Paradise Reclaimed (7 page)

9

Steinar leaves, with the secret

She gave food for hungry hound,
She gave bed for sleeping sound.

Who was the woman who performed such prodigies of hospitality, people asked? Was it the Good Fairy of days gone by, or the Norns who decided men’s fates? Or was it the good housewife of Hlíðar, who never doubted her husband’s superiority in anything and thought it a measure of his integrity that he refused to accept gold? Or was it the blue-clad elf-woman who for a thousand years has been seen wandering alone over the heather moon beside the cliffs on hot summer days? It could hardly be His Royal Majesty of Denmark himself, could it? Or was it just that shallow jade whom some people call Mother Earth? Only one thing was certain: the woman was no more overpraised in this ballad than is the custom in Iceland when the talk is about anything of value.

As the winter wore on, Steinar of Hlíðar would all the more often shut himself away in his workshed with the door locked from the inside; and whenever he came out, he would lock the door again and put the key in his pocket.

“Daddy,” said the girl, “when we were small you used to tell us everything. Now you don’t tell us anything, and lock yourself in when we are curious.”

“We have almost worn out the shoes of our childhood, my little darling,” said Steinar. “Our fairy-tale horse has now become a royal pony and is called Pussy.”

“Yes, but you could tell us just a tiny little bit sometimes, Daddy, even though it’s only a fairy-tale. We are so longing to know what you’re making in there.”

“Perhaps with God’s help I shall manage to concoct some little trifle before spring—and then I shall open up the workshed for you,” he said.

And that is just what happened. In spring, when the land was freeing itself from its bonds of ice, Steinar called his children into the workshed one day and showed them his completed handiwork. It was a casket, most beautifully finished. It was quite unvarnished, and therefore retained the natural colour of the wood, but the surface was highly polished as if it had been kneaded between the hands; and this had been done with such artistic skill that the wood seemed to have surrendered and allowed itself to be moulded like wax. It was taller and longer than most other caskets, but did not seem to be larger; all its proportions were somehow unique; there was no other casket quite like it. And it was as agreeable to the eye as it was pleasing to the touch.

It was divided into several compartments of different sizes. Under the largest compartments, which were detachable, was the bottom; but there was more to that than met the eye, because under it there lay three, some say four, secret compartments which no one could open except by an ingenious special device which will be dealt with shortly. But first the locking mechanism of the casket must be described; it is said to have been the most complicated and cunning arrangement that had ever been known in Iceland, and many delicate operations were required to open it. On the lid there was a large group of numbered studs which had to be adjusted according to an intricate formula before the casket could be unlocked; to do this, one had to start with the seventh stud and end with the sixth, and with that the lid would open. Steinar had no alternative but to set the formula to verse in order to commit it to memory. It was a long poem, composed in a verse-form which only Icelandic farmers know, and for anyone who did not know the poem off by heart it was an impertinence even to attempt to get the casket open.

Steinar recited the poem to his children and opened the casket according to its instructions; and the children gaped as if thunderstruck by this miracle.

POEM TO OPEN A CASKET

First you shove the seventh out,
Eleven can soon be moved away;
Flip the fourth one round about,
For the ninth to come in play.

Now you press the second spur,
And see the eighth come swinging round;
Then the third can start to stir,
And thirteen moves up with a bound.

The fifth is now at last set free,
And fourteen slides down with a click,
Give the twelfth a twist with glee,
And turn the sixth one with a flick.

You who seek life’s happiness,
Set ten and fifteen on their own;
And you will glimpse just how intense
Is God’s glory. But leave it alone.

With fourteen clues I’ve favoured you,
To find the gold that’s hidden well;
But still there’s yet another clue,
And that one I shall never tell.

Steinar’s daughter asked what was to be put into all these compartments.

“The large compartments are for silver,” said Steinar.

“What about the trays that are divided into four?” asked the boy.

“They are for gold and precious stones,” said Steinar.

“Then I don’t understand what is to go into the secret compartments,” said the girl.

“Then I shall tell you, light of my life,” said her father, and laughed his falsetto titter. “That is the place for what is costlier than gold and precious stones.”

“What could that be, Daddy?” asked the girl. “I never thought that such a thing existed.”

“It is the secrets which no one else will ever know until the end of the world,” said Steinar, and closed the casket.

“Is all that gold ours, then?” said the little viking. “And all these precious stones?”

“And what secrets do we have, Daddy?” said the girl.

“Why did God create the world with compartments for silver and gold and precious stones, my children?” asked their father. “And with so many secret compartments as well? Was it because He had so much ready money that He did not know where to keep it all? Or was it because He Himself had something on His conscience which He had to hide away in holes?”

“Daddy,” said the young girl, staring spellbound at the closed casket, “who’s going to open up the casket when we are dead and no one remembers the poem any more?”

The news of this masterpiece of carpentry spread far and wide, and many whose journeys took them near Hlíðar knocked on the door to ask if they could feast their eyes on this phenomenon. Others travelled miles for this specific purpose. And many offered large sums of money for the casket.

Late that summer, Steinar made it known that he was going to travel to Denmark to visit his Krapi, and that he was going as the guest of King Kristian Wilhelmsson of Denmark. He made his preparations to the best of his ability. A renowned seamstress from another district made up a suit for him of blue homespun, and he ordered a pair of topboots from Eyrarbakki. He left home in the middle of the night without saying goodbye to his children; but before he went he looked at them for a moment as they slept. Steinar was 48 years old when he undertook this journey.

His son Víkingur had just been confirmed, and his daughter Steina was almost sixteen. And although the departure of this home-loving farmer gave his family cause for tears, there was consolation in their pride at having a father whom foreign kings wished to have at their side, just as in the sagas. His wife wiped away her tears on the corner of her apron and said to her neighbours: “It is not surprising that kings should send for my Steinar. What a wonderfully peaceful world it would be abroad if there were more like him there. I’m quite sure there will be God’s heaven on earth when men like my Steinar can influence kings.”

These were Steinar’s circumstances when he set off on his journey: as was said before, the land he farmed was his own, inherited from his father. The farm was worth twelve hundreds according to the old system of valuation, whereby one hundred was equivalent to the price of a cow. He owed no man anything, because in those days farmers had no credit, nor was there any money available for lending. If any farmer got into difficulties, he just had to sell up. Steinar owned thirty milch-ewes and a dozen nonmilkers, two cows and a year-old heifer, and five work-ponies which for the most part fended for themselves. The cow has always been the people’s bread and butter in Iceland, and the sheep their ready cash. In modern terms, the income from one sheep is equivalent to two days’ pay for a labourer, but in those days there were no wage-earning labourers. Of thirty sheep on a farm, ten were required for maintaining the stock; thus, Steinar only had the income from twenty sheep for his ready cash, or in other words the equivalent of forty days’ pay for his year’s expenditure. With this income he bought rye-meal and barley and other necessities from the store at Eyrarbakki, two days’ journey away; this was the largest trading concern in the Danish overseas empire, and customers came to it from many hundred of kilometres away. A few old ewes were slaughtered every year for meat, and clothes were home-made from waste wool. Shoes were also made at home, from untanned hide dipped in alum, and it was always impressed on the children that they must not put too much strain on the shoes by treading hard on the ground. Fish and dulse were bought from the littoral crofters in exchange for mutton, and sometimes, when provisions were low, Steinar would himself go and spend a fishing-season at Þorlákshöfn in an open boat. With any luck he could earn himself a few baskets of fish off that surf-tormented coast where relatively more Icelandic fishermen were drowned in storm and tempest almost every winter than soldiers were killed in wars.

10

Concerning horse-copers

Meanwhile, Steinar of Hlíðar had gone west and boarded ship and was now on the high seas bound for foreign lands. He had not set off until late in the hay-season, when most of the hay had already been secured, and he expected to be back late in October on the last autumn sailing. At the farm were only a woman and two children to clear up the autumn work. And the nights were growing dark.

Petroleum was so expensive in those days, compared with farmers’ means, that one could hardly say there was much illumination in farmhouses during winter; even fish-oil, which had been the staple source of light in Iceland from the very beginning, was itself now becoming a luxury. The few pints of petroleum which served as the year’s supply of light at Hlíðar were reserved for the dark days of midwinter, and people tried to make the fullest use of what daylight there was. One banked up the fire and went to bed when there was no longer light enough to work by, and rose at the first streak of dawn, until at last the nights were equally long at both ends; only then did one begin to light the lamp. How long the children found the first few nights after their father had gone abroad!

After a day of toil there was nothing to do except go to bed. But it sometimes happened that those twin travelling companions, Sleep and Dream, were late in calling at the house. In that case the best way to pass the time was to listen for the sound of distant hooves. The children could recognize the hoofbeats of horses from more than one district. It made a change during the quiet of the night to hear riders clattering through the yard and the dog baying up on the roof. And every morning they counted the days until their father was expected home.

On the night which is now to be described, just at the time of the first autumn round-up, everyone in the house had been asleep for a long time. There had been no sound of hooves from any direction all evening. It was raining. At midnight the mother and daughter woke suddenly from deep slumber at a deafening tumult outside, as if the world were falling in. Then someone came to the window and said “God be with you!,” as was the custom in those days. The women threw on some clothes in haste and opened the door. Outside, the rain was lashing down. A burly man, dripping with rain and wearing a voluminous coat and enormous topboots, seized them in an embrace and kissed them. He smelled powerfully of horses, with a mixture of snuff and cognac as well. There was rainwater in his beard, and clammy moisture in the tufts of hair on his nose.

“It’s only your old friend Björn of Leirur,” the visitor said when he had finished kissing them in the darkness. “We were just coming from east of the rivers, a few lads and myself with one or two horses. The wretched beasts are getting a bit tired. The boys haven’t slept for two days. We haven’t a dry stitch up to the armpits. What a God’s mercy it is to be able to kiss such warm and dry people! But tell me, by the way, is my good friend Steinar still at the king’s coat-tails?”

The housewife said that Steinar was in Copenhagen and not expected home before the end of October: “But if this house is of any use to you, then you are welcome here. As you know, my dear Björn, there’s not much in the way of luxury here to offer to the gentry; but still, what’s good enough for my Steinar should be good enough for the king, that’s what I always say.”

“As if drenched people can be gentry, my good woman!” said the visitor. “The main thing is to get a drop of warm soup, even though it’s only cow-soup. The other matter I have already discussed with my friend Steinar a long time ago—indeed, he offered me it unasked, as my two lads here remember from when they were helping him load up his horse with mahogany: ‘You will be obliging me, my dear chap,’ he said, bless him, ‘if you would rest up in my pastures next time you are driving horses. The grass does not care who eats it.’ As far as the boys are concerned, they can bed down in the lamb-shed, if they could just have a wisp of hay to lie on.”

“Well, my dear Björn,” said the woman, “it so happens that we have nothing better for soup than some barley. We haven’t done any slaughtering at Hlíðar yet. Everything is waiting for Steinar. But there is some dried fish, although that’s not much of a feast for the nobility. And you are all welcome to share the three bunks in the living-room here, except that you yourself will have the bed in the spare-room, of course.”

“Is that not just like you, my dear?” said old Björn. “And as for the soup, I could well believe that we have a shank or two of mutton tucked away in our saddle-bags, if you have the barley.”

The woman told her daughter to fetch some brushwood and sheep-dung to revive the fire.

It was quite an occasion. Half a score of dripping visitors filled the living-room and the family had their hands full pulling off their outer garments. A small lamp was lit, but one could still hardly see one’s nose for all the steam from the sodden clothing. Those who had no change of clothes borrowed some. There was some schnapps to keep the strength up while waiting for the soup; and that started the singing. The soup did not arrive until the night was nearly over, and some of them were already asleep by then. They shared the bunks out amongst themselves, but some had to go out and see to it that the ponies did not stray.

At dawn the housewife thought it safer to send her daughter to the spare-room to help the champion off with his things, rather than let such an inexperienced young girl stay longer in the living-room waiting upon a crowd of high-spirited horse-copers who furthermore had been at the bottle.

“Thanks for the offer, dear woman,” said Björn of Leirur, and kissed her goodnight. “It doesn’t come amiss to have such a lissom young creature to wait upon an old fellow who is numb and stiff from the glacier-rivers.”

It was an old Scandinavian custom in all decent farms for a woman to be provided to help a visitor off with his clothes when he retired.

“Well, well, my little lamb,” said Björn of Leirur.

He was so big and bulky that he almost filled the little room. He patted the girl on the cheek and the head, the way one pats a dog; then he casually ran his hands over her breasts, stomach, and buttocks, squeezing them briskly the way one does with sheep to see if they are in good flesh. The girl gasped.

