Iceland's Bell (43 page)

16

Night. Two Icelandic Jóns stagger waywardly through a burning city. The learned Grindavíkian is bawling like a child. The farmer from Rein plods silently behind. The fire of Copenhagen is at their heels, driving them on in the direction of Nørreport. The sea of flames turns terrified folk into frantic silhouettes, fleshly phantoms.

“What are you whining about?” said the man from Skagi, completely neglecting to address his learned namesake respectfully. “You could hardly be mourning for Copenhagen.”

“No,” said the scholar. “This city, built with the blood of my destitute people, is bound to perish. For God is just.”

“Well, then I think you’d better start praising him,” said Jón Hreggviðsson.

“I would give much to be illiterate like you, Hreggviðsson,” said the scholar.

“I think there’ll probably be enough old books left in the world even if your rubbish burns, if that’s what you’re crying about,” said the farmer.

“Even if my life’s work were to perish,” said the studiosus antiquitatum, “even if the flames were to consume all those texts that I diligently compiled for four decades, mostly by night after I’d completed my day’s work, I would still eternally weep for a poor man’s poor books. I weep for my lord’s books. His books, which burn even as we speak, contain the life and soul of the Nordic peoples, who spoke the Danish tongue ever since the Flood and all the way up until the time when they abandoned their origins and adopted a Germanic mien. I weep because now there will no longer exist any books written in the Danish tongue. The Nordic countries no longer have a soul. I weep for my master’s sorrow.”

Passersby could hear by their speech that they were foreigners, and thinking that they were Swedish spies were eager to string them up without delay.

Suddenly they ran straight into a man wearing a dress coat and a top hat, carrying a bag upon his back. Jón Hreggviðsson greeted him warmly, but the scholar from Grindavík pretended not to notice the man and tearfully continued on his way.

“Hey you Grindavík dimwit!” called Jón Marteinsson after him. “Don’t you want beer and bread?”

The third Jón who now joined their company was as crafty as ever no matter where he went. Even here at the Nørrevold he knew of a woman who could provide a man with beer and bread.

“But I’ll tell you this right now,” he said, “if you don’t stare up at me like beaten dogs while you’re drinking the beer that I’m going to get for you, then I’ll take it right back.”

He led them to this particular wench’s kitchen and told them to take a seat. Jón Hreggviðsson sneered and grimaced in a variety of ways, but the man from Grindavík did not look up.

The woman was terribly affected by the fire in Copenhagen and wailed and begged God for mercy, but Jón Marteinsson grabbed hold of her, gave her a quick tweak in a spot just above her hams, and said:

“Give these old farmers here flat beer in poor mugs and brennivín in tin goblets; but give me fresh Rostocker beer in an enameled stone pitcher, preferably with a silver lid and inscribed with one of Luther’s bawdy lyrics; and brennivín in a silver goblet.”

The woman gave the man a clout, but cheered up slightly.

“Cheers lads and tell us a lie,” said Jón Marteinsson. “And bring us bread and sausages, my good woman.”

They gulped down the beer.

“It’s horrendous to think,” said the woman as she smeared the bread, “what trials God sets before our blessed king.”

“Screw the king,” said Jón Marteinsson.

“You Icelanders are heartless,” said the woman.

“Make sure you put a lot of smoked blubber on that,” said Jón Marteinsson.

After they had slaked the worst of their thirst he continued:

“Well now, old Árni’s gone and gotten all of Iceland’s books burned—”

The scholar from Grindavík looked with tear-filled eyes directly into his enemy’s face and said only one word: “Satan.”

“—except for the ones I managed to rescue in time and bring to the Swedish count du Bertelskiold and his brothers,” said Jón Marteinsson.

“You’ve conducted business with men who call Iceland’s books West Gotlandic,” said the Grindavíkian.

“Yet here in the bottom of my bag is something that will ensure that the name of Jón Marteinsson will never be forgotten as long as the world exists,” said the other.

They ate and drank for a short time, saying nothing, except for Jón Marteinsson, who directed flirtatious comments at the woman in between mouthfuls. The scholar from Grindavík had stopped crying, and he had a spot of jam on his nose. By the time they were well into their third pitcher Jón Hreggviðsson had become adequately drunk, and he started reciting a stanza from the
Elder Ballad of Pontus
at the top of his lungs.

As they finished the food and drink and the festivities started winding down, Jón Marteinsson, the party’s host, started peeking quickly and furtively beneath the table in order to take stock of his guests’ shoes. Typically Icelandic, as he might have guessed. He also examined the buttons on their jackets: neither brass nor silver, just bits of bone. Jón Marteinsson asked the woman to loan them cards or dice. Both of the guests declined their host’s invitation to a game of craps, but Jón Hreggviðsson said he wouldn’t mind a bit of arm wrestling. He said that even though he might be an old geezer, he’d still be able to fend off each and every man whom Jón Marteinsson sent to remove him from his shoes. The blubbery woman, flat-footed and knock-kneed, her face swollen from crying, stood at the stove and watched the three men. She soon gathered what sort of people these were, then stopped lamenting the king’s misfortune and said that these insane Icelanders would always be more akin to themselves than to human beings, and that anyone who did as much as extend his little finger to them would regret it, even if the city were burning around him and the pit of Hell gaped open beneath his feet—even if the inhabited world were destroyed, she said, their lies and trickery would remain. Jón Marteinsson tried pinching her again but she would not be appeased and instead announced that she was going to send for the master of the watch.

Jón Marteinsson said that in that case there was nothing left to do but open up his bag and hand over its contents as payment or ransom for the hospitality, and he pulled out a large, age-old vellum manuscript and handed it to the woman.

“What am I supposed to do with this?” said the woman, looking contemptuously at this heap of blackened, tattered, and shriveled patches of skin in the faint light of the inn’s coal stove. “I couldn’t use this thing to light the fire under my kettle even once. And I’d be surprised if the plague’s not lurking in it.”

The two Jóns stared wide-eyed at the book: one of them beheld before him the lost chief treasure of his master, and the other felt for sure that what he saw were the parchment pages that had belonged to his blessed mother from Rein. It was the
Skálda.
Without a word, both of them reached down and removed their shoes.

17

The Alþingi sentenced Jón Hreggviðsson to prison at Bremerholm for having at one time concealed the Supreme Court appeal contained in the royal warrant that had been issued in connection with his case. Arnæus retrieved the old man from the castle at the same time as he concluded arrangements to have the farmer’s original case finally tried before the Supreme Court. His case was contested once again throughout the first winter of the farmer’s present sojourn in Copenhagen and on into the summer. Almost all of the litigation took place behind the farmer’s back, except for once when he was summoned to appear before the judge. He repeated all the answers he had made to the old charges; he wasn’t about to deny anything. He also knew well how to put his wretchedness on display before the court: an old white-haired rustic stands with drooping shoulders, tearful and trembling before foreign judges in a distant land, overcome by the tremendous and difficult journeys of past and present that he’d been forced to make because of a long-past accident that had made him an innocent man to the dismay of the authorities.

The lawsuit dragged on, not because of any prevailing interest in Denmark in the fate of a farmer from Akranes, but rather because it was an essential part of the conflict being waged between two opposing camps within the government, both equally strong in many ways. Arnæus served as litigator on behalf of Jón Hreggviðsson and employed the uncompromising logic and learned pedantry that had always been the Icelanders’ strength against Danish courts. In a lawsuit such as this, in which the indictments were long since obsolete, the grounds banal, and none of the evidence against the accused legally admissible, it was easier than usual for Arnæus to use philosophy and logic to unravel the prosecution’s arguments. The court documents, both old and new, for and against, had become so muddled that nothing was more likely than that they were the incarnation of the Icelanders’ evil propensities for chicanery and quibbling, and it was deemed impossible for anyone to attempt to learn the truth from them as to whether or not the aforementioned Regvidsen had, twenty years ago, finished off his executioner in a black bog on a black autumn night in the black land called Iceland.

For a time during the summer it had looked likely that the case would continue to expand in size, that the two contestants on this field of battle would increase the force of their exertions, and that the old entanglements would be transformed into a matted mass that could never be unraveled. The main reason for this was that the daughter of Magistrate Eydalín from Iceland wanted Jón Hreggviðsson’s case to be made the touchstone for determining her departed father’s integrity as a judge. The knot continued to be hacked at by the highest authorities until the king decreed that the two cases were to be tried separately: the Supreme Court was, as originally planned, to pass judgment in the case of the farmer from Rein, but the Commissarial Court’s harsh judgments against the departed Eydalín and numerous other officials were to be disputed before Iceland’s high court at Öxará.

And now as spring approached and human life in Copenhagen was returning to normal after the fire, news came which many people, the Icelanders least of all, could scarcely believe: a verdict had finally been issued by our Majesty’s Supreme Court in the much-despised and seemingly endless lawsuit against Joen Regvidsen paa Skage.* Due to a lack of positive evidence the man was acquitted of the old charge brought by the magistrate that he had murdered the executioner Sívert Snorresen, and he was therewith released from the burden of any other penalties he had accrued in connection with his case and pronounced free to return home to our Royal Majesty’s country of Iceland.

One day in the spring, Arnas Arnæus, who now resided on Laxagade in the midst of the throng, sends for his woodcutter and hands him a new jacket, breeches, and boots, and lastly places a new hat upon the man’s hoary head, telling him at the same time that they would ride together today to Dragør.

This was the first time that Jón Hreggviðsson had ever been driven anywhere without having to sit up front with the driver. He was allowed to sit inside the carriage next to the scholar from Grindavík, and on the rear seat opposite them sat their lord and master, who gave them snuff and chatted with them pleasantly, though somewhat distractedly.

“Now I shall teach you an introductory verse from the
Elder Ballad of Pontus
that you have never heard before,” he said.

Then he recited this verse:

“Folk will marvel at the story
There on Iceland’s shore
When Hreggviðsson’s old gray and hoary
Head comes home once more.”

After both Jóns had memorized the verse they all sat in silence. The road was wet, causing the carriage to sway from side to side.

The assessor remained lost in thought for some time, then finally looked at the Rein farmer, smiled at him, and said:

“Jón Marteinsson saved the
Skálda.
You were all that fell to my lot.”

Jón Hreggviðsson said: “Does my lord have any messages he would like me to deliver?”

“Here is a rixdollar for your daughter in Rein, who stood in the doorway of your farm as you rode away,” said Arnas Arnæus.

“I can’t understand why that devil of a girl let the dog out,” said Jón Hreggviðsson. “Like I hadn’t already told her to keep her eye on it.”

“We shall hope that Rover found his way back home,” said Arnas Arnæus.

“If you should ever hear of anything unusual in Saurbær parish,” said the scholar from Grindavík, “peculiar dreams, trolls, elves, monsters, or any remarkable abnormalities, then please ask my dear Reverend Þorsteinn, and give him my greetings as well, to put it down in letters and send it to me so that I can add it to a book I’ve just begun writing,
De Mirabilibus Islandiae: Concerning Iceland’s Wonders.
”

They arrived at the trading station at Dragør. The merchantman to Iceland dawdled at anchor in the harbor, a few of its sails already hoisted.

“It is auspicious to set sail for Iceland from Dragør,” said Arnas Arnæus, and he extended his hand in farewell as Jón Hreggviðsson stepped down into the rowboat that would take him out to the merchantman. “Old friends of Icelanders linger here. Saint Ólafur* was known to loan Icelanders his ferryboat here, after the other ships had gone, especially if he thought it important that they arrive home in time for the Alþingi. If it so happens now that the holy King Ólafur enables you to reach home before the thirteenth week of summer, then I would like to ask you to pay a visit to the Alþingi by Öxará and show them your head.”

“Should it say something to them?” asked Jón Hreggviðsson.

“You can tell them from me that Iceland has not been sold; not this time. They’ll understand later. Then you can hand them your pardon.”

“But shouldn’t I convey your greetings to anyone?” said Jón Hreggviðsson.

“Your old ruffled head—that shall be my greeting,” said the Professor Antiquitatum Danicarum.

The easy breezes from Øresund blew through the white locks on the head of the old Icelandic scoundrel Jón Hreggviðsson as he stood there in the stern of the rowboat midway between ship and shore on his way home, waving his hat to the tired man who remained behind.