“What are you up to, girl?” Rannveig calls, words clenched in the old woman’s jaw. “Get what you want, and go.”
What I want, Hallgerðr thinks. From an iron hook on the far wall, she takes a silk pouch: filigreed box-brooches, strings of indigo glass beads, silver rings clatter inside. Next the embroidered girdle Gunnarr gave her after their wedding. She bags the scentless shirt, and two more like it. Rannveig thumps the butt of her staff on the floor downstairs, and Hallgerðr takes a last look around. Light sparks off a single shelf in the corner. Hurrying over, she sweeps her oldest trinkets off the board and cups them in her palm.
What I want, she thinks again, looking at the delicate bronze boat, the tiny silver sheep, the golden crescent. What I want is for things to be how they were.
“Hallgerðr,” Rannveig shouts. “Now!”
“What’s the rush,” she snaps, pulling Gunnarr’s stringless bow out from under the furs on their once-bed. “My hurrying won’t make you any younger.”
Hefting the useless weapon, she wraps it in a wool cloak and stuffs the bundle under her arm.
What I want, she thinks, is to stay.
◊∆◊∆◊∆◊∆◊∆◊
It is not wrong to want.
Those were the seer’s words; Hallgerðr remembers precisely, though decades have rushed by since they were uttered. Generations have died. Whole families have been lost. She was ten, maybe eleven. Past thirty now, she yet remembers the tone of the seiðr-woman’s voice, burred as the hand she’d pressed to little Hallgerðr’s head, the edges of the witch’s curse stiff and blue-limned with woad, just like her lips and eyebrows and fingernails. It is not wrong to want, she’d said, flashing black-stained teeth, pain in her smile. Her eyes fixed on Hallgerðr’s uncle Hrút, as he watched his long-legged niece teasing the other children by the hearth, while her father, Höskuldr, crowed, “Isn’t she the loveliest thing you’ve ever seen?”
Hallgerðr already caught warriors’ and bondsmen’s eyes. With thick sheets of blonde hair swaying below her slim waist, she’d abandoned her place at the witch’s side. Skipping around the fire in the centre of Höskuldr’s large hall, snatching bone game-pieces from her cousins’ boards, she forced them to chase her. She’d laughed to see them glower, laughed even harder when at last they caught up, grubby hands tugging at her kirtle until she relinquished their toys. All gazes in the longhouse followed Hallgerðr—from the lowliest slave to Höskuldr’s most trusted retainer, from the oldest grandmother to the newest guest, this Lapplander, the fate-sealing seer. Everyone paid attention to Hallgerðr, and she had been glad. Honoured to have her father’s affection. Proud to be called beautiful. She had been happy, for a while. Yes, she remembers being happy.
Until Hrút spoiled it. “The girl has thief’s eyes,” he’d said. “No good will come of her; she is headstrong and greedy. Foster her out until she learns humility. Þjóstólfr will take her, if you ask him.”
Hallgerðr’s heart sank at her uncle’s comments. Crouching beside the children, she feigned interest in her baby brother Bárðr, while sneaking a look at Höskuldr. He’d sat, like the rest of his men, on the edge of the fur-laden bench that doubled as a bed at night. Bowl in one hand and bread in the other, he’d ruminated, chewing the strands of his drooping moustache. Hallgerðr had leaned over and slapped the baby’s chubby arm to stop his babbling. Then she had scuttled back to the guest-bench at the far end of the room, where the seiðr-woman sat smirking.
Hallgerðr had waited for her father to defend her, to tell Hrút to shut up, to say there was no way he’d let her go.
Slowly, Höskuldr had frowned. Þjóstólfr came from the Hebrides; a strong warrior who had killed many men without once paying reparations. “He’s hardly the type of man to improve Hallgerðr’s character,” he said at last, but had no chance to say anything further. Instead, the witch had made her pronouncement.
It is not wrong to want, she’d said, in that haunting voice.
Grey tendrils did not swirl dramatically around the stranger. No flames guttered, portent-filled. The afternoon was always dark in Iceland at mid-winter, but the elements were calm outside. Snow had blown in great drifts up the sides of Höskuldr’s hall, adding insulation to its turf walls. Inside, all was snug and quiet. Smoke from the hearth and steam from the cook-pot billowed lazily upwards, escaping through a hole in the roof. These wisps of peat-scented air ignored the woman, much as the men did, returning to their ale and fish.
But to Hallgerðr, the foreigner’s observation had been hook-sharp. I want to stay here with father, she remembers thinking. What’s so wrong with wanting that? When the witch urged her closer, Hallgerðr had shifted without hesitation, though there’d been a strange smell about her: tilled soil, pine and juniper. As the woman bent to move her gloves and satchel to make extra room, there’d been a gust of fermented milk.
“It is not wrong to want,” she’d repeated, staring at Hallgerðr with mismatched irises: one hazel, one green. In later years, Hallgerðr would imitate that perfect posture, that haughty tilt of the chin; she would tighten her stomach so her torso also appeared longer and stronger than it was. The seiðr-woman wore a deep red kirtle over a black wool dress, colours Hallgerðr would forever associate with cleverness and far-travelling. An evening-blue cloak hung from her shoulders—lined with the fur of fifty white cats. From a silver chatelaine around her waist dangled a stone-tipped wand, a sheathed knife, a tiny copy of Þórr’s hammer, and a leather pouch of rune-sticks that clattered every time she moved.
“Why do you keep saying that? About wanting,” she’d asked bluntly. Then as now Hallgerðr was not one to waste time with niceties. “Why bother repeating yourself?”
“To remind you,” the witch had said. “To make you understand.” Licking her lips, she’d spent a moment rummaging in her sack. She’d withdrawn three small trinkets that glinted in the firelight. One by one, she placed them in the girl’s hand.
A bronze open boat, with an oversized fish welded inside.
A silver sheep balanced on a cairn of stones.
A gold-plated bow fit for a tiny warrior, only lacking a string.
“You have a rich future in store,” the seiðr-woman had said, and Hallgerðr’s heart raced.
“Can I keep them all?”
The woman grinned, nodded. “It is not wrong to want.”
◊∆◊∆◊∆◊∆◊∆◊
Of course Hallgerðr had kept the shining trinkets. Of course she’d agreed with what the stranger said. She’d agreed and in so doing—or so she has come to realise—Hallgerðr had clinched her doom. Her fate. Her urðr. Hers and Gunnarr’s. At the time, she’d believed there was nothing wrong with wanting attention, affection, the precious joys in life. She remembers this last most acutely; how she’d not just wanted, but needed possessions.
Great lengths of fine woollen cloth. Embroideries from the East. Bed-sheets from Constantinople, soft as summer water. Amber beads from Rús. Scarlet and fur cloaks, the gifts of Norwegian kings. She’d needed these treasures and more: barrels of whey, crocks of skýr, jugs of smooth buttermilk, blocks of strong cheese, enough salted herring to see ten families through the long winter. All of this, she remembers thinking, would make her attractive. Desired. Wanted. All of this would prove her worth. With this wealth in her pantry and coffers, she would be loved.
◊∆◊∆◊∆◊∆◊∆◊
“Selfish girl,” Rannveig says now, eyeing everything Hallgerðr carries down from the loft. “Gunnarr’s burial mound hasn’t yet been dug—and you’re stealing his grave-goods!”
“So says she who refused to give Njáll that halberd when he came asking for it,” Hallgerðr replies. She will not be called a thief in her own house. “Knowing Njáll and his sons, they’ve worked day and night since Gunnarr’s—” she won’t say defeat “—skirmish. The mound is ready to welcome our warrior to the afterlife. How do you expect him to fight in Valhöll without his best weapon?”
“You know as w
ell as I,” Rannveig says, menace in every syllable, “that given a fair chance, no one could beat my son with a bow.”
“Think what you like, old wretch.” Flushed, Hallgerðr turns on her heel, still carrying her largest bundle. She retreats to the private weaving room Gunnarr had built for her, long ago, at the other end of the house. With trembling hands, she places her burden on a workbench next to the loom. In her fist, bronze grinds against gold and silver. Loosening her grip, she lets the boat, the sheep, the broken bow clunk onto the table.
What good are the seiðr-woman’s predictions? What good are cheap baubles to her now?
Hallgerðr sighs. Crossing to the loom, she admires her handiwork. She takes up the wooden beater and drives home the weft, pushing threads needlessly up and up and up. A hand-span of material is all that’s left to weave, but once Rannveig has her way, Hallgerðr won’t be here to see it finished. The pattern has come together nicely: the colours are strong. Puffin-black lines zig and zag across a field of deep green, the hue fair as the hillsides around Hlíðarendi—or so Gunnarr had said when he came back to the farmstead, months ago now, and found Hallgerðr setting the first threads. Fair are the hillsides, he’d said, returning when he should have been three years in exile. Only three years…
Footsteps scuff past the door. Hallgerðr turns; behind her, the room is empty. The packed earth is swept clean, no sign of intrusion. Not footsteps, she decides. Wind rustles through the grass growing on the rooftop; the beams and turf in the hearth-room will have to be repaired and replaced, but this small corner of the house remains undamaged.
Outside, her son Högni instructs a slave in a voice so like her husband’s it hurts. Ready the horses, he’s saying. Mother’s first. Grani, her second boy, is returning from the homefields, where Gunnarr’s bondsmen are mowing hay; the scythes’ rhythmic song rings across the miles.
Most likely his last harvest here, Hallgerðr thinks. Rannveig always favoured Högni over her younger grandson. “Grani’s disposition is too much like yours,” she’d sneer. “Högni, though, is a good man. Upright. Like his father.” Closer to the house, a goat is griping, joined now and then by a pair of snorting steeds, impatient for the journey.
Unhooking a pair of shears from the wall, Hallgerðr removes her kerchief and grabs a thick handful of hair. Quickly, before she can change her mind, she snips close to the scalp.
In the background, persistent as a truth, comes the rush of the Grótjá. When Rannveig has her way, that dark river will separate Hallgerðr from this land she’s grown to love. The farmstead that once belonged to her most beloved husband, Gunnarr Hámundarson. Gunnarr of Hlíðarendi. Gunnarr the Great.
Her Viking.
And oh, she thinks, long locks falling like water down her face: Oh, how she’d wanted him.
◊∆◊∆◊∆◊∆◊∆◊
Not like that pig Þorvaldr Ósvifsson, who turned Hallgerðr’s stomach before they’d even met. Her father, Höskuldr, had arranged the marriage in mere minutes, without taking an instant to ask her opinion.
“Name the conditions,” Þorvaldr had apparently said, hand outstretched to shake on any deal Höskuldr offered. “Let’s get this done. I’ll not let Hallgerðr’s temper get in the way of this bargain.”
The memory of her first husband’s audacity—his outright gall—still burns. Unbelievable that such a low-born man had such a high opinion of himself! That he thought himself a match for her. True, his wealth walked on many feet, and some thought him well bred, but he was no warrior. He had no honour. And his personality! She could have found better conversation with that goat bleating in the yard. No, Þorvaldr had been no Gunnarr.
But what’s worst, Hallgerðr thinks, is how eager Höskuldr had been to barter her away, to be rid of her…
Tugging at her hair, Hallgerðr cuts furiously. She has outlived the cursed seer and her charms. She’s outlived three husbands. She’s outlived Höskuldr. She’s outlived her mean uncle Hrút. They’d lived, they’d fought, they’d died, just as all men do—but not before they’d shipped her off to Þjóstólfr, her foster-father, who proved his love more than Höskuldr ever had.
The lavishness of her first wedding feast hadn’t salved her wounded pride. Over a hundred guests, including her foster-father, who’d joined the newlyweds at Medalfell Strand soon as the festivities had ended. Þjóstólfr had stayed with them throughout the winter, a welcome distraction from married life.
Þorvaldr. Hallgerðr shudders. The man kept such a miserly pantry, always running out of flour and dried fish, then accusing her of over-indulgence.
“The supplies used to last until summer,” he’d snarled, pockmarks vivid against the ale-flush in his cheeks.
“It’s no concern of mine if you and your family tried to save money by starving yourselves,” Hallgerðr remembers replying. She still thinks it was reasonable for Þorvaldr to provide the essentials. Support the household. Support her. She’d intended to discuss the pauper-portions of their meals like an adult—but then the pig had slapped her.
Hallgerðr puts down the shears, feels the patch of cropped hair at her brow. Two sturdy strands are all she needs, only two, but she has cut ten times that many. Not enough, she thinks, taking up the clippers again.
“It’s not enough,” she’d said to Þorvaldr, and he’d struck her, struck her face so hard it drew blood. Then he sailed off to the Bear Isles, where their storehouses had stood, to get his wife more grain for bread, more salted herring.
Shivering in the cold weaving room, Hallgerðr contemplates pinning an oiled hide over the window to keep out the breeze. No time, she thinks, just as Rannveig bellows from out in the hall: “Dusk is falling, girl. You’re out of this house today, dark or light. Trolls take you for all I care!”
Hallgerðr plunges her hands into the kirtle’s deep pockets. She balls her fists, harder and harder, nails digging into palms. Harder still, until they cut into flesh.
Do they cut as viciously as the knife Þorvaldr had wielded, defending himself, the day he slapped her, the very day her foster-father ambushed him on the Bear Isles?
Is his loss as heavy as the two-hundreds of silver Höskuldr had been forced to pay as wergild for Þorvaldr’s shortened life?
Perhaps. Sometimes.
Höskuldr and Hrút had blamed Hallgerðr for her first husband’s death, but Þjóstólfr’s axe had done the deed. Yes, she’d been furious, jaw bleeding and sore from his attack. Yes, she’d had a quiet word with Þjóstólfr and maybe, just maybe, she had implied that none of this—none of this!—would have happened if only he’d been around at the time.
“And you would have been here,” she recalls saying, lighting a spark that had burnt Þjóstólfr’s honour, “if you cared for me at all.”
It is not wrong to want.
Yes, she had wanted the pig gone.
But she hadn’t been the one to butcher him.
◊∆◊∆◊∆◊∆◊∆◊
At the other end of the house, Högni enters, the clomp of his boots less graceful than his father’s. “Amma,” Hallgerðr hears him say, voiced pitched low, addressing his grandmother. “Amma, they’ve built a huge mound—Njáll and his sons. They’ve stood a great throne in its depths, carved from the best Norwegian pine. Gunnarr sits there even now; upright, as always. The Njállsons will see him avenged. Please, Amma. Forsake this vigil. Clean yourself off.”
Sweet Högni, always avoiding confrontation. In this, too, he is different from his father.
Half of Hallgerðr’s hair is amassed on the workbench, a pool of molten red-gold, a gossamer shield. Two strands are all she needs, just two strands—but which two? Which are the strongest? The best? Tilting her head, she yanks another handful. Tears spring, but she won’t let them fall. Vision blurred, she looks over at the loom. Blinks until she can see more clearly, and waits for her galloping pulse to slow.
It had taken long summer days of stringing wool, threading and rethreading, for Hallgerðr to weave Lætrsérannarsv
íti at varnaðiverða across the top margin of her tapestry. Let another man’s woe be your warning. How Glúmr Óleifsson, her second husband, had laughed when his brother, Þórarin, had used this same maxim to discourage him from marrying her!
But to Gunnarr—oh, to a warrior like Gunnarr—this phrase was a call to arms. A Viking’s battle-cry.
Glúmr should have been Högni’s father, Hallgerðr thinks. He’d been a lamb of a man, soft-eyed, curly-headed. Preferred farming to fighting. But he had understood her; he’d accepted she was a woman who knew her own mind. He’d asked her if she’d be willing to marry him. Dear, simple Glúmr. Honest as the flocks he’d loved tending. Plain as the fleece on their backs.
How he’d contented her, for a time.
They’d lived in fine style at Varmalœk, a large farmstead with more bondsmen than Hallgerðr knew what to do with. The larder was always full, the hearth roaring, the blankets piled high on their happy bed. Glúmr had been a sheep, but a generous one. He’d given her whatever she wanted, including a plump baby girl. Þorgerðr grew to be as beautiful as her mother.
When she was asked, Hallgerðr freely admitted how fond she was of her second husband.
“We are very much in love,” she’d told her foster-father, the first and only time he visited them. In hindsight, Hallgerðr realises she shouldn’t have let him stay so long. Maybe she shouldn’t have sweet-talked Glúmr into taking him in after her father had evicted him from Höskuldsstead. No. That wasn’t her fault. Glúmr should have grown a spine: he should have sent the troublemaker away. After Þjóstólfr had spent weeks nitpicking and complaining. After he’d pestered the shepherds and harassed the slaves. After he’d shown no respect for anyone other than Hallgerðr herself.
Cranky Ladies of History Page 21