B0046ZREEU EBOK Read online

  We looked down on Frodriver as dusk fell, where it lay in a corrie facing the sea to the north. The farm stands on a plain that was saltmarsh when the settlers came. Thorodd drained it, and now it’s good land, but I felt shut in there after Arnastapi. The cliffs lower over the plain, and the waterfalls drown the sound of the sea. I remember jumping over drainage ditches lined with kingcups and cotton grass. The farm was where Halldis’ friend Thurid lived, who was married to Thorodd and sister of Snorri the Priest. The feuds of my childhood had a lot to do with her.

  Thurid was obviously glad to see Halldis. I hung back against my pony’s shoulder as they greeted one another. Then Halldis took my hand and brought me forward to the threshold, right in the middle of a group of strangers.

  ‘This is my foster daughter,’ she told Thurid proudly. ‘This is Gudrid.’

  Thurid was so grandly dressed I couldn’t take my eyes off her. She was slight and fair, very pretty I suppose, but I saw with a child’s eyes, and it seemed to me her face was closed, and she had a tight mouth which I didn’t like. She wore a blue linen dress with embroidery round the throat and hem, and a darker blue tunic. Her brooches had animal heads on them, and between them she wore a string of coloured beads. Reds and blues were woven in a pattern I had never seen before, in the scarf over her hair. Beside her my stepmother looked big and austere, a bit too much like a man, in her plain dress and simple bronze brooches. A part of me admired Thurid; I thought for a moment that when I grew up I would like to be like that. Then I felt disloyal and despised myself.

  Thurid had a baby, Kjartan, the one whose red curl she had sent so that Halldis could work her spell. We gave him his medicine at once, the first evening we arrived. He didn’t look like a child who would have convulsions, but of course I had no experience. He wasn’t fat like some babies are, and he crawled about in the rushes by the hearth, moving faster than you’d think possible, and trying to get his hands into everything. I liked him, and I wished he were my little brother. I had never played with a younger child before.

  I remember now: I said I’d tell you how it was that our neighbour Bjorn didn’t marry. Thurid was already married to Thorbjorn the Stout of Frodriver when Bjorn first set eyes on her. It was hardly the ideal marriage for a woman like Thurid; by all accounts Thorbjorn was a loud, violent man, who used to beat up his own thralls for no other reason than to vent his own rage. He’d been married before and was much older than Thurid. But he was killed in a feud over some stolen horses, and Thurid got the farm out of it, so in the end I suppose it was worth the trouble she went through. Bjorn was already visiting her when her husband was still alive. I think now, from scraps I overheard then and only understand now, that my foster parents hoped, when the news came that Thorbjorn the Stout was dead, that Bjorn would marry Thurid and bring her back to Breidavik. Whether he planned to do that or not, her brother, Snorri the Priest, was too quick for him. That wily man was too quick for most people. When I think about it now, although he took care of his wayward sister, I don’t think he ever understood her, or would you say, loved her? I think Thurid was only loved by one man in her life. And Snorri the Priest had every cause to hate Thurid’s father; they were only half brother and sister, you see, through their mother.

  But you don’t want to hear all about that. When Halldis took me to Frodriver, Thurid had been married off, this time to Thorodd, who had grown rich trading with Norway and the islands, and she was living in Frodriver again with her husband. But – I only heard all this years later, from my son Snorri’s godfather’s sister, whom I used to meet at the Thing once a year, when we were living at Glaum – Bjorn started visiting Thurid again, as soon as she was back in her old home at Frodriver. If one husband hadn’t mattered to him, I suppose, why bother about another? Thorodd knew what was going on, and he was as angry as you’d expect a man to be. But he didn’t meet Bjorn in fair fight. Bjorn wasn’t our Breidavik champion for nothing. No, Thorodd ambushed him just before dawn, he and his friends the Thorissons and a couple of thralls, five of them altogether. Bjorn had been with Thurid and was riding home up Digramull from Frodriver. Bjorn killed the Thorissons, and Thorodd – that proud seagoing trader – fled with his slaves. Bjorn came home so covered in blood they thought he’d had his death blow, but he recovered from his wounds soon enough, and it was after that he was sent into exile. He went first to Norway, and then he travelled far into the east beyond that, fighting in the king’s wars. Nine months after the night of the ambush a son was born to Thurid at Frodriver: Kjartan Thoroddsson.

