The Guests of Odin (5 page)

Meanwhile Hagbard’s brother Haki won fame and fortune when he and his warriors, who included Starkad the Old, sailed to Sweden and fought King Hugleik. Two brothers came to Hugleik’s aid, Svipdag and Geigad. They met on the Fyris Wolds and after a long battle, defeated King Hugleik’s army.

Despite this, Svipdag and Geigad charged forward, but Haki’s twelve champions, led by Starkad, went against them, six on one, and they were taken captive. Now Haki forced through the shield-ring surrounding Hugleik, and he killed the king and two of his sons. The Swedes fled, and King Haki became king of Sweden.

Now Haki heard of Hagbard’s death, and he collected a fleet in the bay called Hervig, although Starkad deserted him. Dividing his fleet into three, he sent two-thirds forwards, while a few men rowed up the river Susa to give aid to the foot-troops. Haki went with the remaining third overland, travelling through the forests to avoid being spotted. When they left the cover of the trees, they cut down boughs from the trees and carried them before them, carrying naked swords.

Sigar received a report of a forest advancing on him. The king thought this was an omen of his own death. Sigar retreated from the town to find a more level and open battlefield. He fought Haki at a spring named Valbrunna, where he was slain. Haki returned to his kingdom.

Now he found himself challenged for his throne by Jorund and Eirik, King Hugleik’s cousins, who had been living as Vikings all this time. They had heard that Starkad had abandoned the king and now they sailed towards Sweden, after gathering a large fleet. When they landed in Sweden, the people flocked to join them. The brothers reached Lake Malaren and advanced towards Uppsala, meeting King Haki with his smaller force on the Fyris Wolds. In the battle that followed, King Haki went valiantly forward, cutting down everyone around him until he reached King Eirik and slew him too, and cut down the bannerman. King Jorund and his men fled the field and returned to their ships.

But Haki had been so badly wounded in the battle that he knew his death was close. He ordered that a longship be loaded with his slain warriors and their weapons, and taken to sea with the sails hoisted. Then he had the ship fired and he went to lie down among his slain comrades while the wind drov
e the ship far out into the sea.

Amlodi

Geirvandill ruled over the Jutes until his cousin Vadilgaut of the Angles defeated him in battle. Vadilgaut established his power over the Jutes, but appointed Geirvandill’s sons Aurvandill and Feng as under-kings. Aurvandill reigned for three years, and then decided to win for himself a wife. He heard of the princess Gerutha, fairest woman in the world, who was imprisoned in a tower in Jotunheim, surrounded and guarded over by giants. Aurvandill set out north with his fleet, bound for the land of the giants, but for three years his progress was hindered by the ice, until finally a storm freed them. Then the fleet sailed on to a land governed by a giant named Beli, who Aurvandill defeated in a sea-battle.

But then his ship was wrecked, and Aurvandill came floating on a plank to an island where he was rescued by a man in a fishing boat. But Aurvandill soon saw that the man was no ordinary fisherman: he had a castle with seven towers, and a host of fishermen served under him. In truth, he was the god Thor, who in the northern oceans had once caught the world-serpent on his hook.

After many other adventures, Aurvandill came to Odainsakr, where Gerutha was imprisoned. Thor himself showed him the way. Aurvandill found Gerutha surrounded by giants and monsters, who spent their time fighting each other, but still waited upon the fair maiden as their princess. When Aurvandill approached, the giants tried to take his life, and he was hard pressed to defend himself.

But he came at last to Gerutha’s bower, where she received him with a kiss and a greeting, knowing that he was to be her husband. Once Aurvandill had defeated all the giants, they celebrated a kind of wedding, but between them lay a two-edged sword, and they slept like brother and sister by each other’s side before sailing back to Jutland.

Aurvandill had now spent three years in valiant deeds of war, and to win Vadilgaut’s favour, he gave the king the pick of his plunder. He married Gerutha, and she bore him a son named Amlodi. For many years they lived in peace.

But Feng, Aurvandill’s brother, was jealous at his good luck, and after much brooding he decided to murder his brother. When the chance came to do this, he seized upon it, and then married Gerutha, telling the people that Aurvandill had greatly ill-treated her.

“It was to save her that I slew my brother,” he told the people. “I thought it was shameful that she should suffer her husband’s abuse.” And he was widely believed.

Amlodi was one who put no credence in his uncle’s claims. But fearing Feng might suspect him, he feigned madness.

Every day he lay by the hearth of his mother’s house, rolling in the dirt. Nothing that he said was anything other than madness. At other times he would sit over the fire, fashioning wooden crooks, hardening them in the fire and shaping barbs at their ends to make them hold more tightly.

Someone asked him what he was doing. “I am preparing sharp javelins to avenge my father,” was his crazy reply. Everyone scoffed at this: but it helped him afterwards.

But these words made some of Feng’s thanes suspect a cunning mind beneath the mad behaviour. “His skill suggests he has the hidden talent of a craftsman,” said one of them to the king.

“His mind is quick enough,” said another, “and he only acts the fool to hide some other intentions.”

“Can you prove his deceitfulness?” asked Feng thoughtfully.

“We would, my lord,” said a thane, “if we put a beautiful woman in his way, in some secluded place, and tempt him to acts of love. All men are too blind in love to be cunning.”

So Feng sent his thanes to take the young man to a remote part of the forest, and do all that they thought necessary.

Among them was Amlodi’s foster-brother, who did not want to trap Amlodi, but decided to warn him if he could. He could see that Amlodi would suffer the most if he behaved sanely, and if he made love to the girl openly. But Amlodi was aware of this also. When the men asked him to mount his horse, he sat upon it backwards, putting the reins on the tail. They rode on, and a wolf crossed Amlodi’s path through the thicket.

“A young colt has met you,” said one of the thanes, laughing at his own wit.

“In Feng’s stud there are too few of that kin
d fighting,” said Amlodi. There were some frowns at this, which seemed to them a more cunning answer than they had expected.

“Your answer is
witty,” said the first thane, ruefully.

“I speak nothing but truth,” replied Amlodi. He had no wish to be seen to lie about anything, and he mingled truth with wit to reveal nothing about the matter or about himself.

They came to the beach, where the thanes found the steering-oar of a wrecked ship. “Look, Amlodi,” said one, “we have found a huge knife!”

“Then it was the right thing to carve so big a ham,” Amlodi replied. There was laughter at this, but in fact he meant the sea, which matched the steering-oar in vastness.

As they rode past the dunes, one said: “Look at this meal!” referring the sand.

“The tempests of the ocean have ground it small,” Amlodi replied.

“That’s not the answer of a fool,” said the thane.

“I spoke it wittingly,” replied Amlodi.
And in after days the sea was known in poetry as Amlodi’s Mill.

Then the thanes left him, so he could pluck up the courage for love-making. In a dark place he encountered his foster-sister, who was the woman Feng had sent to tempt him. He took her, and would have slept with her immediately, had her brother not given him some idea that this was a trap. For the man had attached a straw to the tail of a gadfly, which he had sent in Amlodi’s direction, and Amlodi guessed from this that it was a secret warning to beware treachery. So he dragged the maid off to a distant fen, where they made love. Before they did so, Amlodi secretly laid down three objects he had gathered during the journey. Once they had lain together, he asked her earnestly to tell no one. She agreed in view of their long friendship.

When he returned home, the thanes were waiting for him. “Did you give way?” asked one slyly.

“Why, I ravished the maid,” he replied.

“Where did you commit the act?” asked another. “And what was your pillow?”

“I rested on the hoof of a donkey, a cockscomb, and a ceiling,” replied Amlodi, and all laughed at the mad reply, but in truth, it had been fragments of these three objects that Amlodi had laid down on the ground before sleeping with his foster-sister.

“Is what this madman says true?” they asked the girl.

“He did no such thing!” she replied firmly. Also Amlodi’s escort agreed that it would have been impossible.

Then Amlodi’s foster-brother said: “Latterly, I have been singly devoted to you, brother.”

In reply, Amlodi said: “I saw a certain thing bearing a straw flit by suddenly, wearing a stalk of chaff fixed to its hind parts.”

Although the others laughed, his foster brother rejoiced.

So none of them had succeeded in tricking Amlodi. But one of Feng’s thanes, in council, said: “No simple plot can prove Amlodi’s cunning. “His obstinacy is great, and his wiliness is many-sided.”

“Then what do you suggest?” asked the king.

“I have thought of a better way, which will certainly help us learn what we wish. My lord, you must leave the palace, claiming that affairs of state take you elsewhere. Closet Amlodi alone with his mother in her chamber, but first place a man in hiding in the room to listen to their speech. If Amlodi has any wits he will not hesitate to trust his mother.”

Feng nodded approvingly. He left the court claiming to be on a long journey. His thane went secretly to Gerutha’s chamber, and hid himself in the straw. But Amlodi was ready for any treachery. Afraid of eavesdroppers, he crowed like a noisy cock on entering the room, flapping his arms as if they were wings. Then he began to jump up and down on the straw to see if anything lurked there. Feeling a lump under his feet, he drove his sword in, and impaled the thane. Then he dragged the man from hiding and slew him. After that he hacked the body into pieces, seethed them in boiling water, and flung them into an open sewer for the pigs to eat. Now he returned to his mother’s chamber, where she lamented his madness. But he reproached her for her conduct, and tore her heart with his words.

