by Tim Severin
I made a circuit of the fiord’s shoreline, staying at one farmhouse after another, claiming to be looking for land to buy. Already I was travelling under an assumed name as I had no wish for Gunnhildr and her father to learn that I was back in Iceland. The only man to know of my return was Snorri Godi, that wily old chieftain, on whom I had called in order to discuss the redemption of my fire ruby. He still held the gem in safe keeping, and I had left with him the bulk of my silver hoard, asking that he wait before handing on the cash to Gunnhildr’s family so that I had time to meet Grettir. I kept only enough silver with me to show the farmers of Skagafiord that I could afford their land prices.
I quickly identified the farmer most likely to be Grettir’s contact. He owned the farm closest to Drang and there was a landing beach and boatshed on his property. More important, he was not a member of the group taking its lead from Thorbjorn Ongul, the chief landholder in the region. Thorbjorn Ongul I judged to be a hard man. Everything about him was off-putting. He had a scarred eye socket. He had lost the eyeball in his youth when his stepmother had struck him in the face for being disobedient and had half-blinded him. Now he was surly and belligerent, and obviously a bully. ‘We’ll get that bastard off our island, if it’s the last thing I do,’ he assured me when I raised the subject of Grettir on the island. ‘Half the men around here are too faint-hearted to take any action. But I’ve been buying out their shares of the island – we used to own it jointly – so that whoever takes the decision about its future, it’ll be me.’ He paused, and looked at me suspiciously. ‘Anyway, what’s your interest in the place?’
‘I just wondered: if I get a farm around here would I be able to purchase a share in the island and put some sheep on it?’
‘Not without my permission, you couldn’t,’ he said rudely. ‘By the time you finalise any land deal, I’ll have seen to it that I hold the majority share in the island. Grettir is dead meat. He’s due for a surprise, the murderous son of a bitch.’
I returned to the farmer whom I had guessed was supplying Grettir on Drang. Sure enough, when I offered him enough silver, he agreed to row me over to the island after dark. He warned me, however, that Grettir was dangerous and unpredictable. ‘You want to be careful,’ he said. ‘When the mood is on him, the outlaw turns violent. He swam over from the island last autumn and broke into my farm building. He was looking for supplies, but I wasn’t at home at the time. So he stripped off his wet clothes, lay down by the fire and went to sleep. Two of the women servants walked in on him and found him stark naked. One woman made some sort of giggling remark about his penis being rather small for such a powerfully built man. Grettir had been half-asleep and heard the remark. He jumped up in a rage and grabbed for her. The other woman fled and Grettir proceeded to rape the woman he got his hands on. I know that he’s been out on that island for a long time, but it was a brutal thing to do.’
The farmer’s story depressed me. I had known that Grettir was moody and unpredictable. I had seen enough examples of his loutish behaviour for myself. But he had never before been violent towards women. According to rumour, he had even been saved from capture several times by women who had taken pity on him and hidden him in their houses. I was appalled that he should use rape to punish what was nothing more than impudence. I began to fear that prolonged outlawry had unhinged Grettir, and he had become half-savage. It made me wonder what reception my sworn brother would give me.
I paid the farmer handsomely to deliver me out to Drang under cover of darkness on the next windless night, and to keep my presence secret. He landed me on the small shelf of beach below the sheer cliff face, and I heard the splash of his oars receding in the distance as I felt my way to the foot of the wooden ladder he had told me I would find. All around me in the darkness I could hear the rustlings and scratchings of roosting seabirds, and my nostrils were filled with the acrid smell of their droppings. Cautiously I felt my way up the rickety wooden rungs, pulling myself up step by step. The first ladder brought me to a ledge on the cliff face. Groping around I found the foot of a second ladder leading even further upward. I wondered at Grettir’s confidence that he should leave the ladders in position at night, not fearing the approach of an enemy.
