Tim Severin - Sworn Brother

Before a marriage is agreed in Iceland, two financial settlements are made. One comes from the bride's family and is a contribution to the couple to help them get started. That investment remains the bride's property. If the marriage fails, she keeps it. By contrast the price put into the marriage by her husband's

side, the mundur, is held as common property, and in the event of divorce may be claimed by the bride if she can show that her husband was in any way at fault. Understandably, the haggling between the families of groom and bride over the size of the mundur can take up a considerable time before a marriage, but should the marriage collapse, the rancour over which partner was at fault takes even longer.

Why did I get married? I suppose it was because Grettir had recommended it and Snorri Godi, who was regarded as a very astute man, had done the same. That, at least, would have been my superficial reason, but deeper down I suppose that Grettir's departure to seek his own family had left me feeling insecure. Also Snorri, after making the initial suggestion, then proceeded actively to find me a wife, which left me little option. Like many men who are approaching the loss of their prestige and power, he could not resist meddling in the affairs of others, however insignificant they might be.

And I was certainly insignificant. Born illegitimate and sent away by my mother at the age of two to a father who had remarried and largely ignored me, I could offer neither support nor prospects to a wife. Nor would it have been wise to tell her that I was sworn brother to the most notorious outlaw in the land. So, instead, I kept quiet and let Snorri do the negotiating for me. I suppose his reputation as the foremost chieftain of the district was in my favour, or perhaps he had some hidden understanding with Gunnhildr's father, Audun. Whatever the background, Snorri invited me to stay at his home while he arranged the details, and all went smoothly until the matter of mundur came up. Old Audun, a grasping and pompous man if there ever was one, asked what bride price I was prepared to pay for what he called his 'exquisite daughter'. If Odinn had been kinder to me at that moment, I would have said that I was penniless and the negotiations would have collapsed. As it was, I foolishly offered to contribute a single jewel, but one so rare that nothing like it had been seen in Iceland. Audun was sceptical at first, then curious, and when I melted down the clumsy lead bird of my amulet and produced the fire ruby he looked amazed.

The greater impact was made on his daughter. The moment Gunnhildr saw that gem she had to have it. She was determined to flaunt it before her sisters. It was her way of paying them back for years of spiteful remarks about her frumpiness. And once Gunnhildr decided that she wanted something nothing would stop her, as her father well knew. So the last of old Audun's objections to our marriage disappeared and he agreed to the match. My future in-laws agreed to provide Gunnhildr and myself with a small outlying farmstead as her dowry, while the gem was my mundur. At the last moment, either because the thought of parting with my talisman and its association with my life in England was so painful, or because of a premonition, I made Gunnhildr and Audun agree that if the marriage failed I would be allowed to redeem the jewel on payment of a sum which was the equivalent value of the farmstead. The price of the gem was set at thirty marks of silver, a sum that was to cloud my next few years.

Our wedding was such a subdued affair that it was barely noticed in the neighbourhood. Even Snorri was absent, having taken to his bed with an attack of fever and Gunnhildr dressed up only in order to display the fire ruby. I was taken aback to discover that the ceremony was to be conducted by an itinerant priest. He was one of those Christian holy men who had begun to appear in increasing numbers in the countryside, travelling from farm to farm to persuade the women to accept their faith and baptise their children, and railing all the while against what they described as the barbaric and heathen Old Ways. During the wedding ceremony I realised that my bride was a rabid Christian. She stood beside me, sweating slightly in her wedding finery, and calling out the responses in her unmelodious voice so devoutly and harshly that I knew she believed the priest's every incantation. Now and again, I noticed, she fondled the fire ruby possessively as it dangled between her ample breasts.

The wedding feast was as skimpy as my father-in-law could get away with, and then my wife and I were conducted to our farmstead by a small group of her relatives, then left alone. Later that evening Gunnhildr made it clear that physical relations between us were out of the question. She had given herself to the White Christ, she informed me loftily, and close contact with a non-believer like myself was repugnant to her. It was a reaction which I did not care to challenge. On the walk to our new home I had been pondering on the fact that my marriage was probably the worst mistake I had yet made in my life.

Matters did not improve. I quickly learned that my in-laws' wedding gift of the farmstead was self-serving in the extreme. The farm lay just too distant from their own home for them to work it themselves. My father-in-law had been too parsimonious to hire a steward to live there and run it, and too jealous of his neighbours to rent them the lands and pasture. By installing a compliant son-in-law he thought he had found his ideal solution. I was expected to bring the farm into good order, then hand on to him a significant portion of the hay, meat or cheese it produced. In short, I was his lackey.

Nor did Gunnhildr intend to spend much time there with me. Once she had acquired a husband or, rather, once she had got her hands on the fire ruby, she reverted to her previous way of life. To her credit she was a competent housekeeper, and she was quick to clean up the farmhouse, which had been left unoccupied for several years and make the place habitable in a basic way. But then she began to spend more and more time back at her parent's house, staying the nights there on the excuse that it was too far to return to her marital home. Or she went off on visits to her gang of women friends. They were an intimidating group. All were recent and ardent converts to Christianity, so they spent a good deal of their time congratulating one another on the superior merits of their new faith and complaining of the coarseness of the one they now spurned.

I must admit that Gunnhildr would have found me a thoroughly unsatisfactory helpmeet had she stayed at home. I was completely unsuited to farm work. I found it depressing to get up every morning and pick up the same tools, walk the same paths, round up the same cattle, cut hay from the same patch, repair the same rickety outhouse and return to the same lumpy mattress, which, thankfully, I had to myself. To put it bluntly, I preferred Gunnhildr in her absence because I found her company to be shallow, tedious and ignorant. When I compared her to Aelfgifu I almost wept with frustration. Gunnhildr had an uncanny ability to interrupt my thoughts with observations of breathtaking banality, and her sole interest in her fellow humans appeared to be based on their financial worth, an attitude she doubtless learned from her money-grubbing father. To spite him, I did as little work on the farm as possible.

Naturally the other farmers in the area, who were hardworking men, thought me a good-for-nothing and shunned my company. So rather than stay and mind the cattle and cut hay for the winter, I went on excursions to visit my mentor Thrand, who had instructed me in the Old Ways when I was in my teens. Thrand lived only half a day's travel away and, compared with white-haired Snorri, I found him remarkably little changed. He was still the gaunt, soldierly figure whom I remembered, plainly dressed and living simply in his small cabin with its array of foreign trophies hung on the wall. He greeted me with genuine affection, telling me that he had heard that I was back in the district. He had not attended my wedding, he added, because he found it difficult to support the prating of so many Christians.