When Feng returned, he could find his thane nowhere. Jokingly, he asked Amlodi, among others, if he had seen him.

“Your thane went to the sewer, but he fell in and drowned in filth,” Amlodi replied with a wild grin. “Then the swine ate him.”

Feng shook his head in disgust at this apparent nonsense.

Now Feng was certain that his stepson was full of guile and treachery, and he wished to slay him, but did not dare do this openly for fear of his wife. Instead, he decided to ask his old friend the King of England to kill him, so that he could claim ignorance of the deed.

Before Amlodi went, he went to his mother in secret. “Hang the hall with woven knots,” he told her enigmatically. “And if I do not return after a year, perform obsequies for me. Then will I return.”

Two of Feng’s thanes went with him, taking with them a runic message to the King of England, asking him to execute their charge. On board ship, while his two companions were sleeping, Amlodi searched them, found the message, and read the runes. Then he scratched clean the stave, and cut his own message to the effect that his companions should be put to death, not he. In a postscript he asked that the King of England give his daughter in marriage to “a youth of great judgement” who he was sending. He signed it with his uncle’s signature.

When they reached England, the envoys went to the ruler, and gave him the rune-stave. The king read it, and then gave them good entertainment. But when Amlodi had the meat and drink of the feast placed before him, he rejected it.

“How incredible,” people were heard to murmur, “that a foreign lad should turn his nose up at the dainties of the royal table as if it were some peasant’s stew.”

When the feast was over, and the king was bidding goodnight to his friends, he sent a man to the quarters assigned to Amlodi and his companions to listen to their speech.

“Why did you act as if the king’s meat was poisoned?” asked one of the thanes.

“Blood flecked the bread,” replied Amlodi. “Did you not see it? And there was a tang of iron in the mead. As for the meat, it smelled like rotting flesh. Besides, the king has the eyes of a thrall, and in three ways the queen acted like a bondmaid.”

His companions jeered at him for his words.

Meanwhile, the king heard all this from his spy. “He who could say such things,” the king remarked, “must possess either more than mortal wisdom, or more than mortal folly.”

He summoned his reeve, and asked him where he the bread came from. “It was made by your own baker, my lord,” replied the reeve.

“Where did the corn of which it was made grow?” asked the king. “Are there any signs of carnage in the vicinity?”

The reeve replied. “Nearby is a field where men fought in former days,” he said. “I planted this field with grain in spring, thinking it more fruitful than the others.” He shrugged. “Maybe this affected the bread’s flavour.”

Hearing this, the king assumed that Amlodi had spoken truly. “And where did the meat come from?

“My pigs strayed from their keeper,” the reeve admitted. “And they were found eating the corpse of a robber. Perhaps it was this that the youth could taste.”

“And of what liquor did you mix the mead?”

“It was brewed of water and meal,” replied the reeve. “I could show you the spring from which the water came.”

He did so, and when the king had it dug deep down, he found there several rusted swords.

After this, the king went to speak with his mother. “Who was my real father?” he asked.

“I submitted to no man but the king your father,” she replied.

He threatened to have the truth out of her with a trial, and she relented. “Very well,” she replied. “If you must know, your real father was a thrall.”

By this, the king understood Amlodi’s words. Although ashamed of his lowly origins, the king was so amazed by Amlodi’s cleverness that he asked him to his face why he had said the queen behaved like a bondmaid. But then he found that her mother had indeed been a thrall.

Amlodi told the king that he had seen three faults in her behaviour. “To begin with,” he said, ‘she muffles her head in her mantle like a handmaid. Secondly, she picks up her gown when she walks. Thirdly, I saw her pick a piece of food from her teeth and then eat it.” He went on to say that the king’s mother had been enthralld after captivity, in case she might seem servile only in her habits, rather than her birth.

The king praised Amlodi’s wisdom as if it was inspired, and in accordance with the message from Feng, gave him his daughter as wife. On the next day, to fulfil the rest of the message, he had Amlodi’s companions hanged. Amlodi feigned anger at this, and the king gave him gold in wergild, which he melted in the fire, and poured into two hollowed-out sticks.

After spending a year with the king, he asked leave to make a journey, and sailed back to his own land, taking with him only the sticks containing the gold. When he reached Jutland, he dressed again in his old rags, and entered the banquet hall covered in filth. Here he found the people holding his wake, and he struck them aghast, since all believed him to be dead. But in the end, their terror turned to laughter. The guests jeered and taunted each other.