The Long Ships

by Frans G. Bengtsson

  “I can write you more poems, and better,” he said to her proudly as he seated himself again.

  Black Grim, Gisle’s father, sat beaming with pride and satisfaction. He said that he had often felt himself to have a talent for verse-making, in his younger days, but that something had always happened which had prevented him from putting his inspirations into words.

  “All the same,” he said, “it is strange that he should have this gift; for he is folk-shy, especially when there are girls near him, though he would gladly have it otherwise.”

  “Believe me, Grim,” said Ylva, “he will not need to be shy of them any more. Trust my word for that. For, now that he has shown himself to be a poet, as many as can find space to do so will hang themselves round his neck. My father, who was full of wisdom upon all subjects, often used to say that as flies swarm around food of any kind but abandon it as soon as they sniff the odor of the honey-pot, so is it with young women when they sense the presence of a poet.”

  Orm sat staring into his ale-cup with an anxious expression on his face, deaf to what they were saying. Asa asked him if anything was on his mind, but he only mumbled abstractedly to himself and made no reply to her question.

  “If I know him aright, he is composing a verse,” said Ylva. “He always wears that troubled look when the verse mood is upon him. It is a peculiar thing with poets that if there are two of them in the same room and one of them composes a verse, the other cannot rest until he has composed another which he thinks is better than his rival’s.”

  Orm sat with his hands on his knees, rocking backwards and forwards on his bench, sighing deeply and mumbling cavernously to himself. At length, though, he found the words he wanted, gave two nods of relief, thumped his fist on the table for silence, and said:

  “I hear you don’t think

  Me your friend, King Sven!

  They tell me you drink

  To my end, King Sven!

  Wouldst catch me off my guard?

  God and my sharp-tongued sword

  Caused you to blink,

  Ay, and bend, King Sven!”

  This was received with approbation by such of the company as were in a condition to appreciate the poem. Orm took a deep draught of his ale, and it could be seen that he was once again in excellent spirits.

  “We have done well this evening,” he said, “for we have composed a poem that has given pleasure to us all, and that will undoubtedly displease King Sven. This is a remarkable coincidence, that two poets should be found at a single feast, for they seem to be somewhat thinly sown in these parts; and even if our quality is not fully commensurate, nevertheless you have acquitted yourself honorably, Gisle, and I shall therefore pledge you.”

  But when Orm peered down toward the end of the church through the smoke of the pitch torches, Gisle was nowhere to be seen; nor could he be discovered among those who were asleep beneath the tables. But since Rannvi’s place was also empty, their parents thought it most likely that they had both become drowsy and, as befitted well-brought-up children, had retired to rest without disturbing their elders.

  That evening Father Willibald, thanks partly to the good offices of Asa and Ylva, received promises from four of the women present that he might soon baptize their infants, provided that he did so in the same tub in which he had baptized Harald Ormsson and with equal ceremony. But still none of the guests was willing to be sprinkled personally, despite the merry humor they were all in as a result of the good food and drink they had consumed. So Father Willibald had to contain himself as patiently as he might, though he had hoped for more spectacular results.

  The next day, which was the concluding day of Orm’s feast, the drinking reached its climax. Orm still had plenty of smoked mutton uneaten, and the greater part of a fresh ox, as well as two tubfuls of feast-ale and a small tubful of strong mead, made from lime honey, and he said that it would reflect little credit on him or his guests if any of this was left when the feast ended. All the guests were anxious to ensure that his honor, and theirs, should not thus be sullied. They therefore promised to do their best and, from the first moment after they awoke that morning, set to with a will. It was their intention, they said, that both their host and his priest should find themselves beneath the table before the last cup was drained to its dregs.

  Orm now took the priest to one side to ask his opinion on an important matter. He wanted to know, he said, whether God would regard it as lawful to baptize heathens while they were unconscious from drink. “For, if so,” he said, “it seems to me that a good work might be performed this evening, the way the day is beginning.”

