Wayward Heroes Read online

  On the cliff face where Þorgeir now hung, there was neither a shelf nor a spur nor any other toehold, nor any chink or handhold by which he could heave himself up. His only life-thread now was one pitiful stalk of cravewort.

  As for Þormóður, he had clambered down onto another ledge to gather this herb, and lingered there doing so for quite some time. He and Þorgeir could not see each other. Upon cutting his fill, Þormóður tied what he had gathered into a bundle, placed it on his back, and hoisted himself to the top of the cliff. The weather was calm and the sea still, and the sun shone in a clear sky.

  Þormóður lay down on the overhang to wait for his sworn brother, but the cries of the seabirds lulled him to sleep. In fact, the sworn brothers were not that far away from each other – if Þorgeir had called out even a little loudly, Þorgeir could easily have heard him. Yet on this, the old books all tell the same story: nothing could have been further from Þorgeir’s mind at that moment, hanging as he was from the cliff, than to call his sworn brother’s name only to beg him for help.

  Þormóður, the books say, now sleeps soundly on Hornbjarg, eventually waking late in the day. He wonders about his sworn brother, and starts calling to him from over the brink. Þorgeir does not answer. Þormóður climbs down to a ledge, whence he shouts loudly, startling birds into flight all over the cliff. Finally, from down below him, Þorgeir replies: “Stop scaring the birds with your shouting!”

  Þormóður asks what is taking him so long.

  Þorgeir replies, saying: “It matters little what is taking me so long.”

  Þormóður asks if he is finished gathering cravewort.

  Þorgeir Hávarsson then gives the reply that has long been remembered in the Vestfirðir: “I think that I will be finished when the one in my hand comes out.”

  Þormóður begins to suspect that not all is as should be with his sworn brother’s cutting of cravewort, and he clambers hastily down to the cleft from which Þorgeir has fallen. He peers over its edge and spies his sworn brother hanging from the cliff. The cravewort stalk is quite frayed, and on the verge of breaking. Þormóður tosses a rope to Þorgeir and manages to pull him up to the cleft. They then climb the narrow path to the top of the cliff.

  Þorgeir Hávarsson did not thank his sworn brother for saving him, nor did he express gratitude for it in any other way – in fact, it seemed as if he harbored some sort of grudge against Þormóður for the incident, and things grew colder between the sworn brothers from that point on.

  20

  ONE EVENING, some farmhands from the district rowed a little boat up under the cliff. With them were three men from other parts. Þorgeir recognized them as belonging to the household of his kinsman Þorgils Arason of Reykjahólar, and leading them was one of Þorgils’ work foremen. The newcomers greeted the sworn brothers amicably. Þorgeir Hávarsson offered his apologies for the lack of seats more comfortable than sea-beaten rocks, yet invited them to sit down all the same, and ordered one of his men to cut them pieces of seal blubber and another to look after their boat.

  These men said that they had ridden from Reykjahólar over heaths and glaciers, and had left their horses nearby. They had been sent here to the north by Farmer Þorgils of Reykjahólar, to deliver the message that Þorgeir Hávarsson had been sentenced to outlawry by the Öxaráþing for the slaying of Gils Másson, and was thus under obligation to leave the country that summer. They said that reparation had been paid for the sworn brothers’ other killings. The chieftains in the Vestfirðir had helped bring about the settlement, and the penalty had been paid by Bessi Halldórsson for his son’s part in Þorgeir’s deeds. The messengers also brought word from Þorgils that a trading vessel down south in Rif lay at the ready to sail to the Orkney Isles. Þorgils Arason owned a share in the ship, and it was his will that the sworn brothers make their way immediately to it and leave the country.

  “Is it not obvious that we should do as your kinsman Þorgils says?” asked Þormóður. “According to the law, any person in the land has the right to kill us.”

  “We will do as no man says,” said Þorgeir Hávarsson. “We would be wise, however, to seize the opportunity to go and search in foreign lands for kings or other worthy chieftains who might desire the service of heroes and skalds. I am tired of listening to the grumbling of churls in a kingless land.”

  They had stored their wares under small piles of rocks or in boxes made of driftwood: seal blubber, whale blubber, and whale oil, as well as some homespun that they had extorted from farmers. Fish and seal meat they had dried on rocks or hung on racks.

