66 Degrees North

CHAPTER TWO

August 1934

‘AAAGH!’ Hallgrímur swung his axe as they came at him. Eight of them. In a frenzy, he chopped off the leg of the first warrior, and the head of the second. His axe split the third’s shield. The fourth he hit in the face with his own shield. Swish! Swish! Two more down. The last two ran away, and who could blame them?

Hallgrímur flopped back against the stone cairn, panting, the fury leaving him drained. ‘I got eight of them, Benni,’ he said.

‘Yes, and you got me too,’ said his friend, rubbing his mouth. ‘It’s bleeding. One of my teeth is loose.’

‘It’s just a baby tooth,’ said Hallgrímur. ‘It was coming out anyway.’

He relaxed and let the weak sun stroke his face. He loved the feeling right after he had gone berserk. He really felt that there was so much repressed anger in him, so much aggression, that he was a modern berserker.

And this was his favourite spot. Right in the middle of the twisted waves of congealed stone that was Berserkjahraun, or Berserkers’ Lava Field. It was a beautiful, eerie, magical place of little towers, folds and wrinkles of stone, speckled with lime green moss, darker green heather, and the deep red leaves of bog bilberries.

The lava field was named after the two warriors who had been brought over to Iceland as servants from Sweden a thousand years before by Vermundur the Lean, the man who owned Hallgrímur’s family’s farm, Bjarnarhöfn. The Swedes had the ability to make themselves go berserk in battle, when with superhuman strength they could smite all before them. They proved a handful for the farmer of Bjarnarhöfn, who passed them on to his brother Styr at Hraun, Benedikt’s farm on the other side of the lava field.

There had been trouble between Styr and his new servants, and the berserkers had ended up buried under the cairn of lava stone and moss, right where Hallgrímur was leaning.

Of course Hallgrímur had grown up knowing the story of the two berserkers, but his friend Benedikt had just started reading the Saga of the People of Eyri, and had come up with all sorts of new details, the best of which was that one of the berserkers had the same name as him, Halli. At eight, Benedikt was two years younger than Hallgrímur, but he was a brilliant reader for his age. Their favourite game had become to stalk the lava field pretending to be the berserkers. It worked quite well, Hallgrímur thought. Benedikt came up with the stories, but Hallgrímur was much better at going berserk. And that was, after all, the point.

‘What shall we do now?’ he asked Benedikt. It was more of a command for Benedikt to come up with another game than a question.

‘Any sign of your parents?’ Benedikt asked.

‘Father won’t be back for ages. He’s gone to look for a ewe on the fell. I’ll just check for Mother.’

The cairn was in a depression, out of sight of grown-ups, which made it such a good playing place. Hallgrímur climbed the ancient footpath between the two farms, which had been hewn out of the lava a millennium before by the berserkers themselves, and looked west towards Bjarnarhöfn. It was a prosperous farm, nestling beneath a waterfall which tumbled down the side of Bjarnarhöfn Fell. It was surrounded by a large home field, bright green against the brown of the surrounding heath. A tiny wooden church, little more than a black hut, lay between the farm and the grey flatness of Breidafjördur, the broad fjord dotted with low islands. Just up from the shoreline were wooden racks on which lines of salted fish hung out to dry. Hallgrímur could see no sign of life. His mother had said she was going to clean the church, something she did obsessively. This seemed a pointless activity to Hallgrímur, since the pastor only held services there once a month.

But there was no reasoning with his mother.

He was supposed to be in the room he shared with his brother, doing arithmetic problems. But he had sneaked out to play with Benedikt.

‘All right,’ said Benedikt. ‘I have heard that Arnkell’s men have stolen some of our horses. We must find them and free the horses. But we must take them by surprise.’

‘That’s a good idea,’ said Hallgrímur. He wasn’t entirely sure who Arnkell was, he was probably a chieftain from the saga. Benedikt would know the details.

They crept southwards through the lava field. It had spewed out of the big mountains to the south several thousand years ago, ending up in the fjord just between the two farms at a place called Hraunsvík, or Lava Bay. For several kilometres it flowed in a tumult of stone and moss, twenty or thirty metres above the surrounding plain. It was possible to crawl along the wrinkles of the lava, to slither through cracks, to lurk behind the extraordinary shapes that reared upwards. There was one spot where the lava seemed to form the silhouettes of two horses standing together, when viewed from a certain angle. That was where they were heading.

They had been crawling and sliding for five minutes when Hallgrímur suddenly heard a grunt ahead of them.

‘What was that?’ Hallgrímur turned to Benedikt.

‘I don’t know,’ Benedikt squeaked. A look of terror on his face.

‘It sounds like some kind of animal.’

‘Perhaps it’s the Kerlingin troll come down from the Pass.’

‘Don’t be silly,’ said Hallgrímur. But he swallowed. The grunting was getting louder. It sounded like a man.

Then there was a short, high pitched squeal.

‘That’s Mother!’ Hallgrímur wriggled forward, ignoring Benedikt’s whispered pleas to come away. His heart was beating. He had no idea what he would see. Could it really be his mother, and if so was she in some kind of danger?

Perhaps the berserkers were walking through the lava field again.

He hesitated as the fear almost overcame him, but Hallgrímur was brave. He swallowed and wriggled on.

There, on a cushion of moss in a hollow, he saw a man’s bare bottom pumping up and down over a woman, half dressed, her face, surrounded by a pillow of golden hair, tilted directly towards him. She didn’t see him; her eyes were shut and little mewling sounds came from her parted lips.

Mother.

Mother seemed to be in a good mood at dinner that evening. Father had returned from the fell having found the ewe stuck in a gully.

His mother was very fond of her children, or most of them. She was proud of Hallgrímur’s obedient little brother, and of his three sisters, whom she was raising to be hard working, honest and capable women about the farm.

But Hallgrímur. She just didn’t like Hallgrímur.

‘Halli! How did you scratch your knees?’ she demanded.

‘I didn’t scratch them,’ Hallgrímur said. He always denied everything stubbornly. It never worked.

‘Yes you did. That’s blood. And they are dirty.’

Hallgrímur looked down. It was true. ‘Er, I fell coming up the stairs.’

‘You were playing in the lava field, weren’t you? When I specifically told you to do your schoolwork.’

‘No, I swear I wasn’t. I was here all the time.’

‘Do you take me for an idiot?’ His mother raised her voice. ‘Gunnar, will you control your son? Stop him lying to his mother.’

His father didn’t seem to like Hallgrímur much either. But he liked his wife even less, despite her beauty.

‘Leave the boy alone,’ he said.

His mother’s good mood was long gone. ‘To your room, Halli! Right now! And don’t come down until you have finished your homework. Your brother can eat your skyr.’

Hallgrímur stood up and looked mournfully at the dish of skyr and berries he was abandoning. He sauntered towards the hallway and the stairs.

He paused at the door.

‘You are right, Mother. I did go to play in the lava field with Benni.’

He was pleased to see his mother’s cheeks flush.

‘I saw you and Benni’s father,’ he went on. ‘What were you doing?’

‘Out!’ his mother cried. ‘To your room!’

That night, after all the children were in bed with the lamps snuffed out, Hallgrímur heard his father shouting and his mother sobbing.

The little boy fell asleep with a smile on his face.