  Father Willibald replied that Orm had raised a moot point, and one that had been much debated by holy men who had devoted their whole lives to studying the craft of conversion.

  “Some scholars,” he said, “hold it to be lawful, in circumstances when the Devil shows himself particularly unwilling to yield. They support their contention by quoting the example of the great Emperor Charles, who, when he desired to baptize some wild Saxons who held fast to their ancient idolatry, had the more obstinate of them stunned with a club as they were dragged forth to baptism, to quell their violence and blasphemous outpourings. It cannot be denied that such treatment must cause the Devil considerable vexation, and I do not see that there is much difference between stunning heathens with a club and befuddling them with ale. On the other hand, the blessed Bishop Piligrim of Salzburg, who lived in the time of the old Emperor Otto, held the opposite view, and expressed it in a pastoral letter of great wisdom. My good master, Bishop Poppo, always used to hold that Bishop Piligrim was right; for, he used to say, while it is true that the Devil must be discomforted by seeing his followers baptized while they are unconscious, still, such discomfiture can only be temporary, for, once they have recovered their senses and have learned what has happened to them, they lose all the feelings of reverence and love of God that the sacrament has imparted to them. They re-admit the Devil to their hearts, opening them wider than before to let him in, and rage more furiously than ever against Christ and His servants; so that no good results from the ceremony having been performed. For this reason the holy men whom I have named to you, and many others besides, hold it inadvisable to baptize men when they are in this condition.”

  Orm sighed. “It may be as you say,” he said, “since you have it from Bishop Poppo’s own lips; for he understands the ways of God better than any other man. But it is a great pity that he should be of that mind.”

  “It is God’s will,” replied Father Willibald, nodding sadly. “Our task would be rendered too simple if we could enlist the assistance of ale in our endeavors to baptize the heathens. More is required than ale: eloquence, good deeds, and great patience, which last is the most difficult of all virtues to acquire and, once acquired, to retain.”

  “I wish to serve God as well as I can,” said Orm. “But how we are to further His cause among these good neighbors of mine is more than I know.”

  So they left the matter at that, and the drinking proceeded merrily and apace. Later in the day, when most of the guests were still more or less upright on their benches, the married women went in to Ylva’s son to bring him name-gifts and good-luck wishes, after their ancient custom; while the men, feeling the need for air, went out on the grass to indulge in games and tests of strength, such as finger-tug, wrestling, and flat-buttock lifting, amid shouts of encouragement and laughter; and many a good somersault was turned; while some of the more daring among them tried their hands at the difficult sport known as knot-lifting,1 without, luckily, anyone overtasking his strength and breaking a limb or dislocating his neck.

  It was while these sports were in progress that the four strange beggars arrived at Gröning.

  1. A sort of invitation to break one’s neck, played by strong, drunken men after a feast. One (the weaker) sits on the ground, while the other (the stronger) kneels on his hands and knees. The latter is the man who risks his neck. The weaker man sits with his knees
drawn up and wide apart, puts his arms outside his thighs and locks his hands under his knees. The strong man then puts his head forward between the other man’s knees and into his locked hands, and tries to rise to a standing position, while the victim does his worst by pressing his knees and his locked hands round the strong man’s neck. It was (says the author, in a letter to the translator) “a frightful game, only played by drunk men.”

  CHAPTER SIX

  CONCERNING FOUR STRANGE BEGGARS, AND HOW THE ERIN MASTERS CAME TO FATHER WILLIBALD’S ASSISTANCE

  THEY looked as beggars usually look, trudging on foot with sack and staff, as they arrived at the house craving food and drink. Ylva was seated on the bench before the house in earnest conversation with the mothers of Gisle and Rannvi; for both these young people had come to her that morning in a state of extreme bliss to say that they were well content with each other, and to beg her to speak persuasively on their behalf to their respective parents, so that the wedding might be arranged as soon as possible; in which project Ylva had willingly undertaken to help them to the best of her ability. When news was brought her that there were beggars standing at the gate, she bade her servants request Orm to come to her, for he had ordered that no strangers were to be admitted until he had himself first carefully scrutinized them.

