Tim Severin - Sworn Brother

After a short pause Grettir turned to face me and said earnestly, 'Thorgils, I want you to promise me something: I want you to give me your word that you will make something exceptional of your own life. If my life is cut short at the hands of my enemies, I don't want you to mourn me uselessly. I want you to go out and do the things that my ill luck has never allowed me to do. Imagine that my fylgja, my other spirit, has attached itself to you, my sworn brother, and is at your shoulder, always present, seeing what you see, experiencing what you experience. A man should live his life seeking out his opportunities and fulfilling them. Not like me, cornered here on this island and becoming famous for surviving in the face of adversity.'

As Grettir spoke, a memory came back. It was of the day when Grettir and I were leaving Norway, and Grettir's half-brother, Thorstein Galleon, had said goodbye. He had promised to avenge Grettir's death if he was killed unjustly. Now, sitting on a cliff top on Drang, Grettir had taken me one step further. He was asking me to continue his life for him, in remembrance of our sworn brotherhood. And behind the request was an unspoken understanding between us: neither Grettir nor I expected that he would live out the full twenty years of outlawry and reach the end of the sentence imposed upon him.

The conversation had a remarkable effect on me. It changed my perception of life on Drang. Previously I had been despondent about the future, fearing the outcome of Grettir's seemingly endless difficulties. Now I saw that it was better to enjoy whatever time there was left for us together. The change of season helped my pessimism to lift. The arrival of the brief Icelandic summer wiped away the memory of a dank and melancholy winter. I watched the tiny island change from a remote, desolate outpost to a place full of life and movement. It was the birds that did it. They arrived in their thousands, perhaps from those distant lands which Grettir dreamed of. Flock after flock came in until the sky was filled with their wings and their constant mewing and screaming mingled with the sounds of the sea and the wind. They came to breed, and they settled on the ledges, crevices and tiny outcrops of the cliffs until it seemed that there was not a single hand's breadth that was not occupied by some seabird busily building a new nest or refurbishing an old one. Even in Greenland I had not seen so many seabirds clustered together. Their droppings ran down the cliff faces like streaks of wax when a candle gutters in the draught, and there was a constant movement of fluttering and flight. Of course, we took their eggs, or rather we took a minuscule portion of them. This was when Grettir was at his best. With his huge strength he lowered Illugi on a rope over the cliff edge so that his young brother could gather the eggs from the ledges while the angry gulls beat their wings around his head, or if they stayed on their nests, shot green slime from their throats into the face of the thief. Perhaps the proudest moment of all my relationship with Grettir was when he turned to me and asked if I would go down the precipice on the rope and I agreed. As I dangled there, high above the sea, swinging in space, with only my sworn brother's strength to prevent me falling to my death like Haering, I felt the satisfaction of utter trust in another.

So the summer weeks passed by: sudden rain showers were interspersed with spells of brilliant sunshine when we stood on the cliff tops and watched the whales feeding in the waters around the island; or we traced the evening spread of white mist over the high moors on the mainland. Occasionally I would go by myself to a little niche on the very lip of the precipice and lie on the turf, deliberately gazing across the void and imagining I was no longer in contact with the solid ground. I hoped to achieve something my seidr mentors had long ago described to me: spirit flying. Like a small bird beginning to take wing, I wanted to send my spirit out over the sea and distant mountains and away from my physical body. For brief moments I succeeded. The earth fell away beneath me, and I felt a rush of wind on my face and saw the ground far beneath. But I never travelled far or stayed out of my body for long. I had brief glimpses of dense forest, a white landscape and felt a piercing cold. Then, like the fledgling which flutters uncertainly back to the branch, my spirit would return to where I lay, and the rush of air on my cheeks often proved to be no more than the rising wind.

The intrusion of awful dread into this pleasant life was shocking. The day was bright and fresh, and the waters of Skagafiord had that intense dark blue into which one could look for ever. Grettir and I were at a spot where the small black and white seabirds which nested in their millions regularly flew towards their nests, a row of tiny fish neatly arranged in their rainbow beaks. As they skimmed low over the cliff, riding up-draughts, we would rise from ambush and with woven nets on sticks pull them down from the sky and break their necks. Smoked over our fire, their dark brown flesh was delicious, a cross between lamb's liver and the finest venison. We had netted perhaps a dozen of the birds when we heard Illugi call out that a small boat was coming down the fiord. We gathered at the cliff edge and saw a little skiff rowed by just one man heading our way. Soon we could make out Thorbjorn Ongul at the oars.

'I wonder what he wants this time,' said Grettir.

'He can't be coming to negotiate,' Illugi commented. 'By now he must know that we can't be shifted, whatever he offers us, whether threats or payment.'

I, too, had been watching the boat, and as it drew nearer, I began to feel uncomfortable. A chill came over me, a cold queasiness. At first I thought it was an expression of my mistrust of Thorbjorn Ongul. I knew that he was the man from whom Grettir had the most to fear. But as the little boat came closer, I knew that there was something else, something more powerful and sinister. I broke out in a cold sweat and felt the hairs on the back of my neck rise. It seemed ridiculous. In front of me was a small boat, rowed by an aggressive farmer who could not climb the cliffs, floating on a pleasant summer sea. There could be no menace there.

I glanced at Grettir. He was pale and trembling slightly. Not since our shared vision of fire emerging from the tomb of old Kar on the headland had we both been touched by the second sight simultaneously. But this time the vision was blurred and indistinct.

'What is it?' I asked Grettir. I did not have to explain my question.

'I don't know,' he answered throatily. 'Something's not right.'

The fool Glaum broke our concentration. Suddenly he began capering on the cliff edge, where he could be seen by Ongul in the boat. He shouted obscenities and taunts, and went so far as to turn his back, drop his breeches to his ankles and expose his buttocks at the Ongul.

'Stop that!' ordered Grettir brusquely. He went across to Glaum and cuffed him so hard that the vagrant was knocked backwards. Glaum scrambled to his feet, pulling up his breeches, and shambled off, muttering crossly. Grettir turned back to face Ongul. He had stopped rowing and was keeping the little skiff a safe distance away from the beach.

'Clear off!' Grettir bellowed. 'There's nothing you can say that I want to hear.'

'I'll leave when I feel like it,' Ongul yelled back. 'I want to tell you what I think of you. You're a coward and a trespasser. You're touched in the head, a murderer, and the sooner you're dealt with the better it will be for all decent men.'

'Clear off! ' repeated Grettir, shouting at the top of his lungs. 'Go back to minding your farm, you miserable one-eye. You're the one who is responsible for bringing death. That young man would never have tried to climb up here if you hadn't encouraged him. Now he's dead, and with your scheme unstuck so badly you've been made to look a fool.'