From the Mouth of the Whale

II (Summer Solstice, 1636)

Last winter I was as solitary as Adam in his first year in Paradise, though the island in winter is nothing like that delightful place. It is cold and bleak and one does not venture out of doors except to empty one’s chamber pot, and not properly even then; one merely opens the door a crack, just wide enough for the pot. I was more like a wretched mouse in its hole than a man created in God’s image. As little and hunched as the rat’s cousin, not ramrod straight, proudly surveying my domain like Adam. Ah, yes, Adam was tall and held his head high. That way he could see over the whole world, for he was bigger and heavier than his living descendants, just under thirty yards in height, and with such a head of hair that his locks cascaded like a waterfall over his loins. He was the largest living creature that God had created from earthly clay. And all through that year as he walked the earth alone, his massive body was being fired and glazed by the sun like clay in an oven. All growth was new: the trees put down roots, sprouted, then dropped their leaves and stood naked for the first time. The swans rose honking from the moorland tarns and heard their own voices for the first time. The lily opened her flowers and her perfume filled the air for the first time. The bee alighted on the dwarf fireweed and quenched her thirst with fresh honey before buzzing in flight to the next flower cup. It had never happened before. Everything was new to the eyes of the man and he was entirely new to himself. Moulded by the Master from the four elements, as they combine in the earth, he was closer to his origins now than he ever would be again. His blood was still diluted with seawater, there was gravel in his flesh, roots crept along his sinews and muscles, the seed that quickened to life in his testicles was thick as spider silk and foamy as sea spume. Thus he strode across the world and wherever he looked he saw to the ends of the Earth. At night the starry sky turned over his head, an ever-moving, twinkling, living picture show, and his childish eyes began at once to draw lines between the points of light as he sought there for parallels to the things that he perceived on his journeys by day: a swan, a ram, a snake. By day the blazing orb of the sun floated over his head and its heat drew the sweat from his skin. On the longest day of the world’s first year Adam grew so hot that the sweat broke out all over him and ran in torrents down his colossal trunk. Most of the liquid was absorbed by the golden mane that cloaked his body, and to wring the wetness from his hair Adam shook himself as he had seen the dog do — alone of all beasts this creature had taken to following him wherever he went — but in spite of such tricks the sweat continued to spring from its human source. Adam bent his head and cupped his hands to catch the liquid that poured down his forehead and fell like rain from his brow. He watched the bowl fill and the level of the salty water rising fast, before long reaching his thumb and forefinger, but for a moment before it flowed over the sides, its surface grew still and Adam saw a wondrous sight in the mirror of his hands: he saw himself. Thirst had not yet driven him to the waters, he did not yet know hunger, for a year was no more than an hour to the immortal man. And so he did not know himself in the eyes that gazed at him from the pool of sweat, did not recognise the smooth, glowing face that framed them, nor the nose that separated them. Shrieking with fright, Adam threw up his hands. When he dared to look back at where the face had appeared there were no more eyes to be seen, the mirror had shattered into countless drops, and although he collected more sweat in his palms the surface was never again smooth enough to show a whole picture, for agitation made his hands tremble too much. After a while he gave up and stood without moving, staring blankly into space, his arms hanging idly at his sides. The sun descended in the sky and he felt her heat moving from his neck to his shoulders, from where she began her journey down his long spine. And then yet another wonder occurred, a phenomenon which he would hardly have noticed had the novel sight earlier that day not opened his eyes to the possibility that the visible world had more to it than that which is solidly present; why, from his feet grew a creature which seemed to originate in himself. At first it was nothing but a faint pool, though not shaped at all like a pool, and for a while he thought that this too was liquid pouring from his body, but by the time the patch of sunshine on his spine had settled lukewarm in the small of his back, the phenomenon had acquired a familiar form: a flat head, broad shoulders and a thick trunk with long arms and short legs. Adam started back: it resembled nothing so much as the apes that lived in the southern part of the garden. In contrast to the dogs, these creatures treated him with contempt, scowling and grimacing whenever he came near. He did not know then that these grotesque half-men were put on Earth by the Creator so that he would recognise himself in them when he fell into sin. Ah, but there was still a long time to pass before the day when in their distorted faces he would see his own visage in pride, envy, rage, idleness, lechery, covetousness or gluttony. Free from sin as he was, Adam did not understand the taunt, seeing them only as mischievous, hairy creatures, and often wondered why they were allowed to exist. But as the first man started back, so the dark creature moved backwards with him, following close, pursuing him as if sewn to his feet, and when he finally straightened his back after trying to shake it off, trying in vain to tear its feet from his own, it had grown so long that it was almost as tall as himself. He had often lain on his back, feeling his own limbs, stroking from his upper arm down to his hand and along each finger to the tip, and in the same way his hands travelled down his thighs and calves to his toes — and beyond. Thus Adam was aware of the general form of his body, and in the dark patch that lay at his feet he saw for the first time a creature that resembled himself. At that moment his solitude was revealed to him, loneliness pierced his childish soul: all around him he saw pairs standing in the meadow: the lions and the sheep, the lizards and the tortoises, and in the waters the walruses and the whales, the flounders and the salmon, while above flew two swans and two eagles, and in the birch scrub a pair of snow buntings puffed out their breasts and sang of the joys of coupledom. Adam gazed out over the wide world; could it be that he had overlooked his other half? No, on his journeys around the Earth he had peered under every stone, groped inside every crevice, turned over every clump of seaweed; there was nothing to be found that resembled him. Just as disappointment threatened to flare up inside him, bringing with it a sinful sense of ingratitude towards the Creator, his eyes happened to fall on the image on the ground and a still stronger sensation seized hold of his mind, yes, and body too. Now it so happened that when this being found its way out of Adam’s soles he was standing on the margin between land and sea, on sandy ground full of dips and hollows, dimpled and gently rounded. The image on the ground was thus much softer than him in form, the dips and swellings adding curves to its hips and breast. Yes, the feeling that gripped his mind also gripped his body. The limb between his legs swelled, reared up and jutted forwards, like the strong arm of an army commander ordering his troops into battle: ‘Onwards to victory!’ And without further ado Adam obeyed the command of his powerfully raised limb. He cast himself over the creature, thrusting his limb between its legs, deep into the sandy soil, pumping on top of it until a great, thick stream of sperm spurted from his body with the force of a tidal wave crashing against a cliff forty fathoms high. The climax shattered the rainbow on the inside of his eyelids, each colour shooting out into the void like a meteor, sometimes violet, sometimes blue as water, sometimes yellow as the sun, and the seed flowed into every cleft in the Earth’s crust, every crack in the rocks, every groove and fissure in the crystals, every hole in the soil. Thus Adam fertilised the underworld by lying with his own shadow. From this act sprang the race that dwells in the dark worlds underground. Was it thrice three hundred thousand that quickened to life on that single occasion? Is that the reason why wherever mankind settles, he is preceded by a vast horde of invisible beings in mounds and hillocks, crags and mountains? But the Creator saw that this would not do: what an abhorrent thought that man should be filled with lust for his own shadow, let alone that from him should spring such a legion of offspring every time he lay with the earth. Before long, there would be no room for the mass of earth-dwellers in the darkness and they would burst forth with the same force as the sperm from their father’s loins. So the first thing the Maker of Man did was to deprive Adam of his shadow until he had found a solution to the problem. And while Adam rushed around the realm of the Earth, seeking an object for his lechery — bellowing with lust, leading a chorus of howling dogs that followed his every step — the Maker of the World invented woman, taking care to form her belly in such a way that it could hold no more than three human embryos at a time. Yes, and their species would shrink by an inch with every generation until man was not much taller than the ignorant son of Adam who sits here on the shore with his misshapen shadow, putting down these thoughts in words.

