Iceland's Bell (41 page)

“Do you mean that from now on we’re to be governed by dreams and fables?” she asked, and her face brightened.

“Control over Iceland has been offered to me,” he said. “I am to become its lord, and you will be my lady. I have come here precisely to tell you this.”

“High treason?” she asked in a low voice.

“No,” he said. “The king wants to sell Iceland. The Danish kings have always been terribly eager to sell or pawn off this possession, but only foreign princes have been considered to be suitable buyers. Until now, that is. Some Germans from Hamburg intend to buy the country. But they don’t trust themselves to control it unless they can appoint a governor who is popular with his people. They are of the opinion that I am this man.”

She stared at him for several moments.

“What are you going to do?” she asked.

“Rule the country,” he said with a smile. “The first step will be to reestablish our civil liberties based upon a foundation of law similar to the one that was established when the covenant was made with Hákon the Old in Norway.”*

“And the judiciary?” she asked.

“One of my first tasks will be to remove all of the Danish king’s functionaries. Some I will banish, including the regent Páll Beyer and the vice-magistrate Jón Eyjólfsson. We must cleanse the legislature of Danish pollution and establish it anew.”

“And where do you plan to have your seat of power?” she said.

“Where would you like me to have my seat of power?”

She said: “At Bessastaðir.”

“As you wish,” he said. “The residence shall be rebuilt and constructed in no less a splendid manner than the palace of any land-grave within the empire. I’ll order a library constructed of stone and will return to their rightful home all of the precious books that I saved from rotting away in the hovels of folk who have been ravaged into utter misery by the Danes.”

“We’ll have a magnificent banquet hall,” she said. “The walls will be hung with the weapons and shields of ancient champions. Your friends will sit with you in the evenings at an oaken table and recount ancient sagas and drink tankards of beer.”

“The people of Iceland will no longer be punished for trying to earn a living through trade,” said Arnas Arnæus. “Commercial centers based on foreign models will rise around the harbors and a fleet of ships will be fitted out for fishing. We’ll sell stockfish and woolen goods to cities on the mainland, just as the Icelanders of old did until the death of Jón Arason, and from those same cities we’ll buy wares befitting civilized men. The earth will be mined for precious minerals. The Kaiser will shake his fist at the Danish king and demand that he return to the Icelanders the artifacts that the Danish king’s men stole from the cathedral in Hólar and from the monasteries at Munkaþverá, Möðruvellir, and Þingeyri. The ancient estates that the Danish crown seized after the downfall of the Icelandic church will be recovered. And we shall build in Iceland a splendid university and collegia,* where Icelandic scholars will once again live the lives of men.”

“We’ll build palaces,” she said, “no less great than those that Governor Gyldenløve built in Denmark using the taxes from Iceland.”

He said: “A splendid courthouse shall be raised at Þingvellir, and another bell hung there, larger and more melodious than the one that the king demanded from Iceland and that the hangman ordered Jón Hreggviðsson to cut down.”

“The cold moonlight gleaming upon Drekkingarhylur will no longer be the one and only merciful consolation for destitute women in Iceland,” said she.

“And famished beggars will no longer be strung up in the name of justice at Almannagjá,” said he.

“They’ll all be our friends,” said she, “for the folk will be contented.”

“And the Þrælakista at Bessastaðir shall be torn down,” said he. “For in the land where the folk are contented no crimes are committed.”

“And we’ll ride throughout the land on white horses,” said she.

13

Seagulls still hovered peaceably over the streets and canals of the sleeping city when from outside came a heavy clattering of hooves and the rattling of carriage wheels, and finally the screech of brakes being pulled. A moment later there was a quiet knock upon the door, like a secret sign. Snæfríður, clad only in a nightshirt, peered out through the doorway. Her face was flushed and her eyes softly lustrous. Her hair hung loosely about her shoulders.

“You knock upon the door and stand unmoving outside,” she said. “Why don’t you come in?”

“I thought I might be a nuisance,” said the maidservant.

“To whom?”

“Are you alone?”

“What’s that to you?”

“They’ve come from the Company with a carriage to fetch the luggage,” said the maidservant.

“Where have you been all night, woman?”

“You told me last night to go to my dear Trine,” said the maidservant. “I didn’t dare come in again. I thought someone might be there.”

“What do you mean? Who do you think might have been here?”

“I never heard anyone leave.”

“And who might it have been leaving?”

“But the man who came to fetch the book?”

“What book?”

“The book.”

“No one has come to fetch the book, as you will see if you look under the lid of the trunk where you put it last night.”

The lady opened the trunk as a sign of proof for her maidservant, and indeed, there lay the book, just as she had left it, wrapped in red silk.

“No one has ever heard of him leaving behind a book,” said the woman.

“I have no idea whom you’re talking about,” said the lady.

“But the man who was standing here on the threshold when you told me to leave last night!”

“It’s true, last night I asked you to go downstairs and bid farewell to our host’s cook, who has been a friend to you. But tell no one that you saw a man here—people might think you were out of your mind.”

The massive buildings of the Iceland Trade Company out on Slotsholmen appeared in silhouette against the dawn. The Iceland merchantman lay at anchor; it was to sail today with the grain supplements that the king believed would help alleviate Iceland’s burden of famine.

The staff at Goldsmith’s house had risen although it was still early. Servants loaded the lady’s luggage onto the carriage and the landlord’s wife helped her to dress for travel, weeping that a woman with eyes such as hers should have to set sail across the dreadful sea where in winter only God has command, on her way to the land where the funnel of Hell burns below ice.

That same morning the assessor Arnas Arnæus was up and about in his library much earlier than he’d been for quite some time. He wakened a servant and ordered him to light the fire in the stove and bring him hot tea, then asked him to dust in the library and tidy up the foyer because he was expecting a guest sometime before noon.

After he had shaved, combed his peruke, and applied ointments and colognes befitting a nobleman, he paced the room in true Icelandic fashion, smoking from a large pipe.

Around midmorning a huge foreign carriage stopped outside the gate, and from it stepped a giant man in an immensely capacious cloak. He was potbellied and his jowls hung down over his shoulders: it was Uffelen from Hamburg. The German was shown to the assessor’s study, where he began bowing as soon as he reached the door. Arnas Arnæus invited him in and bade him sit. They began by exchanging general news and paying each other flattering compliments. Then the visitor turned to his business. He had returned according to the agreement that they had made earlier in the year, to hear his final answer to the question that he had brought up with his lord on several occasions concerning his native country Islandia, especially and particularly in connection with the proposal affecting the island’s future that had insistently been conveyed to the Hamburg merchants by the envoys of His Highness the Danish king; a swift reply was imperative now, since it appeared that the war with the Swedes could not be delayed much longer. The Hamburg merchants had now investigated as carefully as possible various relationes* regarding this land inasmuch as opportunity had allowed, and reiterated and reaffirmed the stipulations previously agreed to, that they would take the purchase of the island from the Danish king into consideration only if they were able to convince a certain Icelander who was trusted and accepted by the poor inhabitants of the island to become their chief man over Islandia. This man, moreover, had to have the ability to be able to act as the representative of the Kaiser in Iceland, which they hoped would someday develop into a republic, while the Kaiser himself would bear the title of Supreme Majesty of this country like so many other countries in the Holy Roman Empire, whether they were autonomous or semi-autonomous. Uffelen said that both he and his colleagues, acting upon the assessor’s advice, had tried to find another man amongst the Icelanders who might be more likely than the assessor, or perhaps might be just as likely but much more eager, to accept the position and responsibility of governor of the island. They had not been able to find such a man. They would neither trust their island to some retired Danish court official nor dress up as their servant some uncultured boor of a farmer, and they knew well that all of the foremost men on the island were infected with an inconvenient, old-school loyalty toward the Danish king, secured through years of bribes and promises of emoluments. On the other hand, they had received verifiable reports that the lord Assessor Consistorii was the favorite and darling son of the inhabitants of the aforementioned island, a folk so helpless that they were incapable of raising their standards of morality and culture on their own.

Arnas Arnæus, who had been pacing the room during the German’s speech, asked whether they had discussed with the Danish envoys the plan that was now uppermost in the minds of various ministers in the Chancery, though it had not yet been put down on paper: to send the surviving band of starving Icelanders to the heaths of Jylland and afterward sell the empty land.

Uffelen said that as far as the Hamburg merchants were concerned, such a plan was out of the question, since they were in no position to hire and transport the manpower necessary to make profitable use of the island. There were no human works to be found in Iceland no matter how much one searched, and the native inhabitants had the talent, unknown amongst the members of any other race, of being able to live inside piles of turf or holes in the ground instead of houses; it was likely that no race of people other than the one already acclimatized to Iceland could sustain itself there. The Hamburg merchants would aim to increase the Icelanders’ prosperity and help them to shape as quickly as possible a way of life no more inferior to the one that was in vogue while the Hansa controlled commercial enterprises there in the old days.

Arnas Arnæus asked whether the Hamburg merchants might not have considered whether it was advisable to appoint a German as governor of Iceland, if a clement and righteous German could be found.

To this Uffelen said that he could give the same old answer as found in the letters and memoirs of Hinrik the Eighth and his advisors, made in response to the Danish king’s persistent offers to the English king for the purchase of the aforementioned island. The English had replied that they had no desire to purchase a country that would cost so much to safeguard as Iceland if the foreign authorities were to carry out their work there secure of life and limb. According to an investigation into the history of the island carried out by the English king’s advisors, the native islanders were well known for their barbaric attacks against foreign envoys to whom they did not take a liking. This had always been one of the principal reasons why it was so difficult for the Danish king to sell the country. Uffelen knew the names of famous foreigners whom the Icelandic commoners had executed without benefit of trial or law, kings’ agents and governmental proxies, governors, bishops, and regents, amongst them a number of men of noble birth. Icelandic women had consistently spearheaded such attacks. He could just as well mention the time when one Icelandic woman had ordered an illustrious Danish nobleman boiled in a kettle along with sixteen of his servants—the Danish king was never able to exact revenge for this murder, nor even so much as indict the murderers. One lofty German baron who had been in the service of the Danish king was also found encairned like a dog under some scree a stone’s throw from the Schalholt bishopric’s vegetable garden. A celebrated, right honorable Swedish archbishop, whose coat of arms could still be seen hanging in the cathedral in Uppsala, was made bishop of Iceland, but the rabble drowned him in a bag like a dog. “We men of Hamburg,” said Uffelen, “do not conduct ourselves with kingly arrogance. We are judicious merchants, goodwilled toward the Icelanders, and we wish to conduct trade with them through the intercession of one of their own friends.”

When he reached this point Arnas Arnæus stopped pacing. He stood facing the German and said:

“There is one reason why it is impossible for me to serve as your representative in Iceland: namely, the man who is offering to sell the country does not own it. It is true that I was appointed to my current office, though I may not have merited it, by a king who became ruler of my native country as a result of intractable events and accidents long before my time; and therefore, the latter error would be even more despicable than the former if I were also to become the confidant of those to whom he would wrongly sell this country.”

The gentleman from Hamburg answered: “My lord knows that stored in Hamburg in a secret coffer are the letters that the bishops Augmundus and Jona Aronis,* in their own ways two of the most eminent men in Iceland during their day and age, wrote to our Kaiser, Karl the Fifth of praiseworthy memory, asking him for his support in their struggle against the Danish king, who at that time had sent out mercenaries on warships to plunder Iceland of its chattel and valuables and to take over the estates owned by the Icelandic church. In their letters Their Excellencies the Icelandic bishops express their hope that the Kaiser will protect and assist their country by granting Iceland status as either a confederate state within the Holy Roman Empire or else as a member, with full duties and rights, of the Hansa’s republican alliance. Your office, under German patronage, would only represent a continuation of the endeavors of these outstanding Icelandic devotees to their fatherland who lived during those proud times before the islanders were thoroughly broken beneath the yoke of the Danish crown.”

Arnas Arnæus said that things had been completely different at that time. The Danish king had waged war against a strong authoritative power in Iceland, a power that was firmly rooted in the land and its people: the Icelandic church, an institution that was in many ways equivalent to and synonymous with Icelandic self-determination, yet which was also an inseparable part of the Catholic Christianity represented by the Roman church; therefore the Icelandic church had no choice but to act as a votary to the German Kaiser, who, in accordance with the origins and nature of the empire, was a confederate of the holy seat at Rome. No such institution existed any longer in Iceland, since the Danish king had wiped out the Icelandic church as a temporal authority and obliterated it from its place in human hearts as a moral authority, introducing in its place the Lutheran heresy, as it is called, which aims to make the pillage and rapine of princes canon law. “Therefore you can see,” said Arnæus, “that in Iceland there exists no power, institute, public opinion, or any other sort of backing that would serve to morally buttress or legally justify my entering into the service of a new foreign overlord.”

Uffelen said that the Icelanders were obligated to remember that the greatest Icelanders of their time, those two elders who had sought the support of Kaiser Karl the Fifth, had both been arrested by the Danish king’s agents—one, blind and decrepit, had been exiled to a foreign country, the other, seventy years old, had been brought out and beheaded in his very own country by the Danes.

Arnas Arnæus said: “Herr Uffelen! My heart is truly moved when I hear that a foreigner has such an excellent knowledge of events that have taken place in Iceland. Our Redeemer has withheld from us many of his gifts of love, but I never once thought that I would be forced to doubt my countrymen’s ability to remember. The fates of Bishop Ögmundur of Skálholt and Bishop Arason of Hólar are and always shall remain fixed in the memory of each and every Icelander throughout the centuries. And although the Danish king has not yet actually managed to sell us into slavery despite his best intentions, enough has already occurred to ensure that His Most Clement Heart will have its own deserved place in Icelandic history and lore in times to come.

“A man who tries to strangle a small animal with his hands eventually grows tired. He holds it an arm’s length away and tightens his grip around its throat as strongly as he can, but it does not die. It stares at him; its claws are out. The animal expects no help, though a cheerful-looking troll might come along and offer to free it. Its only hope is that time is on its side and that its enemy’s strength will wane.

“If a small and defenseless nation is granted somewhere in the midst of its misfortune the fortune to possess a sufficiently powerful enemy, time will fight on its side just as it does for the animal in my example. If in its dire need it assents to the troll’s protection it will be swallowed up in one bite. I know that you men of Hamburg would send us Icelanders maggot-free grain, and that you would never consider it worth your while to try to swindle us by tampering with the weights and scales. But when German fishing villages and German market towns have been built on Iceland’s shores, how long will we have to wait before German castles with German barons and mercenaries are raised there as well? What then will be the lot of the Icelanders, who wrote such celebrated books? They will have become nothing more than the fat servants of a German puppet state. A fat servant is not much of a man. A beaten servant is a great man, because in his breast freedom has its home.”