Part 9

When Grettir heard this, he said farewell to the women, and turned his horse's head to ride down the fiord towards a boiling spring that bubbles up out of the rock, throwing up a cloud of steam, and running in a scalding rill into the sea. Now the rock is perhaps warm there, or the warm water helps vegetation; certain it is that thereabouts the grass grows thickly, and there it was that Thorbiorn was making his bundles of hay. As Grettir rode along near the water, below the field, Thorbiorn saw him. He had just made up one bundle of hay, and he was engaged on another. He had set his shield and sword against the load, and his lad Arnor had a hand-axe beside him.

Thorbiorn looked hard at Grettir as he came along, and he said to the boy: "There is a fellow riding this way. I wonder who he is, and whether he wants us. Leave tying up the hay, and let us find out what his errand is."

Then Grettir leaped off his horse; he had a helmet on his head, and was girt with the short sword, and he bore a great spear in his hand that had a long sharp blade but no barbs. The socket was inlaid with silver, and a nail went through the socket fastening it on to the staff of the spear. He sat down on a stone, and knocked the nail out. His reason was that he intended to throw the spear at Thorbiorn, and if he missed him, he thought the spear-head and the haft would come apart, and would be of no use to Thorbiorn to fling back at him.

Oxmain said to his son: "I verily believe that is Grettir, Asmund's son, he is so big; I know no one else so big. He has got occasion enough against us, and if he is come here it is not with peaceable intentions. Now we must manage cunningly. I do not know that he has seen you; so you hide behind the bundle of hay, and lie hid till you see him engaged with me. Then you steal up noiselessly behind with your axe, and strike him one blow with all your might between the shoulder-blades. When I see you coming up, I will fight the more furiously so as to draw off his attention, that he may not be able to look round. Have no fear, he cannot hurt you, as his back will be turned to you. Get close enough to make sure, and you will kill him with one blow."

Now Grettir came uphill into the field, and when he came within a spear-throw of them, he cast his spear at Thorbiorn; but the head was looser on the shaft than he had expected it would be, and it became detached in its flight, and fell off and dropped into a marshy place and sank, and the shaft flew on but a little way and then fell harmlessly to the ground.

Then Thorbiorn took his shield, put it before him, drew his sword and ran against Grettir and engaged him. Grettir had, as already said, the short sword that he had taken out of the barrow, and with that he warded off the blows of Thorbiorn and smote at him. Oxmain was a very strong man, and his shield was covered with well-tanned hide stretched over oak, and the blade of Grettir fell on it, hacked into it, and sometimes caught so that he could not at once withdraw it. Thorbiorn now began to deal more furious blows. Now just as Grettir was wrenching his sword away from the shield, into which it had bitten deep, he saw someone close behind him with an axe raised. Instantly he tore out his sword and smote back over his head to protect his back from his assailant behind, and the blow came on Arnor just as he was on the point of driving his axe in between the shoulders of Grettir, so that he staggered back, mortally wounded. Thorbiorn, whose eye was on his son, retreated a step, lost his presence of mind for a moment, and thereupon down came Grettir's sword on his shield and split it in half. Grettir pursued his advantage, pressed on him, and struck him down at his feet, dead at a blow.

Then he went in search of his silver-inlaid spear-head, but could not find it. So he mounted his horse again, rode on to the nearest farmhouse, and there told what he had done. Many, many years after, about 1250, the spear-head was found in the marsh. When I was in Iceland I also obtained a very similar spear-head, only not silver-inlaid, that was found in the volcanic sand; it had probably been lost in a very similar manner.

It seems to us in these civilized times very horrible this continual slaying that took place in Iceland; but we must remember that, as already said, there were in those days not a single policeman, soldier, or officer of justice in the island. When a trial took place, the prosecutor was the person aggrieved, or the nearest akin. The court pronounced sentence, and then the prosecutor was required to carry out what the law had ordered. He was to be constable and executioner. Now the law, or custom which was the same as law, for there was no written code, was that when one man had been killed, the next of kin was bound to prosecute the slayer and obtain from him money compensation, or outlawry, or else he might kill the slayer himself, or one of his kin. This latter provision seems to us outrageous, that because A kills B, therefore that C, who is B's brother, may kill D, who is brother to A. But so the law or custom stood and was recognized as binding, and not to carry out the law or custom was regarded as dishonourable. It must be remembered that Iceland was colonized about A.D. 900, and that Grettir was born only about 97 years after, and that Christianity was adopted in 1000; that is to say, it was sanctioned by law, but no one was forced to become a Christian unless he liked. Also, that there was no government in the island, no central authority, and that the colonists lived much as do the first settlers now in a new colony which is not under the crown, or like the diggers at the gold mines.

When Grettir had slain Thorbiorn Oxmain, he went home to Biarg and told his mother, who said it was well that Atli's blood was wiped out by the death of the man who had so basely and in such cowardly fashion slain him; but she said she foresaw more trouble coming like a rising black cloud, and that this would make it more difficult for Grettir to get relief from his outlawry.

*CHAPTER XXIII.*

*AT LEARWOOD.*

_At Hvamsfiord--Iceland Scenery--An Iceland Paradise--One Lucky Chance--Kuggson's Story--Onund's Voyage--In Search of Uninhabited Land--The Landing--Eric's Gift--A Cold Back!--Better than Nothing--An Oversight--Death of Onund--Planning a Murder--Killing the Curd Bottle--The Churl's Axe--The Red Stream--Hard Times--The "Wooden-tub"--The Stranded Whale--The Fight over the Whale--Retreat of the Coldbackers--Before the Assize--The Judgment--An Evil Act--Ill-luck follows Ill_

After the slaying of Thorbiorn Oxmain, Grettir would not remain at home, lest trouble should come on his mother; so he rode across the Neck first of all to his brother-in-law, at Melar, at the head of the Ramsfirth, to ask his advice. His brother-in-law there was called Gamli; he was not very rich or powerful, and he represented to Grettir that it would never do for him to remain in such near proximity to Thorod's-stead, in the same valley, at the head of the same firth. This Grettir acknowledged, so he stayed there but a few days, and then rode over the high table-land to the Lax, or Salmon-dale, where was the watershed, and the river of the salmon ran west into Hvamsfiord. One of the most interesting and best written of the Icelandic sagas relates to the history of this valley. The Hvamsfiord is by nature wonderfully protected against western storms, for the entrance is almost blocked to the west by a countless multitude of islands, of which only one is moderately large, and to the north-west is not only a grassy promontory, but also a natural breakwater of three long narrow islands.

Outside the cluster of islands are eddies and whirlpools, and the passage between them is not always safe; but when a vessel has passed through between the islets it enters as into a wide beautiful inland lake, the shape of which is that of a boot, with the sole to the east and the toe turned up north. Moreover, along the north side of this sheltered firth are high and steep hills that screen from the water all gales sweeping from the Pole; and in the glens and under the crags of these hills exposed to the south are beautiful woods of birch.

Formerly in Iceland the woods were much more extensive than they are now; for the old settlers found in them plenty of fuel, and the birch-trees grew to a fair size. Now, alas, with fatal want of consideration, the trees have been so cut down that the woods are rare and the trees are small. There is hardly a birch-tree whose top one cannot touch when riding through a wood on a little pony no bigger than a Shetlander.

Exactly at the toe of the boot is a rich grassy basin, where two streams flow into the fiord, and here is a beautiful view from the water. One sees in front the green basin, and above it rise the mountains to Skeggoxl, a cone covered with eternal snows and with glaciers streaming down its flanks. Here, in a sweet sheltered nook, basking in the sun, in spring with the river-side and the marshes blazing with immense marigolds, and with the short grass slopes speckled with blue tiny gentianella, is the farm, and near it the wooden church of Hvam. In another part of the basin is a settlement called Asgard, the "Home of the gods;" for those who settled there first thought the spot so delightful, so warm, that they named it after the sunny land of fable, where it was said that their ancestors, the hero-gods of the northern race, had lived in the east before ever they crossed Russia and settled in Norway. Asgard to their minds was Paradise.

Paradise in Iceland is not a paradise elsewhere; nevertheless, to one who has travelled over barren hills and between glaciers, this warm nook with its green grass and woods of glistening birch was a place of inexpressible charm. Now, just to the east, where would come the ball of the toe, looking across the end of this still blue lake-like fiord, up the valleys to the snows of Skeggoxl, is the farm of Learwood, in a grassy flat by the water, backed by birchwood and hills, and screened from the east as well as from the north winds. Here lived Thorstein Kuggson. Kuggson's mother was the daughter of Asgeir, the father of Audun of Willowdale, with whom Grettir had a tussle on the ice, and whom he afterwards upset with his foot when he was carrying curds. Kuggson through his father was related to the influential and wealthy family in the Laxdale, whose history is well known through the noble saga that relates the story of that valley.

Grettir spent the autumn with his relative Kuggson. Now, whilst he was there he fell to talking one day with Kuggson about his trial of strength with Audun, and Grettir said how glad he was that nothing had come of it. It was said that he was a man of ill-luck; yet luck had befriended him on that occasion in sending Bard to interrupt the struggle before both lost their tempers and the quarrel became serious.

Then said Kuggson: "You remind me of the story of Bottle-back, which, of course, you know."

"It is many years since I have heard the tale," answered Grettir; "for, indeed, I can be little at home now, and am out of the way of hearing stories of one's forefathers. Tell me the tale."

Then Kuggson told Grettir

*The Story of Bottle-Back*

"You know very surely, Grettir, that your great-grandfather was Onund Treefoot. He was so called because in the great battle of Haf's fiord, fought against King Harald, he had one of his legs cut off below the knee. You have been told how that Onund had first to wife Asa, and that he settled at Cold-back; and he had by his first wife two sons, Thorgeir and Ufeig, who was also called Grettir, and it is after him that you are named. Onund's second wife was the mother of Thorgrim Grizzlepate, your grandfather.

"The story I am going to tell you relates to Thorgeir, the eldest son of Onund, and how he got the name of Bottle-back. You might think he acquired the designation from a rounded back. It was not so, he had a back as straight as yours.

"But to understand the story of how he got the name, I must go back to the time when Onund, your great-grandfather, came to Iceland. That was in the year of Christ 900; he was unable to remain any longer in Norway, because the king, Harald, was in such enmity with him. So he resolved that he would come to Iceland and seek there a new home. Now this was somewhat late, for the colonization of this island had begun some five or six and twenty years before, and there had come out great numbers of Norwegian chiefs, who fled from the rapacity and the vengeance of King Harald Fairhair, who outlawed every man who took up arms against him."

But the story shall be told not in Kuggson's words, but in mine.

Onund sailed to Iceland from Norway in the summer of A.D. 900, and he had a hard voyage and baffling winds from the south that drove him far away to the north into the Polar Sea, till he came near the pack-ice; and then there came a change, and he made south, and after much beating about, for he had lost his reckoning, he made land, and found that he had come upon the north coast of Iceland, and those who knew the looks of the land said he was off the Strand Bay. To the west rose the rocks and glaciers of the Drang Jokull, and to the east the long promontory that separated the Hunafloi from Skagafiord.

Presently a ten-oared boat put off from shore, rowed by six men, and approached Onund's vessel, and the men in the boat hailed the vessel and asked whose it was. Onund gave his name and inquired to whom the men belonged. They said they were servant men belonging to a farm at Drangar, just under the mighty field of glacier of Drang Jokull. Onund asked if all the land was taken up by settlers, and the men answered that along the north coast all such land as was worth anything was taken already, and that most was also settled to the south.

Then Onund consulted with his shipmates what was to be done, whether coast along the north protuberance of Iceland in search of uninhabited land, or go into the great bay and see whether any chance opened for them there. They had arrived so late in Iceland after the main rush of settlers that they could not expect to get any really favourable quarters. The men advised against exploring the north, exposed to the cold gales from the Polar Sea, where the fiords would be blocked with ice half the year; and thought there would be no harm trying what they could find further south.

So Onund turned his vessel in towards the head of the splendid bay Hunafloi; but seeing a creek that seemed fairly sheltered, having on the north some quaint spikes of rock, and a great mountain to the south like a horn, and finding that this fiord gave a turn northwards under the shelter of the mountains, the men with Onund's consent ran in there, and having anchored the vessel, entered a boat and rowed ashore. On reaching the strand they were met by men who asked them who they were and what they did there. Onund said he had come with peaceable intentions, and then he was told that all that fiord was occupied, and that the owner of the land was Eric Trap, a wealthy man. Eric came to the beach and hospitably invited Onund and his ship's crew to his house. There Onund told him his difficulty. He had come to Iceland too late, and he feared that he would be able nowhere to find unclaimed lands.

Eric considered a while, and then said there was more land that he had claimed than he could well keep in hand, and that he would be pleased to accommodate a man of such noble family and character as was Onund. Onund pressed him to receive payment for the land, but this Eric generously refused. When he had come there, said Eric, the country had been unpeopled, and he had just claimed what he liked, and had claimed more than he wanted. Now he desired to have neighbours, and if Onund would be friendly none would be better pleased than himself to have him near.

This gratifying offer satisfied Onund, but, as the saying is, 'Don't look a gift-horse in the mouth,' he did not at once close with the offer, but asked to be allowed to see the land Eric was so ready to part with.

Accordingly he rode with Eric along the coast, passed the headland where was the horn-shaped mountain, and came upon a fiord where some boiling springs poured up in the sea out of its depths; the mountains on the north came down so abruptly to the water's edge that the only habitable ground lay at the head of the firth and on the south side, having a northern aspect. Moreover there was a lofty range to the south, so that in winter the sun would never light up this firth. Onund did not much like it, he thought that Eric had offered him the place because he did not care for it himself; so he went across the mountain range and down into the little bay south of it. As they rode it was over snow, a long descent of wintry mountain, till they reached a valley in which was a hot spring, a little lake, and some grass. The situation was somewhat more inviting than that Onund had already seen, but it was not very attractive, and looking back on the long dreary slope of snow he said, "A cold back! a cold back! I would like to have had one warmer." "That is not easily acquired," answered Eric. "Further south there is no fiord for many miles till you come to one occupied by a man called Biarni. That I can tell you is a fertile settlement, there are woods and pastures, and hot springs and good anchorage; but that is not my land to give you."

Then Onund sang a stave:

"All across life's strands do run, I who many war-wagers won, Meadows green and pastures fair Once were mine, and woods to spare. Left behind, I rid the steed That o'er wave, with wind doth speed.[#] Cold--cold, icy back behind, This is what alone I find, Hard the lot that fate doth yield To the bearer of the shield."

[#] _i.e._ a ship.

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."