Sun, I thank you for obeying the Almighty Creator’s call and lengthening your course across the sky in summer. Were it not for this, we who live up here on this unlovely splat of lava in the far north of the globe would go stark, staring mad — every last one of us. For so it has been arranged for us that for one quarter of the year the sky is always light, for another quarter it is always dark, and for the other two it is passable. Such are our seasons. In the perpetual light of high summer one has leisure to contemplate the terrible black chill that is the season we call winter, and all the evil that it brings. After such thoughts one sits and turns one’s face to the sky, closing one’s eyes and letting the blueness fill one with the illusion that it will always be so, or at most that the sky will flush like the cheek of a bashful boy but never grow dark again. For there is need of light when one’s memories are dark, as I know to my cost. All day I have been prey to ugly, dismal thoughts. Yet I have so much to rejoice over: the warm sunny weather, the broad vista, the gentle cries of the birds and the pups calling from the seal colony, sounding for all the world like human babes. And my wife, Sigrídur Thórólfsdóttir, is with me. The poor dear woman who thought she was embarking on the dance of life with a reasonably affluent and industrious man when she married me. Thirty-five years later she knows better. They brought her to me this spring, saying that she was restless with longing to see me, the poor soul. Yes, Sigga is a sad wretch, a match for that sad wretch Jónas. I thought her coming would lighten my life, that less time would be wasted on worrying about my belly, and that I would instead have more leisure to devote to pondering matters of importance, to fixing them in my mind. For they stick better if I have someone to lecture to. But these days Sigrídur gets all cross and perverse when I try to impart my ideas, and tempers are lost.

‘There he goes again!’ she says, turning away as if I have produced a stream of piss. I make no attempt to respond. Yet what ensues is inevitable:

‘That’s the sort of nonsense that landed us here in the first place.’

What she says is true, though she should know better than to call it nonsense; it would be more correct to say that it was my intellectual gifts that marooned us here. Or rather, exiled me here; it was her decision to make them row her over to share my fate. Poor woman. But it is probably the lesser of two evils to be the wife of Jónas and share a barren rock with him than to live among strangers. Or so I gathered from the way people spoke to her on the mainland. The saddest thing for me is that her loyalty is misplaced. I have done this woman nothing but harm. She was opposed to my heeding the summons of Wizard-Láfi Thórdarson, alias the specialist and poet Thórólfur, when he asked me to go out west with him and exorcise the troublesome ghost. For that was the beginning of my misfortunes. That is how we came to lose everything. How did our paths cross? It was during the eclipse of the sun, if I remember right. I do not dare ask her; women think men ought to remember that sort of thing. Last time she was scolding me for my madcap ideas, I asked her why she had come back to me if not to take up the thread where we left off when I had to crawl alone into hiding due to the persecution by the Nightwolf and Sheriff Ari of myself Jónas the Learned and my son Reverend Pálmi. Indeed, why was she here if not to assist me in my investigations into the workings of the universe? For that is how it used to be. Now it is as if my enemies have given her the task of ‘bringing me to my senses’, as more than one, indeed several, of my tormentors call it. Yet that is not fair, for when I hinted as much the other day, she responded:

‘If anyone knows there’s no chance of bringing you to your senses by now, Jónas Pálmason, it’s me.’

Sigga was the bonniest lass I had ever met. I first heard of her when a visitor told my grand father Hákon and me that they were having problems with a girl down at Bakki in Steingrímsfjord. She was moonstruck, but not like those familiar crazed fools who are best off begging. No, her lunacy rendered her calm and sensible, while at the same time obsessed with the light of the moon and its path across the firmament, its size and phases. When found to be missing from her bed, she was tracked down at last by the cowshed wall, thumb in the air, calculating how the moon’s shadow had grown from the day before. And if she could lay hands on paper and writing materials, she would begin at once to scribble down numbers and lines. Indeed, the minister who was called to examine her said she seemed to possess a sound knowledge of arithmetic. However, she could not be persuaded to tell where she had acquired this learning, for she can hardly have got the hang of it alone and unaided, and the people of the house were pretty sure that some vagabond must have passed on the knowledge to her: ‘In return for goodness knows what payment.’ But her girlish head had been unable to cope with the arithmetic and she had lost her wits, as was proven by the fact that she had become enamoured of that work of nature, the moon, which invariably attracts an ailing mind. The perpetrator of this wicked deed was never found, though people suspected a failed student from Hólar, who had been expelled for striking the bishop with the Easter sacrament: one Thórólfur Thórdarson, known to all as ‘Wizard-Láfi’. This was the first occasion on which Láfi was to play a fateful role in my life. For had he not so inadvertently led me and Sigga together, and had we not had him to thank for our meeting, she would never have been persuaded to allow me to go north to the Snjáfjöll coast to help him lay the ghost. In truth I had until now had little time for the female of the species, regarding the entire tribe as tedious and irksome company. No doubt the feeling was mutual: they were bored by my philosophising and I was bored by their talk of housekeeping, provisions, child-rearing and whatever they call all that futile business around which their lives revolve. Naturally people whispered that I was impotent with regard to women. What of it? The other bachelors need have no fear that I would compete with them for the wenches. Yet this did not prevent them from commissioning me to write poems ablaze with ardent feelings for the opposite sex. The girl from Bakki was not only of marriageable age but also rumoured to be interested in the heavenly bodies. That sounded promising. Well, I would not give up until I had set eyes on this paragon. It was in the spring of 1598, on the seventh of March. How do I remember? It was the spring when the eclipse sent both man and beast mad. When I arrived at Bakki I pretended to be passing through on my way to Hólar to present the bishop with a book that had long ago been removed from the episcopal seat, ex libris of that decapitated martyr of the True Faith, Bishop Jón Arason. It contained a handful of Greek fables by the wise author Aesop, translated into Latin and illustrated with comical pictures of witless beasts going about human business. A frivolous book from pagan Asia but a valid passport for my sightseeing trip to Bakki. I certainly had the book with me, in case anyone asked, and could show it to trustworthy types if required. I was received with generous hospitality, though the farm was in a state of mourning as the father of the householder had recently departed this life and his body was still lying in state upstairs. I behaved like any other visitor who merely happened to be passing along the fjord on the aforementioned business and had not at all come to catch a glimpse of the moonstruck girl. I was well provided for with food and drink. The good people found me entertaining and listened in silent pleasure to my poems and discursions on natural history, for I adapted my material as befitted a house where a corpse was lying in the parlour. And no one thought it odd that I should have business with the women in the kitchen as in former times. Nothing had changed in there; indeed, kings may come and kings may go but the kitchen hearth remains unchanged, with its fire, food and gossip. I assumed the moonstruck girl would have an errand there sooner or later, and while I was waiting I took a look up the skirts of a couple of old biddies, and fumbled another three, for they allowed me access again, never suspecting that I would be aroused by that touch — however much they themselves might enjoy it. I also pulled a rotten molar out of the eldest of them, who, to my astonishment, was none other than the woman who had teased me with her dirty talk a whole decade before. Alas, why does God allow the candle of worthless old hags to flicker, year in year out, for nine times nine years, while abruptly and without apparent mercy blowing out the newly kindled flames of one’s own children? It is an ugly thought which everyone who has ever lost anyone has entertained, demanding in their despair, why him? Why her? Why not that one or that one, or that other? But I cannot help it. And I would not be surprised if the old crone is still alive now, a hundred and forty years old and convinced there is nothing more natural, though she is of no use to anyone and hardly a source of pleasure even to herself. Anyway, her tooth had no sooner been extracted than there was a great hubbub of raised voices and people began to pour out of the buildings. The old women and I were just scrambling to our feet when a farmhand burst into the kitchen and flung himself on all fours, screeching without pause as he pushed his way through the bundle of skirts:

‘It’s going out, I tell you, it’s going out!’

OLEANDER: a poisonous plant which grows by the Lagarfljót River, between Grænamó and Jórvíkurrimi. If livestock graze on it, they die instantly and their bodies swell up. If rubbed, oleander turns yellowish green in colour and feels somewhat moist to the touch.

I first glimpsed my future wife by the will o’ the wisp light of the eclipse. At the very moment when the sun was halved, Sigrídur captured my gaze with her eyes — eyes that were a haven of peace amidst the storm of madness that raged on the farm. For I was as bewildered as the dogs that howled, the cats that hissed, the ravens that crawled along the ground, the cows that wandered dazed in the fields. I was as unfortunate as the rest, as unmanned by dread of what catastrophe this eclipse might bring, what terrible tidings it might portend, what loss of life, what pestilence would now wash up from the sea on to our rock, what heresies, what insanity; indeed, I was as confounded as those who ran weeping round the yard or pressed their faces to the muddy paving slabs, tore off their clothes and any hair they could grab hold of, many vomiting in mid-prayer. Yes, I was so terrified that even the marrow of my smallest bones quivered like the wings of a hoverfly — for mankind was helpless, trapped in the midst of the scene that the Apostle Mark had painted in words and the ministers in their Good Friday sermons had branded on our minds as if with a red hot poker; the last hour of the Saviour’s life, the ninth hour when darkness fell at noon, when in his torment he doubted the existence of the merciful Father. If even His favourite, ever-blessed son was filled with dread, how could we poor sinful humans fail to lose our minds with fear? And lose them we did, all except Sigrídur. From inside the farm came a shriek:

‘A miracle! A miracle! He is risen again!’

Shortly afterwards three men burst out of the front door carrying the old man’s body between them. They swung the corpse’s mottled limbs back and forth until it appeared to be raising its wizened arms to heaven, its head thrown back, the jaw falling slackly open to reveal the swollen blue tongue for all to see. It did not take a great physician to realise that the old man was as thoroughly dead as he had been but a short time before. People now began to crowd around the threesome with their pathetic puppet. One held its neck and left arm, the second its waist and right arm, the third and strongest stood behind the corpse, throwing both his arms round the bloated belly and lifting it so that it appeared to be proceeding in little hops to the intended destination, which was the roof of the living quarters. Here is another manifestation of insanity: people are united in actions which they would neither have known how to do nor dreamt of doing until seized by madness. And afterwards they are none the wiser about how to perform those deeds that madness rendered easy. While the servants were forcing their way on to the roof with the old man’s body, Sigrídur took me aside. She had already taken precautions to save me from being caught up in the pandemonium. Without taking her eyes off me she stepped forward and took my hand, and when my gaze seemed about to falter and return to the compellingly infectious behaviour of the others, she followed me, taking another small side-step so that I was looking at her, not them. Thus she lured me step by step into her state of serenity, until she could lead me away. Once we were a good distance from the farm, she told me that she had known a solar eclipse was due, not precisely when, of course, but that one was in the offing. I froze in my tracks, my mouth felt dry and a cold sweat broke out all over my body. Smiling at me, she told me to follow her and we passed out of sight of the farm buildings where the herd of lunatics was trampling the fallow winter turf of the gable, raising the cadaver aloft in silhouette against the grey sky. Once sheltered from view, she sat me down and took a seat facing me across a flat piece of ground. Having gathered some pebbles in her hand, she began to arrange them into a planetary model, laying the largest stone in the middle and calling it Earth, then placing next to it the moon and sun and five planets in a straight line away from them. After this, she began to move the heavenly bodies round the Earth according to their familiar orbits until the sun and moon stood face to face.

‘Here there will be an eclipse of the moon.’

Using a slender heather stalk she drew rays extending from the sun to Earth, then showed how the Earth in this position must cast its shadow on the moon. Next she counted several times on her fingers, muttering the names of the months and diverse numbers. She was calculating when the next lunar eclipse would take place and told me the date.

‘You’ll see; wherever you are in the country you’ll discover it’s true — weather permitting.’

Now Sigrídur moved the pebbles once again, saying meanwhile in her bright girlish voice:

‘On the other hand it’s impossible to predict solar eclipses accurately, though we can assume one will take place after a certain period, more or less. I’ve been waiting a long time for this one.’

By this stage I was not so much listening to the words that fell from her lips as staring at the lips themselves, at their ever-changing shape. I moved closer to examine them better. Sigrídur stopped talking and, taking a piece of blue glass from her apron pocket, raised it to her eye and looked at the sun. The chirping of small birds was stilled, the baying of the dogs was silenced, the people on the turf roof ceased shaking the corpse, a hush descended on the countryside and I felt suddenly cold. High above the Earth the disc of the moon completed its shape on the orb of the sun and in the same instant something was completed inside me. Neither Sigrídur nor I looked up when the gable gave way with a loud crack beneath the weight of the corpse-bearers. Our courtship was one uninterrupted conversation about the origin of the stars, the nature of land and sea, the behaviour of beasts great and small, and although it was not conducted in Hebrew or in the angelic tongue as it was with Adam and Eve, it was nevertheless our hymn to Creation. We sat together into the early hours, investigating the delightful puzzles of light and shadow, such as what happens to the shadow of your hand when the shadow of mine falls upon it? Have they become one? Or has yours disappeared temporarily? And if so, where to? We could talk like this for days, but no more. She fell silent when my enemies, no longer content with abusing me, began their persecution of our son, Reverend Pálmi Gudmundur. The boy was stripped of his habit and his calling. He is now forced to wander from farm to farm like a beggar, his wife constantly with child, like his father — alas. It grieves me just as much as it does Sigrídur to know how little my resistance achieved.

DIACODUS: this stone has many useful properties. If it is placed in water, a host of spirits appear in it, apparelled like men, and one may ask it to foretell the future. The stone has been found in Iceland. Exemplum: when we lived at Uppsandar my wife Sigrídur happened to be walking beside the sea at the place where the mountainous shore is known as Fellshraun. On a certain flat rock over which the waves broke, she spied something round floating in a pool. When she picked it up, she thought it looked like a stone with magic properties. There was a pink dot high up in the middle and it was girded about with crimson, while the part under water looked green. She took it over to another smaller pool and dropped it in. All at once she saw countless human shapes appear in the water. Seeming to remember that I had read of such a stone, she reacted quickly, intending to put it in her glove and bring it home to me. But before the diacodus could find its way into her mitten, it fell on the shingle with a sharp crack and instantly vanished from sight. Sigrídur would never tell me what she learnt from the spirits but I assume she must have asked them her fortune.

Alas, how Sigga implored me not to go west to meet Thórólfur. Oh, how right she was when she said it was the demon of vanity that summoned me to do the deed. I wanted to enhance my renown, I said, so that more people would avail themselves of my services. Self-taught as I was, I had to prove myself by my actions. And the man who succeeds in laying a ghost so malevolent that it tans the hide of every person who goes near it, that man will be prized when the twilight portents get out of hand and call down the wrath of God on the libertine herd. I seem to remember saying something to this effect, to which she replied:

‘But aren’t the rams you’re going to perform the deed for the very same that the Lord will strike down?’

And yet … That must have been later. She let me go anyway, since we owed our meeting to Sorcery-Láfi. It was on that journey west along the Snjáfjöll coast that the catalogue of images etched itself on my mind — the traveller’s album that always stands open before my eyes when I compare the world of piety and good works evoked by my grandfather Hákon in his stories to that other world into which I was born: the world where good deeds count for nothing, while conceited bragging of one’s own virtues is enough to purchase tyrants notorious throughout the land a seat at the footstool of the risen Christ. Their busy tongues labour in their jaws while the fruit withers on the vine. On my way west I followed the highway, the road trodden by the common populace on their comings and goings along the shores of this island, which, in common with other circles, has no beginning and no end. And the business that draws the ragged mob from one corner of the country to the other? To beg a bite to eat, of course. Or rags to wear. To feel the warmth of something other than their own hand. To experience compassion. To be a guest rather than a nuisance. To receive a small share of the gifts of the Earth. To have all this. Yes, to be a Christian among Christians, even if only for the brief duration of the major Church holidays. My journey took place shortly after Easter — a holiday that had lost its meaning now that Lent had been scorned and people ate whatever they could shovel into their mouths. Rotting shreds of meat festooned their teeth like Christmas decorations when they yawned during the Good Friday sermon, their gums swollen an angry red where they had begun to fester, yet they could not be bothered to pick their teeth, instead sucking and licking with the tips of their tongues, worrying at the nagging pain in the swollen lumps, sighing when the pus was forced out between their molars, bringing the piece of meat with it into the mouth where it became the gravy for their putrid banquet. But not everyone was fortunate enough to spend Easter with their mouths full of this kind of sweet-meat. God’s lambs, Christ’s lambs, Peter’s lambs: once upon a time the bands of itinerant beggars knew where these sweetly named lambs were kept and what time of the year they might be visited. These poor hungry wretches moved right round the country, like the stars of heaven on a metal arc around a model of the Earth; ah yes, when Spitting-Sveinn shaded his eyes and looked in the direction of Gaulverjabær in the Flói district, or Peg-leg Sigurgeira stood in Eyjafjord, squinting to assure herself that it was not far to Laufás. Marked out by God as Easter fare or Christmas roast, the ceremoniously named lambs walked out to meet the needy, out of the barn, out of their fleeces, out of their skins, frolicsome, fat and juicy, and kept on walking though their flesh changed colour as it roasted, walked across the yard, lathered in their own melted fat, to await the guests at the crossroads, positioning themselves and rotating so that the guests could see for themselves the browned, muscular rump under its glaze of fat and the shoulder where the blood burst forth and ran down the spine. Then the lambs would skip off home to the farm, chased by the starving rabble with gaping mouths and bared teeth. In the yard the lambs would halt and look back over their shoulders at the wretched throng before shaking themselves as if they had just returned from a swim and spraying a great arc of fat which cascaded over the faces of the needy, who stuck out their tongues as they ran, like children chasing fat snowflakes as they fall, lapping up the rain of suet, scraping the film of grease from their eyes and cheeks. Once home the lambs were driven back inside the kitchen by the farmhands and cooks, and there they paced back and forth on the red-glowing grids which the fire licked merrily, and from their roasting throats came forth smoke and crackling bleats announcing that soon their happy task would be accomplished, soon their procession would be over and they would tread the boards of the long trestle table in the hall which housed the vagabonds, beggar women and their urchin spawn, and there the lambs would reach the end of their journey, there they would reach their final goal, there their duty to the Lord would be completed, for they would walk to the gaping mouths of the guests and shake themselves by their teeth until the golden-brown flesh loosed from their bones and the grease cascaded from the tongue down the throat. But this would not happen until Easter Day. Until then, Spitting-Sveinn and Peg-leg Sigurgeira would willingly fast with their Redeemer and eat dried fish with butter. There was happiness in that too: worship, participation in the earthly incarnation of the divinity. But by the time I went on my journey to Snjáfjöll those days were long gone. The barefoot brigade were no longer offered any victuals, whether it was a juicy leg of lamb dedicated to a saint or the skin of a dried haddock, or a roof over their heads or gloves for their chapped hands. Far from it. Now the libertine life was all, and everything a man acquired belonged to him and his kin alone. The rest could eat dirt. And they did. As I began to near the manor farm which used to be governed by God’s almanac, I was met by an abominable sight: the bodies of beggars lying beside the road, weathered sacks of skin stretched over the bones of adults and children. Ravens and foxes had gnawed at their heads and hands, clawed and torn off their rags and dined on their meagre pauper’s flesh. Yes, there you have it, whether you are high-born or lowly, a stout figure or a whip-thin emaciated wretch, when your time on Earth is over you will be nothing but a sack of skin, emptied of its contents: the soul will have departed and without it you will be nothing but a leather bag of bones.

SEA MONSTER: of sea monsters I will say nothing, for I have not read much about them, though I had seen a fair number until they disappeared during the great winter of famine, Anno Domini 1602, the winter that men of the West Fjords refer to as ‘Torment’ and others as ‘Cudgel’.

Sorcery-Láfi was neither whip-thin nor starving. He was short of leg and wide of hip, with a premature stoop, plump cheeks, lively watery blue eyes set in a round head and black hair that always looked wet, as if newly washed, from the fish-liver oil he dressed it with. He was so light of heart that his behaviour bordered on the idiotic. He was forever clicking his fingers and whistling as he walked, spinning suddenly on his heel, clapping his hands together and declaring:

‘Heigh-ho, the sun and snow!’

Or some other such harmless nonsense. He was an amusing fellow, with a poetic tongue that served him well in his dealings with the squires out west, helping him to ingratiate himself and sell them his services, which consisted mainly of escorting them on journeys, telling them jokes and composing comic verses whenever the opportunity arose. Also preparing hot poultices for their swellings, bleeding them, trimming their beards and singeing the hairs from their ears. And last but not least, being alert to the possible scheming of rogues who might pay witches to raise demon familiars against them. Now Láfi had summoned me to help him lay a ghost which had been running riot in the coastal district of Snjáfjöll. The spirit was so devious that Láfi had given up trying to tackle it on his own. It was thought to be the shade of a parson’s son who had been cruelly treated by his father and stepmother, beaten and mocked and finally forced out in a violent storm to bring home some sheep that were in fact quite snug in a cave on the mountain above the farm. Since the shepherd had given up trying to drive them home, the parson put pressure on his son to prove himself the better man. It was not unkindly meant: both shepherd and parson’s son happened to have their eye on the same maidservant, and it was clear to all that she preferred the shepherd, who had the stronger grip and the bushier whiskers. The parson’s son, on the other hand, was a delicate youth who minced rather than walked, as unfit for physical work as he was for spiritual labours. He had been deeply attached to his late mother and used to help her with the needlework. Now he was wrapped up in layer upon layer of coats, with sturdy boots on his feet, a hat of polar-bear skin on his head and an iron-shod staff lashed to his right hand. Thus equipped, he set out on tiptoe over the hard-frozen snow. Onlookers made fun of his ridiculous high-stepping gait as it took him the best part of a day to clamber up to the top of the slopes, a point any other man could have reached in two hours. There he vanished from view and shortly afterwards fell over a cliff, broke his leg in three places and died of exposure. It was not long, however, before he returned to wreak vengeance on his father and neighbours, becoming the most palpable ghost ever to haunt the district; many were injured by his blows and stone-throwing when he ambushed them in the winter darkness. If a lamp went out in the living room during supper, he would have licked out all the bowls by the time it was re-lit. But it was no better when he satisfied himself merely with pinching women in the crotch and kicking men in the balls, hoping by this to castrate the district until it fell into dereliction. He had given Láfi such an almighty kick in the groin that one of his testicles had been squashed flat like a blueberry between the teeth, as I was permitted to see and feel for myself. Yet Láfi’s attempts to exorcise the phantom parson’s son had not been entirely unsuccessful. For the first few months afterwards the ghost had kept a low profile, hardly laying a finger on anyone, though he could be heard from time to time howling down the kitchen chimney. But when summer came round and the ghost was discovered to have pushed a shepherd boy flat on his face and torn off his breeches, Láfi admitted defeat: a ghoul that did not require the cover of darkness to commit its foul deeds was beyond his powers. So here I was, come to help him lay its body in the grave — where the spirit departed after that was not within our power to decide. Láfi was to be paid a fee for the ghost-hunt, and this he would share with me. We were well provided with food and drink and made tolerably comfortable at the parsonage of Stadur. But as the weather was exceptionally fine that year, we slept outside for most of the summer, using a tent that Láfi had acquired from a Spanish whaler. We began our quest by travelling from farm to farm, enquiring whether the spook had been there and, if so, how it had behaved. We were given a warm welcome and in return entertained the locals with our ballads and riddles, and my tales of people from my home district far away. It was on this investigative journey that we composed the ‘Bird Verses’ which every Tom, Dick and Harry now knows. We were of one mind during those sunny days and nights on the coast of Snjáfjöll. Láfi had begun the poem, the first three stanzas were his, but had run out of birds and inspiration by the time I turned up. As we walked from farm to farm we took to chanting the poem together. He recited the first verses, which he had knocked together with some skill, and I slid into the metre — slipped into it like a tongue into the eye socket of a well-boiled sheep’s head. We composed like fury, casting one bird after another into the air before slotting it into place in our list. The light summer days and nights merged into one and, free from any timetable, we took no rest when the muse was upon us but allowed it to seize us and lift us to that higher plane of the poet’s art that is sometimes called poetic ecstasy and resembles nothing so much as delirious happiness, for those under its influence tend to move with quick jerks of the limbs, rocked by gales of laughter and prone to madcap fits, such as rushing off, yelling words into the blue, one to the west, another to the east, the third up in the air, the fourth behind one, the fifth in front and the sixth at the ground, before plumping down on top of it, as if to crush any devil that might pop up its head at the unexpected message, and sit tight, rocking to and fro, babbling gibberish as one juggled the six words together until they formed a clever, well-crafted line. And so on until we nodded off with a half-made line of verse on our lips and slept where we fell, often till well past midday. Unfortunately, though, it was not always so, and most of the verses came into being like any other discussion between learned men. I even slipped in several alien bird species that Láfi had never heard of, like the noble pelican which builds a nest for its young in its beak and gives birth to them from the blood of its breast, or that Babel bird the parrot that speaks every tongue on Earth. When he cast doubt on the existence of such freaks, I answered his objections by saying:

‘Who’s to say that they haven’t been blown here by the wind some time, cast ashore by gales or in the baggage of one of those foreign ships’ captains who are forever turning up in Iceland with all kinds of odd cargo? Really, do you think anyone who ran into us in our madness would find it any stranger to hear of a sky-blue bird with red wings prating in Latin than to learn that men such as ourselves thrive in this land?’

‘Well …’, Láfi replied, ‘surely there’s no such thing as the ostrich; one minute a flightless giant, the next a kind of bush?’

In the end the final verse came together just as we reached the part of the coast where the ghost was wreaking the greatest havoc. I doubt my tongue would have been as agile as it proved when our paths crossed, the living Jónas the Learned and the dead Phantom Jónsson, had I not oiled it with the Bird Verses during the previous week.

Where was it that we first encountered the boy? Ah yes, we were asleep in a grassy dell beneath a black crag, known as the Hafsteinn or Sea Rock, and I would sooner have expected a mysterious visitor from its bowels than the one who emerged from his cold grave to harass us. We were lying comatose after one of our poetic fits when I was roused by a movement in the scree above us to the east, as if little stones had been dislodged by a foot and rolled down the gravel bank with a dry rattle. Assuming it was a fox on the prowl, I closed my eyes and lay without moving, waiting for the animal to complete its journey across the scree. But when there were no further noises, I thought it wiser to take a look at this traveller. Holding my breath, I strained my ears. For a long moment there was no sound but the piping of the newly wakened oystercatcher, strutting along the beach of the cove below us. Then I heard something tread warily into the thick moss on the other side of the rock. I realised at once that it must be the ghost come to meet us since no mortal creature could descend in a single stride from the scree to the heathery slope where Láfi and I were lying. I imagined it standing with one foot on high, the other down in the moss beside the rock, legs akimbo like a wishbone. I waited and the thing waited. I breathed out cautiously, without making a sound. There was a crack as the ghost’s upper leg whipped down and smacked into its lower leg. Clacking knees like that would have been painful for a living man but the dead one uttered not so much as a whimper. Láfi was woken by the crack. He raised his head from the ground, about to start his sleep-drugged ‘wha-wha-wha?’ when I signalled to him to be quiet. He obeyed, turning his head towards me so that I could give him further indication as to what was afoot. As imperceptibly as we could, and with utmost slowness, we now turned our heads towards the corner of the rock in whose lee the demon was standing. I thought I saw a shadowy human shape moving there; evidently the ghost was waiting and watching us too.

Now the patience of the players was tested. The dead generally possess more fortitude than the living, as is clear by the way they lie still in their graves while man scurries around like a frightened field mouse, trembling and quivering in the rare moments that he pauses, resembling a mouse in that as well, but this time a house mouse that has fled from a cat into a crack in the wall and is listening for its footsteps, hoping that it will give up and leave, but unsure whether the cat is there or has gone, because a feline can also stand motionless for long periods without its knee-joints stiffening up. Láfi and I could expect Reverend Jón’s dead son to vanquish us in any battle that is won by the player who waits longest. I heard Láfi sigh and saw his eyes darting around in his head, from the rock to the sky, while I disciplined myself to wait for what was to come. And it came, a horrible sight that hung in the air for a split second, like the face of the fellow who shares one’s quarters, which floats before one’s eyes in the darkness like a purple mask after the candle has been blown out: one, two, three and it is gone. So the apparition’s loathsome head appeared and disappeared again as it craned it round the rock wall and scowled into my face. White skin, with a fist-sized bruise from the temple to the right-hand corner of its mouth, mouldering cheeks, hair straggling claw-like over its forehead above rolling, red, bestial eyes. The evil youth opened wide his skate’s jaw, inside which all the teeth were broken at the root or smashed in from the fall that had sent him to his death on the slab of rock; he clicked his tongue loudly and vanished the instant Láfi looked his way. Láfi turned to me and started gasping and whining with fright, for the vision had left behind an expression of such terror on my face that it was more than enough to unman him. I understood now why he had been unable to tackle the task alone. But before I could pursue this thought any further, and before Láfi had finished his wailing, the ghost launched its attack. The parson’s dead son sprang on to the crag, squatted on the edge and loosed the back flap of its breeches. Before we could dodge, it released a torrent of almost every imaginable kind of human filth: the excrement of men and livestock, human faeces and horse manure, lamb droppings, rotten eggs and animal bones, maggoty bird skins, the squitters of babes and fish guts, dead men’s rags and all kinds of other muck. Under this deluge we scrambled to our feet, flinging out our arms to ward off the seemingly endless diabolical flood that continued for a good while even after we had fled on to the moor. My reading glass was buried under this colossal dung heap but I could not bring myself to dig it out of the filth, nor could Láfi be persuaded to do it for me. Many years would pass before I found another lens as handy, and you can imagine how this hindered me in my philosophical studies. From up on the crag the ghoul let out a rending screech as it finished. Shall we concur that the sun shone from a cloudless sky as we were drenched in the hideous downpour, and the moors smelt as sweet as moors can do on the loveliest summer’s day? Well, I myself now reeked like the belch from a dead man’s gullet. Stripping off by the nearest stream, we rinsed the ordure off ourselves and our clothes, and while they were drying we ate some breakfast and discussed what to do. The ghost was clearly ungovernable, bound neither by the rules of men nor those of higher powers; it had not only been banished from the realm of the living but also from that of the dead. We had to make it clear to the ghost where it belonged, now that it was deceased.

‘It seems to me that the best way to go about it would be by the sort of exorcism that good priests used to perform in papist times, that is, to tell the ghoul the history of the world, of spirits and men, both evil and benevolent. In that way it will eventually see where it fits into God’s great mechanism and realise that it is in quite the wrong place. For how is a dead man to tell the difference between himself and the living if he is still able to walk around, participate in fights and run errands? For that matter, how is he to know that he is not one of the elves? Both live outside human society. How is he to know that he is not a piece of driftwood? The flesh of both is equally rotten and stinking. Or a stray dog? Both are shooed away. Or merely a rock that rolls down the mountainside, causing men to dodge?’ I said, and persisted doggedly:

‘No, we must find this walking corpse a suitable resting place, we must find it the right shelf in the world’s museum of curiosities, we must place it beside its peers, so that both it and any passer-by may see what kind it is, and thus both we and the ghost will be free of all fear and suffering. For when a thing has been classified correctly, it is tamed.’