It was when I had reached the flat crest of the island and was stumbling my way forward through tussock grass that I tripped over the body of his lookout. The man was sound asleep, wrapped in a heavy cloak and half buried in a shallow trench. He gave a startled grunt as I trod accidentally on his legs, and I sensed, rather than saw, him sit up and peer in my direction.
‘Is that you, Illugi?’ he asked.
‘No, it’s a friend,’ I replied. ‘Where’s Grettir?’
The half-seen figure merely grunted and said, ‘Well, that’s all right then,’ and sank back into his hole to return to sleep.
Fearful of stumbling over the cliff edge in the darkness, I sat down on the ground and waited for the dawn.
Daylight showed me that the summit of the island was covered with pasture, closely cropped by sheep. I could see at least a score of animals. In every direction the surface of the island stopped abruptly, ending in thin air where the cliff edge began. Only behind me, where the wooden ladder reached the summit, was there any access. And between me and the ladder I could see the little hump of cloth which marked the location of Grettir’s watchman. He was still asleep.
I rose to my feet and went in search of Grettir. I could see nothing except for the sheep grazing quietly. There was no hut, no cabin, no sign of habitation. I walked across to the west side of the island. It took just a couple of hundred paces and I was at the cliff edge, looking straight down several hundred feet to the sea. I could see the white shapes of gulls circling and wheeling far beneath me in the updraughts. Puzzled by Grettir’s absence, I turned back, retraced my steps, and searched towards the south end of the island. I had almost reached the lip of the furthest cliff when, coming round a large boulder jutting up from the soil, I came upon my sworn brother’s home. It was a dug-out shelter, more like a bear’s den than a human dwng. He had scraped out the soil to make an underground chamber roofed with three or four tree trunks he must have salvaged from the beach, for there were no trees on the island, not even a bush. Over the tree trunks was laid a layer of turf sods. A smoke hole at the back of the dugout provided a vent for the smoke from his cooking fire. It was a bleak, miserable place.
Grettir must have sensed my presence. I was still taking in the depressing scene when he emerged from the shelter. I was shocked by his appearance. He looked haggard and worn, his hair grey and streaked, and his skin was grimed with soil and smoke. His eyes were red-rimmed from the foul air in the dugout and his clothes were tattered and squalid. I realised that I had not seen a freshwater spring on the island, and wondered how he and his companions found their drinking water. Washing clothes did not seem possible. Despite his grotesque and shabby appearance, I felt a surge of pride. There was no mistaking the self-assurance in the look my sworn brother directed at me as, for a moment, he failed to recognise who I was.
‘Thorgils! By the Gods, it’s Thorgils!’ he exclaimed and, stepping forward, gave me a great hug of affection. He stank, but it did not matter.
A moment later, he pulled back. ‘How did you get here?’ he asked in astonishment, which for a moment turned to suspicion. ‘Who brought you? And how did you get past Glaum?’ Glaum must have been the lazy sentinel I had stumbled on.
‘All of Iceland knows that you are living on this island,’ I replied, ‘and it wasn’t difficult to work out who your ferryman is. He dropped me off last night. As for Glaum, he doesn’t take his duties very seriously.’
At that point, a second figure emerged from the dugout behind Grettir. It had to be his younger brother Illugi. He was at least ten years younger than Grettir, thin and undernourished looking, with black hair and a pale skin. He too was dressed in little better than rags. He said nothing, even when Grettir introduced me as his sworn brother, and I wondered if he was m
istrustful of my intentions.
‘Well, what do you think of my kingdom?’ said Grettir, waving his arm expansively towards the southern horizon. The entrance to the dugout looked down the length of Skagafiord to the distant uplands on the mainland. To left and right extended the shores of the fiord, and rising behind them were the snowstreaked flanks of the mountains. ‘Wonderful view, don’t you agree, Thorgils? And practical too. From this spot I can see anyone approaching by boat down the length of the fiord, long before they reach the landing beach. It’s impossible for anyone to sneak up on me.’
