Chapter XVII The Hostel burning
Aground in the Fiord—The Light over the Water—Grettir Swims Across—The Fight for Fire—The Burned Hostel—At Drontheim
There lived a man named Thorir at Garth in Iceland who had spent the summer in Norway when Olaf returned from England, and he had stood in great favour with the king. He had two sons, and at this time both were well-grown men.
Thorir left Norway for Iceland, where he broke up his ship, not intending again to go a seafaring. But when he heard the tidings that Olaf was king over the whole of Norway, then he deemed it would be well for his sons to go there and pay their respects to the king, and remind him of his old friendship for their father.
On reaching Norway much about the same time as had Grettir, they took a long rowing-boat, and skirted the coast on their way north to Drontheim. They preceded Grettir by a few days. On reaching a fine fiord, in which there was shelter from the gales that began to bluster violently with the approach of winter, the sons of Thorir ran in their boat, and as there was a large wooden hostelry there built for the shelter of weather-bound travellers, they took refuge in it, and spent their days in hunting and their nights in revelry.
Now it so fell out that Grettir’s merchant ship came into this same fiord one evening and ran aground on the opposite shore to that on which was the hostel. The night was bitterly cold; storms of snow drove over the country, whitening the mountains. The men from the ship were worn out and numbed with cold, and they had no means of kindling a fire. Then, all at once, they saw a light spring up on the opposite side of the firth, twinkling cheerfully between the trees. This was a sight to make them more eager for a fire, and they began to wish that some one of their number would swim across and bring over a light.
“In the good old times there must have been men who would have thought nothing of swimming across the streak of water at night,” said Grettir.
“No comfort to us to know that,” said one of the crew. “It does not concern us what may have been in the past, we are shivering in the present. Why do you not get us fire?”
Grettir hesitated. The night was very like that on which he had fought with Glam: the same full moon, with snow-laden clouds rolling over its face for a while obscuring it, and then the full glare falling over the face of earth again; and, unaccountably, a sense of doubt and depression had come over him, as though that evil adversary were now about to revenge his downfall upon him. He looked round suddenly, for he thought that the fearful eyes were staring at him from out of the black shadows of the fir-wood.
The rest of the crew united in urging him, and at length, reluctantly, Grettir yielded. He flung his clothes off, and prepared himself to swim. He had on him a fur cape, and a pair of wadmal breeches. He took up an iron pot, and jumped into the sea and swam safely across.
On reaching the further shore, he shook the water off him, but before long his trousers froze like boards, and the water formed in icicles about the cape. Grettir ascended through the pine-wood towards the light, and on reaching the hostel from which it proceeded, walked in without speaking to anyone, and striding up to the fire, stooped and began to scrape the red-hot embers into his iron pot. The hall was full of revellers, and these revellers were the sons of Thorir and their boat’s crew. They were already more than half intoxicated, and when they saw a wild-looking man enter the hall, half naked and hung with icicles, they thought he must be a troll or mountain-spirit.
At once every one caught up the first weapon to hand, and rushed to the attack. Grettir defended himself with a fire-brand plucked from the hearth; the sons of Thorir stumbled over the fire, and the embers were strewn about over the floor that was covered with fresh straw.
In a few moments the hall was filled with flame and smoke, and Grettir took advantage of the confusion to effect his escape. He ran down to the shore, plunged into the sea and swam across.
He found his companions waiting for him behind a rock, with a pile of dry wood which they had collected during his absence. The cinders were blown upon, and twigs applied, till a blaze was produced, and before long the whole party sat rubbing their almost frozen hands over a cheerful fire.
Next morning the merchants recognized the fiord, and, remembering that a hostel stood on the further side, they crossed the water to see it, when—what was their dismay to find of it only a heap of smoking embers! From under some of the charred timber were thrust scorched human limbs. The chapmen, in alarm and horror, turned upon Grettir and charged him with having maliciously burned the house with all its inmates.
“See, now,” said Grettir, “I had a thought that this expedition would not bring luck. I would I had not taken the trouble to get fire for such a set of thankless churls.”
The ship’s crew raked out the embers, pulled aside the smoking rafters, in their search for the bodies. Some of these were not so disfigured but that they could recognize them. Moreover, they knew the ship that lay at anchor under the lee, hard by, and they saw that Grettir had brought the sons of Thorir to an untimely end. The indignation of the merchants became so vehement, and their fear so great that they might be implicated in the matter, that they drove Grettir from their company, and refused to receive him into their vessel for the remainder of their voyage. Grettir, in sullen wrath, would say no word of self-defence; he had to make his way on foot to Drontheim, where he resolved to lay the whole matter before the king.
The vessel reached Drontheim before him, and the news of the hostel burning roused universal indignation against Grettir.