Yes, Láfi and I would impress upon the corpse of the parson’s son the workings of the world and its own place within it, after which it would hopefully find its way to the right door, in this case the coffin lid. But for this to work, I would have to browbeat it. Láfi glanced out of the corner of his eye and nodded, signalling that the ghost was sneaking up behind me. I spun round. Yes, there it stood, mouldering and hideous. I began the browbeating:

Christ’s death upon the holy cross

has brought mankind salvation.

Twixt thee and me this fact I toss,

thou creature of damnation …

And still I intoned:

All day we’ve knocked this fiend about

and harried him with our verse;

may it strike his jaw like a bloody great clout

and put an end to this curse.

At this, the apparition’s lower jaw snapped against the upper with such force that its front teeth cracked to the root. Not that it could have answered me anyway as its tongue was too rotten to do more than growl and spit. And now it could not even do that, though its throat still rattled and the groans found their way out through its nose as it flinched under the verses, which became ever harder for it to bear the more skilfully and aptly they were composed. While I chanted, Láfi made sure that the ghost remained within earshot, for of course it fled from the message like a dog from curses, and was uncomfortably quick on its feet due to the length of its stride, as mentioned before. The corpse fled, not pausing in its flight except to stoop for stones or dirt or sheep droppings still warm from the rectum, which it flung at my head as I tore in pursuit, chanting as loudly as my lack of breath would allow, while Láfi ran alongside, trying to head it off or guide it towards rough terrain that would slow it down. Eventually, we managed to drive it into a marsh, where it sank up to its navel in a bog. I was now able to summon up before its mouldering eyes a picture of the horde of demons that fell to Earth when Lucifer was cast down from Heaven. Their multitude is like glowing motes in a sunbeam (they are swarming evil in search of something to stick to) or as many as the raindrops that fall in a downpour that lasts for nine days without stopping. Then I consoled it by explaining that it did not belong to that group. I described for it how the heavens rise and fall in relation to the moon, three in a row above and three in a row below. In these heavens dwell the ethereal spirits, endowed with various natures, some fine, some foul, though it is always perilous for people to swallow them and therefore not to be attempted except by well-equipped experts like Láfi and me. Under this onslaught the animate corpse struggled like a wolf in a trap, scrabbling in the spongy moss and trying in vain to heave itself out of the bog. I continued, turning now to its own case, telling it that revenants were the bodies of the dead who in life had been guilty of swearing at others; that on the corpses of such cursing wretches the doors stood wide open for the Devil himself to crawl inside. Which he did willingly, appointing himself the driver of the body and riding the deceased like a cruel jockey driving on his horse, except that in this case the vengeful heart formed the saddle in which the accursed rider sat as he drove his spurs into the rotten lungs. Once I had exposed the Prince of Darkness who was abusing the corpse of the parson’s son, it was as if all the wind left its sails. Its body slumped, its arms fell to its sides and it hung forwards, trapped by the bog, like a drunken rider fallen asleep in the saddle, its matted hair swinging in the evening breeze. In this position it began to stiffen up, like the corpse it should by rights have been. A deathly silence fell on the countryside, the breeze caressed my cheek and I believed the Devil’s corpse-ride was at an end. And so it was for a long moment. Then the corpse’s mouth fell open and from where I was standing I noticed that a small butterwort growing on a nearby tussock imitated its movement; its flower-head opened with a quiet pop, releasing a midge that it had snapped up the instant the world fell silent. The fly had not been lying in the plant’s digestive juices too long to prevent it from launching into flight, and with an ugly thunderous drone it flew straight into the dead man’s mouth. Instantly all rigidity left the corpse as the Devil re-entered it in the form of this midge. The corpse tore itself out of the bog with a terrible howl and took flight, heading for the mountain with us close on its heels. But its strength was so depleted by its enforced sojourn under my fiend-scaring verses that Láfi caught up with it before it could squeeze all the way into a fissure in the rocks. Clutching its shanks, Láfi hauled with all his might against the ghost which was halfway down the cleft, hanging on grimly to a root or whatever it could grab. The wretched fiend was evidently trying to reach the place where it was happiest; in other words, Hell. At this I began my hectoring anew, commanding it to release the soul of the parson’s son for judgement by God in Heaven, for only then would it be free to travel down the fifteen levels that separate the world of men from the inferno of Hell. At that it ceased all its struggling and our work was done. We dragged the corpse out of the hole and wiped the filth from its face, for although it was all battered and maggoty as described before, it now had the peaceful air of one who is well and truly dead. We carried the boy between us home to the parsonage, where the parson and his wife thanked us with kisses and cries of gratitude for laying the fiend that had forcibly taken up its abode in their son’s body. Láfi and I received our appointed wages, which were not much to speak of once we had divided them up between us but more than enough when one considers the fame we acquired by this deed. We did not dine at the farm, having had our fill of the stinking corpse, but took the food we were given and hurried up the mountain with our tent. It was the longest day of the year, my last night with Láfi, and the prospects were good for poetry. The following day I would head south to Sigga and Pálmi Gudmundur, our firstborn. I was full of grand plans, mindful of the fame that the destruction of a malevolent ghost was bound to bring me, the anticipated renown that would elevate me to the giddy heights of esteem, from which vantage point I would be able to survey the world as my playground. Just as I was thinking this thought, I was startled by a gruff voice saying:

‘Make the most of your fame!’

It is my poor old lady, Sigrídur. Instead of answering, I merely pat the tussock at my side and so the two of us sit, watching the sun complete its circuit of the Earth. It climbs aslant up the cloud-foamy sea of sky, sailing in a fine arc to the horizon where it perches for an instant like a dandelion seed which just touches a wet stone before the wind lifts it away.