  “We have good wares here – we cannot leave without these spoils,” said Þormóður.

  The messengers said that they did not have the horses to carry their goods over steep heaths and arduous mountain paths. “How did you procure these things?”

  Þorgeir said that the wares they had gathered here had been procured by better means than most others, having been fought for most manfully and valiantly, and having cost several doughty men their lives – though some of it had been caught by their slaves or taken by force from cowards. However, since the sworn brothers’ minds were now on more momentous things than stockfish and whale oil, he said that it was of no consequence to him if this booty were left here for seagulls. Yet when it came time for them all to board the boat, their men sat themselves down on rocks and said that they would not move – they wished to remain here instead. These men were clad mainly in tatters, and their shoes were all worn thin.

  Þorgeir Hávarsson said: “I can see that you, being the slaves that you are, look more to your bellies than to the honor you have in following heroes – and no valiant lad lets himself be tied down by cattle he may have slaughtered or oil that he has drained from other people’s whales. It is a greater haul than any other to know that somewhere, you have gotten the better of most others. Now let us be off, knowing that we never once needed to beg mercy of or make peace with any man, or to agree to any terms apart from those that we set for others.”

  They replied: “Now you shirk your promises to us, intending to leave to the birds the wealth that we toiled and scraped to gain for you, and to drag us, unarmed, down unknown paths. Yet we have risked our lives for you, and what little honor we have. These rags wrapped around us are more tattered now than when we joined your company, and they were shoddy then. There are also some in your company whose frostbite from the winter has not fully healed – and is in fact festering. Are we now to pay for not being as smart as Lúsoddi, who chose to flee with the man here on Hornstrandir who was cleverer than you, Þorgeir, and who could have been your slayer if he had felt like beheading you when you slept beneath his ax?”

  Þorgeir Hávarsson said: “It looks to me as if we should cut down these miscreants here by this cliff.”

  Þorgils Arason’s men wanted nothing more than to get to their horses as quickly as possible and ride south straightaway, rather than be caught up in slaughter. They bade the sworn brothers not rattle their weapons at these vagrants and needlessly waste their own time – the tide was rising beneath the cliffs, and the oarsmen would have more than enough work holding the boat steady. In the end, the sworn brothers stepped aboard, and their ragamuffin men, escaping death for the time being, dug into the provisions that the heroes left behind.

  They now rowed to an inlet where the messengers had left their horses, made them ready and rode off, taking routes over mountain passes, high glaciers, and heaths that their horses could handle. They spent the nights in the fjords. In the countryside there, it was thought a grand event when these heroes, Þorgeir Hávarsson and Þormóður Kolbrúnarskáld, rode by. Young people thronged them to have a look, while women peeked out from thresholds.

  It is said that the riders were much in need of food when they came down from Drangajökull Glacier. They found lodging for the night in Skjaldfannardalur Valley. They were brought cods’ heads, incredibly hard, as the residents stood in the doorways and timidly observed the visitors. The co
ds’ heads were hardly filling, and Þormóður took to reciting bawdy verses as he tore pieces from his, while Þorgeir flung the head-bones and gills violently to the floor, rattling the walls and rafters. The sworn brothers were pointed to a dark passageway leading to the sleeping room, but they said that they would sleep where they were, and neither removed his clothing nor rose from his seat; instead, they propped their shields on their knees and leaned their axes on their shoulders before dozing off. Near midnight, however, Þormóður was woken by his ax falling from his grip onto the bench, and he got up to go see what women he could find.

  As for Þorgeir, he wakes to a little ray of light shining down on his nose through the window in the roof, and he sneezes loudly at the pungent smell of the hall’s earthen walls, common in the summer. He looks around, but does not see his sworn brother Þormóður, so he takes his weapons and goes outside.

  The air is cold and there is dew upon the grass, and the sun is rising over the glacier. The household is still asleep, apart from the farmer’s son, who has come down to let the ewes out of their night-time enclosure and herd them away from the homefield – where he spies the visitors’ horses standing. He calls to his dogs and sets them on the horses, but the horses are hungry from their long journey and will not stop grazing. Some face down the dogs. When the farmer’s son sees this, he loses his temper and drives his spear into one of the horses. This happens just as Þorgeir Hávarsson steps out of the house. He raises his spear straightaway and goes down to the foot of the homefield to have a word with the farmer’s son. “Now,” he says, “you must wield your spear against a man, rather than a four-footed beast.”

  The spear that the farmer’s son brandishes is hardly useful for anything but prodding stubborn bulls – and some books say that it was only an alpenstock. Nor does the lad have a shield with which to defend himself, so he decides to retreat into the lamb shed located at the foot of the homefield.

  Þorgeir pursues him. Behind the lamb shed is an enclosure for hay, empty now at the start of the summer, and the farmer’s son retreats there. The doorway from the lamb shed into the enclosure is too narrow and low for so big a man as Þorgeir, and he is disinclined to bend down. Instead, he adopts the plan that always seems to work in the old stories: to tear his way in through the roof – which, in this case, is patches of turf laid over posts, to shield the hay ricks in winter.

  Þorgeir Hávarsson stands on the wall and the farmer’s son crouches in the enclosure, and both jab their spears at each other through the turf. They keep this up until the shaft of the farmer’s son’s spear breaks, at which point Þorgeir jumps into the enclosure through a gap in the turf, hoists his ax over the lad, and starts hacking at him so furiously that it looks as if seven axes are whirling in the air. The lad slumps against the earthen wall, bleeding from innumerable wounds – before giving up the ghost.

  At around the same time, Þormóður Kolbrúnarskáld crawls out from one of the farm’s windows, and is standing in the farmyard when Þorgeir returns from this deed. They rouse their fellows, declaring that they have had enough of sleeping in the dens of churls, and say that they are ready to be on their way. Upon mounting his horse, Þorgeir walks it to the farm door and declares himself the slayer of the farmer’s son, adding that the fetches of champions, the raven and the eagle, have been given their tidbits, and vengeance has been taken for last night’s disgrace, when heroes and skalds had been made to eat cods’ heads. Then the others mount, and they ride off together.

  The day was bright with sunshine and a breeze blew off the glacier, and the sworn brothers were in a festive mood. Yet as they drew near to the middle of this district, their path split into numerous other ones, making it difficult for them to know which was best. The sworn brothers rode ahead of their companions, and they came to some paths by the banks of a river. As they discussed which to take, they noticed a man walking against the wind, with a bundle of brushwood on his back. The wind pushed hard against the man’s burden, causing him to stagger. Þorgeir Hávarsson called to this man across the river and asked his name and where the paths led. The wind and the noise of the water, however, prevented the man from hearing the travelers’ words, and he made no reply. Þorgeir called out several more times, but the man bearing the brushwood continued on his way without answering.

  Þorgeir said: “That man is more than a middling fool to refuse even to look at Þorgeir Hávarsson and his sworn brother.”

  “I suspect that this man is not very sharp-sighted,” said Þormóður, “and he looks to me to be unsteady of step, as blind men are wont.”

  “Then why does he not answer when those who are the greatest heroes in the Vestfirðir call out to him? I will certainly put up with no taunt from him,” said Þorgeir.

  “Perhaps he is deaf?” said Þormóður.

  Þorgeir said: “Where does it say in the old tales that a man saved himself by pretending to be blind and deaf when men of might rode by? I feel certain that the man both heard us and saw us, and will now think us weak if we do not catch him.”

  He drove his horse into the river, rode over to the man, and thrust his spear into his chest, and the man, sorely wounded, fell beneath his burden. He clutched at his chest and groaned. Þorgeir leapt from his horse and started hacking at the man’s neck to take his head off, though the task went incredibly slowly due to the dullness of his weapon, despite the champion’s firm intent. Finally, however, the head came off its trunk, and the man lay there dead on the ground in two pieces, his bundle of brushwood next to him. Following this, Þorgeir rode back over the river to Þormóður. At that moment, their fellow travelers from Reykjahólar arrived. They declared this a great deed, done by a true hero. On a hill a short distance away stood a little farm. A woman was raking the homefield, and children played by a creek. The group rode to the farm and announced the slaying, saying that the hero with the stoutest heart in the Vestfirðir had come. As everywhere else, the folk there marveled at how dauntless a man Þorgeir Hávarsson was.

