by Tim Severin
That was when they unleashed their assault. How they knew that Grettir was in a coma, I have no way of knowing.
The end was swift and bloody. More than a dozen farmers came up the ladders, which had been left in place now that we no longer had Grettir's strength to pull them clear. They came at dusk, armed with axes and heavy spears, and overpowered Glaum as he lay half asleep. They prodded him in front of them as he led them to our dugout, though they would have found the place soon enough for themselves. I heard them coming first, for they were working themselves up into a battle rage. Illugi, in an exhausted sleep, was slow to wake and scarcely had time to jam shut the makeshift door. But the door was not designed to withstand a siege - it was nothing more than a few sticks of wood covered with sheepskins — and it burst open after the first few blows. By then Illugi was in position, sword in one hand, axe in the other. The first farmer who ventured in lost his right arm to a terrific blow from the same weapon that had been Grettir's bane.
For an hour or more the attack continued. I could hear Ongul's voice urging on his men. But they found it was deadly work. Two more farmers were badly wounded and another killed, all trying to rush the door. Our attackers were like men who corner a badger in its sett and try to take the prey alive. When Ilugi held them off with sword and axe, they began to dig down through the earth roof of our refuge. From inside we heard the sounds of digging and soon the roof began to shake. I was as weak as water and unable to intervene, only to observe. From where I lay on the floor I saw the earth rain down from the ceiling and then the point of a spear poked through. I knew the end could not be long in coming.
Another rush at the door and the frame split. Our defence was collapsing around us. A spear thrust through the doorway caught Illugi in the shoulder. Grettir struggled to his knees to face the attack. In his hand was the short sword that he and I had robbed from old Kar's burial mound. At that moment a section of the roof fell in close to the hearth. Amid the shower of earth, a farmer jumped down. Grettir turned to meet the new threat, stabbed with the sword and impaled the intruder, killing him. But the man fell forward so that Grettir's sword arm was trapped. As he struggled to withdraw the blade a second man dropped through the hole and stabbed Grettir in the back. I heard Grettir call out and Illugi turned to help, throwing up his shield to protect his brother. This left the door unguarded and suddenly the dugout was filled with armed men. In moments they had knocked Illugi to the ground and were hacking and stabbing him to death. One man, seeing me, stepped forward and planted the point of his spear against my blankets. He had only to press down his weight and I too was dead. But he made no move, and I watched as Ongul darted behind Grettir to avoid the outlaw's sword and knifed him several times in quick succession. Grettir did not even turn to look at his killer. He was already so weak that he slumped to the ground without a sound. I lay there, unable to move, as Ongul leaned down and roughly tried to prise Grettir's fingers from Kar's sword. But the death grip was too strong and Ongul pulled aside my sworn brother's hand until it lay across the fatal fire log. Then, like a skilful butcher, he severed the fingers so that the sword fell free.
Picking up the sword, Ongul cut Grettir's head from his shoulders. It took four blows. I counted every one as Ongul hacked down on the corpse. By then the blood-splattered remains of the ruined dugout were crammed with sweating, jubilant farmers, all shouting and talking and congratulating themselves on their victory.
I bought my life for five and a half marks. That was the sum the farmers found on me, and I gave them a promise of ten marks more if they delivered me, alive, to Snorri Godi's son Thorodd for judgement. They accepted the bargain because, after the slaughter of Grettir and Illugi, some of them had had enough of bloodshed. They buried the corpses of Illugi and Grettir in the ruins of our dugout, then lowered my sick and aching body down the cliff face on a rope and placed me in the stern of the ten-oar boat they had come in. Destitute Glaum was not so lucky. On the way back to the mainland, they told him he had betrayed his master, cut his throat and threw his body overboard. Grettir's head they kept, wrapped in a bag, so Ongul could present the gruesome evidence to Thorir of Gard and claim his reward. Eavesdropping, I learned how we had been defeated: Ongul had gone to his aged foster-mother Thurid for help in evicting Grettir from Drang. Thurid was a volva, rumoured to use black arts. It was she who had lain concealed beneath the pile of rags when Ongul rowed out to quarrel with Grettir. She needed to hear and judge the quality of her victim before she chose her curse runes. She then cut the marks, stained them with her own blood and selected the hour on which Ongul should launch the cursed tree on the tide. My only consolation, as I listened to the boastful farmers, was to learn that the old crone was hobbling and in dreadful pain. The rock that Grettir threw had smashed her thigh bone and crippled her for life.
