grettir the outlaw 30
The widow crossed herself, and said, "That will never do. How can you
manage such a burden?"
But without more ado Grettir caught up Steinvor on his arm, and then he
picked up the little girl and set her on her mother’s lap, and strode
into the water; they were on his left arm, but he kept the right free.
They were so frightened that they durst not cry out. He waded on in the
river, and the water foamed up to his breast; and then he saw a great
ice-floe coming bearing down upon him. He put out his right hand, gave
the mass of ice a thrust, and it was whirled past them by the current.
Then he waded further, and the water washed about his shoulders, and
that was the deepest point. After that the river shallowed, and he bore
the mother and child safely to the shore and set them down.
Now Grettir turned to go back, and he took up a great stone and set it
on his head, and so waded back. If he had tried to go through the water
without a stone he would have been washed away; but the great stone on
his head enabled him to stand firm and resist the current of the water.
Those who have not been through an Icelandic river can hardly imagine
the intensity of the cold. I have ridden through these rivers, my horse
swimming under me, and when I reached the further side have thrown
myself off and lain on the sand for a quarter of an hour before I could
recover from the numbness caused by the deadly cold; for some of these
rivers are as broad as the Thames at London Bridge, and the water is
milky because full of undissolved snow.
When Steinvor reached the church every one was astonished to see her,
and asked how she had managed to get across the Quivering Flood. But
when the priest heard the story, he called Steinvor aside, and said:
"Mind and do not say too much about your new man; do not talk about his
strength, and set folk a-wondering who he may be. I have my own
opinion, and I think you will do well to house him, and say nothing to
anyone about his being in any way remarkable."
And now there comes into the saga of Grettir a story which is certainly
untrue, but how it comes in can be made out pretty easily.
The real truth was, as the saga writer confesses, that Grettir remained
hidden at Sandheaps all that winter, and no one in the country round
knew that he was there. But then, the saga writer did not feel
satisfied with such a dull winter, in which nothing happened; so, to
fill out his story and say something interesting, he worked into his
history a wonderful tale. The story, which I tell in my own words, is
this:—
*The Story of the Stream-Troll*
There is on the Quivering Flood some miles below Sandheaps a mighty
foss, or waterfall. The whole river pours over a ledge in a thundering,
magnificent cascade. The stream in the middle is broken by an island.
You can hear the roar of the falling water for a long way around, and
see the spray thrown up from the fall like a cloud or column of steam
rising high into the air. This waterfall is called Goda-foss, and was
long supposed to be the finest in the island; but there is another,
which I was the first to see, on the Jokull-river, called Detti-foss,
which is infinitely finer, but which is in a region of utter desert of
sand and volcanic crater, many miles from any human habitation.
It happens that there is a curious black lava rock standing near the
river, higher up than the fall, which bears a quaint resemblance to an
old woman, and this stone is called The Old Hag; and the story goes that
it is a troll-woman turned to stone.
Now, you must know that throughout Norway and Iceland, and, indeed,
wherever the Scandinavian race is found, a superstition exists that
every river has its spirit, that lives in the river; and it was held
that these river-spirits demanded a sacrifice of a human life, at least
once a year. If a sacrifice were not given to them, then they took some
man or woman, when crossing the water, and carried the victim away. And
in heathen times there can be no doubt whatever that human sacrifices
were offered to every river; generally an evildoer or a prisoner was
thrown in and drowned, to propitiate the Stream-churl, as he was called,
so that he should not snap at and carry off other and more valuable
lives. Wherever there was a cataract, there the Stream-churl was
believed to live, hidden away behind the curtain of falling water. If
the stream was small, then this spirit or demon was small; if, however,
it were a mighty river, then the spirit was a great troll or giant.
Even to this day in Iceland and Norway, the ignorant and superstitious
believe that there are these Stream-churls, and tell stories about them,
and cannot but suspect that, when anyone is drowned, it is the
Stream-churl exacting his toll.
Now, it is quite certain that Steinvor, although she was a Christian,
believed in there being a great Stream-churl living under Goda-foss; and
as she had lost her husband and one of her servants who had been drowned
in the Quivering Flood, she held that they had been carried off by the
Troll of the waterfall.
There had been, as it happened, something mysterious about the death of
Steinvor’s husband. Two years before Grettir came to Sandheaps, on
Christmas-eve, he had disappeared. She had gone off to see some friends
at a distance, and when she returned home next day she heard that her
husband had not been seen—he was gone, and not a trace of him remained.
It occurred to her that in all probability he had gone across the river
to church, and had been carried off by the river—that is, by the
Stream-churl. But she could be certain of nothing, and she was greatly
distressed because she could not give his body burial. A year passed
and not a word about her husband could she hear. His body had not be
found anywhere washed up by the river, supposing he had been drowned.
Next year she lost one of her men-servants in the same way. He
vanished, and none knew how or whither he had gone. If he had run away,
she would probably have had tidings of him; but she heard none, and his
body was also never found.
I have no doubt that she told Grettir about this, and also that she
believed that the Stream-churl who lived under Goda-foss had carried off
both her husband and the servant. I believe also that, to satisfy her,
Grettir undertook to look, and that he actually dived under the fall,
and came up and searched between the sheet of falling water and the
rock, and found—nothing.
That is the foundation of a wonderful story which has found its way into
the saga. It did not satisfy those who told the tale of Grettir that he
should have spent the winter at Sandheaps and done nothing—that he
should have dived under Goda-foss and found nothing.
So by degrees old nursery tales got mixed up with this incident about
Grettir’s search for the Stream-churl, and all was worked into a
wonderful story, which you shall hear.
On that night on which Grettir had carried Steinvor across the river, he
returned to the farm, and lay down in his bed.
When midnight arrived, then a great din was heard outside, and presently
the hall door was thrown open and in through it came a gigantic woman, a
Troll-wife, with a trough in one hand and a huge chopper in the other.
As she entered she peered about her, and saw Grettir where he lay, and
she ran at him. Then he jumped up and went to meet her, and they fell
a-wrestling terribly, and struggled together so furiously, that all the
panelling of the hall side was broken.
She was the stronger, and she dragged Grettir towards the door, and
forth towards the entrance, in spite of all his efforts. She had got
him as far as the entrance, when there he made a final struggle, and in
the struggle the door-posts and fittings were torn from their place, and
fell outwards.
Then the Troll-woman laboured away with him towards the river, and right
down towards the gulfs.
Grettir was exceedingly weary, yet he saw that his only chance was to
make a last effort, or be flung by her over the edge into the deep,
boiling river.
All night they contended in such fashion, and ever was he drawing nearer
to the edge. But just as she was preparing to fling him into the water,
he got his right hand free, and he swiftly seized his short-sword, and
struck off her arm; and at that moment the sun rose, and the Troll-woman
was turned into stone. There she stands with her amputated arm-socket,
as a mass of black basalt or lava to this day.
If the reader will recall the story of Grettir’s struggle with Glam at
Thorod’s-stead, in the valley of Shadows, he will see that this is only
the same story over again almost in every particular,—except that the
first fight was with a man, and this is with a woman. The reason why
this story was concocted and put in here, was to account for the stone
figure which stands by the river, and which is called the Troll-wife.
So far the story carries its character on its face.
Now we will go on to the next part of the tale. It did not satisfy
people that Grettir should have dived under Goda-foss and found nothing,
so the story was thus told:
When the goodwife, Steinvor, came from church, she thought that her
house had been rudely handled; so she went to Grettir and asked him what
had occurred. Then he told her all, and she prayed him to go and make a
search for her husband’s bones, under Goda-foss.
Grettir consented, but he asked that the priest might be sent for. His
name was Stone. Steinvor sent for him, and Stone was curious to know
whether his suspicions about this stranger were true. So he asked him
questions, but Grettir answered that if the priest wanted to know who he
was, he must find out. The priest laughed at the story of the
Troll-wife, and said he did not believe a word about the struggle.
Then Grettir said, "Well, priest, I see that you have no faith in my
tale; now I propose that you accompany me to Goda-foss, and we will
search for the Troll himself, and see if we can recover the bones of
Steinvor’s husband."
The priest, Stone, agreed, and they went together to the side of the
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