Authors: Margaret Elphinstone
Cold water springs from under the rock and bubbles over black stones. Moss grows in clumps, jewelled with waterdrops. Flowers cluster in the damp: kingcups, buttercups, willow herb. The hollow smells of wet
earth. It is midnight, and the sun has gone behind Snaefel. Grey streaks of cloud are drawn across the sky by ashy fingers. The western sky is pink.
The girl stands by the spring. She is tall, and her hair reaches to her waist. She has it tied back with a red band. She holds herself very straight. She is no longer a child; her face is thinner and more secret. There are moments when she looks how she will be when she is old.
Now that the sun has gone there is a chill over the pastures. Beyond them, the glacier is cold and dull. The girl begins to chant under her breath. A small breeze lifts her hair. She takes a silver piece from the sheath that hangs round her neck. She throws it into the heart of the spring, and it vanishes without a glimmer.
She kneels down with her head close to the water. Pebbles gleam like jewels in the mud below. A fleet of shadows chases over the surface of the spring. She looks up. A flock of terns flies over her, then turns west in a flash of white, and disappears into the dazzle.
She has never been to sea, but she knows terns are unsafe guides, as they do not always make for land. This must be the sign for which she asked. She does not understand it yet, but the spell is made.
I thought things were going to change that autumn. We were used to Thorgeir the trader coming to Arnarstapi at that time of year on his way to Laugarbrekka. This year his son Einar came instead, as Thorgeir wasn’t as fit as he used to be. I couldn’t remember Einar, although he’d been to Arnarstapi with his father before he went abroad. He didn’t remember me either, and if he had, I don’t think he would have connected an inquisitive little girl with the young woman I was now.
Anyway, once a man sees a woman in a particular way, she has no past or future in his eyes. Einar had been travelling between Iceland and Norway for quite a few years, spending one winter there and one here – in Iceland, I mean. He was another of those Icelanders who grew rich and successful in a generation. Thorgeir was the son of a slave, and a travelling packman to begin with. His son was a shipowner and seagoing trader. Orm would have invited him to stay with us for his father’s sake anyway, but naturally he was
interested in the man himself. Success is always interesting to us in Iceland.
I knew the trader had arrived, but Halldis kept me busy outside. As a child, I could run in and out as I pleased. Then I was neither man nor woman, so I could work my way into any hearth, like the animals, and be invisible. Now, if men came to the house, she would keep me at the loom or in the dairy, so that I couldn’t even listen to the talk. I can tell you, young man, that it’s hard to be young if you’re a woman. You have to keep to the rules. A child can break them, and an old woman, if she’s like me, will do exactly as she likes, but a young girl is attractive to men and must therefore always be careful. Not that I minded being beautiful. It has its compensations, but it’s a kind of prison all the same.
So there was Einar in the hall displaying his wares from Norway to my father, and there was I, out in the field with my stool and bucket, milking the household cow. It was a grey evening just at the turn of the year, when for the first time there’s a touch of winter in the wind, and the day is no longer than the night. A mizzle of rain came in from the sea with the dusk, and I could feel the chill of it against my bent back. I pressed my head against the warmth of the cow, while the milk squirted down. It gleamed like ice in the half light. I was excited about seeing the trader’s wares. I was still scornful of women like Thurid who cared so much for fine clothes and jewels, but at the same time I admired their courage. Thurid defied the world she lived in. We were starved of colour, but she insisted on it. I realised, as I watched the whiteness frothing in the pail, that I wanted colour. I wanted just to see and feel the colours the trader would have brought. I wanted to buy colours of my own.
That was all I was thinking about as I came back to the house. I passed the door of the hall, and I heard men’s voices, but I didn’t turn my head. I went straight into the dairy and poured the milk, and took down yesterday’s buttermilk. It was my job to make the skyr, but before I could go into the hearth to get the boiled milk, Halldis brought it out to me. As I mixed in the rennet I could hear a murmur of voices from the hall. I remember I was wondering if I would feel different if I wore dyed clothes. I never had. I wondered if the colours
that people dress themselves in change the way they think? I’d never had the opportunity to find out.
The farmer and the trader sit in the hall. The trader has opened his bales and spread out bolts of dyed cloth, wool and linen, trays of amber beads and bronze brooches, coloured necklaces and ornaments of jet and silver, knives in decorated sheaths, charms to hang round the neck, sets of pins and needles in cases of polished horn, enamelled crosses to keep away ghosts and devils. The trader is dressed in a red tunic and green trousers, and the rings on his fingers are gold. His belt and knife scabbard are soft woven leather, and his boots are engraved with spiralling patterns. He is tall and fair, and his eyes are pale blue. He has set his scales up on the table in front of him, and as he talks to the farmer he juggles absentmindedly with the weights.
Orm the farmer wears rough woven trousers and a sheepskin tunic. He has left his muddy boots at the door. The bald patch on his head is much whiter than his face, because out of doors he always wears a hood. His hands are engrained with dirt, and his fingernails are black and broken. His dogs lie at his feet.
The girl passes the door at the end of the hall on her way to the dairy. Her hair is the colour of willow leaves in autumn, and it hangs loose to her waist. She holds herself very straight, even though she is carrying a milking stool and a bucket. She does not seem to have noticed the men at all.
The trader stares, and stops juggling. A weight rolls across the table.
‘Orm, who’s that girl? She’s not your daughter, is she?’
‘What girl?’ Orm looks round, but there is no one to be seen, only a faint clinking sound from the dairy. ‘Oh, that must be Gudrid, my foster daughter. She’s the daughter of Thorbjorn of Laugarbrekka.’
Einar picks up the weight, and turns it over in his hand. ‘She must be a good match,’ he remarked. ‘I expect there’ve been suitors for her hand?’
‘Naturally. But she won’t be easy to get. Gudrid is particular about husbands, and so is her father.’
‘Is that right?’ Einar lays his weights out in a row, in order. ‘If I were to propose a marriage contract, would you speak to her father on my behalf?’
Orm raises his eyebrows, otherwise his face is expressionless. It is impossible to know whether Einar’s words have surprised him or not.
‘I’d repay you with my support,’ urges Einar. ‘Thorbjorn must think it’s a good match. It’s hardly a secret that he’s getting through his money. Everyone talks about how much he spends, and the estate can’t possibly pay for it all. Now I’ve got land, and more money than I know what to do with, and so has my father. Thorbjorn could hardly say no. Only the kind of contract that a man like me can offer will save him from complete ruin.’
‘I’m not sure that Thorbjorn will see it that way.’ Orm pauses, and frowns. ‘Maybe you’re right. I won’t say you’re wrong. I’d be your friend in this matter, as in any other, but Thorbjorn is a proud man.’
‘He’s no more to be proud about than I have. Oh yes,’ Einar adds, a shade aggressively. ‘You’re thinking of my ancestry. Is Thorbjorn’s any better? If my grandfather was a slave – well, so was his. And at least in my family we’ve made the most of our opportunities.’
‘You’ve barely seen the girl.’
‘I’ve seen her, and that’s enough. I know what I want, Orm, and I’m not afraid to take it. It’s time I was married. If you want to do your foster daughter a good turn, you’ll speak to Thorbjorn for me. Wouldn’t you like to see her the wife of a wealthy man who’ll give her the kind of life a woman wants? You know she’d be better off with me to look after her than with her father.’
‘I’ll think it over,’ is all Orm will say, but clearly he has begun to be interested.
I suppose that what attracted me about Einar was his obvious admiration of me. I remember the meal we had that night. He was sitting beside Orm, and every time I looked at him his eyes were on me. I took care not to look too often, but all through the evening I was self-conscious as I had never been before. As I moved round the table, pouring the milk, I was aware of my own body, and the effect that it might have on him. When I poured his drink into the cup for him, he looked at my hair, so close to his own face, as though he wanted to touch it. I was excited, and my heart beat as if I were doing something dangerous. I don’t think I’ve ever been so demure, before or since.
As it turned out, the danger was not mine, but Orm’s. Einar went away the next day, without even having spoken to me. I can’t remember now how much Orm told me, but I knew what was going on. I don’t think Halldis approved, or perhaps she just knew too much. When I tried to speak to her about the young man who had visited us, she just pursed her lips and turned away.
I thought I might see Einar again a week later, at my father’s autumn feast, but he wasn’t there. The feast was even more splendid than usual. My father, having no rival in hospitality anywhere near us, had taken to striving to outdo himself, and the results were spectacular, although I found myself disapproving – a throwback to my early days of want, perhaps, or a premonition of hunger still to come. Thorbjorn welcomed me with more warmth than usual. Perhaps my new clothes and amber necklace had something to do with it, or maybe he was beginning to make plans of his own about my future. Certainly when we arrived he seemed pleased with me, and with my foster parents.
My father and Orm were sitting together at the top of the table, their heads close together. Suddenly Thorbjorn leapt to his feet with a great shout. I saw him raise his fist and I thought he was going to hit my foster father. Thorbjorn was a bigger man than Orm, but Orm just stood there stolidly. My foster mother shoved the people on the benches aside, and was up there beside the men. She grabbed my father’s arm, and I thought he’d hit her but he just pushed her away. The other guests were shouting to him to calm down, and I was pushing my way through till I was just across the table from them. My father never even looked at me.
‘So I’m short of money am I?’ my father roared. He put his face close to Orm’s and shouted right at him. My foster father just looked dour, in the way I knew so well. ‘I’m a poor man, am I, who should be glad to be rescued by the son of a slave? Is that what you’re saying? I should be glad to give my daughter to the son of a common packman? You think, do you, that I’ve fallen as low as that? You dare to offer me this, when you’re eating my meat and drinking my ale? You dare, you say, to conspire with servants to dispose of my daughter? And yet I trusted you with her. You’ve had her all these years, and you dare to repay me with this!’
‘I mean well by both her and you,’ said Orm, without raising his voice.
My foster mother stood between them, her eyes moving fast from one to the other, as if she were waiting to intercept a blow. For the first time in my life I noticed how much taller she was than Orm, and it occurred to me that they looked slightly ridiculous together. I never saw it, until they were both up there facing my father, fighting for my future.
‘You mean well?’ sneered my father. ‘What right have you to mean anything by us at all? No right but what I gave you, and that you have no longer. You can get out of my house, and take your woman with you. But not my daughter. Oh no, Gudrid stays here, where I can keep an eye on her myself. And I’ll have no more of your plots. And don’t try spreading any more rumours of my poverty. You’ve seen my feast, you’ve seen the gifts I have to give. So don’t go round telling folk that I’m poor!’
I think Orm tried to answer him. I remember looking at Halldis, and Halldis looking at me. The table was between us. She tried to move towards me, and I stretched out my hands to her. I couldn’t speak, there was too much noise. The men on the benches were shouting, trying to intervene. Some of them got between Orm and Thorbjorn. Steinthor of Eyr was holding my father back, yelling at him to restrain himself. The others pushed Orm and Halldis towards the door. I tried to follow, but Halldis looked at me again and slightly shook her head. Then they were gone.
I hated my father all that winter. It was quite the other way round between us from how it had been. He tried to woo me, and I would have nothing to do with him. Whenever he talked to me I would sit there looking stonily at the hangings against the wall. After dinner he would keep me beside him until bedtime, trying to make me answer him. I never would. Nor did I try to go over to Arnarstapi; I wasn’t going to give him the pleasure of stopping me. Although we were far from the main routes along Snaefelsnes we did sometimes have visitors, and on those nights there would be stories and singing, which made my silence less noticeable. I was polite to my father’s guests, and I always waited on them respectfully as I’d been taught,
but I got a reputation for being cold and aloof. Sometimes there’d be someone there who’d watch me move about the room, just as Einar had done at Arnarstapi, but I don’t think any man approached my father. The rumours about the state of Thorbjorn’s affairs must have made any possible husband very cautious. I thought it was me they didn’t like. I had often been told I was beautiful, but I began to think that something else must be wrong about me.
I thought about Einar quite a lot. I had a daydream that one day he would ride up to my father’s door, and demand me for his wife. Of course that wasn’t very likely in the middle of winter, but I used to lie in my bed at night and imagine it happening once the snow had melted. Einar would confront Thorbjorn and my father would be quite confounded. I used to go over the scene in my head until it was perfect. At the end Einar would turn to me and tell me to come with him, and I would mount one of the ponies in the herd he had brought, and ride away from Laugarbrekka without a backward look. The next part of the story was more vague, because I had only seen Einar once and didn’t know what he would be like. Occasionally the fantasy went on until I was in bed with him, but then I used to get stuck, because that wasn’t really where I wanted to be. I just wanted to be rescued from hating my father, and there wasn’t any man but Thorbjorn himself who could do that. To give him credit, during that long winter he did try his best.