The Greenlanders - Jane Smiley [44]
There was a woman called Gudrun, he said, and she was the sister of Gunnar and Hogni, who were great heroes and very wealthy men in the time of Egil Skallagrimsson and Erik the Red. Gudrun, he said, was married to a rich farmer called Atli, who lived in the east, according to the tale, but this probably meant the east of Iceland, since there is no other mention of this Atli among the Greenlanders. Atli, too, had a great farmstead with a multitude of sheep and cows and horses, as well as rich furnishings inside a large farmhouse with high wooden beams, as high as those at Gardar, and many rooms. He also had many servants, but even so, he was not content, and was resolved to have the wealth of his wife’s brothers, which was in the form of gold and silver. And so he ordered his wife to invite her brothers to the Yuletide feast, and since he kept his designs a secret, she did so, and they came alone on their horses to the farmstead of their sister’s husband, eager in anticipation of great feasting, with much beer and ale as well as meat.
As soon as Gudrun led them into the farmhouse, Atli’s servants seized the two men and tied them up, and Atli came to them and demanded to know where the treasure was hidden, and Atli threatened Gunnar with death, and with the death of his brother if he did not tell, but Gunnar did not tell. Then Atli told Gunnar that Hogni had indeed been killed, and that there was no use holding out, for Hogni had divulged the whereabouts of the treasure before dying, and so Gunnar said for Atli’s servants to bring him Hogni’s heart on a trencher. Since the servants had not killed Hogni, for he was a prodigious fighter, they seized one of their own men and put him to death and cut out his heart, which they brought to Gunnar. The heart, however, quivered on the trencher, and Gunnar declared that this was not Hogni’s heart, but the heart of a coward, and so Atli himself subdued Hogni, and cut out his heart and brought it to Gunnar. And Gunnar recognized the stout heart of his brother, and declared that now he would never speak, because now only he knew the secret. At this he took his own knife and cut out his own tongue. Then Atli and his men seized Gunnar and threw him into a snake pit, where he was done to death by adders and other poisonous snakes.
That night Atli went to his bed very drunk, and did not notice the sword that his wife had placed between them. And after he was asleep, she rose up and plunged the blade into him. Then she opened the door of the farmstead, roused all the dogs and sent them outside, and burned Atli and his servants in their beds.
Gunnar paced back and forth while telling this tale, for it was one of his favorites, and he got great enjoyment from it. At the end of it, Pall Hallvardsson smiled. “This is a bloody tale,” he said, “not much fit for a priest, except as an exemplum of the lives of men before the coming of Christ as their Savior.”
“Is it not true,” asked Gunnar, in an agitated voice, “that men are still very greedy and murderous, even those who go to the church every Sunday and make themselves good friends with the priests?”
“If there are such men, even so,” said Sira Pall, “God thinks ill of a man who cherishes an enemy in his breast, and fondles the injuries done to him by others as if they are treasured possessions.”
“It seems to me that Gudrun’s tale is a fine one, for when I tell it, my breast swells for the injuries done to her, and her bold resolve in avenging herself.” After this, they stopped talking of this tale, and