Ongul, as it turned out, never received his head money. Thorir of Gard refused to pay up. He said that, as a Christian, he would not reward the use of witchcraft. Ongul took this as a weasel excuse and sued Thorir before the next assembly of the Althing. To his rage the assembled godars supported Thorir's view - he may have bribed them - and went so far as to banish Ongul. They ruled that there had been enough bloodshed and, to forestall revenge by Grettir's friends, it was better that Ongul left Iceland for a while. I was to meet Ongul later, as I will relate, but in the meantime the Gods provided me with a way to honour the memory of my sworn brother.
Thorodd was lenient in his judgement, as I had anticipated. When I was brought before him, he remembered that Grettir had spared his own life when he had challenged the outlaw on the road, and now repaid his debt by declaring that I should be set free after I had paid my captors the ten marks I had promised. This done, Thorodd returned to me my fire ruby, saying that this was what his father had instructed him to do, and undertook to settle my affairs with Gunnhildr's family. He also surprised me by handing over Thrand's old hoard chest. Apparently Thrand had left instructions that if he failed to come back from Jomsburg, I was to be his heir. I donated the entire contents of the chest to Thor. Half the silver paid for a temple mound to be erected in the God's honour on the spot where Thrand's old cabin had stood, and the remainder I buried deep in its earth.
At the feast which followed the temple dedication, I found myself seated next to one of Snorri Godi's sons-in-law, an intelligent and well-to-do farmer by the name of Bolli Bollason. It turned out that Bolli was suffering from that itch for travel which is so characteristic of the northern peoples. 'I can hardly wait for the day when my oldest son can take over my farm, Thorgils,' he confessed. 'I'm going to put it in his care, pack and head off.
I want to see other countries, meet foreign peoples and see how they live while I am still fit and active. Iceland is too small and remote. I feel cooped up here.'
Naturally his words recalled Grettir's words, begging me to travel.
'If you had your choice, Bolli,' I asked, 'which of all the places in the world would you most want to see?'
'Miklagard, the great city,' he responded without a moment's hesitation. 'It's said that there is nowhere else on earth like it — immense palaces, public baths, statues which move of their own accord. Streets paved with marble and you can stroll along them after dark because the emperor who rules there decrees that blazing torches be set up at every corner and kept lit throughout the night.'
'And how does one get to Miklagard?' I asked.
'Across the land of the Rus,' he answered. 'Each year Rus traders bring furs to sell at the imperial court. They have special permits to enter the emperor's territories. If you took a load of furs yourself, you would make a profit from the venture.'
Bolli fingered the collar of his cloak. It was an expensive garment, worn specially for the feast, and the collar was trimmed with some glossy fur.
'The trader who sold me this cloak told me that the Rus get their furs from the northern peoples who trap the animals. I haven't seen it for myself, but it is said the Rus go to certain known places on t
he edge of the wilderness and lay out their trade goods on the ground. Then they go away and wait. In the night, or at dawn, the natives come out secretly from the woods, pick up the trade goods and replace them with the amount of furs that they think is a fair bargain. They are a strange lot, those fur hunters. They don't like intruders on their territory. If you trespass, they're likely to put a spell on you. No one else is more skilled in seidr, men and women both.'
This last remark decided me. Thor may have put the words in Bolli's mouth as a reward for my offerings to him, but it was Odinn who determined the outcome. A journey to Miklagard would not only carry out Grettir's wish, it would also bring me closer to my God's mysteries.
