Hallvard’s Story—The
Two Sealers
“This is a true story. I know many stories.
Some are made up, though perhaps the made up ones were true in
times everyone has forgotten. I also know many true ones, because
many strange things happen in the isles of the south that you
northern people never dream of. I chose this one because I was
there myself and saw and heard as much of it as anyone
did.
“I come from the easternmost of the
southern isles, which is called Glacies. On our isle lived a man
and a woman, my grandparents, who had three sons. Their names were
Anskar, Hallvard, and Gundulf. Hallvard was my father, and when I
grew large enough to help him on his boat, he no longer hunted and
fished with his brothers. Instead, we two went out so that all we
caught could be brought home to my mother, and my sisters and
younger brother.
“My uncles never married, and so they
continued to share a boat. What they caught they ate themselves or
gave to my grandparents, who were no longer strong. In the summer
they farmed my grandfather’s land. He had the best on our isle, the
only valley that never felt the ice wind. You could grow things
there that would not ripen anywhere else on Glacies, because the
growing season in this valley was two weeks longer.
“When my beard was starting to sprout,
my grandfather called all the men of our family together—that was
my father, my two uncles, and myself. When we got to his house, my
grandmother was dead, and the priest from the big isle was there to
lay out her body. Her sons wept, as I did myself.
“That night, when we sat at my
grandfather’s table, with him at one end and the priest at the
other, he said, ‘Now it is time that I dispose of my property. Bega
is gone. Her family has no more claim on it, and I shall follow her
shortly. Hallvard is married and has the portion that came to him
from his wife. With that he provides for his family, and though
they have little to spare, they do not go hungry. You, Anskar. And
you, Gundulf. Will you ever marry?’
“Both my uncles shook their
heads.
“‘Then this is my will. I call upon the
Omnipotent to hear, and I call upon the servants of the Omnipotent
also. When I die, all that I have shall go to Anskar and Gundulf.
If one die, it shall go to the other. When both are dead, it shall
go to Hallvard, or if Hallvard is dead, it shall be divided among
his sons. You four—if you do not agree my will is just, speak
now.’
“No one spoke, and thus it was
decided.
“A year passed. A ship of Erebus came
raiding out of the mists, and two ships put in for hides, sea
ivory, and salt fish. My grandfather died, and my sister Fausta
bore her girl. When the harvest was in, my uncles fished with the
other men.
“When spring comes in the south, it is
still too early to plant, for there will be many freezing nights to
come. But when men see that the days are lengthening fast, they
seek out the rookeries where the seals breed. These are on rocks
far from any shore, there is much fog, and though they are growing
longer, the days are still short. Often it is the men who die and
not the seals.
“And so it was with my Uncle Anskar,
for my Uncle Gundulf returned in their boat without
him.
“Now you must know that when our men go
sealing, or fishing, or hunting any other kind of sea game, they
tie themselves to their boats. The rope is of braided walrus hide,
and it is long enough to let the man move about in the boat as much
as is needful, but not longer. The sea water is very cold and soon
kills whoever remains in it, but our men dress in sealskin
tightsewn, and often a man’s boat-mate can pull him back and in
that way save his life.
“This is the tale my Uncle Gundulf
told. They had gone far, seeking a rookery others had not visited,
when Anskar saw a bull seal swimming in the water. He cast his
harpoon; and when the seal sounded, a loop of the harpoon line had
caught his ankle, so that he was dragged into the sea. He, Gundulf,
had tried to pull him out, for he was a very strong man. But his
pulling and the pulling of the seal on the harpoon line, which was
tied to the base of the mast, had capsized their boat. Gundulf had
saved himself by pulling himself hand over hand back to it and
cutting the harpoon line with his knife. When the boat was righted
he had tried to haul in Anskar, but the life rope had broken. He
showed the frayed rope end. My Uncle Anskar was dead.
“Among my people, women die on land but
men at sea, and therefore we call the kind of grave you make ‘a
woman’s boat.’ When a man dies as Uncle Anskar did, a hide is
stretched and painted for him and hung in the house where the men
meet to talk. It is never taken down until no man living can recall
the man who was honored so. A hide like that was prepared for
Anskar, and the painters began their work.
“Then one bright morning when my father
and I were readying the tools to break ground for the new year’s
crop—well I remember it!—some children who had been sent to gather
birds’ eggs came running into the village.
