From the Mouth of the Whale Read online

  ‘Fuddy man …!’

  Quite right; in the hayfield above the farm lay a pale bundle, of human appearance, furnished with both arms and legs, though not in the right places. I dismounted, placed the boy in Sigrídur’s arms and went to take a look at this novelty. It turned out to be an unfortunate old lady who had caught her petticoat on a jutting piece of stone while climbing over the wall. She had been hanging there with her legs in the air since the day before. I released the poor dear and turned her the right way up, and once she had recovered her wits she was able to tell us the truth about the wrecked and abandoned settlement. When they saw the approaching ships the locals had panicked, and to prevent the supposed corsairs from getting anything for their pains, they had smashed and destroyed everything they could, burning their belongings or sinking them in bogs, before running away to hide among the stony wastes and moors. So great had been the panic that she herself had been left behind, hanging upside down like a nightdress on a washing line. When questioned, the old woman was fairly certain that although she had been watching them from the wrong way up, the supposed corsairs had held their course due south, sailing on towards Steingrímsfjord. This was the first indication we had of how the arrival of great ocean-going ships could terrify our neighbours in that district. At around nine o’clock that evening we rode down off the moors into the Selárdalur Valley. Out on the fjord before us the magnificent craft lay at anchor. A tent had been pitched in the hayfield belonging to Reverend Ólafur of Stadur, from which carried a delicious smell of roasting meat, accompanied by the lively sound of musical instruments and voices with a strange inflexion. They were Basques, come from Spain to try their luck at harpooning whales in the Icelandic fjords. In the following weeks the new arrivals set about building a whaling station. It would appear that the ships had accommodated a whole village in their bellies, for in no time at all there arose a harbour and forge, kitchen huts and laundries, timber and rope workshops and ovens for rendering oil, built of wonderfully regular bricks. I paid Reverend Ólafur frequent visits to observe how they conducted the whaling and rendered the oil. The minister, who was on good terms with the whalers, willingly showed them to the hunting grounds, for he said it was a kindness on their part to cull the monsters, since the Icelanders themselves had lost the knowledge of how to harpoon whales. It was sheer pleasure to watch how nimbly the Basques killed the beasts, with a combination of cunning, daring and enviable skill. There was often good cheer among us on shore as we watched the harpooners’ small boats rocking on the red foaming crests of the waves while the titans wallowed in their own blood. The news quickly spread that the Spaniards only made use of the animals’ blubber, and now the foolish people who had made themselves destitute by destroying their farms when the ships arrived began to flock to the station. The whalers showed great generosity, selling the whale meat, with the minister as middleman, for whatever small items the locals had to barter, such as stockings and bone buttons, which saved the lives of the hapless beggars. Most notable of all, however, was the visit by the new sheriff of the West Fjords, the young Hamburg-educated Ari Magnússon. After inspecting the station and questioning the foreigners and locals about their trade, he struck a deal with the captain of the Basque fleet, Señor Juan de Argaratte, that the fee for whaling should be a tenth part of each catch, to be paid to the sheriff’s office in barrels of whale oil or their equivalent value in silver. It was a bargain to the satisfaction of both, but the Spaniards asked the Minister of Stadur to look after their copy of the licence, as it would be best placed with him should different captains sail to the whaling station the following year. Seventeen whales were caught that summer and the whalers were happy men. Come Michaelmas they dismantled the station and put out to sea. All reached home safely and their voyage was celebrated throughout the Basque country, where the news soon spread that in the far northern oceans off Iceland there was an inexhaustible supply of whales. In May of 1614, twenty-six whaling ships put out to sea from many different places on the north coast of Spain, though after an attack by English pirates only ten ships reached their destination. As before, the whalers set up camp and built their rendering ovens in Steingrímsfjord, though some occupied the bays and coves further north on the West Fjords peninsula. The friendly relations between the foreigners and locals continued; good service was provided and there was plenty of trading. The farmers, who had better wares to barter than the year before, were able to lay in stores of whale meat for the winter, dried or cured in brine, while in return the Spaniards received live sheep and calves, warm milk and fresh butter. Then Reverend Ólafur of Stadur died. His funeral was a memorable affair. The service held for him in his own church was Lutheran, but outside the Basques sang a Catholic mass for their benefactor. The service was led by Peter the Pilot, a Frenchman from the fleet captain Juan de Argaratte’s ship, Nuestra Señora del Carmen, and he gave me permission to attend the mass. But because such heathen popish practices had not been seen in Iceland for a lifetime, it caused a mixture of scandal and fear. There was a great deal of coming and going from the church. Men pleaded the call of nature but then sat with their breeches round their ankles by the churchyard wall; they may have had difficulty in emptying their bowels but they had none in using their eyes. When they went back into church they made a great show of shuddering and banned their wives and children from going outside lest they be corrupted by the heretics’ wicked ways. But not everyone had turned up in Stadur to pay their respects to the peace-maker, Reverend Ólafur. While the perfumed smoke rose from the Catholic priest’s incense, some crofters had made their way to a cove further down the fjord and were busy stealing meat from a half-flensed whale that the Basques kept on the beach there. With that the peace was at an end and there was no one left to hold back the rabble but the Sheriff of Ögur. He, however, ignored the captains’ complaints about the theft of meat, calling them ‘lying heathens’, for he had a scheme by which to make a better profit from the foreigners than he had done before. That coming winter Ari Magnússon intended to ask for the hand of Kristín, daughter of Bishop Gudbrandur of Hólar, and in order to be a worthy match he needed to increase his means substantially. The office of sheriff had provided leaner pickings than he had anticipated and although the whale tithe was considerable, it was not enough. The master of Ögur now banned all trade with the whalers, citing the same king’s law that he himself had broken when he made a deal with the Basques over the whaling licence. At the same time he began to spread tales of their overbearing behaviour. For their voyage south they were forced to buy provisions from him alone. The whale meat he received from them in return for his sheep and dairy products he sold on to the common people at a vastly inflated price. This trade was resented by everyone except the man responsible.

