Independent People Read online

  From that day forward the mistress Gunnvor began to prosper, and everyone believed that it was due to her evil compact with Kolumkilli, and soon she was the owner of many good horses.

  There was much journeying through the district in those days, both in the summertime when men went to the fishing undei Jokull, and in the springtime, when men journeyed from afar to Jokull to buy their stockfish. As time went on, however, it was rumoured throughout the district that the more horses Gunnvor acquired, the less hospitable towards these travellers did she grow, and though she was a woman who attended church regularly, as was the custom in that age, it is told in the Annals that on Whit Sunday she could not see the sun in a cloudless sky after the service at Rauthsmyri Church.

  Rumours now began to be whispered abroad concerning the fate of Gunnvor’s husband, and how she murdered men, some for their possessions, others for their blood and marrow, and rode after some on the mountains. Now, there lies in the valley, to the south but not at a great distance from the bigging, a stagnant lake called Igulvatn, which name it bears to this day. The mistress killed her guests in the middle of the night, and this was the manner of their death: she attacked them with a short sword as they slept, bit them in the throat and drank their blood, then, after dismembering their bodies, used their bones as playthings for herself and the fiend Kolumkilli. Some she pursued over the moors and assailed with her sword, and brightly flashed the blade as she made an end of them. In strength she was the equal of any man, and she had in addition the help of the Devil. Clots of blood may still be seen in the snow on the ridges, especially before Yule. She bore their carrion down into the valley and sank it in the lake, after tying stones to it. Then she stole their possessions, their clothes and horses and money, if any. Her children were idiots all and would bark from the housetop like any dog, or squat in imbecility on the paving and bite men, for the Fiend had deprived them of common sense and human tongue. To this very day this lullaby is sung in districts on both sides of the high moors:

  Guest of Gunnvor was one man,

  With pony of price,

  Through his heart her sword she ran,

  Lullahalulla,

  Running blood reddens the blade,

  Lullábabalulla.

  Guest of Gunnvor was no man

  With God or good grace,

  She has broken my rib-bone, my leg-bone, my hip-bone,

  Lullabalulla,

  Running blood reddens the blade,

  Lullababalulla.

  If Kolumkilli call me should,

  This is what he’d say:

  Bones and red blood, bones and red blood,

  And dododo,

  Runs the blood in a flood,

  So lullababalulla.

  But in the end it came to pass that Gunnvor’s vile practices were unmasked. She had been the bane of many—men, women, and children alike—and had chanted at night to the fiend Kolumkilli. She was condemned at the district moot and broken at the lich-gate of Rauthsmyri Church on Trinity Sunday. Then she was dismembered, and last of all her head was cut off; and she took her death well, but cursed men with strange curses. Her trunk, head, and limbs were gathered into a skin bag, which was borne up to the ridge to the west of Albogastathir and buried in a cairn at the highest point. The cairn may be seen to this day, now overgrown with grass below and called latterly Gunnucairn. The people say that there will be no misfortune if the traveller cast a stone on to the cairn on the first occasion that he crosses the ridge, but some throw a stone each time they pass that way, and hope therewith to buy themselves immunity.

  Troublesome as the mistress Gunnvor may have seemed in living life, she far surpassed her former evil conduct after her burial; she was considered to rest ill in the barrow and walked again at home on her farm. She woke up with her those several men whom she had destroyed, and folk at home in Albogastathir had little rest from disturbance once the nights took to darkening. She resumed her former practices, tormenting living and dead alike, so that always there might be heard in the croft at night a loud yelling and howling as though flocks of tortured souls held lament on the roof and at the window because of their great misery and little rest. Sometimes it was as if the most powerful stench of brimstone erupted from the earth, filling the house with its gust so that men lay suffocating and dogs thrashed about as though mad. Sometimes Gunnvor rode the roof so that every timber shook, and in the end no building was thought safe from her evil pounding and shameful night-riding. She would climb on men’s backs and on the backs of livestock and crush the cows; she would drive women and children mad and frighten old people, yielding neither to signs of the cross nor to magic spells. The story relates that finally the priest of Rauthsmyri was brought to lay her and that she fled before his most admirable learning into the mountain, splitting it where a cleft is now to be seen. Some people say that she took up her habitation in the mountain, in which case it is not unlikely that it was in the form of a troll. Others believe that she lives much in the lake in the form of some kind of serpent or water-monster; and indeed it is on all men’s lips that a monster has now for many generations inhabited the lake and appeared to countless witnesses, who have testified to it upon oath, even those without second sight. Some people say that this monster has destroyed the bigging Albogastathir thrice, others seven times, so that no husbandman had any peace there longer and the farm was laid waste because spectres in various likenesses continually disturbed it. So in the time of Sheriff Jon Reykdalin it was added to the lands of Rauthsmyri first as sheep-cotes for the winter, whence its later name of Winterhouses, but afterwards as a lambs’ fold.

  THE HOLDING

  ON a knoll in the marshes stand the ruins of an old croft-house.

  This knoll is perhaps only in a certain sense the work of nature; perhaps it is much rather the work of long dead peasants who built their homes there on the grassy bank by the brook, generation after generation, one on the other’s ruins. But for over a hundred years now it has been a lambs’ fold; here ewes and their lambs have bleated for more than a hundred springs. Out from the fold and its knoll, mainly to the south, spread miles of marshland dotted here and there with islets of ling, and through Rauthsmyri Ridge a little river runs down into the marsh, and another from the lake in the east through the valleys of the eastern moors. To the north of the knoll towers a steep mountain, its lower slopes scarred with landslides, and the tongues between covered with heather. The crags soar up from the landslides in sheer castellations, and in one place above the fold the mountain is cloven by a gully in the basalt, and down from this gully in spring cascades a waterfall, long and slender. Sometimes the south wind blows the spray up over the brink again, so that the waterfall flows backwards. At the foot of the mountain boulders lie, scattered here and there. This lambs’ fold, where once stood the bigging Albogastathir on the Moor, has for the past few generations been known as Winterhouses.

  A little brook runs down past the fold, runs in a semicircle round the home-field, clear and cold, and never fails. In summer the sunbeams play in its merry stream and the sheep lies chewing on the bank and stretches one foot out into the grass. On such a day the sky is blue. The sun shines brightly on the lake with its swans; and on the smooth flow of the trout river through the marshes. Heath and marshes hum with blithe song.

  Ridges and high moorland enclose the valley on all sides. To the west lies a narrow ridge, and the first farm beyond it is called Utirauthsmyri, Rauthsmyri, or simply Myri, the seat of the local Bailiff; this moorland valley has until now been part of his possessions. Broad lands, widely farmed, open beyond Myri. The high heath in the east, over which lies the road down to the market town on the fjord, is considered a five hours’ crossing with pack-horses. In the south, low undulating moors gradually rise in height until the Blue Mountains close the horizon, melting into the sky, it seems, in pious meditation, and rarely free of snow before St. John the Baptist’s Day. And what lies beyond the Blue Mountains? Only the deserts of the land.

&nb
sp; And the spring breezes blow up the valley.

  And when the spring breezes blow up the valley; when the spring sun shines on last year’s withered grass on the river banks; and on the lake; and on the lake’s two white swans; and coaxes the new grass out of the spongy soil in the marshes—who could believe on such a day that this peaceful, grassy valley brooded over the story of our past; and over its spectres? People ride along the river, along the banks where side by side lie many paths, cut one by one, century after century, by the horses of the past—and the fresh spring breeze blows through the valley in the sunshine. On such a day the sun is stronger than the past.

  A new generation forgets the spectres that may have tormented the old.

  How often has the bigging Albogastathir on the Moor been destroyed by spectres? And rebuilt, in spite of spectres? Century after century the lone worker leaves the settlements to tempt fortune on this knoll between the lake and the cleft in the mountain, determined to challenge the evil powers that hold his land in thrall and thirst for his blood and the marrow in his bones. Generation after generation the crofter raises his chant, contemptuous of the powers that lay claim to his limbs and seek to rule his fate to his dying day. The history of the centuries in this valley is the history of an independent man who grapples barehanded with a spectre which bears a new and ever a newer name. Sometimes the spectre is some half-divine fiend who lays a curse on his land. Sometimes it breaks his bones in the guise of a norn. Sometimes it destroys his croft in the form of a monster. And yet, always, to all eternity, it is the same spectre assailing the same man century after century.

  “No,” he said defiantly.

  It was the man who was making for Albogastathir on the Moor a century and a half after the croft had last been destroyed. And as he passed Gunnvor’s cairn on the ridge, he spat, and ground out vindictively: “Damn the stone you’ll ever get from me, you old bitch,” and refused to give her a stone.

  His movement was a response to the breeze, his gait in perfect harmony with the uneven land beneath his feet. A yellow dog was following him, a farm labourer’s dog with a slim muzzle, and full of lice, for she often threw herself down and bit herself passionately, rolling over and over between the tussocks with the strange, restless yelp peculiar to lousy dogs. She was starved of vitamins, for she stopped every now and again to eat grass. It was equally obvious that she was wormy. And the man turned his face into the fresh wind of spring. The sun shone on the flaunting manes of ancient horses and in the wind was the clopping of long gone hoofs; they were the horses of the past in the bridle-paths along the river, century after century, generation after generation, and still the road was travelled—and now he, the newest landowner, Icelandic pioneer in the thirtieth generation, was treading it, dauntless as ever, with his dog. Halting on the path of the centuries, he ran his eyes over his valley in the sunshine of spring.

  As soon as he halted the dog came fawning upon him. She stuck her slim muzzle between his hard paws, resting it there and wagging her tail and all her body, and the man gazed at the animal philosophically for a while, savouring, in the submissiveness of his dog, the consciousness of his own power, the rapture of command, and sharing, for a second, in human nature’s loftiest dream, like a general who looks over his troops and knows that with a word he can send them into the charge. A few moments passed thus, and now the dog was squatting on the withered grass on the bank before him, watching him with questioning eyes, and he replied: “Yes, whatever a man seeks he will find—in his dog.”

  He went on discussing this subject after he had left the path and was making his way over the marshes towards the home-field, repeating it in various forms: “The things a dog seeks he finds in a man; seek and ye shall find.” Bending down, he felt at the spring grass of the marshes with his thick fingers and measured its length; then he uprooted a few blades from a boggy patch, and after wiping the mud from them on to his trousers, put them into his mouth, like a sheep, and thinking as he chewed, began thinking like a sheep. The taste was bitter, but he did not spit; he smacked his lips and savoured the rooty taste of it. “This stuff has saved many a life after a long winter and little hay,” he said to himself; “there is a sort of honey in it though it tastes strong. It is this young swamp grass that gives the sheep new life in the spring, you see; and the sheep gives man new life in the autumn.” And he went on talking about the swamp grass and mixing it up with philosophy and playing variations on the theme till he had reached the home-field.

  Standing on the highest point of the knoll, like a Viking pioneer who has found his high-seat posts, he looked about him, then made water, first to the north in the direction of the mountain, then to the east, towards the marshy tracts and the lake and the river flowing smoothly from the lake through the marshes; then towards the moors in the south, where the Blue Mountains, still coated with snow, closed the horizon in meditation. And the sun shone from a cloudless sky.

  Not far from him two Rauthsmyri sheep were cropping the green of the home-field, and although they were his master’s sheep, he chased them off, cleared his own home-field for the first time. “This land is mine now,” he said.

  And then it seemed as if some misgiving gripped him; perhaps the land was not all paid for. Instead of allowing the dog to pursue the sheep, he called her to heel. And went on viewing the world from his own enclosure, the world he had just bought. Summer was just rising over this world.

  It was for that reason that he said to the dog: “Winterhouses is no name for a farm like this, no name at all. And as for Albogastathir on the Moor—that’s no name either; it’s just another of these relics of old popery. Damn me if I’ll have names that are bound up with spectres of the past on my farm. I was christened Bjartur, which ought to mean ‘bright, So the farm shall be called Summerhouses.”

  And Bjartur of Summerhouses walked round his own home-field, inspecting the grass-grown ruins, scrutinizing the stonework in the walls of the lambs’ fold, and pulling down and building up again, in imagination, the same sort of croft-house as he had been born and bred in across the eastern heaths.

  “Size isn’t everything by any means,” he said aloud to the dog, as if suspecting her of entertaining high ideas. ‘Take my word for it, freedom is of more account than the height of a roof beam. I ought to know; mine cost me eighteen years’ slavery. The man who lives on his own land is an independent man. He is his own master. If I can keep my sheep alive through the winter and can pay what has been stipulated from year to year—then I pay what has been stipulated; and I have kept my sheep alive. No, it is freedom that we are all after, Titla. He who pays his way is a king. He who keeps his sheep alive through the winter lives in a palace.”

  And when the bitch heard this, she too was happy. Now there were no more clouds. She raced in circles around him, barking frivolously, then slunk towards him with her muzzle on the ground, as if to pounce on him, and the next second had leaped away again and traced another circle.

  “Now then,” he said soberly, “no fooling here. Do I run in circles and bark? Do I lie down with my nose on the ground and tomfoolery in my eyes and go for folk? No, my independence has cost me dearer than that: eighteen years for the Bailiff at Rauthsrnyri and the poetess and Ingolfur Arnarson Jonsson, who they say has been sent to Denmark now. Was it maybe just for a picnic that I used to go and comb the mountains in the south there for their strays, with winter well on the way? No; and I’ve buried myself in snow. And it wasn’t their fault, bless them, if I crawled out alive next morning.”

  At this reminder the dog’s joy subsided considerably, and she sat down and took to biting herself.

  “And no one will ever be able to say that I counted my footsteps in their service; and what’s more, I paid the first instalment on the farm on Easter morning as had been arranged. And I have twenty-five ewes fleeced and lambed; there’s many a one begun with less, and still more who have been other people’s slaves all their Jives and never owned a stick. Take my father for instance. He lived
to be eighty and never managed to pay off the miserable sick-loan the parish advanced him when he was only a youngster.”

  The bitch contemplated him sceptically for a while, as if she didn’t really believe what he was saying. She thought of barking, but decided not to, and opened her jaws in a long yawn only, like a question.

  “No, I didn’t think you would understand,” said Bjartur. “You dogs are pretty poor objects really, though on the whole I think we humans have even less to boast about. Still, things will go worse with us than I think, if my Rosa serves her folk with the bones of an old horse on Christmas Eve after twenty-three years of housekeeping here, as the poetess of Rauthsmyri thought fit to do, and that no longer ago than last year.”

  The bitch had again begun biting herself passionately.

  “Aye, no wonder their herd’s dog is lousy and eats the grass, when even their housekeeper hasn’t set eyes on the pantry-key for twenty years. And wouldn’t the horses he leaves out in winter tell a fine story, if only their tongues were loosened, poor brutes; and his sheep, too. It has been one eternal martyrdom for them all these years, and probably it’s just as well for some people that sheep don’t have a place on the judgment seat in heaven, poor brutes.”

  The farm brook ran down from the mountain in a straight line for the fold, then swerved to the west to go its way down into the marshes. There were two knee-high falls in it and two pools, knee-deep. At the bottom there was shingle, pebbles and sand. It ran in many curves. Each curve had its own tone, but not one of them was dull; the brook was merry and music-loving, like youth, but yet with various strings, and it played its music without thought of any audience and did not care though no one heard for a hundred years, like the true poet. The man examined it all closely. He halted by the upper fall and said: “Here she can wash out socks and so on;” by the lower fall and said: “Here salt fish could be put to soak.” The dog stretched her head down to the water and lapped at it. The man lay flat on the bank, too, and drank, and some of the water went up his nose. “It’s first-rate water,” said Bjartur of Summerhouses, looking at the dog as he wiped his mouth on his sleeve. “I could almost believe that it had been consecrated.”