grettir the outlaw 21
Eric answered, "Many men have lost everything in Norway, and have got
nothing in exchange. Cold may be the back against which to lean; but
better cold back than none at all."
This was true. Onund had not received Eric’s offer graciously; but he
now accepted it, and he called the second bay he saw—that into which he
had descended over snow—Coldback, and that remains the name to this day.
Eric behaved very nobly; he gave up to Onund the whole tract of land
from the Horn-headland to the limit where Biarni’s land began. He
received the whole of Reykjafiord, Fishless Creek, and Coldback Bay.
Then Onund built himself a house at Coldback; and there was no
difficulty about wood, for the Gulfstream flowed up past the great
north-west promontory of Iceland, curled round into Hunafloi, and
deposited a quantity of American timber as drift all along that coast.
Indeed, the drift was so abundant that neither Eric nor Onund made any
agreement about it. Now, as it happened in the sequel, this was an
oversight.
Onund prospered at Coldback, and even set up for himself a second farm
at the head of the firth to the north, called Reykja-firth, from the
boiling springs that puffed and bubbled up in the sea at the entrance;
and a hot spring is in Icelandic—Reykr.
Now, a few years after Onund had settled in Iceland, his good wife Asa
died. He had by her two sons—the elder was called Thorgeir, and the
younger Ufeig Grettir. After a while Onund went courting a woman called
Thordis, in Middle-firth, and he married her, and by her had a son
called Thorgrim; he grew to be a big man, very strong, wise, and a
capital man at husbandry. When he was twenty-five years old his hair
grew gray, and so he went by the name of Thorgrim Grizzle-pate, and he
was the grandfather of Grettir. After the death of Onund, his widow
married, as already said, Audun of Willowdale, and their son was Asgeir,
the father of Grettir’s cousin Audun, with whom he had that affray on
the ice, and then with the bottle of curds.
When Onund was a very old man, then he died in his bed, and he was
buried under a great mound, which you may see at Coldback if you go
there. It is called Old Treefoot’s cairn. When he was dead, then
Thorgrim Grizzlepate and his half-brothers, Thorgeir and Ufeig Grettir,
lived together on the best of terms at Coldback, and managed the
property between them.
In time Eric Trap of Arness died also, and left his lands to his son
Flossi. He had remained in friendship with Onund all his life; but
Flossi, his son, was a grasping man, and he was often heard to grumble
about the Coldback family, and say that they were squatters on his
father’s land, and had no title to show for the land they held.
Thorgrim Grizzlepate and his half-brothers did not wish to quarrel with
Flossi, so they kept out of his company; and when there were sports of
hurling, and wrestling, and horse-fighting, strayed away, so as not to
be involved in a quarrel with him.
Now, Thorgeir was the eldest of the three brothers at Coldback, and he
was mightily fond of fishing. This was known to Flossi, and he made a
plot for slaying him; for he was envious of the brothers, and wanted to
get back all their lands into his own possession. He had got a
house-churl called Finn, and he and Finn had some talk together. The end
of this talk was that Finn started secretly for Coldback armed with a
hatchet, and he hid himself in the boat-house at Coldback.
Early in the morning Thorgeir got ready to go out fishing, for the
weather was good, the sea calm and was alive with fish. His nets were
in the boat, and before sunrise he left his bed and dressed, and went to
the boat-house to start on his excursion. He had not the smallest
suspicion of mischief, and as he was like to be on the water for a long
time, he flung a great leather bottle of curds over his back. As already
said, these leather bottles were no other than the hides of goats or
sheep, sewn up and converted into receptacles for liquid.
So Thorgeir went to the boat-house with the bottle of curd over his
back, opened the door, and went in. He did not look round, he had no
suspicion of evil, and he did not see Finn lurking in the dark corner.
It was, moreover, very dark in the boat-house. Thorgeir stooped to get
hold of the boat and thrust her out, when all at once out from the dark
corner leaped the churl, and brought the axe down on Thorgeir’s back.
The blow made the bottle squeak, and all the curds gushed out. That was
enough for Finn. He made sure he had killed Thorgeir, so he ran away as
fast as he could back to Arness, burst into the house, and shouted to
his master "I have killed him! I have killed him! And he squeaked! he
squeaked!"