  Later that evening, after following the shoreline for some time, the travelers came to a shoal beneath the coastal cliffs. At ebb tide, it was possible to walk with dry feet there beneath the cliffs, but at flood tide it was impassable by men or horses. The company had one of two choices: either wait until ebb tide, or follow barely negotiable paths over the mountains. When they approached the shoal, the tide was coming in. The men from Reykjahólar rode in front, while the sworn brothers lagged far behind, conversing about the things that were always foremost in their minds: Þormóður proclaimed the happiest man to be the one who took delight in women’s charms by night, while Þorgeir insisted that he was the one who charged boldly into combat by light of day. As before, Þorgeir declared the man felled by the weapons of his enemy to be better off than one who truckled to a woman.

  As they were bandying these ideas, they came to the shoal. They dismounted their horses, tightened their girths, and let them graze, before Þorgeir said, quietly: “Although you are a man who loves women, Þormóður, you are clearly the most skilled with weapons of any man that I know. In not one single contest have I seen a man knock you off your feet, and at times I find myself pondering which of us sworn brothers would be the victor if we tried our strength against each other.”

  Þormóður then said: “I have often lain awake by your side as you slept, Þorgeir, and watched your chest move to the beating of the heart that I know to be braver than all others, and gazed at your neck, knowing that no stronger pillar has ever borne a man’s head.”

  Þorgeir said: “Why did you not behead me then?”

  “You have no need to ask, friend,” said Þormóður. “You might well remember when you came upon me conversing by night with the woman I esteem higher than many others: it took but one word from your lips to make me leave her and board ship with you, despite the winds being as cold as they were. When I watch you sleeping, I find most laughable the augury sent me by the Spear-Lord, Mímir’s friend, that one day I should h
old your bloody head in my living hands. Grant that then, these slender, weak arms of mine carry out the vengeance that we swore in our oath to the earth. And you shall ride first across the shoal.”

  Þorgeir looked and saw that the tide was much higher, and that their companions were riding speedily ahead. He did not wait, but drove his horse into the flood tide between the cliff and a breaker roaring in. Þormóður paused to see how it would go for his sworn brother – and soon the water was higher than his horse’s loins, forcing it to swim. Finally the man made it, just as the wave crashed against the cliff. Þorgeir dismounted on the opposite side of the shoal and beckoned Þormóður to cross. Yet when Þormóður went to mount his horse, it ran off up the mountain – and the sea between the sworn brothers was now impassable. Þormóður cupped his hands round his mouth and called out:

  “I do not know which of us would win in single combat with the other, but the words that you have spoken now will divide our company and fellowship, and I sense clearly that you have not yet come to terms with me saving your life this summer.”

  “I did not mean all that I said!” shouted Þorgeir Hávarsson.

  “You said what you were thinking,” replied Þormóður, “and what you no doubt have thought oft times before. And now we shall part for the time being. Fare you well.”

  At that, Þormóður turned back, walked to a nearby farm, and asked for conveyance home to his father in Laugaból.

  21

  AS FOR ÞORGEIR Hávarsson, he rode south to Rif and boarded the waiting ship, in which Þorgils Arason owned a share. The merchants were of the sort that did business with others if the occasion presented itself, but otherwise, in fine Norse style, plundered in places where no one seemed likely to defend their possessions. The first few days of their voyage they had clement weather, before the wind picked up enough to make them think they would soon reach Shetland, where they intended to trade their wares for silver. Just as they assumed they were nearing land, however, the wind died, leaving them in a damp, dreary, stubborn sea fog. In those days, seafarers did not know of the lodestone, their troubles thus being multiplied when the Star was hidden. They lost course and drifted aimlessly for days, before their journey ended with them wrecking on some rocks, and their ship filling and sinking along with its sailyards and rigging. Many men perished there, including the shipmasters, who all drowned. Accounts say that seven men survived this shipwreck, after washing onto a barren skerry in the night, exhausted and destitute. Þorgeir Hávarsson was among the survivors. He was wearing a tunic and was girded with the short, single-edged sword that he always had with him. That night, a man asked him how he was faring. Þorgeir Hávarsson replied: