“I thought you knew,” Nils whispered. He caught Tóvó’s wrists, and his eyes grew mournful. “My boy, I thought you knew.”
Admiral Bülow’s warship had been anchored in the bay for a week, and as Hammershaimb put it in the letter to Rafn: there has been much unrest. To fully round things out, Pløyen decided to hold a large farewell dinner one evening. The officers’ cook aboard the admiral’s ship prepared the meal. A young bull was roasted on a spit in the Amtmand’s garden, and the aroma from the parsley-and-thymeseasoned giant floated through the little, flag-decorated capital. Friends and acquaintances from across the country had been invited to attend.
Skraddar Debes gave this description of the Látra farmer’s party attire: “He was dressed in a traditional stavnhetta, a hat shaped like the bow of a ship, a cloak, trousers of black Faroese homespun, a black silk vest, red and blue fringed muffs, patterned mittens, light blue stockings, and Danish shoes with buckles. The Dannebrog Cross hung around his neck on a new, black silk ribbon. He had a Faroese mountain-staff in his hand.”
The Danish officers stared wide-eyed at this comical figure, who stood three cubits tall, and who, with his twelve-inch-high stavnhetta, towered like a giant before their eyes.
His wife, Anna Kathrina, was no less stately: “. . . she wore a black Saxon skirt with an embroidered silk apron, a corset that was a red, blue, and white, a flowered silk scarf held in place around her neck by twelve small glass-head pins, long white thumb gloves knitted from cotton wool. On her head was a flowered silk brocade bonnet, which was decorated on the cropped chin and neck band with gold braid.”
Among these Faroese dignitaries, Napoleon Nolsøe was notably absent, though the doctor lost no sleep over it. As far as he was concerned, Pløyen and all his set could go to hell. Nonetheless, his father had been invited, and after the higher officials and Admiral Bülow had spoken, the trade director tapped his glass with a knife.
By then the party was in full bloom. The guests were in high spirits, and a small ensemble started to sing and play drinking songs by Bellman. The trade director struggled to lift his goat’s voice above the crowd, bleating about the great achievements that had been accomplished during Pløyen’s eighteen years of governing the Faroese people, seven years as commandant, and the last eleven as both commandant and amtmand.
Some of the guests had trouble understanding his Danish, and when he sang three verses of Grindavísan, which was supposed to demonstrate Pløyen’s poetic ability, the crowd began to laugh at the man rocking back and forth and singing with his elbows flapping.
The words praising Pløyen’s achievements were also rather doubtful. How could anything great be accomplished in this hole? Tórshavn was just a north-European backyard, and one of the most miserable at that. There was no visible indication here of any great work! The true feat was that people could actually bring themselves to live in this hole, and the man with the flapping elbows was probably the backyard’s aging clown.
Jákup Nolsøe was embarrassed. He was not used to being laughed at when he spoke, and the shame was crushing when Pløyen, with a small gesture and a gentle smile, asked him to be seated.
Pastor Schrøter related these events to Napoleon.
Nils Tvibur had not been invited either. As Skansin Fortress’s watchman, he had had his hands full just keeping the boisterous officers in check. There were three more or less secret taphouses in Tórshavn, and for several days now there had been drinking and singing until the morning light.
Pløyen nonetheless had stopped by the Mosque, as Tórshavnars called Nils’s house, to give the corporal a two-liter flask of Dutch gin and to thank him for a good collaboration. They talked for a good while, and Pløyen said that he regretted that he was unable to secure Nils farmland. He repeated his words and said that it was only on paper that he was the country’s highest authority. He thought that the Faroes had been a theocratic chieftaincy under the Danish monarchy since the Reformation, and in only one respect had the theocrats followed the letter of the Scriptures, and that was to be fruitful and multiply and populate the earth. They had always managed to pawn their daughters off on rich farmers, and they had been no less efficient in securing good royal farmland for their sons. “I can tell you one thing, Nils Tvibur. Greedy clerical blood runs through all the lush farmland on these islands. If greed is still a deadly sin, then believe me, my friend, you won’t get into Hell for all the pastors already there!”
