“As I’m sure your Benevolence knows, our Highness has tried many times to sell or to pawn the oft-mentioned island of Iceland,” said Arnas Arnæus. “Twice before in just over a decade, for example, he sent a legate to discuss the same matter with the king of England, as one can read in the court documents. The wealthy merchant from Hamburg, Uffelen, informed me yesterday that it has pleased our Grace’s Most Clement Heart to put that country, if it can even be called that, up for sale once again.”
At this news the statesman slumped back down into his chair, stared stiffly ahead, and turned pale. Finally he stammered, from somewhere within his gloom:
“This is caprice, this is treachery, this is a wicked deed.”
Arnas Arnæus continued to smoke. Finally the statesman was able to summon the strength of will to stand up, and he fetched a bottle and glasses from a cupboard and poured wine for himself and his guest. After taking a drink he said:
“Permit me to impugn the king’s right to sell the country behind the backs of those of us in the Chancery. That would amount to stealing the country; and not only from the Chancery, but also from the Company. What does the Ministry of Finance have to say about this? Or Gyldenløve, the governor of Iceland?”
“Your Benevolence must surely be aware,” said Arnas Arnæus, “that after the papacy was defeated in Iceland and replaced by Lutheranism, the king became the owner of all church property in his kingdom; thus all of the greatest estates in Iceland, in addition to thousands of smaller farmsteads, have come under his control. Just one more command from him and he would also own whatever lands are left. What our Most Benign Grace does with his estates is entirely up to him. And would it not significantly lighten the load resting upon the High Chancery if this miserable land were taken off its conscience? The Iceland merchants would no longer perish on the arduous sea voyage. The Company would be relieved of a great deal of its burdens in providing charity to my needy folk.”
The statesman was beginning to rage. Now he stood right before his guest, shook a quivering fist in his face, and said:
“This is another one of your damned deceptions; false; a scheme; a plot; you’ve duped the king; there’s not a single Danish counselor or dignitary who would advise the king to sell Iceland, for the simple reason that no matter how high a price he could get for it this once, he could make much more profit from it in the long run through fair trading practices.”
“We must first attend to our most pressing needs,” said Arnas Arnæus. “The costume balls must go on; this costs money. An excellent costume ball gulps down all the revenues gathered in one year from all the Icelandic cloisters, your Benevolence. In addition, our Grace must make war upon the Swedes in order to increase Denmark’s renown; this also costs money.”
“And the Icelanders themselves,” gasped the statesman, somewhere between rage and terror, “what do they have to say?”
“Icelanders,” said Arnæus. “Who wants the opinion of an ignominious folk? Their one and only task is to retain their stories in memory until a better day.”
“Your Excellency must excuse me,” said the statesman in conclusion, “but urgent business calls me out into the city. I have, to wit, come into possession of a new mistress. Would my lord perhaps like to ride with me?”
Arnas Arnæus had stood up, and had stopped smoking.
“My carriage is also waiting outside,” he said.
“By the way, with regard to the shipment of fishing line on the Hólmship,” said the statesman, as he put on his cloak, “I shall look into the matter. The Chancery has always been willing to take into consideration the Icelanders’ requests for pig iron, sacramental wine, and cord. It might even be possible to get more ships to sail this year than last.”
6
In the spring following the epidemic the Alþingi was so poorly attended that the court cases were left unadjudged. From many districts not a single man came to the assembly. It became necessary to postpone the executions of criminals, since their Christian executioners had also been swept away by the sudden terror of the pox, and the offers made by crazed youths to behead the men and drown the women for their own amusement were not taken seriously there by the river that takes its name from the ax of justice. One woman from the Múli district out east was done away with, however, a certain Hallfríður who had had a child by a man named Ólafur who had been beheaded the year before, but no others from the same district had shown up except for the man who had escorted the woman to the assembly, and he absolutely refused to take her all the way back to the opposite end of the country alive, over so many lakes and rivers. Prudent men solved his problem by drowning the woman in Drekkingarhylur.
