EVERYONE KNOWS THE STORY OF THE MARE SKALM. How she lay down with her pack still on, and Seal Thorir founded his farm in that place. It says so in Landnámabók. Skalm was wise. This is the story of another horse, one even more deserving of fame, though she has no name. This mare’s story proves that one can be famous without a name, a valuable lesson. She is the most famous of all the horses of Iceland.
She is all the horses of Iceland.
People tell many strange lies about the horses of Iceland. How they are made of fire that has leached into their bones from the fiery earth, or sky that they have sucked into their lungs from the tops of mountains. So there are sorrel horses, and horses with blue eyes. How a great stallion was once caught in a crevasse, caught by his near fore- and hind leg, while his off legs kept running and running, scrabbling on the ice for a foothold until he pulled himself out, sweating and steaming with effort. So ever after he ran using his legs first on the one side, then the other, and the tölt was born.
The truth about them is scarcely less strange. Every horse in Iceland, like every person, has ancestors who sailed here in a ship. What has a horse to do with a ship? In a ship, a horse cannot hold on. A horse cannot row or trim sail or bail out water. A
horse has no business on the sea at all. Horses were carried here, cold and sick and protesting, in open boats, frost riming their manes, from Norvegr and the Føroyar, from Irland and Hjaltland and the Suthreyar. Their sturdy kin can be seen in all those places, long-haired in winter, working around farms and fjords. These little horses of the North, strong as oxen, carry tall men in their endeavours of work and pleasure and war, all the way to Garthariki. The mare of whom this saga speaks, she came from a land beyond even these, a great ocean of grass. Her journey here was long and the wealth she brought with her was considerable, but no rune stones speak of them. What are the most important words, after all, that rune stones record?
Names.
* * *
When Eyvind of Eyri left the island of Iceland in the prime of his life he was already an old man. He could not have children. It is not that he was impotent, but he could produce no offspring. He was also deaf in one ear. As a child, he had had the throat-swelling fever. It is seen that people who survive this fever often have such defects. But he was young and strong. He went as a crewman on a knarr trading, as he thought, to Grikkland. He hoped to see Miklagarth. But that is not what happened.
There are many tales of wide-travellers. Many are about war. Some are about trade. Many are about war, then trade. Some are about trade, then war. Eyvind’s tale is different. He passed through many lands that were at war: lands in which retainers were murdering their lords, lands being overrun by neighbours or by strangers, lands newly taken and rebellious, lands in which not so much as a single grape was left hanging on a vine. He saw villages in cinders. He saw rich towns in which men sat in comfort reading books with golden covers. Eyvind coveted the books, and not only for the gold. He understood that treasures also lay inside the covers, treasures that were hard to put a price on. While Eyvind never became a literate man, he saw as he went on that books contained words that could transform men into priests and kings and healers.
By now you may think that Eyvind’s story concerns his conversion, as do so many stories from the pagan time. And while it is true that the lands through which he passed were rife with priests of every kind, and that as he went on he encountered Christians and Sarks and Jews before any of these religions had been heard of in Iceland, nonetheless he did not convert. None of these faiths appealed to him and he died as pagan as he was born. I, Jór, cannot approve of this. Yet the fact remains that in the matter of religion he was no better and no worse than the rest of his
should remain under one law. Thorgeir the gothi lay flat upon the ground all the night through, meditating, and when he cast off his fur cape in the morning he declared in favour of the God of the Gospels. As he had been duly appointed lawspeaker, it was a binding agreement. God is not divorced from reason. What temptations Thorgeir might have endured, and what the divine voice might have said to him in the darkness of that night, he never said, though many priests since have attributed to him a mighty visitation, an epiphany such as was experienced by the first disciples. None have said that Ingwe experienced any such visitation.
“Then leave,” said Ingwe to Eyvind.
“I will,” said Eyvind. Ingwe paid him what he was owed. He had been a fellow in the journey, laying his money down with the rest. Three other men with whom Eyvind was friendly, none of whom had been baptized, stood with him as he received his payment. Eyvind thanked them and left the crew. He had no dealings with Icelanders after that for four years.
Eyvind went out alone into the city of Helmgard. It was high summer. He considered what he would do. He had money. He could buy in to another trading vessel. ...
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