At around two o’clock in the morning on the night of the farewell feast, as Nils Tvibur was passing the Granis Boathouse, he thought he heard a half-strangled shout in the dark. He noticed that the latch was undone, and when he glanced in, he saw several officers in the half-light. Two of them held the arms of a woman lying on the ground, and a third was on top of her. One or two long seconds passed by before Nils asked, “What the hell is going on here?” Even as he was asking the question, though, Nils had already grabbed the first officer by the neck, and his fingers were so long that his middle finger pulled back a corner of the man’s mouth. With his powerful grasp he pulled the rapist off the woman, and the man, naked from the waist down, tumbled outside.
Now he saw that the woman was Betta í Geil. Just the other evening he had been talking to her in Óla-Pól’s taproom, and he had warned her that the Danish officers had not seen a woman in months, that they were complete animals who only “thought of cunts. Go home, dear, they’ll burst your ovaries.” Betta had only smiled and said, “my friend Muhammad,” and given the corporal’s cheek a slight caress. She was still one of the most attractive women in the city, or more precisely, what she had was a dark, seductive magnetism. Yes, that was what she had. She had a Lapp woman’s broad face, and according to Old Tóvó, one of their ancestors had been the Laplander Aslak Orbes, who was a barber in Tórshavn after the Reformation.
Now terror shone in her dark, gemstone eyes. During the brief battle that followed, however, she was able to creep beneath the boat’s railing. Nils attacked the officers with unimaginable force, and although Betta could not see anything, she heard the blows and groans as the corporal’s fists struck. Nils was undoubtedly one of the strongest men on the island, and when he was enraged, he became an absolute beast. The fight spilled outside the boathouse. The officer with the dislocated jaw and corner of his mouth ripped all way to his ear lay howling on the round timbers used to haul the boat up to the shed. However, Nils had two men in their best years against him; or more precisely, he had three men against him. A fourth had been standing further back in the boathouse, masturbating while the three others raped Betta by turns. Now he struck Nils with a wooden club, the kind used to kill seals, which he had found in the longline basket. The sharp spike on the end pierced cloth, skin, and flesh, ending with an audible sound at his shoulder blade. That only enraged Nils more. He bellowed with hot fury into the rapist’s face. Grasping the officer by the throat and crotch, Nils lifted the man above his head and cast him with a heavy thud onto the timbers. And there the man remained, breathless and unconscious.
A couple of the longboats used to row the officers back and forth from the ship were located outside nearby, and when their crews became aware of the fight, and the fact that their own men were caught up in the fray, they jumped up and sprinted across the beach. Three officers lay wounded and unconscious on the ground, and the fourth was huddled into a corner making a terrified attempt to defend himself.
Nils howled at the boatmen, said this territory was under his jurisdiction. If they wanted they could step into the boathouse, and there they would find a woman these monsters had murdered!
The boatmen finally succeeded in calming Nils. Adopting a friendly tone, they said that they understood the situation, but that Nils must also recognize the necessity of getting the officers to a doctor. In any case, the man with the torn mouth and the onanist, who looked like he was convulsing.
Nils had no idea he was crying when he returned to the boathouse, although it was not humble tears of remorse that
wet his beard. They were the tears of a Hordaland berserker. Hoarse sounds came from his throat and chest, and he did not bother to reflect that if the boatmen had not intervened, he would now be a murderer. As a Skansin Fortress soldier, it was his duty to protect the city’s inhabitants, but it was also his feelings for Betta that had made fury erupt from the white-hot forge of his soul. Protecting the Brahmadella woman was one thing; however, that did not give him the right to beat her attackers bloody.
When he finally found Betta, she had crept up into the boathouse’s gable and was pressed against a longline basket. “Sweetheart,” he said to her, “come to Muhammad.” She did not reply, however, and was unable to stand. Her blouse was shredded and her naked breasts heaved. She smelled of brandy and sweat and semen. Nils slipped his arms around her knees and waist, and she made no protest when he lifted her. He carried her so carefully her head came to rest against his shoulder, and the fact that she found his shoulder a worthy support filled Nils with an unexpected tenderness.
They had been together a number of times since Martimann’s death, but Nils had always thought that what they had was lust. But now that he felt the weight of her wounded body against his, he wondered. Perhaps this beautiful, unhappy woman loved him.
When he reached Geil, he told Old Tóvó what had happened, and asked the old man to fetch Doctor Napoleon or the Landkirurg. Old Tóvó found a cloth to dry Betta’s face, saying that they had no money for a doctor, but that maybe it would be a good idea to speak to Midwife Adelheid, she was always so helpful.
Nils’s wound had begun to throb and when he removed his jacket the sleeve was full of blood.
He said he knew there was no money since the measles had taken Martimann and that old woman from Hestoy. Tonight, however, the doctor would come and the Danish fleet would foot the bill.
The Dream of Landownership
NILS HAD ALWAYS had the ability to form quick decisions, and that was true not only in daily life, but also when it came to momentous decisions that would affect his life’s course. Among other things, the decision to leave his family farm, Sellegsgård, was one he made on the run, as was the decision to come to the Faroes in 1837.
For several years, he served in the Akershus Fortress in Norway, and one night when he was on watch with an older officer, the man said that Tórshavn’s fortress needed a cannoneer. The older officer was from the era when Norway and Denmark still belonged to the same kingdom, and he added rather scornfully that the Faroes was not a country that attracted young people, so Nils could be certain of getting the position if he applied.
That remark wakened Nils’s enthusiasm. A country that did not attract young people might be the very place to realize his dream of landownership.
In reality, the course of Nils’s life was pre-established, and he was well aware of this fact. As a result, those quick, momentous decisions were critical only in the sense that they fit a pattern already formed in childhood. Landownership was not just his dream, it was his life’s purpose, and decisions that were somehow connected to his becoming a farmer were not difficult to make—in truth, they made themselves.
He began to tire of daily Skansin life, particularly after the Granis Boathouse incident. He had often remarked how wrong it was to pattern one’s labor on a schedule that ranked the man-made clock over nature’s great clockwork.
The real way to live was to rise at the rooster’s crow and to pattern one’s work after the changing seasons. It was no coincidence that winter was the best time to fish. The inquiring kittiwakes and terns called to the fisherman: Come here, come here, fish beneath our wings! Potatoes and other root vegetables should be planted in April; and to ask the sun for a reprieve because the sheriff needed to be rowed to Nes, or because thirty barrels of whale oil needed to be loaded onto some cargo ship, that was ridiculous. Turf had to be cut and dried while the sun shone warmest. That was how it had always been, and that was how it would always be. It could vary slightly when exactly the sheep were driven together in the spring, but one thing was certain, sheared wool was a necessity for all the activity that took place place in living rooms during the dark fall and winter months. Every detail of creation fit harmoniously, and it gave a person a sense of security to work according to a schedule that went unchanged year after year.
The Sunmen
ONLY ONCE IN his years at Tórshavn’s fortress did Nils Tvibur climb Skælingsfjall to greet the sun on the year’s longest day. It happened during the measles epidemic. His actual mission was not to greet the sun; in truth, he had no clue what he and Amtmand Pløyen were doing up on the mountain that night. Pløyen had told him to bring a pistol and some ammunition, and when Nils asked if he was planning to shoot targets at the sun, Pløyen responded that even a modest ethnographic expedition should be armed.
Nils did not bother to ask what the ethnographic expedition was. He trusted Pløyen, just like he had always done. Undoubtedly, the men who rode to Medina with the Prophet Muhammad did not know their leader’s objectives. They trusted the man, and therefore they followed him and his worthy steed Buraq.
And the evening was so bright and beautiful around them, it was so delightfully melancholy to listen to the golden plovers whistle while their horses ambled north across the island. It seemed as if the little birds were deliberately trying to calm the riders, as if they had realized that Nils Tvibur and Pløyen were plagued by all the deaths down in Tórshavn.
The closer they got to Skælingsfjall, the more riders they caught up with; they greeted one another courteously, and no one seemed to be in much of a hurry. Pløyen told Nils that these other men were called Sunmen, and who knows, maybe they were Christians who simply shed their Christianity this one night in order to pray to gods older than Christ himself.
Nils grew alarmed and asked if they were heading up Skælingsfjall to study heathen devils, but Pløyen simply smiled and did not answer the question.
Having almost reached their destination above, the men dismounted and left the horses to some servants. The last hundred fathoms or so were made on foot, and when they reached the flat peak they formed a circle.
The group sang the Gudbrandskvædi by Jens Henrik Djurhuus, also known as the Sjóvarbondin, and the old poet, who was also present, joined in. He was over seventy, but his aging voice was confident as he greeted the sun with these comely words:
If you will see the true God,
gaze upon his work!
Turn your eyes to the east,
there comes his strong servant.
Nils counted about a hundred sixty farmers in the circle. They had arrived from all over Streymoy, but he also saw men from Eysturoy and Vágoy. The journey up the mountain was one they had made every St. John’s Eve for many, many years. Their fathers and grandfathers had also been loyal Sunmen, and Pløyen said that in 1777 it was pressure from the Sunmen that prompted the old parliament to adopt the unfortunate Slave Law, which forbade marriage to anyone who did not own enough land to support a family.
Pløyen tried to draw Bjørgvin, a farmer from Válur, into conversation. But the man bore his words as an offering to the old gods, and did not like that a Danish official with a Norwegian corporal at his heels had come to this holy mountain to snoop.
Among the farmers was also young Skeggin Pól from Leynar. He was only about as tall as a dwarf, and his eyes glinted above his full beard. An arm emerged from from the tangled wool and gave Nils’s coat tail a tug, and the man asked in his gruff voice if there were many flies in Hordaland. His presence made Nils uneasy. He feared the hairy dwarf and kept his left hand on his sword hilt. Pløyen, however, had instructed him not to act without orders.
Pætur úr Kirkjubø was more friendly. He and Pløyen had met on many festive occasions, and the farmer had brought his two sons.
Otherwise, the men were subdued and introspective, and some were undoubtedly affected by their country’s plight.
Regin, a farmer from Hvalvík, was not among the aggrieved. Like many who lived in Su
ndalagið, he was dark-skinned—a tint some people believed was due to the enormous quantities of mussels they consumed up north. Sundalagið’s women looked outright southern, and their dark, luxuriant pubic hair was a frequent topic of conversation.
Hvalvíks-Regin said that farmers had long since forgotten that a farmhouse should be built on the farm’s eastern edge. That showed Her Majesty the Sun that one of His own lived there. He also believed that Tórshavn’s many new graves proved His Majesty was still capable of making difficult, but necessary judgments.
The smith Arnhjún stepped forward and recited several lines out of “Hávamál” from the Edda. A dagger in a finely worked sheath hung from his leather belt. As he said:
Where you meet evil,
call it evil indeed,
and give your enemies no peace
he was applauded by the men, who were clearly moved.
The east side of the mountain’s peak glowed red now, and as the sun slowly rose it was as if the blood of the indigent was sacrificially spilling in streams down the cliff’s edge and hammer. A deep red light and a dark blue sky. The air was thin and pure and not a breeze stirred. The Sun was the guest of honor, and it was welcomed with reverence and with befitting silence.
The birds, however, had no restraint. Cheerfully and boldly, they fluttered up into the bright morning, intent on nothing else but being alive in this blessed hour.
Although midnight arrived with unusual solemnity, no one offered a sacrifice, nor was there any stone altar in sight. The farmers were husbands and fathers and ordinary Faroese men, but on this night they claimed their place in the great solar system.
The Brahmadells Page 10