So it was that, less than a month later, I had a trader's pack on my back and was plodding through the vast forests of Permia, wondering if Odinn had been in his role as the Deceiver when he lured me there. After a week in the wilderness I had yet to glimpse a single native. I was not even sure what they were called. Bolli Bollason had called them the Skridfinni, and said that the name meant 'the Finni who run on wooden boards'. Others referred to them as Lopar or Lapu and told me, variously, that the name meant 'the runners', 'witches' or 'the banished'. All my informants agreed that the territory they occupied was barren beyond belief. 'Nothing except trees grows up in their land. It's all rock and no soil,' Bolli had warned. 'No crops at all, not even hay. So you won't find cows. Therefore neither milk nor cheese. It's impossible to grow grain ... so no beer. And as for vines to grow grapes, forget it. Not even sheep can survive. So the Gods alone know what the natives do for clothing to keep out the cold when they haven't any wool to weave. They must do something. There's snow and ice for eight months in the year, and the winter night lasts for two months.'
No one at the trading post where I had bought my trade stock had thrown more light on these mysteries. All they could say was that I should fill my pack with coloured ribbons, brass rings, copper figurines, fish hooks and knife blades. They thought I was mad. Winter was coming on, they pointed out, and this was not the time to trade. Better wait until the spring when the natives emerged from the forest with the winter pelts of their prey. Stubbornly I ignored their advice. I had no intention of spending several months in a remote settlement on the fringes of a wasteland. So I had slung my pack on my back and walked away. Now, with the chill wind beginning to numb my fingers and face,
I was wondering - and that not for the first time - if I had been incredibly foolish. The footpath I had been following through the forest was more and more difficult to trace. Soon I would be lost.
I blundered on. Everything around me was featureless. Each tree looked like the last one I had passed and identical to the trees that I had seen an hour earlier. Very occasionally I heard the sound of a wild animal fleeing from me, the sounds of its alarmed progress fading into the distance. I never saw the animals themselves. They were too wary. The straps of my pack were cutting into my shoulders, and I decided that I would set up camp early and start afresh in the morning. Casting around for a sheltered spot where I could light a fire and eat a meal of dried fish from my pack, I left the faint trace of the path and searched to my left. After fifty paces or so I came across such a dense thicket that I was forced to turn back. I tried in the opposite direction. Again I was thwarted by the thick undergrowth. I returned to the path and walked forward a little further, then tried again. This time I got only twenty paces — I counted them because I did not want to lose my track — before I was again forced to a halt. Once more I returned to the path and moved forward. The bushes were crowding closer. I limped on. There was a raw blister on my right heel where the shoe was rubbing and my foot hurt. I was concentrating on this pain when I noticed that the path led to an obvious gap between the dense thickets. Gratefully I quickened my pace and walked forward, then tripped. Looking down, I saw my foot was entangled in a net laid out on the ground. I was bending down to untangle the restraint when I heard a sharp, angry intake of breath. Straightening up, I saw a man step from behind a tree. He was carrying a hunting bow, its arrow set to the string and he drew it back deliberately and quietly, aiming at my chest. I stood absolutely still, trying to look innocent and harmless.
The stranger stood no higher than my chest. He was wearing the skin of an animal, some sort of deer, which he wore like a loose blouse. His head poked through a slit cut in the skin and the garment was gathered in at his waist by a broad belt made from the skin of the same animal. This blouse reached down to his knees and his lower legs were clad in leather leggings, which extended down to strange-looking leather slippers with turned-up toes. On his head was a conical cap, also of deerskin. For a moment he reminded me of a land wight. He had appeared just as silently and magically.