  One of the best things that happened for me, when I was a little girl, was Bjorn coming home to Breidavik. I told you about the games, didn’t I? I loved that man, Agnar, if a little girl can be said to love a man who’s not her father. He had time for me, and yet he had an air about him of a man who’d seen much more of the world than we had – a whiff of something far-off and exotic, of strange places very different from our little peninsula. Only he went nowhere any more, after he got home, just over the mountain to Frodriver, and children were not told anything about that. But I think a part of me knew, all the same. I can’t remember anyone telling me who Kjartan really was. I think that’s because whoever actually said it was only confirming something that deep down I’d always known. Anyway, I was telling you about my first meeting with him, when Halldis took me on that visit to Frodriver.

  Kjartan had a box full of coloured pebbles, shells and driftwood. That evening I played with him by the hearth. I built him towers and he knocked them down, squealing with laughter each time my castles crashed into the ashes. It was easy to listen to the women’s talk at the same time. Halldis knew I had sharp ears, but Thurid seemed to assume I was as absorbed as the baby. I was half insulted by that; I wanted her to notice me. But soon I forgot about it and was intent on what they were saying. It frightened me, and being among them all in a warm safe place, there was a perverse pleasure to be got from being afraid.

  ‘No one dare go out after sunset anywhere in the valley,’ Thurid was saying. ‘If ever a man refused to lie quiet in his grave, it was he. And listen – I had this from Thorgeir the packman – you know he comes every summer now along the coast of Breidafjord – it was he who brought me these beads. Do you like them?’

  Halldis glanced at the beads. ‘What did Thorgeir say about the hauntings?’

  ‘It began with the oxen they used to haul the body up the valley to the grave. They took him as far from the farms as they could, but as they went the corpse grew heavier and heavier, and at last the beasts could pull no more, and they had to bury him where they were, in the middle of the lava field. They raised a great cairn over him to hold him down. But it did no good, and nor did the spells that were used to bind him to the earth. That same night the oxen were possessed, and harried over the precipices where their broken bodies were discovered the next morning. Thorgeir talked to the shepherd, who said it’s as much as a man’s life is worth to be out on the hill. But the shepherd is Arnkel’s thrall and has no choice about it. “But Thorgeir,’’ he said, “I’m a marked man now, you see if I’m not.’’’

  ‘Once a man believes in his own death he’s doomed,’ observed Halldis. ‘Arnkel should let him go away.’

  ‘They hear the ghost at night,’ went on Thurid. ‘It sits astride the roof and drums on the turf with its heels until the whole house shakes. His widow can’t stand it. She lies in her bed with the covers over her ears, and won’t budge until it’s broad daylight. He’ll ride her to death, Thorgeir said. Her husband’s black ghost will drive all the reason out of her.’

  That night I lay beside Halldis on the sleeping platform, and whispered in her ear. ‘Do the dead walk everywhere? Do we have ghosts at home?’

  It was a while before she answered me. A turf fell away from the banked-up fire, and I could see the embers through the hole it made, glaring at me like a red eye.

  ‘Wherever the living are,’ whispered my foster mother, ‘the dead will be there too. No one wants to
be cast back into the darkness beyond the world. We grow too attached to our selves to accept that. So the dead stay among us for as long as they can. Where they’re loved and respected, perhaps they can settle for a while. Where they’ve been hated, if they have the spirit for it they’ll keep the fight going for as long as possible. Already in Iceland the dead outnumber us, for we’re the third generation. They do their best to stay until we banish them.’

  ‘How can we do that?’

  ‘By forgetting. But that’s how fate tricks us all. You can’t forget on purpose, however hard you try. In fact it’s the opposite. Forgetting only happens when you’re looking the other way. To forget is the only way to lay a ghost for ever, but when you most need to do that you can’t use it. There are other spells, but none is so effective. They last for a while, sometimes for long enough, until no one’s left alive who remembers any more.’

  ‘Is my mother a ghost now?’

  ‘Your mother was a good woman who did her best for you.’

  ‘That’s not what I asked.’

  ‘It’s the only answer I can give you.’

  I thought that over, and shivered. I didn’t fully understand, but I was sure that I did not want to live among ghosts. ‘Halldis?’

  She started. ‘I thought you were asleep. Settle down, can’t you?’

  ‘If a person went to a land that was empty, where no people had ever been before, there wouldn’t be any ghosts there, would there?’

  ‘Only the ones you’d be bound to take with you. And now, for goodness sake, child, go to sleep.’

  Orm and Halldis had no children of their own. Yet I learned from Halldis charms that will make a woman conceive, and prevent miscarriage and bring a baby safely into the world. I don’t know if she had ever tried to use them on herself. I could have asked – I wasn’t afraid of her – but I never thought of it, until my own son was born, and by then it was too late to ask Halldis anything. I’ve often wished I could have had her advice later; sometimes even after we had come back to Glaum I would ask myself what Halldis would have done in such and such a case. I’ve used her remedies all my life, though now I’m cautious about the spells. She made them innocently; we knew nothing about the new religion then. But I’ve since been given the knowledge of good and evil, and I’ve learned to take care.

  We went to Frodriver again one summer when they had a big fair by the river. Thorgeir the packman and lots of other traders were there, displaying more fine wares than I had ever seen in my life. There were games as well, and feasting out of doors. Thurid was dressed in red with real gold brooches, and an amber necklace. She didn’t even notice me. She was talking to our neighbour Bjorn, who at that time had only just arrived back from Norway.

  I found my old friend Kjartan, but he wasn’t a baby any more, and he didn’t want to play with me. He was fair and chubby, half the height of a man, with a little axe thrust into his belt. He strode about, watching the men.

  There was a fight. It was nothing important, only I’d never actually seen a man killed before. Someone split a man’s head open with an axe. It looked as easy as cracking a hazelnut, only the inside was not firm and white but wet and red. They hid the corpse in a clump of willows. I didn’t want to look, but something drew me. A few men were loitering nearby, talking quietly. Then Kjartan dashed past me and dipped his axe in the dead man’s blood. He was gone almost before I realised what I had seen. His eyes were shining as he slipped away, his little axe gleaming with real blood. That was the last I saw of Kjartan until years later I went to the Thing with Karlsefni and met him there. He grew into a strong, sensible man, very like Bjorn, and the farm at Frodriver flourished in his hands. They had a lot of trouble with witchcraft there after we’d gone to the Green Land, but Kjartan put an end to all that. He visited us once or twice at Glaumbaer. Karlsefni liked him.

  Although my father was often at Arnarstapi, he never had much to say to me. Often Bjorn of Breidavik would be there too, and he was always urging my father to support him in some action against the Thorsnes men. When it was just my father and Orm they talked about the farm more than feuds. Perhaps there was nothing to say about me. I was well, Halldis was teaching me the things I should know. But I used to long for my father to notice me, and be silently angry when he didn’t. I had no idea what he wanted me to be or do, but I would have done anything to get a moment of his attention. Even now, it makes me angry to think of that.

  I realise now I must have satisfied him. You probably can’t see it now, and indeed you ought not to, but as a young girl I was good looking. I knew it too, Halldis made sure of that. It didn’t mean anything to me, because my father never looked at me.

  Other men did. By the time I was fifteen several men had approached my father to find out what his plans were for my marriage. Of course, a large estate came with me, so it might have seemed like a good bargain, but the rumour was already going around that my father was short of money. His heart had never been in his farm; since Eirik went away west something in my father had gone too. He’d never wanted to settle down, but on the other hand he was never fully involved with the Breidafjord feuds either. He made up for it by entertaining lavishly, and at his feasts he would make gifts to his guests that everyone would talk about for months afterwards. It’s a way to achieve fame, I suppose, but not a provident one to take if you’re not well-off. Thorbjorn thought he was rich. After all, my grandfather had been a slave, although no one ever mentioned that any more.

  Thorbjorn was twice the man his father had been, in terms of wealth, but he wasn’t interested in his land, and he made a poor husbandman. That’s my opinion now. As a child growing up at Arnarstapi I had Orm’s good management as an example right before my eyes. Orm and Halldis were like the man in the story who built his house upon a rock. My father’s house was built upon sand, and the sands were running out fast by the time I went back to him.

  A house built on a rock. You say the rock is faith, and I say, yes, that’s true, but faith in God begins with faith in one’s self. Go on, write that down. I can see you hesitate, and now you’ve made a big blot, holding a full quill hovering over your vellum like that. I’m not speaking blasphemy. Isn’t God within us all? I repeat, Orm and Halldis built their house upon a rock, and the rock was in place ready when the news of the new religion first reached us. Faith in oneself, good management, a generosity built not upon show but upon substance. That’s what I learned from them.

  I was fourteen when Thangbrand the missionary landed at Arnarstapi, and was going up to my father’s house, but he stopped at our house first. That was a miracle in itself: if he had gone straight to Laugarbrekka we might have heard no more about it. Thangbrand had already travelled over most of Iceland, and made many converts, some by the sword and some by magic. He didn’t need to use either with us. Halldis was already interested. Talk of the new religion had been going around for some time. Halldis and Thurid had discussed it at Frodriver, when we stayed there. Thurid was suspicious then, but my foster mother was interested in the idea.

  ‘This is a land of ghosts, but the gods have other things to do than worry about that,’ Halldis said. ‘It’s all very well for a man at sea to pray to Thor, but here on land we’re overrun by demons, and more and more people are being driven off their land by the dead who refuse to lie quiet. This new power may be just the thing we need.’

  ‘It’s only politics,’ argued Thurid. ‘Bjorn told me what’s happening in Norway now. The king isn’t interested in ghosts. He wants our land.’

  ‘But perhaps this god offers a better fate than the old ones. Perhaps he gives us more choice about our own lives.’

  ‘Halldis!’ I had never seen Thurid roused before. I crept a little closer to the hearth. ‘I don’t know how you dare to talk about choices. How do you know what is listening to us, in the dark?’ I shrank back, although I knew she did not mean me. ‘Who are you to play around with unseen things?’

  ‘I’d still like to know more about this Christ of T
hangbrand’s. I’m afraid for Gudrid too. She knows and sees too much already, and I don’t know how to protect her.’

  I supposed Halldis had no idea I was listening. I shrank further behind the hangings, but she must have heard me move. ‘Is that you, Gudrid?’ she called. ‘Come in by the fire, and show us what you bought at the fair.’

  I’d been given a silver piece, and I’d bought a knife that I could hang round my neck on a string. Halldis admired it, but Thurid said, ‘You take after your foster mother too much. You’re a lovely girl. You should buy yourself pretty things. Didn’t you look at the necklaces in Thorgeir’s pack?’

  I didn’t answer. I watched Halldis test my knife with her thumb, and nod approvingly. ‘A good choice,’ she said, and I was satisfied.

  When Thangbrand came to Arnarstapi, Halldis took from him the thing she needed, and found a god that suited her. She would have had us all baptised then and there, but Orm was more cautious. He took Thangbrand to my father first. Thorbjorn had no opinions about gods, but he’d been to the Thing that summer and knew which way the wind was blowing in Iceland. Christianity was becoming politic. Thangbrand had been sent by the King of Norway himself, and was a powerful man to have for an ally.

  So, each of us having a reason of our own, we all made our way down to the sandy beach at Arnarstapi, one afternoon around midsummer.

  The sea is green. Loose knots of dulse rock over rippled sand. The onshore breeze catches the small company on the shore. Its touch is sea-cold, like the wet sand underfoot. The man who stands, chest-deep, beyond the small waves, is shuddering, his teeth clenched against the cold.