The Sagas of the Icelanders (16 page)

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When Kveldulf heard about the death of his son Thorolf, he was so saddened by the news that he took to his bed, overcome by grief and old age.

Skallagrim went to see him regularly and tried to talk him round. He told him to take heart, saying that nothing was less becoming to him than to be bedridden.

‘A more suitable course would be for us to take vengeance for Thorolf,’ he said. ‘There is a chance that we will come within reach of some of the men who were responsible for Thorolf’s death. If not, there are men we can take that would not be to the king’s liking.’

Then Kveldulf spoke a verse:

That summer King Harald went to Oppland, and in the autumn he headed westwards to Valdres all the way to Voss. Olvir was with the king and often suggested to him that he should consider making compensation for Thorolf,
by offering Kveldulf and Skallagrim money or some honour they would accept. The king did not rule out the possibility entirely, if Kveldulf and his son would come to see him.

Then Olvir set off northwards for Fjordane, not stopping until he reached Kveldulf and his son one evening. They were grateful to him for his visit, and he spent some time there.

Kveldulf asked Olvir about the entire incident at Sandnes when Thorolf was killed, about the worthy deeds he had done in battle before his death, and who had struck him down, where his worst wounds were and how he had died. Olvir told him everything he asked, mentioning that King Harald had dealt him a blow that by itself would have sufficed to kill a man, and that Thorolf had dropped face down at the king’s feet.

Kveldulf said, ‘You have spoken well, because old men have said that a man’s death would be avenged if he dropped face down, and vengeance taken on the man at whose feet he fell; but it is unlikely that we will enjoy the good fortune to do so.’

Olvir told Kveldulf and his son that he expected the king to show them great honour if they would go to see him and seek recompense. Speaking at great length, he asked them to take the risk.

Kveldulf said that he would not go anywhere on account of his old age.

‘I will stay at home,’ he said.

‘Do you want to go, Grim?’ asked Olvir.

‘I do not feel I have any reason to,’ said Grim. ‘The king will not be impressed by my eloquence, and I do not think I would spend much time asking him for recompense.’

Olvir said he would not need to anyway – ‘We will say everything on your behalf, as well as we can.’

Olvir was so insistent that Grim eventually promised to go when he felt ready. When the two of them had settled the time Grim was to meet the king, Olvir left and went back to him.

25
Skallagrim prepared for this journey and chose the strongest and boldest of his men and neighbours to go with him. There was a man named Ani, a wealthy farmer; another called Grani, and Grimolf and his brother Grim, who lived on Skallagrim’s farm, and the brothers Thorbjorn Hunchback and Thord Hobbler. They were known as Thorarna’s sons – she lived near Skallagrim and was a sorceress. Hobbler was a coal-
biter.
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Other men in the band were Thorir the Giant and his brother Thorgeir Earth-long, a hermit called Odd and a freedman named Gris.

In all there were twelve in the party, all outstandingly powerful men, and many of them were shape-shifters.

Taking an oared ferry that Skallagrim owned, they followed the shore southwards and put down anchor in Osterfjord, then went overland to Voss, to the lake that had to be crossed on the route they had chosen. They procured a suitable oared ship there and rowed across the lake to a place not far from where the king was attending a feast. Grim and his men arrived when the king was sitting at table. They met some people in the yard, spoke to them and asked if there was any news. When they had been told what was going on, Grim asked someone to call out Olvir to speak to him.

The man went into the room to where Olvir was sitting and told him, ‘A party of twelve men has turned up, if men is the right word. But they are more like giants than human beings in size and appearance.’

Olvir stood up immediately and went outside, guessing who it was who had arrived. He welcomed his kinsman Grim and invited him to join him in the room.

Grim said to his companions, ‘It is said to be the custom here to meet the king unarmed. Six of us will go inside, and the other six stay outside and look after our weapons.’

Then they went inside. Olvir went up to the king and Skallagrim was standing behind him.

‘Grim, Kveldulf’s son, is here now,’ Olvir announced. ‘We would be grateful if you make his journey here worthwhile, as we are sure you will. Many people receive great honour from you who are less worthy of it than he is, and nowhere near as accomplished in most of his skills. You could do what matters more than any other thing to me, King, if you feel it is important.’

Olvir spoke at length and cleverly, because he was an eloquent man. Many friends of Olvir’s approached the king and put the matter to him as well.

The king looked around, and saw a man standing behind Olvir, a whole head taller than all the others, and bald.

‘Is that great man Skallagrim?’ he asked. Grim said the king had recognized him.

‘If you are seeking compensation for Thorolf,’ said the king, ‘I want you to become one of my men, join their company and enter my service. I may be pleased enough with your service to give you compensation for your brother Thorolf or no less honour than I showed him. But you should be sure to act more carefully than he did, if I make you a man of his stature.’

Skallagrim answered, ‘Everyone knows that Thorolf was much more able than I am in all respects, but he lacked the good fortune to serve you properly. I will not take that course. I will not serve you, because I know I lack the good fortune to serve you the way I would like and that you deserve. I imagine I would lack many of Thorolf’s qualities.’

The king fell silent and his face turned blood-red. Olvir turned away immediately and asked Grim and his men to leave. They did so, left and took their weapons, and Olvir told them to get away as quickly as they could. Olvir accompanied them to the lake, with a large band of men.

Before he parted company with Skallagrim, Olvir said to him, ‘Your visit to the king turned out differently from what I would have wished, kinsman. I urged you to come here, but now I must ask you to go home as quickly as you can, and also not to go to see King Harald unless you two are on better terms than you seem to be now. Keep on your guard against the king and his men.’

Then Grim and his men crossed the lake, while Olvir’s men went to where the ships were beached and hacked away at them until they were unseaworthy, because they had seen a large band of men leaving the king’s quarters, heavily armed and moving at great speed. King Harald had sent them after Grim, to kill him.

Shortly after Grim and his men had left, the king had begun to speak: ‘I can see that huge bald man is as vicious as a wolf and will do harm to men over whose loss I would grieve, if he gets hold of them. That bald character cannot be expected to spare any of you, the people he claims have done him wrong, if he has the chance. Go after him now and kill him.’

Then they left and went to the lake but could not find any seaworthy ships. They returned to tell the king what had happened, saying that Grim and his men would have made it across the lake by then.

Skallagrim proceeded on his way with his companions until he reached home, and he told Kveldulf about the outcome of their journey. Kveldulf was pleased that Grim had not gone to the king in order to enter his service and repeated that they would receive nothing but harm from the king, and no reparation.

Kveldulf and Skallagrim discussed over and again what to do and were in complete agreement that they could not stay in the country, any more than other people who were engaged in disputes with the king. Their only alternative was to leave Norway, and they were attracted by the idea of going to Iceland, where they had heard of the fine land that was available. Their friends and acquaintances, Ingolf Arnarson and his companions, had already gone to Iceland to claim land and settle there, and had found land for the taking and were free to choose wherever they wanted to live. The outcome of their deliberations was to abandon their farm and leave the country.

Thorir Hroaldsson had been brought up as Kveldulf’s foster-son when he was very young, and was the same age as Skallagrim. They were close friends as well as foster-brothers. Thorir was one of the king’s landholders at the time this all happened, but he and Skallagrim remained constant friends.

Early in the spring, Kveldulf and his men prepared their ships. They had many fine ships and manned two large knorrs with thirty able men on each, not counting women and children. They took all the possessions they could, but no one dared to buy their land from them, for fear of the king’s power.

When they were ready, they set sail and headed for the Solund Islands, where there are so many big islands with bays and coves that few people are said to know of all the harbours there.

26
There was a man named Guttorm, who was King Harald’s maternal uncle, the son of Sigurd Hart. He had been Harald’s foster-father and had acted as regent because the king was still a child when he came to the throne. Guttorm was in charge of Harald’s armies when he conquered the territories in Norway and had taken part in all the king’s battles during his campaign to win control of the country. When Harald had become sole ruler of Norway and ceased his warfare, he gave his uncle the territories of Vestfold and East Agder and Ringerike and all the land that his father Halfdan the Black had owned. Guttorm had two sons, Sigurd and Ragnar, and two daughters, Ragnhild and Aslaug.

Guttorm fell ill, and when his death was drawing near, he sent messengers to ask King Harald to take care of his children and lands. Shortly afterwards he died.

When the king heard news of his death, he called Hallvard Travel-hard
and his brother to meet him, and told them they should undertake a mission on his behalf to Vik. The king was in Trondheim then.

The brothers equipped themselves lavishly for the expedition, choosing troops and taking the best ship they could procure. They took the ship that had belonged to Thorolf, Kveldulf’s son, and had been seized from Thorgils Boomer. When they were ready to leave, the king ordered them to go east to Tunsberg. There was a town there, where Guttorm had lived.

‘Bring Guttorm’s sons to me,’ said the king, ‘but leave his daughters to grow up there until I give them away in marriage. I will appoint people to safeguard his realm and foster the girls.’

Once the brothers were ready they set off, and had a favourable wind. They reached Vik in the spring and headed to Tunsberg and stated their business, and Hallvard and his brother took Guttorm’s sons and a large amount of money. Having done so, they set off to go back, but made much slower progress because of the winds. Nothing eventful happened on their journey until they sailed north into Sognefjord, on a good wind and in fine weather, and they were in high spirits.

