Grettir the Outlaw 3

Grettir the Outlaw 3

And now I will give one incident of Grettir’s boyhood. It was a

favourite amusement for young fellows at that time to play golf on the

ice, and in winter, when the Middlefirth was frozen over, large parties

assembled there for the sport.

 

One winter a party was arranged for a match on the ice, and a good many

lads came to Middlefirth from Willowdale, a valley only separated from

the Middlefirth by a long shoulder of ugly moor. The Willowdales-men

had a much better sheet of water, a very large lake called Hop, into

which their river flowed, before discharging itself into the sea; and

the return match was to be played on Hop.

 

Among the young fellows who came from Willowdale was Audun, a fine,

strapping fellow; frank, well-built, good-looking, and amiable.

 

When the parties were assembled at the place, there they were paired off

according to age and strength; and on this occasion I am speaking of,

Grettir, who was fourteen, was set to play with Audun, who was two years

older than he, and a head taller.

 

Audun struck the ball and it flew over Grettir’s head, and he missed it,

and it went skimming away over the ice to a great distance, and Grettir

had to run after it. Some of those who were looking on laughed. Then

Grettir’s anger was roused. He got the ball and came back carrying it,

till he was within a few yards of Audun, and then, instead of dropping

the ball, and striking it with his golfing-stick, he suddenly threw it

with all his force against his adversary, and struck him between his

eyes, so that it half-stunned him, and cut the skin. Audun whirled his

golfing-bat round, and struck at Grettir, who dodged under and escaped

the blow. Then Audun and Grettir grappled each other, and wrestled on

the ice.

 

Every one thought that Audun would have the stumpy, thick-set boy down

in a trice, but it was not so; Grettir held his ground;—they swung this

way, that way; now one seemed about to be cast, and then the other, and

although Audun was almost come to a man’s strength, he could not for a

long time throw Grettir. At last Grettir slipped on a piece of ice

where some had been sliding, and went down. His blood was up, so was

that of Audun; and the fight would have been continued with their

sticks, had not Grettir’s brother Atli thrown himself between the

combatants and separated them. Atli held his brother back, and tried to

patch up the quarrel.

 

"You need not hold me like a mad dog," said Grettir. "Thralls wreak

their vengeance at once, cowards never."

 

Audun and Grettir were distant cousins. They were not allowed to play

against each other any more, and the rest went on with their game.

 

 

 

 

*CHAPTER III.*

 

*OF THE RIDE TO THINGVALLA.*

 

 

_Thorkel Mani’s Find—Thorkel Krafla—The Halt at Biarg—A Bad

Prospect—Among the Lakes—The Lost Meal-bags—Suspicion

Confirmed—The Slaying of Skeggi—The Song of the

Battle-ogress—Grettir Chooses to take his Trial_

 

 

There lived in Waterdale, a day’s journey from Biarg, an old bonder,

named Thorkel Krafla. He was the first Icelander who became a Christian.

 

In heathen times, among the Northmen as among the Romans, it was

allowable for parents to expose their children to death, if they did not

want to have the trouble of rearing them. Now Thorkel had been so

exposed, with a napkin over his face. It so happened that a great chief

called Thorkel Mani was riding along one day, thinking about the gods

that he had been taught to believe in, who drank and got drunk, and

fought each other, and, being a grave, meditative man, he could not make

out what these rollicking, fighting gods could have had to do with the

world,—with the creation of sun, moon, and stars, and the earth with its

yield. He thought to himself, "There must be some God above these

tipsy, quarrelsome deities; and this higher God must love men, and be

good and kind to men."

 

As he thought this, he heard a little whimpering noise from behind a

stone; he got off his horse, and went to see what produced this noise,

and found there a poor little baby, that with its tiny hands had rumpled

up the kerchief which had been spread over its nose and mouth. Thorkel

Mani took up the deserted babe in his arms, and looking up to heaven, to

the sun, said, "If the good God, who is high over all, called this

little being into life, gave it eyes and mouth and ears and hands and

feet, He surely never intended His handiwork to be cast out as a thing

of no value, to die. For the love of Him I will take this child."

 

Then Thorkel Mani rode home, carrying the baby in his arms; and he

called it by his own name, Thorkel; but to distinguish it from himself,

it was given the nickname Krafla, which means to rumple, because the

babe had rumpled up the kerchief, so as to let its cries be heard. So

the child grew up, and kept the name through life of Thorkel Rumple.

This Thorkel became a very great man, and Godi, or magistrate, of the

Waterdale; and, as I have said, he was the first man to become a

Christian, when missionaries of the gospel came to Iceland.

 

Very soon after Grettir’s birth Christianity became general, and in the

year 1000 was sanctioned by law; but there were few Christian priests in

the land, so that the knowledge of the truth had not spread much, and

taken hold and transformed men’s lives. Thorkel Rumple was now very old.

He was the bosom friend of Asmund, and every year when in the spring he

rode to the great assizes at Thingvalla, he always halted at least one

night at Biarg. Not only were Asmund and he men of like minds, and

friends, but they were also connected. In the spring of the year 1011,

Thorkel arrived as usual at Biarg, attended by a great many men, and he

was most warmly received by Asmund and his wife. He remained with them

three nights, and he and they fell a-talking about the prospects of the

two young men, Atli and Grettir. Asmund told his kinsman that Atli was

a quiet, amiable fellow, now at man’s estate, and likely to prove a good

farmer; a man who would worthily succeed him at Biarg when he died, and

keep the honour of the family untarnished, and would enlarge the estate.

 

"Ah! I see," said Thorkel. "A useful man, good and respectable, like

yourself. But what about Grettir?"

 

Asmund hesitated a moment before answering; but presently he said, "I

hardly know what to say of him. He is unruly, sullen, makes no friends,

and he has been a constant cause of vexation to me."

 

Thorkel answered, "That is a bad prospect; however, let him come with me

to Thingvalla, and I shall be able to see on the journey of what stuff

he is made."

 

To this Asmund agreed; and right glad was Grettir to think he was to go

to the great law-gathering.

 

Thorkel had sixty men with him, and he rode in some state; for, as

already said, he was a great man. The way led over the great desolate

waste, called the Two-days-ride; but as on this expanse there were few

halting-places, the grass most scanty, and not sufficient to allow of a

stay, the party rode across it down to the settled lands nearer the

coast as quickly as they could, and reached Fleet-tongue in time to

sleep; so they took the bridles off their horses, and let them graze

with their saddles on. Their road had lain among the lakes, from which

issued the rivers that united above Biarg. In each lake floated a pair

of swans. Often they heard the loud hoarse cry of the great northern

diver; but there was hardly any grass, for the moor lies high, is swept

by the icy blasts from the glacier mountains to the south, and is made

up of black sand. Before them all day had stood towering into the sky

the Eyreksjokull, a mountain with perfectly precipitous sides of black

basalt, domed over with glittering ice. It resembles an immense

bridecake. At one place this mountain in former times had gaped, and

poured forth a fiery stream of lava that ran to the lakes, and for a

while converted them to steam. One can still see whence this great

fiery river issued from the mountain. Little did Grettir think then as

he passed under it, a boy of fourteen, that, for the three most lonely,

wretched years of his life, that great glacier-crowned mountain was to

be the one object on which his eye would rest.

 

The men were all very tired after their long ride, and they slept till

late next morning, lying about on the scant herbage, around a fire made

of the roots of trailing willows that they had dug out of the sand.

 

When they awoke many of the horses had strayed, and some had rolled in

the sand, burst their girths and shaken off their saddles. But they

could not have gone any great distance, for they were all hobbled. In

Iceland thick woollen ropes are put round the legs of the horses, below

the hocks, and twisted together into a knot with a knuckle-bone. This

serves as a secure hobble, and the wool being soft does not gall the

skin.

 

It was customary in those days for every one to take his own provisions

with him, and most of those who went to the great assize carried

meal-bags athwart their saddles. Grettir found his horse at last, but

not his meal-bag, which had come off, and was lost; for the saddle was

turned under the belly of his cob.

 

The horses could not have strayed far, not only because they were

hobbled, but also because the Tongue where they had been turned loose

was a narrow strip of land between two rivers; but then the slope was

considerable in places, and the meal-bag might have rolled down into the

water.

 

As Grettir was running about hunting for his bag, he saw another man in

the same predicament. What is more, he saw that the rest of the party,

impatient to get on their way, would tarry no longer for them, and were

defiling down the hill to cross the river.

 

Grettir was in great distress. Just then he saw the man run very

directly in one course, and at the same moment Grettir saw something

white lying under a mass of lava. It was towards this that the fellow

was running. Grettir ran towards it also. It was a meal-sack. The man

reached it first, and threw it over his shoulder.

 

"What have you got there?" asked Grettir, coming up panting.

 

"My meal-sack," answered the fellow.

 

"Let me look at it," said Grettir. "It may be mine, not yours. Let me

look before you appropriate it."

 

This the man refused to do.

 

Grettir’s suspicion was confirmed, and he made a catch at the sack, and

tried to drag it away from the fellow.

 

"Oh, yes!" sneered the man—who was a servant at a farm called The Ridge,

in Waterdale, and his name Skeggi,—"Oh, yes! you Middlefirthers think

you will have everything your own way."

 

"That is not it," answered Grettir. "Let each man take his own. If the sack be yours, keep it; if mine, I will have it."