Tim Severin - Odinn's Child

Quite why Hallbera accepted my infatuation is something I have never been able to explain fully. There was really no reason for her to take up with such a modest prospect as myself. The only explanation that I can find is that she was bored and perhaps

curious as to how to manage the opposite sex, and I was conveniently on hand to experiment with. There was nothing improper about our relationship. Hallbera and I began to meet quietly, exchange kisses and indulge in some gentle cuddling. These physical contacts made my head spin and I would feel weak for half an hour afterwards, though Hallbera never seemed to experience similar surges of emotions. She was always so robust and crisp and energetic. She was capable of emerging from an embrace, suddenly announcing that she had promised to help one of her brothers in some task, and go bouncing off in her athletic stride, her blonde hair swinging, leaving me dazed with emotion and completely baffled. I am sure that Snorri guessed at the relationship between his daughter and myself, and there is no doubt that it was known to Hallbera's mother. But neither of them chose to interfere because there were so many other children and more important matters to occupy their attention.

In the throes of calf love, I would go off for hours to some quiet corner and fall into a trance, meditating on how I could spend the rest of my life close to that glorious, milk-and-honey girl. Now I realise that I wanted more than just Hallbera. I was longing to be absorbed for ever into the embrace of a large family, where everything seemed to be in a perpetual state of sunny commotion and bustle, where there were few problems which, when they did arise, were solved in moments by mutual help and support. In short, I was feeling lonely and insecure, and my view of Snorri's family was a fantasy which overlooked the fact that my darling Hallbera was no more than a thoroughly normal, conventional young woman in the blush of her maidenhood.

The conversation that autumn was all about a local bandit by the name of Ospak, and what should be done about him. Listening to the discussions, I learned that Ospak had plagued the region for many years. He had always been a bully. A brute by nature and in stature, he had started his mischief when he was still in his teens, knocking about his neighbours and generally terrorising them. As he grew to middle age, he graduated to systematic oppression of the people living within reach and a gang of similar-minded ruffians soon clustered around him. On one notorious occasion he and a gang of his toughs showed up when a dead fin whale had been stranded on a beach. By Icelandic law the division of anything washed up on a beach is strictly controlled. Each stretch of rocky foreshore belongs to the farmers who own the driftage rights there. Dead whales, lengths of driftwood, bits and pieces from boat wrecks, are all considered valuable. They are so precious, in fact, that the first pioneers developed an ingenious system of selecting where to build their homes. Sailing along the new-found coast, the captain of the vessel would throw overboard the carved wooden panels that traditionally stand on each side of the high chair in a Norse hall. Later, going ashore, the new arrivals would range the coast looking to see where the panels had washed up. There they built their home and claimed the beach rights because they knew that the sea currents would supply an endless source of bounty at that spot.

On the day the fin whale washed up, the farmers who owned the driftage rights went down to the beach early in the morning to check what the sea had cast up. The previous night there had been a great gale from the direction which normally brought the best flotsam, and sure enough the carcass of the whale, dead from natural causes, was found lying in the shallows. The farmers went home, fetched their cutting spades and axes and began to butcher the dead whale. They had peeled back the blubber and got as far as cutting up large chunks of the meat, stacking it in piles ready to be shared out, when Ospak appeared. He had no driftage rights, but knew the wind and waves as well as anyone and had rowed across the bay with fifteen of his gang, all heavily armed. They came ashore and demanded a share of the meat, only to be told by one of the farmers, a man named Thorir, that if the other workers agreed they would sell Ospak what he wanted. Ospak gruffly told Thorir that he had no intention of paying and instructed his men to begin loading their boat. When Thorir objected, Ospak struck him on the ear with the flat of an axe blade and knocked him unconscious. The rest of the farmers, outnumbered, were in no position to resist. They had to look on while Ospak and his men filled their boat with as much meat as they could carry, and rowed off, taunting their unfortunate victims.

The following year Ospak's behaviour became even more wild. He and his men took to raiding isolated farms and looting them, often tying up the farmer and his family. They carried off whatever valuables they could find, all spare stocks of food, and drove away the cattle and horses. They operated with impunity because the farmers were poorly organised, and Ospak had taken the trouble to fortify his own farmhouse so strongly that it was dangerous to counter-attack. His following increased to at least twenty men, all desperadoes attracted by the chance of easy pickings. But the more men Ospak recruited, the more he had to extend his raids to obtain them enough supplies. So the vicious cycle continued unabated. Some time before I joined Snorri's household, Ospak and his men had raided Thorir's farm, pillaged it and dragged Thorir outside and killed him. The raiders then headed on towards a farm owned by another of the men who had been at the whale kill, and against whom Ospak bore a grudge. Fortunately Alf, known as Alf the Short, was fully dressed and still awake when the raiders arrived, though it was late in the evening when most people would have been in bed and asleep. Alf managed to slip out of the rear of the house as the raiders battered down the front door, and he ran off across the moor, heading for refuge with Snorri, who was one of the few men in the district too powerful for Ospak to meddle with.

Snorri heard Alf s tale and his plea for help. But though he gave Alf shelter for as long as he wanted to stay, Snorri waited several months without taking any action against Ospak. For this Snorri was criticised by many, but it was typical of his style. Snorri never did anything in haste, and only after he had made meticulous preparations did he reveal his hand. He wanted more information about Ospak's defences, and asked if I would visit Ospak's fortified farm. Ostensibly I was calling to look for work. In reality I was, once again, a spy and — as Snorri made this request just when I was in the full fever of my passion for Hallbera and badly wanted to impress her — I accepted without hesitation.

It took me two days to walk across country to Ospak's stronghold, and as I approached his farmhouse I could see that he had built a tall palisade made of timber and closed the entrance to the stockade with massive double gates. Round the inside of the palisade ran an elevated walkway, which would allow the defenders to stand at the rampart and hurl missiles down at any attackers who came too close. Even more daunting was the garrison. I saw at least twenty heavily armed men, including one ugly specimen who affected the old-fashioned style of weaving his long beard in plaits, which he arranged in a mat down his chest. Snorri had already told me about this flamboyant villain, who went by the name of Hrafn the Vikingr. He was a simple-minded, lumbering sort of oaf who drank away his spoils and was already under sentence of full outlawry for committing a random murder.

I also laid eyes, for the first time, on a second, rather more intriguing outlaw at Ospak's farm. When I walked in through the massive wooden gates I saw a young man sitting in the farmyard on a bench, moodily carving a piece of wood with his knife. I remember he was wearing a brown tunic and blue leggings, and that he seemed to control a repressed fury. The pale shavings were curling up from his knife blade and jumping into the air like nervous insects. Only the breadth of his shoulders, his long arms and powerful hands gave a hint of how he had earned his name, Grettir the Strong. I was interested to meet him because he was only two years older than myself, yet already infamous throughout Iceland. He was not a member of Ospak's band but visiting the fortified farm with his sister, who was betrothed to Ospak's son. All sorts of stories were circulating about Grettir the Strong. Even as a young boy he had been uncontrollable. He wilfully disobeyed his parents, refused to help on the family farm and spent most of his time sprawling lazily in the house. When forced to get to his feet and carry out any chore, Grettir made sure he did it in such a way that he was never asked to do the same job again. Sent to lock up the poultry for the night, he left the chicken-shed door ajar so the birds escaped onto the moors. Told to groom the prize stallion, he deliberately scored its back with a sharp knife point so the wretched animal was invalided. He was an impossible youth, wayward and perverse. Nor was he affable with his contemporaries. He was always picking fights, quarrelling and brawling, and he made few friends. I had first heard his name mentioned that winter when I and several of Snorri's younger children were out on the frozen fjord, playing an ice game. We had divided into two teams and were using shaped sticks to hit a small ball through a mark. One of my team lost his temper and rushed at an opponent, threatening to smash him on the head with his stick. It was called 'doing a Grettir'. I found out that Grettir had famously attacked an opponent during the ice game and nearly killed him when he hit the boy so hard that his skull cracked. Three months later Grettir killed a man in a quarrel over, of all things, a leather flask of skyr, sour milk. After that brawl, Grettir was sentenced to lesser outlawry, and when I met him he was in the second grace year, preparing to leave Iceland and seek service with the King of Norway. At that time I had no inkling that one day Grettir would become perhaps my closest friend.