Fall Hard (15 page)

“Jeez. Some guys’ll do anything to get there first.”

Alex’s sarcasm surprised a laugh out of me. “Right. Time we got there, anyway.” I put the car back in gear and drove onto the bridge.

Borgarnes itself was a pretty little place with a cosy feel about it, unlike most Icelandic towns, which tended more towards the functional than the aesthetically pleasing. No wonder I’d come back here more than once. Even without the Egil connection, it’d be worth a visit. I drove straight through the town—smaller than most villages, by English standards—following the road up a hill to a patch of grassy moorland crowned by a rocky outcrop. I parked the car by the side of the road.

“This is Borg á Mýrum—literally, ‘stronghold in the marshes’—where Skallagrim built his farm, and where Egil was born and grew up,” I said in my best tour-guide voice.

Alex didn’t seem impressed. It seemed there wouldn’t be any tips for the guide at the end of this trip. “Looks pretty bleak.”

We got out of the car. True, there wasn’t a lot here—moorland and some low, scrubby trees, around a little red-and-white church that looked like a child’s toy. “It was different when Skallagrim came here. There were wide woodlands, and all the seal, ducks and swans they could eat.”

“Swans, huh?” Shielding his eyes from the sun with one hand, Alex gazed into the sky as if he expected to see some flying out on cue. “Is it true that in Britain, only the queen’s allowed to eat them?”

“As far as I know, but I’m not sure anybody else would want to,” I said absently. I turned in a slow circle, taking in the scene. Trying to imagine it as it would have looked in Egil’s time. A rough land, yes, but full of strong, warlike men, equally skilled in hunting and farming as they were at fighting. Survivors. “I’d give anything to see this place back then,” I murmured. “To meet men like that. They gave up their whole lives to come here and start over, and ended up founding a nation.” I looked at Alex then, and flushed to find an odd expression in his eyes.

He coughed, looking away quickly. “I guess those early settlers were kinda like the American pioneers.”

“True. It must all seem a very familiar story to you. Although of course the Vikings weren’t fleeing religious persecution. Just ordinary political infighting.”

“Yeah, and the pilgrim fathers didn’t float their dead dads’ coffins overboard. Least, not in the history books I read at school.”

It seemed an odd way of putting it—surely he’d read far more history books since leaving school? But then, didn’t Americans call university “school”? I frowned, but Alex was off again already. “Hey, is that a church over there? Looks kinda modern for a Viking relic. And weren’t they still making sacrifices to Odin in those days?” He strode off, and I followed.

“That church is nineteenth century, but there’s been one here since around the year one thousand. So yes, after Skallagrim’s time. After Egil’s, even, but not by much.”

Just across from the church was the black monument to Egil’s grief,
Sonartorrek
, and we wandered over to take a closer look.

“Mags told me this always makes her cry,” I murmured, touching the sculpture’s smooth, chilly contours.

Alex joined me, putting his hand on the stone beside mine. It felt curiously intimate, as if the sculpture forged a connection between us somehow. “That’s got to be the worst—losing a child. And to lose her husband at the same time… I don’t know how she handles it.”

“She hasn’t got much alternative, has she?” I stood in silence for a moment. Where was my grief? I wondered. I’d lost a life partner, hadn’t I? Where was the crushing sorrow, the emptiness I should feel? All I could sense was a blankness, a fog. And when I thought of love, of intimacy, it wasn’t Sven’s image that came to me. I let go of the sculpture and sighed.

Alex was looking at me, and once again, I couldn’t quite interpret his expression. “Do you want to walk up to the cairn?” I asked into the silence, gesturing up the hill towards the rocks. The best-known saga sites in Borgarnes were marked with cairns of stones, ringed with chains, and the trail to this one started only a few feet away.

Alex seemed to shake off whatever mood had overtaken him and shrugged. “Seen one heap of stones, you’ve seen them all,” he said. I hadn’t missed his glance at my stick first. I wasn’t sure whether to be irritated or touched by his concern, but it seemed childish to insist on walking up there just to spite him. “There’s more to see back in town, isn’t there?”

