• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

By Root 2095 0

of Kollgrim Gunnarsson, some thirty winters—and when he and Jon Andres and the servingmen came on their horses around the hillside, and the broad fields of Gunnars Stead with their peaceful buildings lay spread before him, he stopped and gazed and knew not what to say, for indeed, the steading had a wide and pleasant aspect. The blue of the sky was cast back by the blue of the lakes that dotted the fields, and the ancient water system ran through the thick grass, glinting here and there. The great hillside where he had gone to gather blueberries with Margret, and where he had later gone to kill Skuli Gudmundsson, rose, pale and serene, off to the west, and the sun shone upon it. Now he gave his horse a little kick, and the animal trotted into the scene that Gunnar had just been gazing upon, and it seemed to him that he was indeed an unlucky man, but that his ill luck had always taken this lovely shape, so that as it destroyed him, still he clutched it to his breast.

Kollgrim took no interest in their plans for his defense, and they got little satisfaction from him, and so, though they lingered through the day, at last, toward evening, all agreed that there was no more to be said on this subject. Gunnar and Jon Andres returned to Ketils Stead for the night. And now, after their evening meat, when Helga and the child Gunnhild had gone to their bedcloset, and all of the servants as well, Gunnar and Jon Andres sat on the slope that looked from the steading down toward the water of the lake.

Gunnar said, “It seems to me that I have never told you a tale, although it is my habit to tell such tales as I know.”

Jon Andres looked at him with some pleasure, and said, “It would please me to hear such a tale as you might have told my Helga when she was a child.”

“I will tell this one, then. It is said by folk that some seventy-five winters ago, when my father Asgeir was a boy and folk still lived on the farmsteads of the western settlement, there was a certain man there named Kari, who went out one spring and slew a great she-bear, the greatest that was ever taken in Greenland. This bear was some ten ells from nose to tail and stood on her hind legs as tall as two men. But her cub, which Kari saw after he had made the kill, was as tiny as a puppy, and so Kari, who was a softhearted fellow after all, forbore to kill it, and took it home with him. But instead of putting it in the byre, he brought it into the steading. Now Kari’s wife, whose name was Hjordis, had a new baby at the breast, and Kari gave her the following choice, she could either suckle the bear and the child together, or she could milk herself and and feed the bear through an eagle’s quill, as folk do when a child is unable to suck. This woman Hjordis was a lazy and not very particular sort of person, and so she chose to suckle the bear and the child together.”

Gunnar’s voice was nearly a whisper, as if he were speaking to children huddled together in the bedcloset, and Jon Andres moved closer and closed his eyes, for indeed, he had had a fondness for tales as a boy, though gossip had been more the rule with Vigdis and Erlend than tales had been.

“Now the baby and the bear grew apace, and each looked at the other while they were suckling, and each thought that the other was his brother, or himself, and the two began to chatter to each other, bear and boy. Kari was rather pleased with this, and Hjordis, too, but the priest of the parish was less pleased, for men must look upward to the angels, rather than downward to the beasts. Even so, Kari and Hjordis paid little attention to the priest. They named the bear Bjorn, and the boy’s name was Ulf. It happened that after the bear came, Hjordis had no more children, and so they looked upon these two as their children.

“The boy, as it turned out, was not so handsome, for he had a squint and a humped back. But the bear was a beautiful bear, with long, soft, white fur that glowed in the light and the dark, and he had a shiny black nose and large, shiny brown eyes, and they were not the eyes of a wild beast, which communicate