A seal, they said, lay on the shingle of the south bay. As everyone
knows, no seal comes to land where men are. But it sometimes
happens that a seal will die at sea or be injured in some fashion.
Thinking of that, my father and I and many others ran to the beach,
for the seal would belong to the first whose weapon pierced
it.
“I was the swiftest of all, and I
provided myself with an earth-fork. Such a thing does not throw
well, but several other young men were at my heels, so when I was a
hundred strides away I cast it. Straight and true it flew and
buried its tines in the thing’s back. Then followed such a moment
as I hope never to see again. The weight of the fork’s long handle
overbalanced it, and it rolled until the handle rested on the
ground.
“I saw the face of my Uncle Anskar,
preserved by the cold sea brine. His beard was tangled with the
dark green kelp, and his life rope of stout walrus hide had been
cut only a few spans from his body.
“My Uncle Gundulf had not seen him, for
he was gone to the big isle. My father took Anskar up, and I helped
him, and we carried him to Gundulf’s house and put the end of the
rope upon his chest where Gundulf would see it, and with some other
men of Glacies sat down to wait for him.
“He shouted when he saw his brother. It
was not such a cry as a woman makes, but a bellow like the bull
seal gives when he warns the other bulls from his herd. He ran in
the dark. We set a guard on the boats and hunted him that night
across the isle. The lights that spirits make in the ultimate south
flamed all night, so we knew Anskar hunted with us. Brightest they
flashed before they faded, when we found him among the rocks at
Radbod’s End.”
Hallvard fell silent. Indeed, silence
lay about us everywhere. All the sick within hearing had been
listening to him. At last Melito said, “Did you kill
him?”
“No. In the old days it was so, and a
bad thing. Now the mainland law avenges bloodguilt, which is
better. We bound his arms and legs and laid him in his house, and I
sat with him while the older men readied the boats. He told me he
had loved a woman on the big isle. I never saw her, but he said her
name was Nennoc, and she was fair, and younger than he, but no man
would have her because she had borne a child by a man who had died
the winter before. In the boat, he had told Anskar he would carry
Nennoc home, and Anskar called him oath-breaker. My Uncle Gundulf was strong. He seized
Anskar and threw him out of the boat, then wrapped the life rope
about his hands and snapped it as a woman who sews breaks her
thread.
“He had stood then, he said, with one
hand on the mast, as men do, and watched his brother in the water.
He had seen the flash of the knife, but he thought only that Anskar
sought to threaten him with it or to throw it.”
Hallvard was silent again, and when I
saw he would not speak, I said, “I don’t understand. What did
Anskar do?”
A smile, the very smallest smile,
tugged at Hallvard’s lips under his blond mustache. When I saw it,
I felt I had seen the ice isles of the south, blue and bitterly
cold. “He cut his life rope, the rope Gundulf had already broken.
In
that way, men who found his body would know that he had been
murdered. Do you see?”
I saw, and for a while I said nothing
more.
“So,” Melito grunted to Foila, “the
wonderful valley land went to Hallvard’s father, and by this story
he has managed to tell you that though he has no property, he has
prospects of inheriting some. He has also told you, of course, that
he comes of a murderous family.”
“Melito believes me much cleverer than
I am,” the blond man rumbled. “I had no such thoughts. What matters
now is not land or skins or gold, but who tells the best tale. And
I, who know many, have told the best I know. It is true as he says
that I might share my family’s property when my father dies. But my
unmarried sisters will have some part too for their marriage
portions, and only what remained would be divided between my
brother and myself. All that matters nothing, because I would not
take Foila to the south, where life is so hard. Since I have
carried a lance I have seen many better places.”
Foila said, “I think your Uncle Gundulf
must have loved Nennoc very much.”
Hallvard nodded. “He said that too
while he lay bound. But all the men of the south love their women.
It is for them that they face the sea in winter, the storms and the
freezing fogs. It is said that as a man pushes his boat out over
the shingle, the sound the bottom makes grating on the stones is
my wife, my children, my children, my
wife.”
I asked Melito if he wanted to begin
his story then; but he shook his head and said that we were all
full of Hallvard’s, so he would wait and begin next day. Everyone
then asked Hallvard questions about life in the south and compared
what they had learned to the way their own people lived. Only the
Ascian was silent. I was reminded of the floating islands of Lake
Diuturna and told Hallvard and the others about them, though I did
not describe the fight at Baldanders’s castle. We talked in this
way until it was time for the evening meal.