I nodded. “Come on, then.” We got back into the car.

Having parked down in Borgarnes, we headed on foot first to Skallagrimsgardur, a small park holding Egil’s father’s burial mound. Not that there was a lot to see there either besides, well, a grassy mound ringed with flowerbeds.

“Kinda weird, isn’t it?” Alex commented. “Like finding King Arthur’s grave, or Robin Hood’s. Brings it home that the sagas were about real people.”

I nodded. “Egil’s eldest son Bodvar is buried here, too. And Skallagrim’s horse,” I added with a smile.

“You’d think it’d be getting a bit cramped in there.”

“Oh? And you think a six-foot wooden box is spacious?”

“Fair enough. I guess
Lebensraum
really is for the living.” He grinned, his whole face lighting up in the sunshine that made his hair shine like burnished copper. My heart lifted, and I found myself smiling back.

The mood turned sombre again as we moved on to look at the modern bronze relief erected beside the grave mound. It showed a grief-stricken Egil carrying his teenage son’s body back home after Bodvar’s drowning.

“Thinking of Mags again, huh?” Alex asked, his tone gentle.

I nodded. How old had her son been when he’d drowned? No wonder she hadn’t wanted to come here. I cursed myself for having been so thoughtless as to ask her.

The next site on our list could hardly have brought her comfort either. We made the shortish walk through town and along Brakarbraut to the very tip of the headland. A single-span bridge led across the turquoise waters of Brakarsund to a small island, Brakarey. We stopped there to watch a group of laughing young boys taking turns jumping off the bridge into the sea. I didn’t like to think how cold it must have been.

“I’m sensing a theme in the names around here,” Alex said after a moment. “What does
Brak
mean?”

“It’s from Thorgerdr Brak, Egil’s old nursemaid. She died here, saving Egil’s life when he was about twelve.”

“What, did he fall into the water or something?”

“No. It was wintertime, and he was playing a ball game with his father and his best friend, a young man called Thord. Skallagrim was losing, until evening drew on. Have you heard about Kveldulfr, Egil’s grandfather? His name means evening wolf, and legend had it he actually turned into a wolf when the sun set.”

“Uh-huh. See, this is the thing about these sagas. You just get used to them being about real people and then they get all weird on you.”

“Well, he was probably just a berserker. There’s a fair bit of confusion between them and actual shape-shifters in the old literature. At any rate, apparently Skallagrim took after his father, and as evening fell, he quite literally went berserk. He killed Thord—dashed his brains out on the ground—and was about to kill Egil too, but Thorgerdr saw what was happening. She must have been an incredibly brave woman—or incredibly fond of Egil—because she stood up to this fierce killer, who by this point was probably frothing at the mouth, and gave him a right old ear-bashing. Of course, he turned on her instead. She ran out here and was trying to swim to the island to escape, but Skallagrim threw a rock at her, and she sank without trace.”

“Jeez, that’s one fucked-up family.”

I nodded. “I hate to think what social services would make of his parents these days. Although, to be fair, they can’t have had it easy with him. Pretty much the first mention of Egil in the saga is when his dad tells him—at three years old, mind—he can’t go to a party because there’s going to be alcohol there and he’s too much of a handful even when he’s sober.”

“Let me guess, that was when he had his first berserker fit?”

“No, actually. He just took a horse and rode off to the party on his own. Then he composed a poem about it.”

“Jeez. All my three-year-old nephew wants to do is watch Spongebob all day.”

We stood a moment longer. “Is anything coming back?” Alex asked finally, not quite looking at me. “Your memory, I mean.”

“No.” It came out a bit more harshly than I’d intended. “I mean, it’s all familiar as it relates to the saga, but it’s like…” I grimaced, frustrated. “I remember the places but not actually coming here. It’s weird.” Also disappointing. I’d had high hopes coming to the place in the picture would prove to be the key to at least some of my memories of Sven. “Maybe it’s just that I associate the place with Egil’s life rather than with mine.”

Alex was nodding. “I guess you just can’t rush these things.” His understanding made me warm to him.