Now the story turns back to old Jón Hreggviðsson, sitting at home at his farm on Rein. It was no great wonder, considering the current circumstances, that he was in no hurry to obtain a new Supreme Court appeal as he’d been ordered to do by the Commissarial Court. Other things occupied his mind. Those blundering authorities who still showed signs of life also had other matters besides Jón Hreggviðsson to attend to for the time being. Seasons passed. Finally, however, when the decimation slackened and the countryfolk’s pain was momentarily alleviated, the farmer heard rumor that the authorities who had replaced their fallen comrades hadn’t completely forgotten his old case. No one in the country doubted that the commissary’s mission had been of a peculiar nature: he’d been made the judge of judges, and his verdicts could not be appealed. Those whom he convicted had no hope whatsoever of being exonerated. Those whom he exonerated were to suffer no further harm. Things proceeded in such a way that by the time his work was concluded it was more obvious who had fallen than who had been redeemed. The redeemed had disappeared. The fact that they had been freed was evidenced nowhere. The man who had lowered the high to raise the low was accorded not a single public show of gratitude. People did, however, bemoan the repudiation and fall of Magistrate Eydalín.
At the conclusion of the Commissarial Court convened at Öxará during the spring before the epidemic, Jón Hreggviðsson was the only man who returned home less sure of his fate, since he’d been both acquitted and convicted at the same time. His case was without a doubt the basis for one of the heaviest charges made against Eydalín and nothing else played such a significant role in the magistrate’s repudiation than the death sentence he had passed ages ago against this man, based on evidence that could be considered dubious at best. On the other hand, there was not a single shred of positive evidence to support the charges made by the commissary against Eydalín, that he had, sixteen years ago, made an arrangement with Jón Hreggviðsson not to make public the Supreme Court appeal that he’d brought home with him from Copenhagen. And because there were no witnesses to testify to this arrangement, Christ’s farmer had been ordered to procure a new Supreme Court appeal so that his case could be reopened and retried.
After Eydalín had fallen and the pox had sheared the see of Skálholt of its adornment and honor by putting to rest the bishop and his wife, the magistrate’s daughter, and after a number of other noblemen who were in any position to prosecute him further had disappeared, Jón Hreggviðsson felt that there were few remaining who would blame him if he were to take his time in procuring a new appeal. As it happened, however, things didn’t turn out quite as the farmer expected.
The second spring after the epidemic an assembly was held at Öxará, and this time enough manpower was present to facilitate the execution of criminals and the drafting of a new petition to the king. The country’s high court was presided over by Jón Eyjólfsson, vice-magistrate and bailiff, as well as the regent Beyer from Bessastaðir.
The assembly was drawing to a close and there was still no sign that old lawsuits would be reviewed this session. The spring was cruel and cold; apathy and reluctance characterized the few members of the court who had taken the trouble of riding to the assembly over the half-dead countryside, throughout which the surviving remnants of stricken humanity managed to totter along, dizzied from the
force of the blow. But one night toward the end of the assembly, after the members of the court had crawled under their sheepskins, a visitor on horseback arrived at Þingvellir. It was a woman. Her entourage, consisting of three grooms and a good number of horses, had ridden in across the plain from the east, from Kaldidalur, the natural boundary between the country’s quarters. The pilgrimess dismounted near the regent’s booth and went straight in to meet Beyer, the governor’s proxy. She was there only a short time before a servant was sent to wake the vice-magistrate and escort him back to the regent’s booth. Whatever happened at this meeting was never discussed with outsiders, and the visitor rode away from Þingvellir a short time later.
One other event occurred that night: two of the vice-magistrate’s servants were woken and sent with papers west to Skagi to find the farmer Jón Hreggviðsson from Rein and to bring him to the assembly.