"Let me look at the axe," said Flossi. Then, when he had the axe in his
hand he turned it about and laughed, and said, "Verily, I did not think
that Thorgeir had milk in his veins instead of blood. That accounts for
it, that you have been able to slay him."
This affair was a subject of much comment, and much laughter did it
provoke. Thorgeir had not received the smallest wound, only his bottle
was split, and ever after he went by the name of Bottle-back.
But a song was made about this event which was never forgotten. It runs
thus:—
"Of the days of old
Great tales are told
How heroes went forth to fight,
Their shields, for show
Were whitened as snow,
And their weapons were burnished bright
The battle began,
In the weapon-clang,
The red blood flowed apace
In rivers shed
It dyed red
The shields o’er all their face.
But nowaday
We tune our lay
To tell a different story.
The churls who fight
Bring axes white,
With curds and whey made gory."
When Kuggson ceased, Grettir laughed heartily. "Ah!" said he, "that
cannot be said now, for indeed there flows much blood."
"You speak the truth," answered Kuggson; "and I wish that this red
stream flowed less abundantly."
"That may be," said Grettir; "but I would fain hear the rest of the
story. I have not heard it told me for a long time; and, indeed, to
speak the truth, much of it I have clean forgotten, though I did hear it
when I was a boy at home."
"If you will hear what follows, it must be as a new story," said
Kuggson. Again I will tell it in my own words.
*The Story of the Stranded Whale*
Hard times came to Iceland, such as had not been known since it was
settled, for the timber that had been thrown up by the sea came to an
end, or very nearly so. There had been great accumulations, and these
were exhausted, and for some reason or other that cannot now be
explained the Gulf-stream ceased to carry on its current the amount of
timber it had formerly, the wreckage of the forests on the Mississippi,
swept down into the great Mexican Gulf, and thence washed out over the
vast Atlantic, borne on the warm stream to the north, to give fuel to
those lands which were by nature unprovided with trees. At this time
the axe was laid against the largest and finest birch that grew in the
forests in Iceland. But none of that timber was big and good enough for
building purposes.
This deficiency in drift-wood continued for many seasons, and if men
required building timber they were constrained to send to Norway for it.
Now, it happened that about this time a great merchant vessel was
wrecked in the fiord in the lap of which was Arness, where lived Flossi,
and he took four or five of the chapmen to his house, and lodged them
there well and hospitably, and the other wrecked men were quartered in
other farmhouses near. All winter the men were engaged in building a
new ship out of the wreck and what other timber they could get; but they
were not skilful over their work, and they built a badly-proportioned
vessel, over small at the stem and stern and over big amidships; and
this vessel was much laughed at, and men called it the Wooden-tub, and
that bay where Flossi lived was ever after called Wooden-tub Bay,
because this broad-beamed, comical vessel was built there.[#]
[#] It is still so called, Trèkyllis-víc.
Now, it fell out that at the spring equinox there was a great storm from
the north, and it lasted a week. The waves came in huge rollers against
the cliffs, and spouted like geysers into the air, and all the air was
in a haze with spray, and was full of the noise of the sea. Those who
lived on the coast were not sorry for the storm, because they hoped it
would blow in drift-wood and other spoils of the deep upon the shores;
and sure enough, when it abated, a man who lived out on Reykja-ness came
and told Flossi that there was a great whale washed ashore there. Then
Flossi sent word to all the farms round to the north. But hard-by where
the whale had come ashore lived a farmer named Einar, who was a tenant
under the brothers at Coldback, so he took a boat and rowed off to
Coldback, and told them about the monster that was stranded.
When Thorgrim and his brothers Thorgeir and Ufeig heard this, they got
ready at once, and were twelve in a ten-oared boat, with axes and knives
for cutting up the whale. Another boat put off from another of their
farms, with six men in it, and others were sure to come as soon as they
could get ready.
In the meantime, Flossi and all his company, his kindred, servants, and
tenants, had hurried to the spot, and were already engaged in cutting up
the whale, when round the ness came the boat of the brothers. Now, the
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