  A sledgehammer, three nails, a tree trunk and a crosspiece. When did a skilled craftsman first fiddle with a nail between his fingers, then happen to glance at the hammer that hung heavily at his side and see not the carpentry job in front of him but his brother nailed to a cross? What fisherman first toyed with the idea that it would be an excellent thing to stick large and small hooks in a man’s flesh? What blacksmith first raised his glowing tongs from the fire and was filled with the urge to crush his sister’s breast? What was he called, the horse-breaker who first used his whip on the back of the errand boy or lent his unbroken beasts to the authorities to tear the limbs from living people? What natural historian sees in water and fire the means by which to drown or burn a person, sees in the wind and plants the means to kill him by thirst or poison? Who first thought of employing all these useful objects to torture their fellow men to death? And why are they so easily converted into lethal instruments in the hands of man? Why may a knife not simply be a knife for carving wood, for slicing mutton from the bone or harvesting angelica? Why does the sharp blade invariably find an easy path to the jugular vein of one’s fellow man? And how can the bloody instruments of murder then return to the world of practical use? Nobody knows, least of a
ll me. One can still find tools in the Strandir district that today play an indispensable role in people’s lives but twenty-two years ago were used for unspeakable atrocities, like the men who wielded them. Auger, awl, shovel, axe and spade, all turned to weapons in their hands. I am assailed by such terrible images of my Basque friends’ fate that they heat up the inside of my head like flames in a furnace. Flinging off the sheepskin, I roll out of bed on to the kitchen floor, clamber to my feet and run out of the hut in nothing but my shirt and stockings. The winter night administers an icy slap of snow and for one blessed moment the searing memories subside. Only to flare up again with tenfold force, and over the unbearable, ghastly scenes I hear sung the words of ‘The Spanish Ballad’ that my old friend Sorcery-Láfi composed in the New Year of 1615 at the instigation of Ari Magnússon, who then sent his poet out to recite this travesty at evening entertainments throughout the district. Which that wretch Láfi did in his squeaky, insistent voice, sucking on his blackened teeth between verses:

  Wherever they go these villains are always the same,

  rustling cattle and stealing sheep is their game,

  and not so much as a penny they’ll leave to your name.

  Filching butter and flour and every fish that we own;

  the poor man’s flesh was stripped from his bone,

  while the frost hardened and wind did moan.

  Aghast at these antics men and women did gaze

  but fearing the tyrants, no protest dared raise;

  ’tis shocking to see how such wickedness pays.

  Thus the big man of Ögur incited poor Láfi to blow on the flames of the locals’ prejudice and hatred of Spaniards. If the whalers ever returned to the West Fjords, they would have nowhere to turn for their trade but to the tyrant himself. And so often were the polemical verses recited that by the beginning of summer people had come to believe them better than their own stories of fair dealings with the foreign heroes of the deep. Alas, at the beginning of June three whaling ships reached land after a perilous journey through the sea ice which still loomed off shore although the almanac showed it to be summer. At first the odd farmer ventured to trade with the Basques but this soon stopped because wherever Ari Magnússon went he sniffed at people’s cooking pots and the smell of whale meat was hard to disguise. The captains of the two smaller ships, Domingo de Arguirre and Esteban de Tellaria, put up with this state of affairs, having no doubt experienced harsher conditions in their whaling stations on Jan Mayen. But the third captain was on his first trip to Iceland and found it hard to understand why his fellows and the servile local peasants should respect Ari’s ban on trade. His name was Martinus de Villefranca, a young man of great promise who had taken over Nuestra Señora del Carmen on this voyage. To support him he had my good friend Peter the Pilot, but no doubt he took the occasional sheep from the mountainside in spite of the pilot’s warnings. Martinus was not only handsome but unusually hardy and did what no other captain had done before: he went out himself on the harpoon boats. So the summer passed, with few whales, frequent accidents and monotonous fare. But the first real test of the master of Ögur’s new dictate came that autumn when the whalers prepared to return home to the Basque country with their meagre haul. By then the weather resembled midwinter, ice lay right up to the head of the fjord and for weeks the sky had been upholstered in black from dawn to dusk. I wade through the snow from the door of my hut, abandoning the little shelter that the hovel provides against the north wind, and trudge down to the foot of the mound where the buffeting is even worse, though it would take more, much more, to blow out the fires of my nightmare. The blizzard lashes me from without; a bonfire consumes me from within. The Tuesday after Saint Matthew’s Day, that is the nineteenth of September, the whaling ships assembled in the fjord which is now known as Reykjafjord, Smoky Fjord, but used to be called Skrímslafjord or Monster Fjord. There the captains divided up the haul and prepared their vessels for the homeward voyage. Although the catch could have been better, the fishermen were glad that the season was over and singing carried across the water from their ships towards dawn. Then the wind began to pick up and blew into a terrible tempest. During the night icebergs had drifted into the path of Esteban’s and Domingo’s vessels and before they could prevent them their ships broke their moorings and were driven by the icebergs towards the cliffs where their hulls crashed together. Nevertheless, by quick thinking the veteran captains managed to free their vessels from one another and eventually made it out to sea. The young Martinus, on the other hand, succeeded in raising his anchor and sailing down the fjord, but there he had to admit defeat and his great ship drifted out of control before the incredible wind, running aground on a stony beach where it rocked to and fro until the timbers of the hull eventually gave way under the strain and split with a loud groan. First the helm broke, then the ship was holed below the waterline and the sea poured in. The crew members pulled out their prayer books and prayed aloud with much shedding of tears. When Ari of Ögur heard what had happened he sounded the trumpet for battle against the shipwrecked men, ordering the farmers to take part at their own expense, against the promise of a share in the booty as a reward for each man they overcame. I alone of the Strandir men excused myself from the call-up, claiming that I had business south on the Snæfellsnes peninsula and would rather pay a fine for shirking the fray than let down the man who awaited me there. I lacked the courage to condemn the campaign as a heinous crime, but my action was enough to earn me threats and curses from the commander, who later made sure they all came true. Naturally Ari would have had me killed there and then had he known that following the death of Reverend Ólafur I had become custodian of the contract that he had made with the whalers, whom he had first cheated by deceitful wiles and now intended to deprive of both life and property. While the Basques struggled ashore in the dire conditions, some swimming or dog-paddling among the wreckage, others crawling on to the ice and razor-sharp rocks, the peasants armed themselves with tools, calling them weapons, and set out to meet the shipwrecked men. They caught Peter the Pilot first, along with a small group who had sought shelter in an abandoned fisherman’s hut. They were ambushed in their sleep; Peter’s head was resting on a psalter when it was smashed by a hammer blow, followed by a thrust from a knife through the heart and into the spine. Beside the pilot lay his burly companion, Lazarus, who, woken by the thud of the blow, tried to escape. He was slashed across the kneecaps, then set on by all who could reach him, yet he managed to keep them busy for quite a while. In an inner room they found the barber, stoker and washer boy, whom they also hacked to pieces. After that the bodies were stripped of their clothes and laid naked on stretchers. It was then that two objects were discovered on Peter’s breast, the holy relics and his crucifix, which the warriors claimed were instruments of black magic, and even though they had failed to save him, none of them dared touch them. The dead were carried to the edge of a cliff, where they were lashed together and their naked, bloody corpses were sunk in the deep like heathens rather than poor innocent Christian men. When a great fork of lightning in the likeness of a sword struck the mountain, the leader declared that his followers should construe it as a sign of victory. After sailing back up and across the sound, in a tempest so fierce that it was barely possible to stay afloat, the mob reached the deserted farm where Martinus de Villefranca had taken refuge. He could be seen through the window, sitting beside a small fire with some of his men, while the rest were in the main room around a larger fire, over which they were drying their clothes. A man was set to guard every window and door, and when the leader gave the signal, many shots were fired inside. Martinus was heard to cry that he had not been aware that his crimes were so great that he and his men deserved to be shot down. Among the war band was the Minister of Snjáfjöll, Reverend Jón ‘the Ghost-father’, who was made to address the captain in Latin. In the end Martinus emerged from the hut, crawling on his knees with his hands in the air, and with tear-soaked face thanked Master Ari Magnússo
