Egil’s Saga (35 page)

Thordis went to speak with Egil her kinsman: it was then the greatest game to Egil to talk with her: and when she found him, then asked she, “Is that true, kinsman, that thou wilt ride to the Thing? I would thou wouldst say to me what might be in this rede-taking of thine”.

“I shall say to thee”, quoth he, “what I have thought on. Minded am I to have to the Thing with me those two chests that
King Athelstane gave me, that be full each one of them of English silver. I am minded to let bear the chests to the Hill of Laws, then when there is most throng of men there. And then I am minded to sow the silver: and methinks ’twill be wonderful if they all divide it well betwixt ’em. I am minded that there would be then kickings and bufferings, and it might come to that at last that all the Thing should be a-fighting.”

Thordis saith, “This seemeth to me a rede indeed! and like to be talked of as long as the land is dwelt in”. And now went Thordis to talk with Grim, and said unto him Egil’s rede-taking.

“That shall never be, that he bring this to pass, so great a villainy!”

And when Egil came to talk with Grim about faring to the Thing, then Grim talked him off that altogether, and Egil sat at home through the Thing. Nowise liked him well of that. He was somewhat frowning.

At Mossfell they had hill-dairies, and Thordis was at the hill-dairy during the Thing. That was one evening, then when men made them ready for bed at Mossfell, that Egil called to him two thralls that belonged to Grim. He bade them take him a horse: “I will fare to the baths”. And when Egil was ready, he gat him out, and had with him his silver-chests. He went a-horseback: and now fared down along the home-mead past a brent that was there, when men saw him last. But in the morning when men rose up, then saw they how Egil staggered about on the holt beyond the eastern garth and led after him the horse. Fare they then to him and fetched him home. But neither came back afterward, thralls nor chests; and there be many guesses, where Egil may have hidden his fee.

Beyond the eastern garth at Mossfelf goeth a gill down out of the fell; but that hath come about to mark there, that in sudden thaws there is there a great waterfall, but after the waters have fallen away, there have been found in the gill English pennies. Some men say from this that Egil will there have hidden his fee. Below the home-mead at Mossfell are big fens and marvellously deep: many have that for true, that Egil will there have cast in his fee. To the south of the river are baths and a short way therefrom big earth-holes; and some say from this, that Egil would
there have hidden his fee, because thitherward is often seen howe-fire. Egil said that he had slain Grim’s thralls, and so too, that he had hidden his fee; but that said he to no man, where he had hidden it.

Egil took a sickness the autumn after, that led him to his bane. And when he was dead, then let Grim put Egil in good clothes, and thereafter let flit him down into Tiltness and make there a howe, and Egil was laid therein and his weapons and clothes.

CHAPTER LXXXVI. OF THE FINDING OF EGIL’S BONES.

G
RIM of Mossfell was baptized then when Christ’s faith was brought into the law in Iceland. He let make a church there; and that is the saying of men that Thordis hath let flit Egil to church. And there is that for a token, that later, when a church was made at Mossfell and that church taken down at Bushbridge that Grim had let make, then was the church-yard there dug up, and under the altar-place then were found man’s bones. They were much greater than other men’s bones: men think they know from the sayings of old men that that would have been the bones of Egil.

There was then Skapti Thorarinson the mass-priest,
¹
a wise man. He took up the skull of Egil and set it in the church-yard. The skull was wonderfully great; yet that seemed more beyond all likelihood, how heavy it was. The skull was all wavy-marked on the outside, like a harp-shell. Then would Skapti find out about the thickness of the skull. Took he then a hand-axe, great enough, and swung it with one hand at his hardest and smote with the hammer on the skull and would break it; but there where the blow came it whitened, but dented not nor split. And one may mark from such things, that that skull would be nought easy-scathed before the hewings of small men, while skin and flesh followed it.

The bones of Egil were laid in the outer part of the churchyard at Mossfell.

CHAPTER LXXXVII. OF THE MYRESMEN’S KIN THAT ARE COME OF EGIL’S BLOOD AND LINE.

T
HORSTEIN EGILSON took baptism then when Christ’s faith came to Iceland, and let make a church at Burg. He was a troth-fast man and a well mannered. He became an old man, and dead of a sickness, and was laid to earth at Burg at that church which he let make. From Thorstein is a great line come, and a mort of great men, and many skalds; and that is the Myresmen’s kin, and so all that which is come from Skallagrim.

Long held it in that line, that the men were strong and great fighting men, but some wise of understanding. That was great unlikeness of looks, whereas in that line have been bred up those men who have been fairest in Iceland, as was Thorstein Egilson and Kiartan Olafson, sister’s son to Thorstein, and Hall Gudmundson, so also Helga the Fair, Thorstein’s daughter, whom they strove for, Gunnlaug the Wormtongue and Skald-Hrafn; but the more part of the Myresmen were of men the ugliest.

Thorgeir, the son of Thorstein, was the strongest of those brethren, but Skuli
¹
was the biggest; he dwelt at Burg after the days of Thorstein his father. Skuli was long a-viking. He was forecastle-man to Earl Eric on
Ironbeak
, then when King Olaf Tryggvison fell. Skuli had had a-viking seven battles.

CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS

TERMINAL ESSAY

SOME PRINCIPLES OF TRANSLATION

E
NOUGH
has been said of the spirit and style of the classical Icelandic saga to make it clear that for an Englishman to render the sagas into his own language is to labour under no alien sky and dig no inhospitable soil. More than that: the Old Northern tongue (called Icelandic because it is only in Iceland that it survives in its purity as a living language, and because it was Icelanders that built up its classic literature of prose and verse) more than any other language resembles our own. The two languages are akin in word, syntax, and idiom. Hundreds of words
^*
are substantially the same in English and
Icelandic, and among them great numbers of the simple basic words belonging to things that are close to the roots of all human thought and action. Thus there is likeness of spirit and likeness of language; and a good translation, a recognizable shadow that being looked on recalls the features and movements of its original without much degradation or distortion, is certainly no impossible thing. Yet there are few good translations of sagas: perhaps only two good translators, and all the rest mostly bad. And the reason is, what?