He made no further move towards me, but clicked his tongue softly. From behind other trees and out of the thickets emerged half a dozen of his companions. They ranged from one youngster who could only have been about twelve years old, to a much older man, whose scraggly beard was turning grey. Their precise ages were difficult to tell because their faces were unusually wrinkled and lined, and they were all dressed in identical deerskin garments. Not one of them was tall enough to come up to my shoulder, and they all had similar features — broad foreheads and pronounced cheekbones over wide mouths and narrow chins, which gave their faces a strangely triangular shape. Several of the men, I noted, had watery eyes as if they had been staring too long into the sun. Then I remembered what Olaf had told me about the long months of snow and ice, and recognised what I had seen in my childhood in Greenland - the lingering effects of snow blindness.
They were not aggressive. All of them were carrying long hunting bows, but only the first man kept an arrow aimed at me, and after a few moments he lowered his bow and let the tension relax. Then followed a brief discussion in a language that I could not understand. There seemed to be no leader — everyone including the youngster had an opinion to express. Suddenly they turned to leave and one of them jerked his head at me, indicating that I was to follow. Mystified, I set out, walking behind them along the trail. They did not even look over their shoulders to see if I was there and I found that, despite their small size, the Lopar - as I knew they must be - travelled remarkably quickly through the forest.
A brisk march brought us to where they lived. A cluster of tents stood on the bank of a small river. At first I thought this was a hunters' camp, but then I saw women, children and dogs and even a baby's cradle hanging from a tree, and realised that this was a nomad home. Tethered at a little distance were five unusual-looking animals. That they were deer was evident because they had antlers which would have done justice to the forest stags I had hunted with Edgar in England. Yet their bodies were less than half the size. Somehow their smallness seemed appropriate among a people who — by Norse standards — were diminutive.
The man who had first revealed himself to me in the forest led me to his tent, indicated that I should wait and ducked inside. I eased the pack from my shoulders, lowered it to the ground and sat down beside it. The man reappeared and silently handed me a wooden bowl. It contained pieces of a cake. I tasted it and recognised fish and wild berries mashed together.
As I ate the fish cake, everyone in the camp continued about their normal business, fetching water from the river in small wooden buckets, bringing in sticks of firewood, moving between the tents, all the while politely ignoring me. I wondered what would happen next. After an interval, during which I finished my meal and drank from a wooden cup of water brought to me by one of the Lopar women, my guardian - which was how I thought of him - again emerged from his tent. In his hand was what I thought was a large sieve with a wooden rim. Then I saw it was a drum, broad, flat and no deeper than the span of my hand, an irregular oval in shape. He placed the drum carefully upon the ground and squatted down beside it. Several of the other men strolled over. They sat in a circle and another quiet discussion followed. Again I could not understand what they were saying, though several times I heard the wo
rd vuobman. Eventually my guardian reached inside his deerskin tunic and produced a small wedge of horn, no bigger than a gaming counter, which he placed gently on the surface of his drum. From the folds of his blouse he next pulled out a short hammer-shaped drumstick and began to tap gently on the drum skin. All the onlookers leaned forward, watching intently.
I guessed what was happening and rose to my feet. Walking over to the group, I joined the circle, my neighbour politely shifting aside to give me space. I was reminded of the Saxon wands. The surface of the drum was painted with dozens of figures and symbols. Some I recognised: fish, deer, a dancing, stick-like man, a bow and arrow, half a dozen of the Elder runes. Many symbols were new to me and I could only guess their meaning — lozenges, zigzag lines, irregular star patterns, curves and ripples. I supposed that one of them must represent the sun, another the moon and perhaps a third depicted a forest of trees. I said nothing as the little horn counter hopped and skipped on the drum skin as it vibrated to the regular tapping of the drummer. The counter moved here and there, then seemed to find its own position, remaining on one spot — over the drawing of a man who seemed to have antlers on his head. Abruptly my guardian stopped his drumming. The counter stayed where it was. He picked it up, placed it on the centre of the drum and began again, tapping a slow, repeated rhythm. Again the counter advanced across the drum and came to the same position. A third time my guardian cast the lot, this time starting the counter at the edge of the drum skin before he began to urge it into life. Once more the wedge of horn moved to the figure of the antlered man, but then moved on until it came to rest on the symbol of a triangle. I guessed it was a tent.