‘At least in daylight,’ I murmured.
‘Yes,’ said Grettir. ‘No one has been bold enough to try a night landing previously, and in future I’ll not trust that lazy servant Glaum to keep a look out. He’s idle, but he amuses me with his chatter, and the Gods know, one needs a bit of humour and light-heartedness out here, especially in winter.’
‘What do you live on?’ I asked. ‘Food must be very scarce.’
Grettir showed yellow teeth through his dirty tangle of beard. ‘My neighbours kindly donate a sheep every couple of weeks,’ he said. ‘We ration ourselves, of course. There were about eighty animals on the island when we took over, and now we are down to about half that number.’
I did a quick mental calculation. Grettir had been living on Drang for at least a year, probably longer.
‘There’s one old ram who’ll be the last one to be eaten. He’s quite tame now. Visits the dugout every day and rubs his horns on the doorway, waiting to be petted.’
‘What about water?’ I asked.
‘We gather rain, of which there is plenty, and when we get really short, there’s a freshwater seep over on the east, in an overhang. It oozes a few cupfuls of water every day, enough to keep us alive.’
‘Enough to keep four people alive?’ I asked.
Grettir took my meaning at once. ‘You mean you want to stay?’ he asked.
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘If you and Illugi have no objection.’
So it was that I became the fourth member of the outlaw community and for almost a year Drang Island was my home.
THIRTEEN
GRETTIR WAS RIGHT: there was no shortage of food on the island, even with an extra mouth to feed. We were able to fish from the beach whenever the winter storms abated, and Grettir and Illugi had already saved an ample store of dried fish and the smoked carcasses of seabirds. For vegetables we ate a dark green weed which grew luxuriantly on the slopes too steep for the sheep to graze. The succulent leaves of this weed – I do not know its name – had a pleasant salty taste, and gave welcome variety to our diet. We had neither bread nor whey, the staple of the farmers on the mainland, but we never went hungry.
Our real struggle was how to keep warm and dry. The roof of the dugout kept out the rain, but the interior was constantly damp from the wetness rising up through the soil and we found it impossible to keep our garments dry. The fireplace was at the back of the dugout against the great boulder so that the stone reflected every bit of precious heat. But the ever-present problem was the scarcity of firewood. We depended on the chance discovery of driftwood. Each day one or other of us would descend the ladders and make a circuit of the island’s narrow beach, hoping that the sea had brought us its bounty. Salvaging a good-sized log suitable for firewood was a greater cause for satisfaction than bringing back a string of freshly caught fish. When we found a log or dead branch, however small, we used ropes to hoist it back up the cliff and put it to dry in a sheltered spot. Then we would use an axe to chop the driftwood into kindling or shape a log to keep the fire at a gentle glow all night.
Grettir and I spent many hours in conversation, sometimes seated in the dugout, but more usually out in the open air where our discussions could not be overheard. He confessed to me that he was feeling more and more worn down by his long period of outlawry. ‘I’ve lived over two-thirds of my life as an outlaw,’ he said. ‘I’ve scarcely known any other condition. I’ve never married, never been able to drop my guard in case there is someone ready to kill me.’
‘But you’ve also become the most famous man in Iceland,’ I said, trying to cheer him up. ‘Everyone knows of Grettir the Strong. Long ago you told me that your reputation was all that mattered to you and that you wanted to be remembered. You’ve certainly achieved that. The Icelanders will never forget you.’
‘Yes, but at what cost?’ he replied. ‘I’ve become a victim of my own pride. You’ll remember how I swore no one would ever drive me away from Iceland by sending me into exile. Looking back, I see that was a mistake. I trapped myself here with those words. I often regret that I have travelled no further than Norway. How I would have loved to see the foreign lands you have known – Vinland, Greenland, Ireland, London, the shores of the Baltic Sea. I envy you. If I were to travel abroad now, people would say that I am running away. I have to stay here for ever, and that means until someone catches up with me when I am weak or old and kills me.’
