Sjon - From the Mouth of the Whale

Alas, how Sigga implored me not to go west to meet Thórólfur. Oh, how right she was when she said it was the demon of vanity that summoned me to do the deed. I wanted to enhance my renown, I said, so that more people would avail themselves of my services. Self-taught as I was, I had to prove myself by my actions. And the man who succeeds in laying a ghost so malevolent that it tans the hide of every person who goes near it, that man will be prized when the twilight portents get out of hand and call down the wrath of God on the libertine herd. I seem to remember saying something to this effect, to which she replied:

‘But aren’t the rams you’re going to perform the deed for the very same that the Lord will strike down?’

And yet … That must have been later. She let me go anyway, since we owed our meeting to Sorcery-Láfi. It was on that journey west along the Snjáfjöll coast that the catalogue of images etched itself on my mind — the traveller’s album that always stands open before my eyes when I compare the world of piety and good works evoked by my grandfather Hákon in his stories to that other world into which I was born: the world where good deeds count for nothing, while conceited bragging of one’s own virtues is enough to purchase tyrants notorious throughout the land a seat at the footstool of the risen Christ. Their busy tongues labour in their jaws while the fruit withers on the vine. On my way west I followed the highway, the road trodden by the common populace on their comings and goings along the shores of this island, which, in common with other circles, has no beginning and no end. And the business that draws the ragged mob from one corner of the country to the other? To beg a bite to eat, of course. Or rags to wear. To feel the warmth of something other than their own hand. To experience compassion. To be a guest rather than a nuisance. To receive a small share of the gifts of the Earth. To have all this. Yes, to be a Christian among Christians, even if only for the brief duration of the major Church holidays. My journey took place shortly after Easter — a holiday that had lost its meaning now that Lent had been scorned and people ate whatever they could shovel into their mouths. Rotting shreds of meat festooned their teeth like Christmas decorations when they yawned during the Good Friday sermon, their gums swollen an angry red where they had begun to fester, yet they could not be bothered to pick their teeth, instead sucking and licking with the tips of their tongues, worrying at the nagging pain in the swollen lumps, sighing when the pus was forced out between their molars, bringing the piece of meat with it into the mouth where it became the gravy for their putrid banquet. But not everyone was fortunate enough to spend Easter with their mouths full of this kind of sweet-meat. God’s lambs, Christ’s lambs, Peter’s lambs: once upon a time the bands of itinerant beggars knew where these sweetly named lambs were kept and what time of the year they might be visited. These poor hungry wretches moved right round the country, like the stars of heaven on a metal arc around a model of the Earth; ah yes, when Spitting-Sveinn shaded his eyes and looked in the direction of Gaulverjabær in the Flói district, or Peg-leg Sigurgeira stood in Eyjafjord, squinting to assure herself that it was not far to Laufás. Marked out by God as Easter fare or Christmas roast, the ceremoniously named lambs walked out to meet the needy, out of the barn, out of their fleeces, out of their skins, frolicsome, fat and juicy, and kept on walking though their flesh changed colour as it roasted, walked across the yard, lathered in their own melted fat, to await the guests at the crossroads, positioning themselves and rotating so that the guests could see for themselves the browned, muscular rump under its glaze of fat and the shoulder where the blood burst forth and ran down the spine. Then the lambs would skip off home to the farm, chased by the starving rabble with gaping mouths and bared teeth. In the yard the lambs would halt and look back over their shoulders at the wretched throng before shaking themselves as if they had just returned from a swim and spraying a great arc of fat which cascaded over the faces of the needy, who stuck out their tongues as they ran, like children chasing fat snowflakes as they fall, lapping up the rain of suet, scraping the film of grease from their eyes and cheeks. Once home the lambs were driven back inside the kitchen by the farmhands and cooks, and there they paced back and forth on the red-glowing grids which the fire licked merrily, and from their roasting throats came forth smoke and crackling bleats announcing that soon their happy task would be accomplished, soon their procession would be over and they would tread the boards of the long trestle table in the hall which housed the vagabonds, beggar women and their urchin spawn, and there the lambs would reach the end of their journey, there they would reach their final goal, there their duty to the Lord would be completed, for they would walk to the gaping mouths of the guests and shake themselves by their teeth until the golden-brown flesh loosed from their bones and the grease cascaded from the tongue down the throat. But this would not happen until Easter Day. Until then, Spitting-Sveinn and Peg-leg Sigurgeira would willingly fast with their Redeemer and eat dried fish with butter. There was happiness in that too: worship, participation in the earthly incarnation of the divinity. But by the time I went on my journey to Snjáfjöll those days were long gone. The barefoot brigade were no longer offered any victuals, whether it was a juicy leg of lamb dedicated to a saint or the skin of a dried haddock, or a roof over their heads or gloves for their chapped hands. Far from it. Now the libertine life was all, and everything a man acquired belonged to him and his kin alone. The rest could eat dirt. And they did. As I began to near the manor farm which used to be governed by God’s almanac, I was met by an abominable sight: the bodies of beggars lying beside the road, weathered sacks of skin stretched over the bones of adults and children. Ravens and foxes had gnawed at their heads and hands, clawed and torn off their rags and dined on their meagre pauper’s flesh. Yes, there you have it, whether you are high-born or lowly, a stout figure or a whip-thin emaciated wretch, when your time on Earth is over you will be nothing but a sack of skin, emptied of its contents: the soul will have departed and without it you will be nothing but a leather bag of bones.

SEA MONSTER: of sea monsters I will say nothing, for I have not read much about them, though I had seen a fair number until they disappeared during the great winter of famine, Anno Domini 1602, the winter that men of the West Fjords refer to as ‘Torment’ and others as ‘Cudgel’.