  So he examined the travelers, who replied freely to his questions; but they did not seem to him to be like ordinary beggars. Their leader was a big man, broad of loin and well fleshed, with a grizzled beard and sharp eyes beneath his hat-brim. As he moved, he trailed one leg behind him, as though it might be somewhat stiff at the knee. He answered Orm’s questions in a bold voice, and it was plain from his accent that he was a Swede. He said that they had come from Sjælland and were heading northwards across the border; a fisherman had brought them across the Sound, and they had begged their way up from Landöre.

  “But today we have eaten nothing,” he concluded, “for hereabouts the houses lie far apart, and at the last house we visited we were given nothing to put in our sacks.”

  “Nevertheless,” said Orm, “you carry more flesh than I have seen on the bones of some beggars.”

  “There is nourishment in Danish and Skanian pancakes,” replied the other with a sigh. “But I fear their effect may wear somewhat thin, and I with it, before I come to the Mälar country.”

  The man who stood beside him was younger, of slender build and pale of skin. His cheeks and jaw were black with a short, dense beard. Orm studied him for a few moments. Then he said: “From your appearance, a man might suppose that you had been shaven for the priesthood.”

  The slender man smiled sadly. “My beard was burned from my face one evening when I was roasting pork in a wind,” he said, “and it has not yet regained its old fullness.”

  But it was at the other two beggars that Orm gazed most curiously, for of them he could make nothing. They had the appearance of being brothers, for they were both small and lean, long-eared and large-nosed, and both of them stared at him with wise brown eyes like those of squirrels. Although small, they nevertheless looked to be agile and muscular. They stood with their heads on one side, listening to the baying of the hounds; then, of a sudden, one of them placed a finger in his mouth and emitted a strange whistle, soft and vibrant. Immediately the hounds stopped howling and began to pant, as they did when no strangers were about.

  “Are you trolls,” asked Orm, “or merely conjurors?”

  “Neither, alas,” replied the man who had whistled, “much as we should like to be either. For we cannot conjure food from anywhere, despite our hunger.”

  Orm smiled. “I shall not refuse you food,” he said, “and I do not fear your witchcraft while there is yet daylight; but such beggars as you I have never before set eyes on. No other stranger has succeeded in quieting my hounds; indeed, I sometimes find it difficult to do so myself.”

  “We will teach you a way,” said the second of the two small men, “once we have got a good meal in our bellies, and food for two more in our sacks. We are wandering men who serve no master, and we understand hounds better than most men.”

  Orm assured them that he would not send them away with empty sacks, and bade them enter.

  “You have chosen a good time to arrive,” he said, “for you have come in the midst of a great feast, so that there will be pancakes enough for you all, and perhaps something else besides. It is a pity for my guests that you cannot play as skillfully as you whistle.”

  The two small men glanced at each other and winked, but said nothing; and they and their two companions followed Orm into the house.

  Orm cried to Ylva: “Here are wayfarers, both large and small, come to crave a plate of your feast-food.”

  Ylva looked up from her conversation and nodded, with her thoughts elsewhere; then, as she caught sight of the two small men, her eyes grew large with wonder, and she sprang up from the bench on which she was sitting.

  “The Erin Masters!” she cried. “Felimid and Ferdiad! My father’s jesters! Are you still alive? In God’s name, dear friends, what has forced you to turn beggars? Have you grown too old to practice your arts?”

  The two small men stared at her in equal astonishment; then they both smiled. They dropped their staffs and beggars’ sacks, took a couple of paces toward Ylva, and then, in the same instant, they both sprang head over heels. One of them remained thus standing on his hands, on which he proceeded to jump to and fro, uttering small joyful cries, while the other tied himself into a ball and rolled toward her feet. Then they both leaped to their feet again and, gravely and expressionlessly, saluted her.