n for granting him and his men quarter. At that moment a man leapt forward with a great axe and struck at Martinus, aiming for his neck but hitting his collar bone instead and making only a small gash. Recoiling violently from the blow, Martinus took to his heels and fled from the hut down to the sea. It looked as if he was lying on the waves, stroking his head with one hand and his thigh with the other, swimming sometimes on his back, sometimes with arms whirling in the air, sometimes on his front, turning his head from side to side. A boat was launched with great palaver, containing men, weapons and stones, to defeat this Viking. When Martinus saw this he swam further out to sea, chanting in Latin all the while. Many thought it a wonder to hear his skill at singing. Those in the boat chased him with grim determination but he swam like a seal or fish, though one man boasted of having struck him with a spear while he was diving under the keel. Only when a farmer’s boy managed to hit the swimmer on the forehead with a stone did his strength at last fail, and not until then. He was towed to the beach and stripped of all his clothes. As the man lay stark naked on the sand, eyes closed and groaning, one of the heroes stabbed him with his knife, cutting him in one slash from breastbone to groin. Martinus jerked violently, coiled up, then managed to get up on all fours, at which his guts fell out and after that he moved no more. The war band roared with laughter and many jostled close to see the man’s insides but their view was obscured by the blood. Afterwards Martinus’s hacked-apart body was sunk in the sea. At that the storm dropped, giving way to a calm which men attributed to the power of the foreign necromancer’s body. Now an assault was made on the remaining Basques, after which none of the shipwrecked men from Nuestra Señora del Carmen had any need to beg for quarter. Guards were placed on all the exits and a hole was made in the turf roof. The sheriff’s younger brother climbed up on to the wall and picked off the enemies one by one with his pistol. As their numbers dwindled, the remaining men tried to hide in nooks and crannies or under beds. At this point a warrior was sent inside with a pitchfork to drive them out of their hiding places into the middle of the room where it was easier to put a bullet in them. The battle ended with every man falling, including the big Spaniard who many had feared would be hard to handle even unarmed. Finally, when all were thought to be dead, feeble-minded Martin was discovered in the cowshed; a cooper from Martinus’s ship, known for his simple nature, who had been hiding in a manger all night. The man who found him did not have the heart to kill him, so he led him out to the mob. As the poor soul knelt there, mixing up his ‘Christus, Christus’, and imploring them not to kill him, Ari Magnússon replied that he should be given quarter and taken into custody. But instead of taking him away, the guards led him into the thick of the mob where one of them split open his forehead with a poker while another struck him from behind with a dung shovel, and with the latter blow that caught him on the back of the neck, feeble-minded Martin fell down dead. This blow signalled the end of the battle, with victory to the Ögur band. The warriors were now eager to divide up all the spoils they had been promised, but at this point there was a change of tune and suddenly all valuables that remained in the wreck or were washed up on shore were declared Crown property and no one was permitted to touch them except Sheriff Ari Magnússon. They were welcome to keep the slain men’s bloody rags but Martinus’s large, heavy treasure chest and other flotsam salvaged from the shore were taken back to Ögur. As before, the naked corpses of the slain were sunk in the sea, though first various indignities were visited on their bodies, since the commander had announced that the warriors could do what they liked with the dead. So their genitals were hacked off, their eyes put out, their throats cut, their ears sliced off and their navels pierced. After this, holes were bored in the necks and hips of the dead and they were lashed together with rope like stockfish on a string, yet still they kept washing ashore, though they were thrown out to sea again and again for it was forbidden to bury or raise a mound over them, on pain of flogging or being stripped of one’s worldly goods. Even the place names of the battlefield were changed for the worse, their beauty fading to match the consciences of those who slew the Basques: where previously the valley had been called Unadsdalur, or the Valley of Delight, now it was merely Dalur, or Valley. Sólvellir, the Sunny Plains, are now Hardbalar, the Hard Pastures. Bjartifoss, the Bright Falls, is now Magrifoss, the Lean Falls. The rocky hillside with its flowery ledges, once known as Sunny Slope, is now the Black Crag. And today at Ögur they call the spit Óbótatangi, the Spit of Infamous Deeds, where once it was the Boathouse Spit, for it was there that most of the bodies washed ashore and long drifted back and forth by Master Ari’s landing place, a gift for scavengers and a warning to the servants. Alas, such are the visions that drive an old man outside in nothing but his shirt and stockings into the searing cold of the blizzard on this, the blackest of all nights. But it does not help; the visions will not go away.