Iceland's Bell (33 page)

“All the same,” continued the German, “a man must pay for his entertainments, even a king. I know that my lord is more familiar with the Treasury of this realm than I, and that therefore it is unnecessary for me to inform him of the growing difficulty the government is having in approving the subsidies needed to defray the costs of the fancy-dress balls, which are not only increasing in number but are also becoming more bombastic year by year. In Hamburg we have received confirmed reports that during the last few years the rents from the Iceland trade have been used to subsidize the court’s entertainments; but now the cow has been milked down to its blood, and famine is on the rise in Iceland, as no one knows better than my lord. In the last several years it has taken a great deal of effort to squeeze out of the Company and the governor the rents the king is supposed to be receiving from the island. And now, after having been forced to pay compensation for the flour, the merchants are reluctant to sail—just one more tiny punishment to add to your people’s misery. No matter what, however, the balls must be held, more palaces must be built, the queen must have another pair of Spanish horses, my gracious princesses must have a crocodile. And above all, the war must be financed. Sound counsel is a rare thing here.”

Arnas Arnæus said: “I’m afraid I don’t understand precisely what my lord Kommerzienrat is getting at. Might he have been entrusted by my king or the Danish Treasury with the duty of procuring funds?”

“I’ve been asked if I would like to buy Iceland,” said the gentleman from Hamburg.

“By whom, might I ask?”

“The king of Denmark.”

“It is reassuring to hear that the country is being offered by someone who cannot be accused of treason,” said Arnæus, and he smiled—he had suddenly become quite carefree. “And has this offer been validated in any way with warrants?”

The German removed from his cloak a letter imprinted with the name and seal of our Highness. The letter was an invitation to several merchants from Hamburg to buy the island called by men Islandia, situated halfway between Norway and Greenland, along with all rights and privileges for their full and free ownership, with a guarantee of the complete and total relinquishment of any claims to the aforementioned island by the Danish king and his descendants throughout eternity. The price was set at five barrels of gold, to be paid to Our Royal Treasury upon the occasion of the signing of the contract.

Arnas Arnæus ran his eyes over the document under the light of a lantern burning in the orchard, then handed it back to Uffelen with thanks.

“I am sure that it is unnecessary for me to point out to you,” said the German, “that by showing you this, I only desire to extend my special confidence to the man who is principal amongst those bearing the name of Icelander in the Danish realm.”

“At this time,” said Arnas Arnæus, “my name is of such worth in the Danish realm that I am the last man of all to hear news of matters concerning Iceland. I have been allotted the great misfortune of desiring prosperity for my native country, and such a man is an enemy of the Danish realm: this is how fate has shaped these two countries. It has certainly never been the custom in Denmark to mention the name of Iceland in good company; but ever since I was gripped by a desire to quicken the hopes of men’s lives in place of contenting myself with my country’s ancient books, my friends pretend not to know me. And His Highness, my Royal Grace, mocks me in public.”

“Might I then hope that this proposed offer would not be unwelcome to you, considering the cause that you have chosen to pursue?”

“Unfortunately, it appears that it really matters little what part I choose to play in this affair.”

“And yet it is in your power to decide whether the transaction is concluded or not.”

“How can this be, my lord, since I am in no way party to the affair?”

“Iceland will not be bought against your will.”

“I am grateful that you trust me enough to inform me of your secret. But concerning this matter, I lack the conviction to take any part in it, whether in word or deed.”

“You desire Iceland’s prosperity,” said the German merchant.

“Absolutely,” said Arnas Arnæus.

“No one knows better than you that a worse fate could not befall the inhabitants of that island than to remain the milch cows of the Danish king and the other usurers to whom he’s given shares of the country, the governor and the monopolists.”

“Those are not my words.”

“You know very well that the wealth gathered here in Copenhagen has been garnished for successive generations from the Iceland trade monopoly. The road to the highest rank in the Danish capital has always run through the Iceland trade. Scarcely a single family in this city doesn’t have a member who hasn’t earned his bread from the Company. And no one would think of Iceland being granted as an emolument to anyone other than the highest-ranking nobleman, preferably royalty. Iceland is a good country. No country has supported so many wealthy people as Iceland.”

“It’s unique to hear such great empathy coming from the mouth of a foreigner,” said Arnas Arnæus.

“I know several other things,” said the German. “I know that Icelanders have always had warm feelings for the men of Hamburg, which is not incredible, since old tax registers attest that in the same year that the Danish king drove the Hansa off the island and monopolized the trade for himself and his men, tariffs on domestic goods for exportation were reduced by almost sixty percent, whereas tariffs on foreign wares were raised by almost four hundred percent.”

And after a short silence: “I would not have been so bold as to mention this matter to Your Lordship had I not made absolutely certain, by my Christian conscience, that we men of Hamburg could offer your countrymen better conditions than our Most Gracious Sire and Host.”

They strolled silently for some time through the orchard. Arnæus was lost in thought. Finally he asked, pensively: “Has my lord ever sailed to Iceland?”

The gentleman from Hamburg answered no, but was curious to know why he asked.

“My lord has not seen Iceland rise from the sea after a long and arduous voyage,” said Arnas Arnæus.

The merchant did not understand him clearly.

“Storm-beaten peaks and glacier caps slung with storm clouds arise from angry seas,” said the Professor Antiquitatum Danicarum.

“Yes, and?” said the German.

Arnas Arnæus said: “I have stood to the lee in a cog following in the path of those weatherbitten pirates from Norway, who ran before the winds for so long at sea; until suddenly this image arose.”

“Of its own accord,” said the German.

“There is no sight more awesome than that of Iceland rising from the sea,” said Arnas Arnæus.

“I’m not so sure of that,” said the German, somewhat astonishedly.

“At this single sight one can fathom the mystery that the greatest books in all of Christendom were written in Iceland,” said Arnas Arnæus.

“Is that so?” said the German.

“You must realize by now,” said Arnas Arnæus, “that it is not possible to buy Iceland.”

The gentleman from Hamburg thought for a moment, then said:

“I may be nothing more than a merchant, but I think I can grasp your reasoning a little. Forgive me for admitting that I’m not entirely in agreement with you. It is certainly not possible to buy or sell the sublimity residing upon those high peaks; nor the masterful leaps that have been made by the land’s champions; nor the ballads that have been sung by its folk; and no merchant would ever make an offer for these things. The only thing we merchants care about is how profitable a thing is. In Iceland can be found great peaks and the poison-spewing mountain Hekla, which causes the entire world to tremble in fear. And Icelanders in ancient times composed remarkable Eddas and sagas. All the same, what matters most to Icelanders is whether they have something to eat and to drink and whether they have clothing to wear. All we ask is whether it is more profitable to the Icelanders for their island of Islandia to remain a Danish slave-house, or to become an independent barony—”

“—under the dominion of the emperor,” added Arnas Arnæus.

“Icelandic noblemen did not consider such an idea too far-fetched in years past,” said Uffelen. “There are some remarkable old Icelandic letters in Hamburg. The emperor would undoubtedly grant his Icelandic barony autonomy; as would the English king. In return, the administration in Iceland would concede fishing harbors and trading rights to the merchants’ league in Hamburg.”

“And the baron?”

“Baron Arnas Arnæus will govern the island as he pleases.”

“You are a most delightful merchant, my lord.”

“I would prefer it if Your Lordship would not look upon my proposal as mere prattle, especially since there is no reason for me to mock my lord.”

Arnas Arnæus said: “I think that there is scarcely an official position in Iceland that has not been offered to me by the Danish king. For two years I possessed the highest authority of any man who has ever lived in that country: I had power over the Iceland bureau in the Council of the Crown, over the Company, over the judges, over the governor’s proxies; and to a certain degree over the governor himself. Besides that I was the man most willing to work for his fatherland. And what was the result of my work? Starvation, my lord. More starvation. Iceland is beaten. The baron of such a land would become the laughingstock of the world even if he were in the service of the good men of Hamburg.”

Uffelen answered: “Of course you had the king’s mandate in Iceland, my lord, but you yourself have previously stated the reasons why it was useless. You had neither the power nor the authority to carry out what was most required: the expulsion of the royally sanctioned monopolists and the establishment of fair trade.”

Arnas Arnæus said: “My Most Gracious Majesty has repeatedly dispatched envoys to foreign princes to beg them to buy Iceland from him or else to loan him money, taking Iceland as collateral. Every time the Company found out about these propositions it offered to pay the crown higher rents on the Iceland trade.”

“I would prefer,” said Uffelen, “that this deal be made swiftly, so that the Iceland merchants get no wind of it before it’s made public. It all depends on whether you wish to act as our proxy to the Icelandic people. If you give me your promise today, we can close on the deal tomorrow.”

“First we must be sure,” said Arnæus, “that this offer is not just one of the king’s schemes contrived in order to squeeze a higher rent out of the Iceland merchants at a time when he’s doing everything he can to raise money to finance what follows the dance: the war. Nothing will be ruined though my answer might be delayed for a day or two.”

2

Arnas Arnæus did not have to wait long before he discovered the reason for the peculiar behavior of the aristocrats at the queen’s banquet. When he arrived home that night he found a letter waiting for him. He had been convicted. The Supreme Court’s verdict in the so-called Bræðratunga case, which had been in the courts for almost two years now, declared Magnús Sigurðsson innocent on all charges.

The case originally centered on two letters that the aforenamed Magnús had written in Iceland; one letter contained a complaint against Arnæus for a suspected intimacy between him and the letterwriter’s wife, and in the other, intended for public reading at the synod in Skálholt, the letter-writer accused his wife of engaging in forbidden relations with the royal commissary and implored the clergy to intercede in the matter. The king’s envoy claimed to have been maligned by the letters and he had subpoenaed their author on charges of libel. A ruling was handed down in district court by the bailiff Vigfús Þórarinsson two weeks after the second letter was read aloud in the choir doorway, and Magnús Sigurðsson was dispossessed of both his honor and his property for his disgraceful attack on Arnæus. The commissary immediately transferred the verdict to Öxará and appealed the ruling before a higher judge whom he himself had specially appointed, since the acting magistrate Eydalín was disqualified from any involvement in the proceedings due to his relation to the accused by marriage. The court at Öxará stiffened the district court’s sentence and stipulated that besides forfeiting his estate at Bræðratunga, Magnús was to pay the royal commissary the sum of three hundred rixdollars as penalty for the malignant insinuations found in his letters, along with alimentary fees to be paid to the court for its own particular difficulties in handling the case.

The Supreme Court ruling reversed the former verdicts. The premises stated that the pitiful wretch Magnús Sívertsen had been subject to stringent and unchristian treatment by the prosecutor Arnas Arnæus and the courts. He had been prosecuted for writing two letters: firstly, to defend his honor, and secondly, in the letter addressed to the ecclesiastical council, to try to compel Arnæus to stifle at their source the rumors and hearsay running rampant at that time, since it was prejudicial not only to the matron at Bræðratunga and her husband but also to the diocese of Skálholt that such lewd report should have its foundation and origin in the watchtower of Christian admonition and the bulwark of Christian morality. As an indication that these letters were not written on a whim nor disclosed to the public in vain was to be considered the fact that Arnæus packed his belongings and transferred his residence from the bishop’s estate to Bessastaðir on the very next day after the second letter was read publicly. The premises stated that it was difficult to justify how these letters had set in motion such an unrestrained attack on a poor man, resulting in such severe verdicts and stiff fines. It was quite clear that Monsieur Sívertsen had sufficient grounds for writing his letters, if by doing so he could silence the persistent rumor of his cuckoldry that was making its way throughout the country. The woman had used Magnús’s drinking bouts as an excuse to rendezvous with this man, Arnæus, who was responsible for the rise of her public reputation as a slattern while still in the flower of her youth. And now she had run away from home and sojourned beneath the same roof with this her lover from youth for an entire winter in an entirely reckless relationship, which, according to court testimony, was evidenced in the ceaseless intimate conversations that took place between her and the commissary as often in the light of day as in the darkness of night behind locked doors, and it was difficult to see otherwise than that her husband had from justo dolore* written the letters in the terms that he did. The twenty-seventh chapter of the civil law corpus, concerning defamation, confirmed that there was no justification for the type of penalty imposed upon Sívertsen according to the judgment of the court at Öxará, since the condemned’s words had not been spoken as positive testimony, and even if they had been, they did nothing other than echo what was already public knowledge, the private conversations between Arnæus and the woman. This being the case, the former unjust and unchristian verdicts affecting Magnús Sívertsen’s honor and reputation were hereby proclaimed invalid and absolutely unbinding. And whereas Arnas Arnæus has in accordance with the same verdicts had the defendant’s property and possessions assessed and confiscated, this sequestration and appropriation is hereby declared invalid, and his assets, both fixed and liquid, are ordered to be returned to Magnús Sívertsen along with all of his earnings and dividends payable from the date of seizure. Item, whereas in the court’s opinion Arnas Arnæus is causa prima* of the husband’s jealousy, as well as of the court’s persecution of him, it followed reason that the aforenamed Arnas Arnæus should pay to Magnús Sívertsen, for the costs of the proceedings as well as for the ridicule and trouble he had suffered, a fee equal to the one awarded to him by jure talionis* and the former judges from Magnús’s assets. And whereas Arnas Arnæus has by his thoroughly unchristian conduct, his iniquity, and his insolence throughout this entire affair instigated exorbitant scandals and aroused the indignation of the common folk in Iceland, subjecting the isle’s kingly administration to reprobation, so shall this oft-named personage be forbidden from sailing to Iceland and denied the right to reside upon the same island for an undetermined period of time, unless he should first procure special permission from our Most Benevolent Grace and Majesty.

On the morning after the banquet, around the time that the first carriages were to be heard rattling down the cobblestone streets and the vegetable seller had begun shouting behind the house, Arnas Arnæus, pale from insomnia, rose from his armchair. He walks into his library. His secretary, the studiosus antiquitatum* Joannes Grindvicensis, is sitting at his desk, sobbing. The man did not realize immediately that his lord had come in, and he continued to sob. His lord hemmed several times to see if he could call the attention of the studiosus away from his work. The secretary looked up hastily in confusion, but when he beheld his master he finally became so overwhelmed that he pounded his forehead against the desktop as a shaking seized his shoulders, which were sunken from the heavy burdens of erudition and guilt.

Arnas Arnæus paced the room several times and gazed with a touch of impatience at this novel and troubling sight of a man sitting sobbing within the heavy silence of the library. And when he saw that the man’s sorrow would not be abated he said, somewhat gruffly:

“Now, now, man, what in heaven’s name is this?”

A short time passed before the learned man was heard to groan the following words between sobs:

“J-jó-jón Ma-marteinsson—”

He continued harping on these words for several moments, and was unable to get any further.

“Have you been drinking?” asked his lord.

“H-he was here,” stammered the scholar from Grindavík. “He was certe* here. God help me.”

“Well now,” said Arnas Arnæus. “What are we missing this time?”

“God grant me mercy for my sins,” said the man from Grindavík.

“What are we missing?” asked Arnas Arnæus.

Jón Guðmundsson from Grindavík stood up from his stool at his desk, threw himself down upon his knees before his master, and confessed that the book of books itself, the gemstone of gemstones, the
Skálda,
was gone.

Arnas Arnæus turned away from the man and walked over to a cabinet in a side compartment where the library’s most precious items were kept locked up. He took out a key, opened the cabinet, and stared at the spot where for the longest time he had stored what he considered to be the most valuable artifact in the northern hemisphere, the book that contained the ancient poetry of his race, in its proper tongue; now there was only a gap where it had stood.

Arnas Arnæus stared for some time at the open cabinet’s empty shelf. Then he closed the cabinet. He walked across the hall once, returned and stopped, and looked at the old studiosus antiquitatum, who remained crouched there upon his knees with his haggard hands raised before his face, trembling so much that he was nearly in convulsions. His patched-up shoes had come off his feet and lay on the floor behind him. There were holes in his socks.

“There now, stand up. Let me pour you a drink,” said Arnas Arnæus, and he opened a little corner cupboard and poured from a bottle into an old tin tankard. He helped his secretary to stand and handed him the drink.

“God’s thanks,” whispered Jón Guðmundsson from Grindavík, but he lacked the courage to look his master in the face until he had finished a second drink. “And I’m here almost all night on watch,” he said. “Last night I came downstairs around matins to continue copying
Maríusaga
* for you, and when I checked on the cabinet as I usually do, there was no
Skálda.
It was gone. He must have come during the one hour I was asleep, around midnight. How could he have gotten in?”

Arnas Arnæus stood there holding the bottle, and he took back the empty tankard from the secretary.

“Would you like more, my dear man?” he said.

“My lord, I may not drink so much that I let the wine take the place of the true comforter, the spirit of the muse,” he said. “Not more than one more glass, my blessed man—though I should think that I deserve far more to feel your wrath for letting that veritable devil in the guise of a man slink past me again while I was sleeping. And I’m reminded of something I heard yesterday from a trustworthy man, that this scamp and gallows bird was seen several evenings ago driving with Count du Bertelskiold to the City Hall Tavern itself. He was dressed in a newish-looking dress coat, and there’s word out that the count ordered grilled partridge and punch for him. What am I to do?”

“One glass more,” said Arnas Arnæus.

“God reward you for your kindness to this wretch from Grindavík,” said the secretary.

Arnas Arnæus raised his hand and said, “Vivat crescat floreat— Martinius,”* as the secretary drank. Then he stuck the cork in the bottle and locked it and the tankard back into the corner cupboard.

“I know that my lord speaks such false words with a bleeding heart,” said the secretary. “But I ask you in all earnestness, my lord: are the town watchmen and the local militia not stronger than Jón Marteinsson? Are not the Consistory, the clergy, and the military in any position to form an alliance against this man? My lord, you who are so highly favored by the judiciary must surely have the authority to send such a man to the Rasphus.”*

“Unfortunately, I think that I’m no longer in favor with anyone, dear Jón,” said Arnas Arnæus, “and especially not with the judiciary. Jón Marteinsson has the better of me everywhere. Now he has also won the Bræðratunga case, which he litigated against me on behalf of the Iceland merchants.”

Grindvicensis was immediately dumbfounded and could do nothing but repeatedly open and close his mouth like a fish, until he finally regained his senses and sighed:

“Can it be the will of Christ that all the inhabited world has been placed at the disposal of the devil?”

“The Iceland merchants’ wealth serves him well,” said Arnas Arnæus.

“It should come as no surprise to anyone that he should have sold himself out to the Iceland merchants to bring an unjust case against his manifold patron and favorite son of our fatherland, since he was capable of traveling to Iceland to buy books and copies of books for the Swedes—of all the evils that could befall an Icelander the worst would be to serve the Swedes, who deny that we are men and claim that Icelandic books appertain to the Gotlanders and West Gotlanders. Is the
Skálda
going to belong to them now too, and be called a West Gotlandic poem?”

Arnas Arnæus had taken a seat and was leaning back, his face pale, his eyelids drooping. He stroked his unshaven chin distractedly and yawned.

“I’m tired,” he said.

The secretary remained standing in the same spot for several moments, stooped, bony-shouldered, snorting and gaping and watching his employer and master. He started to rub his nose and lift one instep, but suddenly the tears flowed once again from the eyes of this poor scholar. He dispensed with all the quirks that distinguished him from others, and again placed a bony hand with its backward-bending thumb over his face.

“Is there something else, Jón?” said Arnas Arnæus.

Jón Guðmundsson from Grindavík sobbed:

“My lord has no friends.”