“You’ve come on a bit since I saw you out there in the yard with your father that time, poor little thing,” he said. “I’ll soon have to be making an offer for you. My old woman is nothing but rheumatics and grumbles nowadays, I’ll be needing a house-keeper before long.”

It was as if the girl withdrew even farther into her shell at these words. She hung her head a little and was rather at a loss for an answer.

“We never say Yes, Björn,” she said, and looked him full in the face for a moment despite her fears. “My brother Víkingur sometimes says No, of course, but Daddy doesn’t like that because he says it means the same as Yes.”

The man-mountain had now seated himself across the side of the bed; he leaned back against the wall and stretched his legs out to the floor. The girl knelt down in front of him and tried to pull off his vast topboots, which are popularly known as waders and are fastened to the waist with suspenders. Under them he was wearing stockinged trousers. He was neither so wet nor so cold as he made out; and perhaps not so old, either.

He said, “You’ve now at least reached the age, little one, when sometime or other a young lad must have sneaked up and said something to you in secret which it was no use answering with nothing but hiccups.”

“I won’t deny it,” said the girl. “It was the year before last. I was riding Krapi on the lamb-drive. And at sunrise, when we were up in the mountains, a boy said to me, just like that, ‘Would you give me a ride on the white horse?’ It’s the first time a stranger has ever asked me for anything like that. What could I say? I haven’t recovered from it yet.”

“Since you could neither say Yes nor No, I can’t see that it would have cost you much to dismount without saying anything, my lamb,” said Björn. “He would just have got on the horse’s back, the young rascal, if he had any presence of mind.”

“His father and my father arrived just at that point,” said the girl. “Otherwise I don’t know what I would have done.”

“One hopes he had the nerve to give you a casual hint of some sort, next time you met,” said Björn.

“I didn’t go to the lamb-drive the next spring,” said the girl. “Nor this spring. When Daddy gave Krapi away, I knew I would never be going on a lamb-drive again.”

“And you haven’t met since?” said Björn.

“We’ve maybe just had a peep at one another in church,” said the girl. “He doesn’t seem to have forgotten that business over Krapi. Perhaps he never will.”

“There’s not much stuff in these young lads yet, little one, pay no attention to them. You young girls are better off helping us old fellows off with our things, you know where you have us then.”

“I don’t think you’re so very old, Björn,” said the girl. “And I don’t think Daddy is, either. When I was little I used to snuggle up under his beard to go to sleep. But since then it’s as if everything has somehow become so distant.”

“Yes, childhood is soon faded into the distance, my little chicken,” said Björn, “and things get worse and worse for you until you’re bedridden with old age, and then things start getting a little better again, thank God. And come on now, dry my toes for me, my little mouse. What the devil’s the point of fording three glacier-rivers a day, anyway!”

The girl said, “Daddy used to sing me a little song once; it went like this:

Come and lay your cheek on mine,
Though mine is cold and hairy,
But yours is peach and petal-fine,
My pretty little fairy.”

“I’ll just have to take your daddy’s place for you, little lamb, while my old friend Steinar is with the king,” said Björn. “And now just pull these English trousers off me, and then there’s not much left except my birthday pants. You’re a real treasure—not the same at all as the old devil of a woman who was wrestling with me out east in Meðalland the other night. A thousand thanks.”

“There are no thanks necessary for a little thing like that,” said the girl, getting to her feet and rubbing the numbness from her bare knees where she had been kneeling on the floor; she was scarlet in the face now. As she turned to go, she said he was not to hesitate to call out for anything he wanted; and she added, out of the goodness of her heart and the trusting innocence which is instinctive to young girls: “It is my life and joy to look after visitors who wake people up in the night.”

“Now that you’ve bedded down all us horse-dealers in your own bunks, what are you going to do yourselves, you poor creatures?”

“Mother is staying up to dry all their clothes in the kitchen,” said the girl. “Víkingur and I will lie down on the saddle-turves in the outhouse. It makes a nice change. It will only be for a short while, it’s nearly dawn.”

“The very idea, child!” said Björn of Leirur. “Do you think for a moment that I’m going to allow a little girl with such long fair hair and rosy cheeks and a body like fresh-churned butter to go and lie on a scrap of turf out in a shed on my account? No, we may be quick to buy and sell horses, but we’re not so quick at sending our girls away. Here, let me put this pillow at the foot of the bed there, and you can creep into bed with me like the Beauty who freed the Beast from a spell once upon a time.”