Part 14 (1/2)

Then she said to the boy Thord, Kari's son: ”Thee will I take out, and thou shalt not burn in here.”

”Thou hast promised me this, grandmother,” says the boy, ”that we should never part so long as I wished to be with thee; but methinks it is much better to die with thee and Njal than to live after you.”

Then she bore the boy to her bed, and Njal spoke to his steward and said:--

”Now shalt thou see where we lay us down, and how I lay us out, for I mean not to stir an inch hence, whether reek or burning smart me, and so thou wilt be able to guess where to look for our bones.”

He said he would do so.

There had been an ox slaughtered, and the hide lay there.

Njal told the steward to spread the hide over them, and he did so.

So there they lay down both of them in their bed, and put the boy between them. Then they signed themselves and the boy with the cross, and gave over their souls into G.o.d's hand, and that was the last word that men heard them utter.

Then the steward took the hide and spread it over them, and went out afterwards. Kettle of the Mark caught hold of him and dragged him out; he asked carefully after his father-in-law Njal, but the steward told him the whole truth. Then Kettle said:--

”Great grief hath been sent on us, when we have had to share such ill-luck together.”

Skarphedinn saw how his father laid him down and how he laid himself out, and then he said:--

”Our father goes early to bed, and that is what was to be looked for, for he is an old man.”

The harmonies of _Laxdaela_ are somewhat different from those of the history of Njal, but here again the elements of grace and strength, of gentleness and terror, are combined in a variety of ways, and in such a way as to leave no preponderance to any one exclusively. Sometimes the story may seem to fall into the exemplary vein of the ”antique poet historicall”; sometimes the portrait of Kjartan may look as if it were designed, like the portrait of Amadis or Tirant the White, ”to fas.h.i.+on a gentleman or n.o.ble person in vertuous and gentle discipline.” Sometimes the story is involved in the ordinary business of Icelandic life, and Kjartan and Bolli, the Sigurd and Gunnar of the tragedy, are seen engaged in common affairs, such as make the alloy of heroic narrative in the _Odyssey_. The hero is put to the proof in this way, and made to adapt himself to various circ.u.mstances.

Sometimes the story touches on the barbarism and cruelty, which were part of the reality familiar to the whole of Iceland in the age of the Sturlungs, of which there is more in the authentic history of the Sturlungs than in the freer and more imaginative story of Kjartan. At one time the story uses the broad and fluent form of narrative, leaving scene after scene to speak for itself; at other times it allows itself to be condensed into a significant phrase. Of these emphatic phrases there are two especially, both of them speeches of Gudrun, and the one is the complement of the other: the one in the tone of irony, Gudrun's comment on the death of Kjartan, a repet.i.tion of Brynhild's phrase on the death of Sigurd;[59] the other Gudrun's confession to her son at the end of the whole matter.

[Footnote 59: Then Brynhild laughed till the walls rang again: ”Good luck to your hands and swords that have felled the goodly prince”

(_Brot Sgkv._ 10; cf. p. 103 above).]

Gudrun meets her husband coming back, and says: ”A good day's work and a notable; I have spun twelve ells of yarn, and you have slain Kjartan Olaf's son.”

Bolli answers: ”That mischance would abide with me, without thy speaking of it.”

Said Gudrun: ”I reckon not that among mischances; it seemed to me thou hadst greater renown that winter Kjartan was in Norway, than when he came back to Iceland and trampled thee under foot. But the last is best, that Hrefna will not go laughing to bed this night.”

Then said Bolli in great wrath: ”I know not whether she will look paler at this news than thou, and I doubt thou mightest have taken it no worse if we had been left lying where we fought, and Kjartan had come to tell of it.”

Gudrun saw that Bolli was angry, and said: ”Nay, no need of words like these; for this work I thank thee; there is an earnest in it that thou wilt not thwart me after.”

This is one of the crises of the story, in which the meaning of Gudrun is brought out in a short pa.s.sage of dialogue, at the close of a section of narrative full of adventure and incident. In all that precedes, in the relations of Gudrun to Kjartan before and after her marriage with Bolli, as after the marriage of Kjartan and Hrefna, the motives are generally left to be inferred from the events and actions.

Here it was time that Gudrun should speak her mind, or at least the half of her mind.

Her speech at the end of her life is equally required, and the two speeches are the complement of one another. Bolli her son comes to see her and sits with her.

The story tells that one day Bolli came to Helgafell; for Gudrun was always glad when he came to see her. Bolli sat long with his mother, and there was much talk between them.

At last Bolli said: ”Mother, will you tell me one thing? It has been in my mind to ask you, who was the man you loved best?”

Gudrun answers: ”Thorkell was a great man and a lordly; and no man was goodlier than Bolli, nor of gentler breeding; Thord Ingwin's son was the most discreet of them all, a wise man in the law. Of Thorvald I make no reckoning.”

Then says Bolli: ”All this is clear, all the condition of your husbands as you have told; but it has not yet been told whom you loved best. You must not keep it secret from me longer.”