Sorcery-Láfi was neither whip-thin nor starving. He was short of leg and wide of hip, with a premature stoop, plump cheeks, lively watery blue eyes set in a round head and black hair that always looked wet, as if newly washed, from the fish-liver oil he dressed it with. He was so light of heart that his behaviour bordered on the idiotic. He was forever clicking his fingers and whistling as he walked, spinning suddenly on his heel, clapping his hands together and declaring:

‘Heigh-ho, the sun and snow!’

Or some other such harmless nonsense. He was an amusing fellow, with a poetic tongue that served him well in his dealings with the squires out west, helping him to ingratiate himself and sell them his services, which consisted mainly of escorting them on journeys, telling them jokes and composing comic verses whenever the opportunity arose. Also preparing hot poultices for their swellings, bleeding them, trimming their beards and singeing the hairs from their ears. And last but not least, being alert to the possible scheming of rogues who might pay witches to raise demon familiars against them. Now Láfi had summoned me to help him lay a ghost which had been running riot in the coastal district of Snjáfjöll. The spirit was so devious that Láfi had given up trying to tackle it on his own. It was thought to be the shade of a parson’s son who had been cruelly treated by his father and stepmother, beaten and mocked and finally forced out in a violent storm to bring home some sheep that were in fact quite snug in a cave on the mountain above the farm. Since the shepherd had given up trying to drive them home, the parson put pressure on his son to prove himself the better man. It was not unkindly meant: both shepherd and parson’s son happened to have their eye on the same maidservant, and it was clear to all that she preferred the shepherd, who had the stronger grip and the bushier whiskers. The parson’s son, on the other hand, was a delicate youth who minced rather than walked, as unfit for physical work as he was for spiritual labours. He had been deeply attached to his late mother and used to help her with the needlework. Now he was wrapped up in layer upon layer of coats, with sturdy boots on his feet, a hat of polar-bear skin on his head and an iron-shod staff lashed to his right hand. Thus equipped, he set out on tiptoe over the hard-frozen snow. Onlookers made fun of his ridiculous high-stepping gait as it took him the best part of a day to clamber up to the top of the slopes, a point any other man could have reached in two hours. There he vanished from view and shortly afterwards fell over a cliff, broke his leg in three places and died of exposure. It was not long, however, before he returned to wreak vengeance on his father and neighbours, becoming the most palpable ghost ever to haunt the district; many were injured by his blows and stone-throwing when he ambushed them in the winter darkness. If a lamp went out in the living room during supper, he would have licked out all the bowls by the time it was re-lit. But it was no better when he satisfied himself merely with pinching women in the crotch and kicking men in the balls, hoping by this to castrate the district until it fell into dereliction. He had given Láfi such an almighty kick in the groin that one of his testicles had been squashed flat like a blueberry between the teeth, as I was permitted to see and feel for myself. Yet Láfi’s attempts to exorcise the phantom parson’s son had not been entirely unsuccessful. For the first few months afterwards the ghost had kept a low profile, hardly laying a finger on anyone, though he could be heard from time to time howling down the kitchen chimney. But when summer came round and the ghost was discovered to have pushed a shepherd boy flat on his face and torn off his breeches, Láfi admitted defeat: a ghoul that did not require the cover of darkness to commit its foul deeds was beyond his powers. So here I was, come to help him lay its body in the grave — where the spirit departed after that was not within our power to decide. Láfi was to be paid a fee for the ghost-hunt, and this he would share with me. We were well provided with food and drink and made tolerably comfortable at the parsonage of Stadur. But as the weather was exceptionally fine that year, we slept outside for most of the summer, using a tent that Láfi had acquired from a Spanish whaler. We began our quest by travelling from farm to farm, enquiring whether the spook had been there and, if so, how it had behaved. We were given a warm welcome and in return entertained the locals with our ballads and riddles, and my tales of people from my home district far away. It was on this investigative journey that we composed the ‘Bird Verses’ which every Tom, Dick and Harry now knows. We were of one mind during those sunny days and nights on the coast of Snjáfjöll. Láfi had begun the poem, the first three stanzas were his, but had run out of birds and inspiration by the time I turned up. As we walked from farm to farm we took to chanting the poem together. He recited the first verses, which he had knocked together with some skill, and I slid into the metre — slipped into it like a tongue into the eye socket of a well-boiled sheep’s head. We composed like fury, casting one bird after another into the air before slotting it into place in our list. The light summer days and nights merged into one and, free from any timetable, we took no rest when the muse was upon us but allowed it to seize us and lift us to that higher plane of the poet’s art that is sometimes called poetic ecstasy and resembles nothing so much as delirious happiness, for those under its influence tend to move with quick jerks of the limbs, rocked by gales of laughter and prone to madcap fits, such as rushing off, yelling words into the blue, one to the west, another to the east, the third up in the air, the fourth behind one, the fifth in front and the sixth at the ground, before plumping down on top of it, as if to crush any devil that might pop up its head at the unexpected message, and sit tight, rocking to and fro, babbling gibberish as one juggled the six words together until they formed a clever, well-crafted line. And so on until we nodded off with a half-made line of verse on our lips and slept where we fell, often till well past midday. Unfortunately, though, it was not always so, and most of the verses came into being like any other discussion between learned men. I even slipped in several alien bird species that Láfi had never heard of, like the noble pelican which builds a nest for its young in its beak and gives birth to them from the blood of its breast, or that Babel bird the parrot that speaks every tongue on Earth. When he cast doubt on the existence of such freaks, I answered his objections by saying: