky. Unlike the sheer rock wall ahead of us, they looked welcoming.
As we grew closer to the base of the cliff, I could see a narrow trail leading up to the top, but it appeared dangerously steep, eased only by a series of switchbacks. One misstep and we would wind up in the churning North Atlantic, food for hungry trolls.
I urged my horse forward until he caught up with Bryndis. Trying to disguise my concern, I said, “You said that the rookery is a popular spot for birders, but most birders I’ve known aren’t mountain-climbers, so how…?”
She reined Freya to a halt and pointed inland, where I saw that the cliff wall was actually the abrupt end of a land bridge that began in the inland hills to the north. Sitting atop the highest was the Hótel Brattholt. We had ridden in a long semi-circle and come out on the other side.
“From the ho