Grettir looked out across the fiord. ‘I have a premonition that this view is the one I will live and die with. That I will finish out my time on this small island.’ Disconsolately he threw a pebble over the cliff edge. ‘I feel cursed,’ he went on. ‘Everything I do seems to have the reverse effect of what I intend. If I start something for the best of reasons, it usually turns out quite differently. People are hurt or harmed by my actions. I never intended to kill that young man who insulted me in the church in Norway, and when I burned those unfortunates in that shore house it was largely their fault. If they had not been so drunk, they would have escaped the fire, which they themselves started.’
‘What about that woman over at the farm? I’m told you raped her.’
Grettir looked down at the ground and mumbled his answer. ‘I don’t know what came over me. It was a black rage, not something I’m proud of. Sometimes I think that living like a hunted animal makes you into an animal. If you live too long away from normal company, you lose the habits of normal behaviour.’
‘What about your brother Illugi? Why don’t you send him away from here? He doesn’t have to be bound to your fate.’
‘I’ve tried a dozen times to persuade Illugi to go back home,’ Grettir replied, ‘but he is too much like me. He’s stubborn. He sees my outlawry as a matter of personal pride. No one is going to dictate to him or his family what they should do and he has a strong sense of family. That’s how we were brought up. Not even my mother wants me to surrender. When Illugi and I said goodbye to her before coming here, she said that she never expected to see either of us alive again, but she was pleased we were protecting the family’s good name.’
‘Then what about Glaum?’ I said. ‘What part does he play in all this? To me he seems nothing more than a lazy lout, a jester.’
‘We met Glaum on our way to the island,’ Grettir said. ‘It was pure chance. Glaum is a nobody. He has no home, no land, nothing. But he’s amusing, and his company can be entertaining. He volunteered to come to the island with us and until he decides to leave I’m willing to let him stay. He tries to make himself useful, collecting firewood, helping haul up the ladders, doing some fishing, generally being about the place.’
‘You’re not concerned that Glaum might try to attack you, like Redbeard, hoping to gain the bounty money?
‘No. Glaum’s not like that. He’s too lazy, too weak. He’s not a bounty hunter.’
‘But there’s something foreboding about Glaum,’ I said. ‘I can’t define what it is, but I have a feeling that he represents misfortune. I would be happier if you sent him away.’
‘Maybe I will,’ said Grettir, ‘but not yet.’
‘Perhaps matters will improve,’ I suggested. ‘I’ve heard it said that if a man survives outlawry for a span of twenty years then the sentence is complete. In a couple of years that will be the case for you.’
‘I think not,’ Grettir answered gloomily. ‘Something is bound to go wrong before then. My luck is dire and my enemies will never give up
. My reputation and the reward for my death or capture means that any young hothead will have a try at killing me or taking me prisoner.’
His forebodings came true in the early spring. This was the season when the farmers would normally bring out their sheep to Drang and leave them there for the summer grazing. Doubtless this prompted them, under Thorbjorn Ongul’s leadership, to launch a plan to retake the island. A young man from Norway, Haering by name, had arrived in the area. Like everyone else, he soon heard about Grettir living on Drang Island and of the huge reward being offered for his death. He contacted Thorbjorn Ongul and told him that he was an expert climber of cliffs. Haering boasted that there was no cliff which he could not scale single-handed and without ropes. He suggested that if he could be landed on Drang without Grettir knowing, he would surprise the outlaw and either kill or wound him so severely that the others would be able to storm the island. Thorbjorn Ongul was shrewd. He decided that the best way to approach Drang without alerting Grettir’s suspicions would be in a large, ten-oared boat with a cargo of live sheep. From his boat he would call up to Grettir, asking for permission to land the animals. Ongul calculated that Grettir would agree because he had already depleted the flock on the island. Meanwhile Haering would climb the cliffs on the opposite side of Drang and creep up on Grettir from behind.