It was a rather beggarly set of authorities that reinstated the charges against Christ’s tenant two days later at that dreary place, Þingvellir by Öxará. Even the Danish proxy’s booth was a shambles, as if the royal power no longer gave any thought to protecting its image of authoritarian splendor against Iceland’s storms of wind and rain, which were so inseparable from its folk, crooked and frostbitten pieces of timberwood in the shape of humans. Iceland’s weather was a mill that left nothing unpulverized but for the country’s basalt peaks. It uprooted and demolished all human works, wiping away not only their color but also their form. The florid bargeboards of the royal lodging were either splintered or torn off, anything iron corroded, the door thin and warped, the windowpanes cracked, the window shutters wrenched off their hinges, the king’s seal for the most part washed away. And the governor’s Danish proxy, the regent Beyer, was completely drunk almost every day throughout the course of the assembly.
The high court was convened in the dilapidated cottage that had once been called a courthouse. Its roof had been torn off, giving wind and rain free range throughout the hall. Mire that had run from the turf walls onto the rotten floorplanks hadn’t been mucked out. Inward along the floorboards hobbled Jón Hreggviðsson from Rein, gray-haired, groaning, and puffing.
The vice-magistrate Jón Eyjólfsson asked how it came about that he had not heeded the duty prescribed to him by the Especial Royal Judiciary here at Öxará, that he appeal his case to the Supreme Court.
Jón Hreggviðsson removed his knitted cap, revealing his white hair to the bench. He stood bowed and humble before his judges, not presuming to look up at them, said that he was an old man, weak-eyed and eared and laid up by rheumatism; whatever sense he’d possessed as a youth was by now completely benumbed. He begged, due to his inability to defend himself, to be assigned an advocate. His request was denied but his response registered. They then moved hastily on to the next case, since it was now the final day of the assembly and it was urgent that the proceedings be concluded as quickly as possible before the judges became too drunk, as they usually did around nones. Jón Hreggviðsson felt fairly sure that nothing more would be done in his case at this assembly, so he took his jade and rode north toward Leggjabrjótur and home. When the judges did indeed find time to return to his case he was nowhere to be found. A ruling in his case was called for in his absence, without further argument, and the verdict issued was worded as follows: whereas this man Jón is renowned for his boorish, wicked, and dishonest behavior, and whereas he, accused of murder, has failed to comply with the stipulations set down in the letter of safe-conduct issued by His Royal Majesty and in the travel pass issued by the king’s military, and has likewise neglected to publish the old Supreme Court appeal, and finally has recalcitrantly refused to procure a new appeal as ordered by the Commissarial Court, but instead has abandoned the assembly, showing his unwillingness to fulfill his obligation to wait and defend himself in his case, the said Jón Hreggviðsson is hereby to be lawfully arrested and placed under the custody of the bailiff in Þverá and put aboard ship and transported, at the first opportunity this summer, to the Bremerholm workhouse, there to spend his days in penal servitude to the castle commandant; in addition, half of his property is hereby forfeited to His Royal Majesty.
7
One day Jón Hreggviðsson, dressed only in his underclothes, was standing out in the homefield at Rein mowing, when two men came riding in toward him over the unmown grass. The farmer stopped and stormed toward them, brandishing his scythe and threatening them with murder for trampling down the grass. His ferocious dog followed suit. The men were unmoved, and informed the farmer that they’d been sent by the bailiff in Skagi to arrest him. He shoved the scythe blade-up into the grass, walked over to them, stuck his fists together, and proffered his wrists.
“I’m ready,” he said.
They said that they wouldn’t be shackling him for the time being.
“What’re you waiting for?” he asked, annoyed at the typical Icelandic sluggishness that made them act as if they had nothing better to do than waste the day in his meadow.
“You want to go dressed like that?” they said.
“That’s my business,” he said. “Which horse do I ride?”
“Don’t you want to say good-bye to your family?” they said.
“What’s it to you?” he said. “Let’s go!”
This was a completely different man than the one who had stood bent and shaking, sighing heavily and on the verge of tears, before his judges at the Alþingi.
He jumped up onto the spare horse that they’d brought, and his dog bit at the horse’s hock.
“There will be no abductions today,” announced the man in charge—they would ride to the farmhouse and report their errand to the farmer’s kinsmen.
The farm was nestled up against the foot of the mountain, its windows as sprightly as eyes peering out from the thick, grass-grown turf walls, its doors low enough that folk had to stoop to go in or out, a paved footpath out front. Smoke reeked from the chimney. His wife was long since dead. The half-wit was nowhere to be seen—people believed that the farmer, its father, had killed it. The leprous sisters had also passed away, leaving no one on the farm to praise God. The farmer had had another daughter to replace the one whom he’d found lying on her bier when he returned from abroad, and this nearly nubile girl came out from the kitchen and stood upon the footpath; she was grimy with soot and scarred from the pox, dark-lashed and dark-browed with her father’s gleam in her black eyes, barefoot and sunburnt and clad in a short smock of wadmal, her knees fat. Her smock was decorated with ash, specks of manure, and gnarls of peat.
The men said: “We’ve been ordered to take your father into custody and to put him aboard ship in Ólafsvík.”
The dog had grown even more agitated—it bristled and yelped and pissed on the wall.
“I’d rather see you dead,” said the girl. “Can’t you see how old this man is? Look at his white hair.”
“Shut up, girl,” said Jón Hreggviðsson.
“Papa,” she said. “Don’t you want to put on your trousers?”
“No,” he said. “But bring me some cord.”
She knew where he kept a small amount of fishing line hidden, and returned in a moment with a decent-sized hank of this precious commodity. The bailiff’s men looked on in awe and respect. His daughter also brought her father’s jacket, which reached down to midcalf, and persuaded him to put it on as he sat there on horseback, then he wove the cord around himself a number of times with quick hand movements. His daughter stood watching him. He finished girding himself by tying a knot in the cord.
“Papa, what shall I do when you’re gone?” said the girl.
“Put the dog inside!” he ordered violently.
She called to the dog, but the dog wouldn’t be fooled and walked no more than half the distance toward her, its tail sinking. She put on a gentle face and went to try to grab it, but it slunk out to the homefield with its tail between its legs.
“I’ll kill you, Kolur, if you don’t stay!” said the girl.
&n
bsp; The dog lay down and started trembling. She walked over to it, grabbed it by the scruff of the neck, and dragged it whining down the path to one of the outer houses, then shoved it inside and bolted the door. By the time she finished this task the men had ridden from the yard.
“Bless you, papa,” she called out after him, but he didn’t hear her. The horses trotted out along the lane leading up to the farmhouse; her father rode in front, kicking at his stirrups. Two farmhands working in the homefield, a man and a woman, stopped and watched in silence as their householder was taken away.
They stopped for the night in Andakíll at the home of the parish administrator and were given lodging in a storehouse. The two men stood guard over their prisoner and late that night tried to engage him in small talk, but he said he was old and tired of people. He said he regretted that the pox hadn’t killed everyone in the country. They asked him whether he knew any ballads.
“Not for entertaining others,” he said.
Early the next morning they pressed on. They rode with the farmer west over Mýrar, then out along Snæfellsnes, taking the path over Fróðarheiði to Ólafsvík. They arrived late in the evening in a drizzling rain. A merchantman lay at anchor in the harbor. They dismounted in front of the trading booth, announced their business to the merchant’s servants, showed their papers, and asked to see the ship’s captain. This particular individual came in his own good time, and he asked them what was new. They said they’d been sent by the bailiff in Þverá and had brought a criminal sentenced to hard labor at Bremerholm. They handed the captain the bailiff’s letters confirming this. The skipper was fat, blue-faced, and illiterate, and he summoned someone to read and translate the letters for him. When the recitation was finished he asked, “Where are the court transcripts?”
Iceland's Bell Page 39