27
Kveldulf, Skallagrim and their men kept a constant watch over the main sailing route during the summer. Skallagrim, who was extremely sharp-sighted, saw Hallvard’s party sailing up and recognized the ship, because he had once seen Thorgils in command of it. Skallagrim kept watch on their movements and noted where they moored for the night, then returned to his men and told Kveldulf what he had seen. He told him he recognized the ship that had belonged to Thorolf and that Hallvard had seized from Thorgils, and that a number of men who would make a fine catch must be on board.

Then they prepared and equipped their boats, with twenty men on each. Kveldulf commanded one, and Skallagrim the other. They rowed off in search of the ship, and when they reached the place where it was moored, they put in to shore.

Hallvard and his men had covered the ship with awnings and gone to sleep, but when Kveldulf and his men reached them, the watchmen who had been sitting by the gangway at the prow leapt up and called out to the ship, telling the crew to get up because they were about to be attacked. Hallvard and his men rushed for their weapons.

When Kveldulf and his men came to the gangway, they went up it to the stern of the ship, while Skallagrim headed for the prow. Kveldulf had a
gigantic double-bladed axe in his hand. Once he was on board, he told his men to go along the gunwale and cut the awnings from the pegs, while he stormed off back to the afterguard, where he is said to have become frenzied like a wild animal. Some other men of his went into a frenzy too, killing everyone they came across, and so did Skallagrim when he ran around the ship. Kveldulf and his son did not stop until the ship had been completely cleared. When Kveldulf went back to the afterguard, he wielded his axe and struck Hallvard right through his helmet and head, sinking the weapon in right up to the shaft. Then he tugged it back with such force that he swung Hallvard up into the air and slung him over the side. Skallagrim swept the prow clean and killed Sigtrygg. Many of the crew threw themselves into the water, but Skallagrim’s men took the boat they had come on and rowed over to them, killing everyone in the water.

More than fifty of Hallvard’s men were killed there, and Skallagrim took the ship which had sailed there and all the riches on it.

They captured two or three of the most paltry men, spared their lives and asked them who had been on the ship and what their mission had been. When they found out the truth, they examined the carnage on the ship and had the impression that more of the crew had jumped over the side and lost their lives there than had died on board. Guttorm’s sons had jumped overboard and perished; one of them was twelve years old then and the other ten, both very promising lads.

Then Skallagrim released the men whose lives he had spared, telling them to go to King Harald and give him a detailed account of what had happened and who had been at work.

‘You will also recite this verse to the king,’ he added:

Skallagrim and Kveldulf sailed the ship and its cargo out to their own ships. They changed ships, loaded up the one they had taken and cleared their own, which was smaller, then filled it with rocks, knocked holes in it and
sank it. Then they headed out to the ocean when a favourable wind got up.

It is said that people who could take on the character of animals, or went berserk, became so strong in this state that no one was a match for them, but also that just after it wore off they were left weaker than usual. Kveldulf was the same, so that when his frenzy wore off he felt exhausted by the effort he had made, and was rendered completely powerless and had to lie down and rest.

A favourable wind carried them out to the open sea, and Kveldulf commanded the ship they had taken from Hallvard and Sigtrygg. They had an easy passage and kept their ships together so that each knew of the other’s whereabouts for most of the time. But as they moved farther out to sea, Kveldulf succumbed to an illness. When it had brought him close to death, he called his men and told them he thought he would probably soon be parting ways with them.

‘I have not been prone to illness,’ he said, ‘but if it happens, as I think it probably will, that I die, make a coffin for me and put me overboard. Things will not turn out as I imagined, if I do not reach Iceland and settle there. Give my greetings to my son Grim, when you see him, and tell him too that if he reaches Iceland and, unlikely as it seems, I am there already, to make himself a home as close as possible to the place where I have come ashore.’

Shortly afterwards Kveldulf died. The crew did as he had told them, put him in a coffin and cast it overboard.

There was a man called Grim, a wealthy man of great family; his father was Thorir, the son of Ketil Keel-farer. Grim was one of Kveldulf’s crew. He was an old friend of Kveldulf and his son, and had voyaged with them and Thorolf, incurring the king’s anger. He took charge of the ship when Kveldulf died.

When they approached Iceland, they sailed towards land from the south, then along the coast to the west, where they had heard that Ingolf had settled. When they rounded Reykjanes and saw the fjord open up, they sailed both the ships into it. A storm got up, with heavy rain and fog, and the ships lost sight of each other. Grim the Halogalander’s crew sailed along Borgarfjord beyond the skerries, then cast anchor until the storm died down and the weather brightened up. There they waited for the tide to come in, and floated their ship into the estuary of the river called Gufua (Steam river). After pulling the ship as far upstream as they could, they unloaded their cargo and spent their first winter there.

They explored the land along the coast, both up the mountains and
towards the sea, and after travelling a short distance they found a bay where Kveldulf’s coffin had been washed ashore. They carried the coffin out to the headland, laid it down and piled rocks over it.