  “We have not grown too old,” said one of them, “as you can see for yourself, O fairest of all King Harald’s daughters. For you must know that the years fear such masters as us; though it is a good while since you sat on your father’s knee and saw us frolic for the first time. But we are hungrier now than we were then.”

  Many of the guests, both men and women, had come running up in haste to look more closely at these marvelous men who could jump on their hands; but Ylva said that the newcomers were to eat and drink in peace, and that they were to be treated with as much honor as any guest in the church. She conducted them into the house herself and placed before them the best of meat and drink; nor did they need any persuasion before they set to. The twins and Glad Ulf followed them in and sat silently in a corner, in the hope that the two little men might perform further antics; meanwhile Orm explained to his other guests who these two strange beggars were, who had so aroused their wonder.

  “They were King Harald’s jesters,” he said, “though now they have no master; they come from Ireland, and are widely famed. I saw them once when I was drinking Christmas with the King; but then they were prinked out with feathers and motley, so that I did not recognize them now. What they can be doing as wandering beggars I do not know, and it puzzles me sadly; but let us sit down to our ale again, and then, in a short while, we will hear their story.”

  When all the beggars had eaten their fill, the jesters offered no objection to joining the drinkers, who, after their short rest, had now begun again in earnest. Both their companions, however, sat staring silently at their empty plates. When asked the reason for their melancholy, they replied that they were weary after the hardships of their journey and the good meal that they had just eaten. So Father Willibald led them to his room, that they might rest there undisturbed. Then he took the two jesters aside and sat with them for some time in earnest conversation, which none dared to disturb; for they had been old friends ever since they had first met at King Harald’s court, and were overjoyed to renew their acquaintance after so long an interval of time.

  When at last all the guests had taken their places in the church, the two jesters were placed one on either side of Father Willibald. Many questions were asked concerning them, and all were anxious to see them display their skill; but the two jesters sat supping their ale in silence, as though unconscious of the excitement they were causing.

&nb
sp; Then Orm said: “It would be ungracious of us to demand that you should show us your skill, for you have a right to be weary after your wanderings, and no guest or stranger who receives hospitality in my house is required to pay for it. But I cannot deny that we should like to take advantage of the fact that two such masters as you have arrived in the midst of my son’s christening feast. For I know that you are both famous men, and I have always heard that no jesters in the world can match those of Ireland.”

  “Chieftain,” replied one of the Irishmen, “what you heard was the truth; and I can assure you that even in Ireland there are not two men more famous for their skill than I, Felimid O’Flann, and my brother Ferdiad here, who is as good as I am. My ancestors have been royal jesters ever since our great forefather Flann Long-Ear performed, long ago, before King Conchobar MacNessa of Ulster and the heroes of the Red Branch in the hall of Emain Macha; and it has always been a law in our family that, once we have become proficient in our art and have earned the right to call ourselves master jesters, we display our skill only when commanded to do so by a person of royal blood. And this you must know, that we who jest before kings follow not only the most difficult calling in the world but also that which, more than any other calling, benefits mankind. For when a king is out of humor, and his fighting-men feel the itch of boredom, they are a danger to other men; but when good jesters perform for them, they rock with laughter over their ale and go contented to their beds and let their neighbors and subjects sleep in peace. After priests, therefore, we perform a more useful function than any other sort of men; for priests offer happiness in heaven, through the influence they have with God, while we offer happiness on earth, because of the influence we have on the humors of kings. And since there are many kings in Ireland, the jesters of that land are the best in the world, and are of many different kinds; tumblers, clowns, ventriloquists, imitators of animals, men who contort their bodies, others who contort their faces, sword-swallowers, egg-dancers, and men who snort fire through their nostrils. But the true master jester is not he who can perform one or another of these arts, but he who knows them all. And it is held by wise men in Ireland that the best among us today are almost as good as King Conaire’s three jesters were in ancient times, of whom it was said that no man who saw them could help laughing, even though he might be sitting with his father’s or his mother’s corpse on the table before him.”