We wandered back into town and stopped in at a welcoming little café set right on the shore of the fjord. There were tables out the back, looking onto the water. The coffee was rich and strong, the carrot cake moist and not too sweet. All in all, it was an idyllic spot. Even the company, I was surprised to find, was pleasant. The skies, while we’d walked, had miraculously cleared to a rich blue almost painful in its brightness, and I could feel the warmth of the sun on my face. But I didn’t want to be here with Alex, I realised. I wanted to be here with Viggo.

And how childish did that sound, once I’d articulated the thought? Any minute now I’d go berserk and throw a tantrum like Egil—or his father—at his worst. I half smiled at the thought.

“What, have I got frosting on my nose or something?” Alex challenged with a grin.

“No—just thinking about Egil,” I semi-explained.

“Can’t imagine a guy like that sitting here with one of these dainty little cups, can you?”

“Not to mention, I’d hate to think what he’d have been like with caffeine inside him.” I smiled. “Odd to think we’re sitting not far from where he killed his first man—or boy, rather. That was over a ball game too. Egil didn’t much like the other boy beating him, so he brained him with an axe.”

Alex made a face. “You do realise I’m eating here?”

I shrugged. “At least it was a clean kill. Better an axe than the way he killed Atli, later in life.”

“You’re going to tell me how he killed this guy, and I’m not going to like it, am I?”

I waited until Alex had taken a bite of cake. “Bit clean through his throat,” I said mildly.

Alex shuddered and didn’t look like he was enjoying his cake all that much. “Okay,” he said when he’d swallowed his mouthful. “Remind me again why you’re so stuck on this guy?”

I leaned forward, my elbows on the table. “Don’t you find him fascinating? He’s such a mass of contradictions. The warrior poet. The bloodthirsty killer who was timid and silent around the woman he loved. A petty, greedy, selfish man, whose
Lament for My Sons
is one of the most beautiful expressions of grief ever written.”

“I couldn’t write a poem to save my life,” Alex said, sounding almost as if he was proud of the fact.

“Funny. Egil did just that.” I sat back, squinting a little in the sun as I smiled at Alex’s look of boyish confusion.

“Uh, what?”

“He wrote a poem to save his life. Twice, actually, if you count the
Lament
, but what I’m thinking of is the
Head-Ransom
. You haven’t heard of it? Egil had a feud going with the exiled king of Norway, Eric Blood-axe, and his queen, Gunnhilda—it started over some land belonging to Egil’s wife but escalated, with Egil putting up a scorn-stick against them.”

“A what?”

“A scorn-stick. Nidstöng, in Old Norse.” His blank look was almost comically endearing. “You take a big stick, carve on some runic curses, bung a horse’s head on top and turn it to face your enemies. Then you make sure everyone knows about it.”

“Nice. Hey, do you think that’s where the Godfather got his ideas?” Alex raised his coffee cup to drain the last few drops.

“Could be. But to a Viking, it wasn’t just intimidation. It was a killing insult. Like calling a man a queer,” I added dryly. Alex and I shared a rueful look of understanding. I was beginning to wonder why I’d found him so off-putting, before. “Anyway, Egil was forbidden on pain of death to enter Eric’s domain, which at the time was in Northern Britain, but then his ship was wrecked not far from York. Egil, being Egil, thought about trying to hide but decided there was no honour in it and just got on his horse and rode straight up to Eric’s front door.”

“I guess he wasn’t the one who came up with
discretion is the better part of valour
.”

“No, that’d be Shakespeare.”

“Hey, I was only five hundred years out.” Alex grinned. “Go on.”

“Well, Gunnhilda was all for having Egil’s head lopped off straight away, but a friend of Egil’s who was at court persuaded Eric to wait until morning. So they locked Egil up, and he spent the night composing a twenty-stanza poem in praise of Eric’s skill at battle, his generosity and his general bloodthirstiness.
Eric on the wave, to wolves flesh-banquet gave
,” I quoted from memory. “That sort of thing. When Egil recited it in the morning, Eric was so flattered he let Egil go. Then Egil dashed off an off-the-cuff verse in thanks: