XII
It soon became evident to Ingolf that on that spring day he had not buried Orn only. He had also interred with his father his home-feeling, his peace and confidence in this region of his childhood and youth. Already, when on the first morning after the burial he stepped out of the house and saw his father’s mighty barrow lift its dome in the landscape, it struck him all at once that the district had assumed an alien aspect. The confidence in the contours and colours, which has its root in the child’s free look and strong, unconscious sense of belonging to the spot where he has grown up, was gone. The landscape had suddenly lost its light in his eyes. He felt thrust out and lonely. It was not here that he should live his life.
Hitherto it had not been really clear to him what a profound change his life would undergo because of Haasten’s sentence. The fact that he was now homeless had, as it were, not yet broken on him in its full extent. Now he saw suddenly what Haasten’s sentence really implied—a complete alteration of his whole life. First, years perhaps must be spent in search and insecurity. And then a battle for life and death with inner and outer powers, in order to gain home-feeling and home-rights in a foreign land.
Ingolf felt from his own experience that the race which has not its own soil to grow in is doomed to misfortune and ruin. The possession of land stamps the race. The man who could be sentenced to lose his possessions was exiled from the earth—this was what Ingolf felt now. Such a man must gain earth’s favour anew by his honest will to live in peace on earth’s fruits.
Ingolf’s hitherto unconscious instinct of opposition to force of all kinds was now suddenly revealed to him. That which had now happened to him was not undeserved, even if the blame for the outer cause of the misfortune could not be imputed either to him or to Leif.
He had continued to ravage foreign lands and to pillage people with whom he had not the least quarrel. From a kind of secret cowardice he had suppressed the unwillingness he had felt in doing so, as unworthy of a man and a Viking. But now he saw that law and right extend beyond the borders of one’s own country. They are valid wherever there is land and sea. The man who aims at living by force and pillage, not only sins against the law which he carries within him, but also against the earth—the sacred earth, which by the grace of the gods is so luxuriant and fruitful that every year it is ready to fill the peaceful barns. As long as the Ases had still reigned undisputed there was peace in their dwellings. The Ases had been driven to conflict and war by the dark powers who were responsible for all disturbance. Thus all disturbance and violence came from the evil power. Ingolf vowed to himself that from that day he would never lift a weapon against any man except to protect his own and his family’s life and property. That resolve somewhat soothed the disquiet and restlessness which had seized him when he became conscious of his homelessness, and suddenly felt himself exiled from the kindness of the earth. The bright Ases would still grant his family a home and prosperity when they saw his honest purpose and clean struggle. The earth would yet take him into favour again when he no longer defiled it with blood and violence, would fulfill his most sacred, yes, his only wish, that his family-tree might be leafy and strong-stemmed. Since fate had granted him Hallveig as a wife, it could scarcely intend to exclude him from the earth.
Ingolf thought much of the far and foreign land away in the west which he was to travel to. Was it there that his family’s cradle for the future should be? Was it there that the pillars of his high-seat should consecrate the earth for him?
He dared not believe it yet. Neither did he dare to go to the gods and ask them. He himself had to seek his future home. He must win again what had been lost here by his own fault. He wished to commit himself to the power of the sky and sea without first seeking instruction from the gods. He would match his own strength and will against storm and sea as a pledge and sign. He would not beg; he would gain by fighting the favour of fate and of the gods.
Now that his father was dead, he was himself the eldest and chief of the family. The responsibility for the honour of the dead, and the honour and prosperity of the unborn, rested principally on him. For now he alone wore the family bracelet, and now the high-seat was also his.