“My mother is eighty-five and my daughter is fourteen,” said the priest. “They’re used to stirring the blood.”
Both women looked vigorous but not in any overblown way.
East of the homefield stood a sheepfold of stone, shaped like a heart, divided in two with gates to the north and south. The surrounding landscape of high glaciers, brush-covered hillsides, and perennial gullies seemed to bow in repose to this place—it was as if the land had its home here. The fold extended northward from a huge turf-grown rock set in a southern gateway; this rock had, according to the priest, proven to be outstanding as both a chopping block for criminals and a tombstone for devils. Jón Hreggviðsson was relieved that there was no ax to be seen in the vicinity of the rock. On the other hand, there was another stone block lying in the field near the southern gate. The cleric called this boulder a slab and invited his guest to lift it up onto the end of the wall to show his gratitude for the hospitality that he had enjoyed on his travels.
Jón Hreggviðsson bent down to take hold of the rock, but since it was sea-beaten basalt and therefore difficult to grasp, he was unable to lift it off the ground, although he did manage to set it on edge and roll it forward a few paces. The female line of Húsafell stood stock-still a short distance away, their faces like stone as they watched the man. Finally the guest said that he really had to be going.
“Good mother,” said the priest. “Will you carry this speck around the sheepfold, to show this boy, before he goes, that there are still women in Iceland?”
The old woman was broad-shouldered and extrusive, strong-looking with hair on her forehead and beneath her chin, her skin as gray and rough-complexioned as a bird’s. She moved in to grab the rock, bowed down and bent her knees slightly, then heaved it first to her thighs and next to her chest. She set off around the fold with the rock in her outstretched arms, her pace steady and ever more measured as she walked. She put the boulder down calmly at the end of the wall. The guest swelled with so much anger at this sight that he forgot he was in a hurry, and he gripped the rock again and pushed harder, but as little happened as before. The daughter watched him with clear eyes and blue cheeks and a face an ell broad, just as the ancient sagas describe young troll-women. Then suddenly her stony expression broke and she laughed. The old woman, her grandmother, gave a tiny monotone bleat from somewhere deep inside. Jón Hreggviðsson stood up cursing.
“Little daughter,” said the priest. “Show this man that there are still young maidens in Iceland, but don’t run more than two or three times with this knucklebone around our little pen.”
The girl bent to her task, and although she was lacking in height she was so well-grown down below that no stronger pillars of support could be found under another adolescent girl in all of Borgarfjörður. She grasped the rock and stood straight up, then laughed and leaped around the fold three times as if she were carrying nothing but a sack of wool, and finally set it down again at the end of the wall.
The priest said: “Go now under God’s care, in that gray belt you wear, Jón Hreggviðsson from Rein. You’ve been fully punished in Húsafell.”
When Jón Hreggviðsson was an old man, he said that he’d never in his life felt greater humiliation before God and men than at that moment. He ran off as fast as he could. The yapping pantry-bitch chased him as far north as the river.
12
He ran the whole day and all the next night and drank plenty of water, since Tvídægra contains the most lakes in all of Iceland. He continued to avoid the common routes, but tried to take the shortest path he could from Ok to the northern coast. The weather was calm, though the silence was broken at times by the loud screeching of swans; these vile creatures were all over the heath, sometimes in flocks larger than several flocks of sheep. The sun emerged late in the evening, and he ran and ran until his feet gave way. He hadn’t noticed that he was tired but now he fell exhausted onto a lukewarm patch of reddish loam. He slept deeply and evenly the whole day, first facedown, though later rolling over to face the sky, as the sun continued to shine and the ground grew warm. He awoke when the sun was high in the sky. A flock of ravens had gathered around him and the birds were obviously preparing to peck out his eyes since they thought he was helpless or even dead. He was slightly fatigued but not thirsty; on the other hand he regretted not having eaten more shark meat in Húsafell. The heath hadn’t grown any smaller while he slept.
He felt no more light-footed now than he had before he slept. Yesterday he’d looked over the entire heath, but now it seemed endless. The northern part of the country constantly moved farther away the farther he walked.
