Hannah Kent - Burial Rites

Agnes was sitting on her bed, trying to find stitches Steina had lost on a mitten. ‘Illugastadir is almost on the edge of the world,’ she said, inclining her head, as though to point out where the farm stood. ‘I didn’t know the way, and everyone had been telling me how lonely it would be, how it was nothing like the valley, where there are folk you know wherever you look. But I wanted to work for Natan.’

‘When did you go there?’

‘As soon as I was able. The Flitting Days, at the end of May.’

‘What year was this?’ Tóti asked.

‘1827. I saw through Yuletide and the new year at Geitaskard, and then waited for the Golden Plover to arrive and sing the snow away. I packed up my possessions, and set off on foot. There were lots of servants moving up and down the valley, but no one was going to Vatnsnes, and no one was headed to Illugastadir. As I started walking northwards on the peninsula a fog came down and I was worried I would be lost. But I could hear the sea in the distance, and I knew I was going in the right direction. When the fog cleared I saw that I wasn’t far from the church of Tjörn. I asked to sleep the night there and the next day the priest gave me directions to Illugastadir.

‘It didn’t take me long to reach the farm from Tjörn. That morning was the first time I had ever seen sea so wide and far. The wind was coming from the north, blowing spray off the waves that scudded against the shore, and there were hundreds of seabirds screaming in circles above the surface. I could even see the west fjords over the grey swell of water. Like a shadow of themselves.

‘It made an impression. The priest from Tjörn had told me to watch for a croft by a rocky bay, and I soon came across this very place. There was a little boat upon the shore, and bedclothes tied to fish-drying racks, which were waving madly about in the wind. At the time I took it as a good sign; I thought it seemed that they were waving to me in welcome.

‘I hadn’t gone very far down the slope when someone appeared out of the croft, and started to trip up the hill. As the figure grew closer I saw that it was a young girl, no more than fifteen winters old. She was waving at me, and seemed exhilarated. When I came within speaking distance she cried out a welcome, and ran towards me. She seemed even younger as she drew closer, Reverend. She had a snub-nose and very red lips, and her hair was fair and tangled in the wind. She was too pretty for a peasant girl, and I remember wondering whether she was some daughter of Natan’s. Her clothes were too fine for her to be a servant.

‘The girl took my sack of belongings and kissed me. She asked if I was Agnes Magnúsdóttir, and she introduced herself as Sigrídur, but said that everyone called her Sigga.’

‘This was the girl-servant Natan had mentioned to you at Geitaskard?’

Agnes nodded. ‘Sigga exclaimed she’d been expecting me all week, and was I hungry, and had I come very far, and wasn’t I frightened of highwaymen or outlaws, walking alone on the mountain paths. She spoke so fast that I barely had time to provide her with answers, and before I knew it she had ushered me inside and showed me my bed, which she had only made up that morning. The badstofa was very small, with only four bunks, and no space to speak of. There was a tiny window over one of the beds, but I supposed that Sigga had taken that bunk for herself. Illugastadir was more cramped and dirtier than I’d imagined. But I reassured myself that it was better to be mistress of a croft than a servant in the home of the governor. Sigga said that she would give me some time to arrange my things about my bed, and went and made coffee for us. When I told her she needn’t go to any expense, that whey and water would be plenty, she smiled and assured me that Natan was fond of coffee and that they drank it at all hours. It seemed a great luxury to me.

‘I waited until Sigga had left the room before looking at my surroundings. Only two beds were made up — hers and mine — and I wondered where Natan slept, and if there was a loft I hadn’t noticed.

‘When Sigga returned, I asked her where Natan was. I’d expected him to be there to greet me. Sigga looked embarrassed and blushed, and said that Natan was out.

‘It was a Sunday, so I asked if Natan was at church, but Sigga shook her head. Natan was not a church-going man. She said that he was the only man she’d ever known who refused to read the evening blessings, and said that if I had a book of psalms I should hide it under my pillow otherwise Natan might kindle the hearth with it. No, Natan was fox-hunting on the mountain, she said, but she would show me the farm in his place.

‘I can’t remember what my first impression of the farm was, Reverend. I was tired from my journey and overwhelmed from seeing so much water on the horizon. But I can certainly tell you what Illugastadir is like after spending a year or so trapped upon that corner of God’s earth.’

‘I should like to hear you describe it,’ Tóti prompted.

‘It’s not much more than the base of the mountain, and the shore of the sea. It’s a long line of rocky ground, with one or two smooth fields where winter fodder is grown, and all the rest is wild grass, growing around the stones. The shore is of pebbles, and huge tangles of seaweed float in the bay and look like the hair of the drowned. Driftwood appears overnight like magic, and eider ducks nest upon nearby banks of rocks near seal colonies. On a clear day it’s beautiful, and on others it’s as miserable as grave-digging in the rain. Sea fog plagues the place, and the nearest farm is Stapar, which is a fair distance away.

‘There are several stony skerries of land that reach a little way out into the fjord, and on one of these is Natan’s workshop. You have to walk out over a narrow bed of rocks to reach it. I remember thinking it was a strange place to build a workshop, away from the croft and surrounded by water, but Natan planned it thus. Even the window of the cottage looked inland, rather than out to sea, because Natan wanted to observe who might be travelling along the mountain. He had some enemies.

‘Sigga said that she didn’t know where the key to his workshop was kept, but that the little hut was where he had his smithy, and where he made his medicines, and that he probably kept a lot of money in there. She told me this with a wild sort of giggle, and I remember thinking her as daft as Natan had told me she was.

‘Sigga told me that Natan went seal-clubbing, and there’d be seal leather shoes if I wanted them, and that they had eiderdown mattresses just like all the District Commissioners of Iceland, and that I would sleep like the dead, they were so soft. Sigga said she’d grown up at Stóra-Borg, but that her mother was no longer living, and she was new to service and had not been a housekeeper before, but that Natan had spoken highly of me and she hoped I would teach her.

‘I was surprised to hear her call herself a housekeeper. I said: “Oh, you are the mistress here? Did you take Karitas’s position?” And she nodded and said yes, she’d been working as a simple maidservant before, but when Karitas gave her notice Natan had asked her to be his housekeeper. She thanked me then for coming to be her servant, and she took me by the arm and said that we must get along well, for Natan was often away, and she grew lonely.

‘I thought there must have been a mistake. I thought that perhaps Natan had only asked her to be his housemistress until I arrived, or perhaps she was a liar. I didn’t think that Natan would lie to me.

‘We had some coffee then, and I told Sigga a little of where I’d worked before. I was careful to mention the number of farms I had lived in and Sigga seemed quite impressed, and kept saying how pleased she was to have me at Illugastadir to help her, and would I teach her how to make such a patterned shawl as I was wearing, so that all in all, I grew more easy.