Suddenly three bearded men with creels full of trout rode up before him. The lead rider was a wealthy farmer from Borgarfjörður on his way back from a fishing trip on Arnarvatnsheiði. They dismounted and the man from Borgarfjörður asked Jón Hreggviðsson who he was and whether he had supernatural powers. At first his two servants didn’t dare come any closer, but Jón Hreggviðsson wept and kissed all three of them. He said that he was a beggar from the north and was supposed to have been branded for thievery south in Biskupstungur, but had managed to escape. Tears streamed down his face as he wept and prayed aloud to God and begged the men to pity him in the name of the Holy Trinity. They gave him a bite to eat. After slaking his hunger he started reciting prayers of thanksgiving, but the farmer said:
“Aw, shut up, Jón Hreggviðsson.”
Jón Hreggviðsson immediately stopped both crying and reciting prayers, looked up at the men, and asked “What?” in amazement.
“Do you think we Borgarfirthians don’t recognize the people we whip?” asked the man. “Stop going on like that—others could hardly have borne themselves better.”
The two servants had risen instinctively to their feet at this newest disclosure. Jón Hreggviðsson followed suit.
“It looks to me that you’d like to try him out, boys, is that right?” asked the farmer.
“Is that the one who killed the hangman from Bessastaðir?” they asked.
“It is,” said the farmer. “He killed the king’s hangman. Now you’ve got the chance to take revenge, boys.”
They looked at each other. Finally one of them said:
“It wouldn’t hurt the king to get himself a new hangman.”
The other added: “And I’m not looking for the job.”
The third one, the farmer himself, settled the matter formally like this: Because their meeting had taken place in the wilderness, where law and justice, in particular God’s Ten Commandments, have no validity, it would be best if they all sat down and had a sip of brennivín. The men sat back down. Jón Hreggviðsson did the same. He was through crying and praying. Instead he looked down at his bare feet—the tattered shoes the woman had given him had worn away— and started to cleanse his cuts with spittle.
Rain clouds gathered to the north shortly after the men from Borgarfjörður left, but the day had been warm. In no time at all the wind whipped around him and a fog rolled in quickly from the north, like a pugnacious army on the march, glowing red throughout like smoke from burning coals, and then darkening until the sun was consumed and the man enclosed. The cloud was dense and so dark that he could hardly see anything. At first he continued on in the direction he thought the fog had come from, but he soon realized that it was standing still. When he ran for the third time into the same waymark, piled up on top of a low, flat rock, he got a good idea of the extent of his plight. He sat beneath the waymark to think the situation over.
He sat for a long time and twilight came over the heath. When he was thoroughly drenched he recited a verse from the Elder Ballad of Pontus and added an extra line: “The Bessastaðir lice on Hreggviðsson will freeze to death tonight,” then he laughed, cursed, stood up and punched himself, sat back down, and pressed his back up against the waymark. He sat there again for a good long time before he thought he saw a rather large mound-shaped object moving slowly toward him over the heath, like a man riding upon a
black horse. After watching it for a moment he stood up and stepped off the rock onto the peat, but only halfheartedly, since he wasn’t feeling entirely too pleased with his journey. The closer the shapeless mass came, the larger it grew. Jón Hreggviðsson stood stock-still and thought about calling out to the approaching man, but as soon as he opened his mouth, foreboding gripped him and he said nothing—he stood silently upon the peat, openmouthed, peering through the fog. The heap continued to draw nearer and to grow larger, until it was close enough for him to make out its form through the fog: it was a troll-woman, coming for him. He couldn’t tell whether this was the mother or the daughter of the cleric from Húsafell, but he was certain that she was from the same family. Her face was an ell broad and her teeth were about the same size. She was wearing short breeches, with huge pillars beneath them and loins like a horse that’s been allowed to rest and eat well all summer in preparation for its work in the mountains in the fall. Her fists were clenched at her hips and her elbows stuck out, and the look she gave him could hardly be called cheerful. He was pretty sure that if he tried to run away from this woman, she would promptly drag him back, shove him down and break his back on a rock, tear off his limbs, and gnaw the flesh from his bones. And thus the saga of Jón Hreggviðsson would come to a close.
But as he stood there more strength and daring welled up inside him than he’d ever felt before. It was most like being overcome by a berserk frenzy, and he heard himself say these words:
“Because there are indeed women in Iceland,” he said, “it will now be proven to you, you ugly wench, that there are also men in Iceland!”
In a flash he jumped at the monster and the fight began. The struggle was fierce and lengthy and both of them fought with everything they had. He discovered that although she completely overpowered him, she was neither as supple in her limbs nor as quick in her reactions. They drove each other around the heath, and the earth was torn up beneath their feet. The fight went on for most of the night, with hard shoves and heavy punches, scratching and clawing, until Jón Hreggviðsson got a good grip around Drilla’s waist. He bent back, lifted her into the air, and threw her down onto the heath with a loud thump. He fell and landed on top of her, and the ogress wailed terribly in his ear and cursed him with these words:
“Now exploit the fallen, Jón Hreggviðsson, if you are a man!”
When he finally came to, a wind was blowing from the south, forcing the fog down off the heath. He could see Hrútafjörður, its long and narrow mouth opening into Húnaflói, and the mountains of Strandir looming blue against the horizon. He had a vague feeling that things would turn out better than they’d looked just a short time ago.
He didn’t slacken his pace until he’d come as far north as Strandir; he raced equally over heaths and mountain tracks and lied about his name and business. No one said anything about Dutchmen until he reached Trékyllisvík.
No crime was more severely punished than the crime of trading with Dutch fishermen, which made it incredibly difficult to gain the trust of strangers engaged in such business. When Jón Hreggviðsson asked about the Dutch, people would naturally point at the tanned sails of the banned doggers lying off the coast, and when he explained what he was doing here in the north they said that his case looked pretty much hopeless; the Dutch, they said, never took on men as cargo, apart from the odd child that they bought from the natives for fosterage, as they called it—especially red-haired boys. It wasn’t until the folk in Trékyllisvík knew for certain all the details of Jón Hreggviðsson’s circumstances and had found out exactly what sort of hardened criminal he was that they thought about lending him any sort of assistance. Then one night when the doggers were close to shore one of the farmers rowed the dead man out in his boat to them. The skipper looked disapprovingly at this black-haired beggar who’d been reduced to such poor shape during his stay at Bessastaðir that he wouldn’t even do for shark bait. When the man from Trékyllisvík made the skipper aware that Jón Hreggviðsson had murdered the Danish king’s hangman it didn’t take long for the news to spread over the entire ship. The sailors shouted happily and hugged Jón Hreggviðsson and kissed him and bade him welcome: the Danish king was in the habit of sending his warships up the coast to sink their ships at every opportunity, or else to seize them under suspicion of trade for profit, and because of this the doggermen hated this king most of all men.
They brought the man on board, gave him a line, and let him fish, though the stocky little ship was already well laden. Jón Hreggviðsson didn’t understand a word of their language but when they handed him a tin full to the brim with food he bent over it eagerly and wasted no time emptying it. In the evening they came with a pailful of seawater and set it down in front of him, but since he thought they were making fun of him he took offense and kicked it over. They rushed at him, tied his hands and feet and tore off his clothes, cut off his hair and beard and rubbed something similar to tar onto his head, then poured seawater again and again over the naked man while they laughed and shouted, and two boys in sabots danced a ring around him while another blew on a flute. Jón Hreggviðsson admitted later that right about then he was convinced that it was all over for him. But after working him over like this for a while they untied him and handed him a cloth to dry himself off. Next they handed him underclothes, wadmal breeches, a sweater, and sabots, but no socks, and they stuck a wooden pipe in his mouth and let him smoke. He started singing the Ballad of Pontus.
On the next day Jón Hreggviðsson awoke to find the ocean’s rim grazing the high summits of the mountains of home—they’d put out to sea. He cursed his country and bade the devil sink it.
Then he continued singing the Ballad of Pontus.
13
Rotterdam, on the Maas River, is a great market town, etched with canals that the Dutch call grachten. The canals are used as anchorage by huge numbers of fishermen and tradesmen, who enjoy the fact that commerce in Rotterdam is unregulated. The Dutch are free to travel in their ships across the seas and throughout the whole world, each as he pleases, some to buy wares, others to fish, and the whole country is ruled by a single magnificent duke. The harbor was full of ships being fitted out for sea; some were tarred and others stained, and there was scarcely a cockle that wasn’t in what could be called the best of shape—it was obvious what sort of clever and thrifty men inhabited the place.
The skipper asked Jón Hreggviðsson what he was planning to do now that they’d arrived. He mentioned Copenhagen. They tried to make it clear to him with miming gestures that he’d be beheaded if he went there. He fell to his knees and wept and invoked the name of the Danish king and tried in this way to communicate to them that he wanted to gain an audience with His Most Gracious Majesty and plead for mercy. This they could not understand. They’d gotten along extremely well with him on board and wanted to take him with them on their next fishing trip to Iceland, and had hoped that he would quickly learn their language so that he could translate for them when they did business with the Icelanders. He, however, wouldn’t budge.
They asked: “You killed the Danish king’s hangman, didn’t you?”
He said: “I didn’t.”
Then they felt that he’d cheated them: he’d come to them as the enemy of their enemy, the Danish king, and now he pretended to want to go meet with this sourpuss of a king. Some of them said that he should be dragged behind the ship’s keel as ballast or else be forced to run the gamut, but they finally let the matter stand by threatening to kill him if he didn’t leave immediately. He scurried onto land. He was relieved that they hadn’t driven him right out of his pants, sabots, and sweater.
The streets of the town were laid out in peculiar curves not unlike the gaps in worm-chewed timber, and people’s houses were packed closely together, the gables like belts of stone on mountain slopes and the gableheads like peaks. The streets most resembled maggot-infested cesspools, full of people, horses, and carriages, and at first it looked to him like everyone was on the run, as if the tow
n were on fire. He was mesmerized by the horses: they were, next to whales, the largest creatures he had ever seen.
In Holland everyone was either a great aristocrat or at least arrogant, and one could go a long way without seeing anyone beneath the rank of bailiff, if one could reckon them by their clothing: in every direction he looked there were perukes and feathered hats, Spanish collars and Danish shoes, and cloaks so wide that he could have cut from one of them enough clothing for nearly all the destitute children in the parish of Akranes. Some were so stately that they drove in carved and glistening carriages of the most elegant craftsmanship, with windows and damask curtains. Throughout the streets drifted women of high degree, audaciously dressed, and slender ladies bedecked with all sorts of haughty ornamentation: ruffs hanging out over their shoulders and brimmed hats just as broad, wide pleated skirts and high-heeled shoes with golden clasps over the instep; they held their skirts up coyly, showing off their feet.
Jón Hreggviðsson had one silver coin in his purse when he arrived in Holland. Since day was drawing to a close he started to search for lodging. The lanterns that hung over every door cast a gleam onto the half-darkened, twilight streets, and in a narrow lane surrounded by antique houses that seemed to bend toward him he saw a woman standing in a doorway; she had a cheery complexion and a strong voice, and she asked the farmer the news. They started chatting and she invited him in. The way to her abode led through the house, along confined and florid corridors, then through a courtyard where silent cats sat arching their backs and pretending not to notice the others, each on its own doorstep. When they arrived at her room she invited the guest to sit beside her on the bed. She spoke to him excitedly, then took hold of his purse and felt about in it until she found the coin. At this she grew even more excited. She reached in again and again to feel the coin and told him how beautiful it was. Jón Hreggviðsson found the woman’s mannerisms to be comparable to those of the women in Iceland who are considered best in most aspects, but at the same time she was extremely friendly, fleshly and flippant, and a bit musky in the bosom; he was convinced that she was the wife of a priest or a provost here in Rotterdam. Since she was sitting so close to him he thought she might be hard of hearing, so he raised his voice and tried to let her know that he was famished, but she placed a finger on his lips to indicate that he didn’t need to speak so loudly. Then she went to her pantry and brought out cold roasted veal, bread and cheese, and some peculiar, bittersweet red fruits, along with a tankard of wine; he was sure that he’d never enjoyed a better meal. The woman ate with him, and then they had sex. The fishermen at sea had made sure that he did more than his share of the work, allowing him little time for rest, so now after all this luxury he grew incredibly drowsy and fell into a deep sleep alongside the woman in her bed. During the night two ruffians came in and started beating him, and when he jumped up they grabbed him and carried him out and threw him like carrion into the street; and thus disappeared Jón Hreggviðsson’s coin.
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