GUNNAR IN THE FOREST HEARS TELL OF FREY AND HIS WONDERS
The course of the snow-slope brought Gunnar to rocks and a precipice
from a gorge in which descended a river of ice. Far below him he heard
the thunderous crash of water, and judged that in following that, if it
could be done, he would find his best chance of guiding his way through
the forest. The river would join another; that other must in time reach
the sea. So he determined to do; but it was easy talking. It took him
the best part of a day to get down the cliff. He spent a miserable night
crouched under a rock, and started off again in the morning almost
fasting. There was coarse grass now growing wherever there was hold for
it. In one of these he saw a white hare lying flat, and by a trick he
knew he fell his length upon her and secured her. He had no fire, and
made what he could of her raw and sinewy flesh. So replenished, he went
on his downward course, reached the waterfall bathed in sweat, and
followed it as nearly as might be down into the chill and silence and
darkness of the forest.
Day and night were alike to him now; for a time whose duration he took
no pains to guess at, he worked his way downwards, a more fearful toil,
with more of peril in it than any he had spent in climbing the ridge.
This great forest was untouched by the hand, unvisited by the foot of
man so far as he could understand. He saw no living thing, though high
above him he sometimes heard the battling of wings, and once or twice
hoarse cries which he judged must come from the air. He listened for
wolves or foxes, but heard none; he kept his eyes aware for the track
of roe-deer or bear, but vainly. All was silent and accursed. Except on
the banks of the torrent there was little vegetation to be seen, for
among the pine stems the needles lay close and deep upon the ground, and
nothing could live in such a soil or in such a chill and dank air.
Whither he went, or how far he had come, he knew not; for all his
steadiness of heart, the conviction turned him sick that if he did not
soon meet with men there would be one man less in the world.
"Better to have been hanging on a green tree in the warm and living air
than to slowly fritter away into corruption, and become bleached bones
here in the dark and cold." He looked back with wistfulness to such a
genial death. "Sigurd would have piled a cairn for me. He would have
grieved for me, and said prayers to his new God in the king's new
temple. Well, hanging is a man's death, as battle is. But to fight the
dark, to grow weak by chill and hunger, to be so lonely that not a raven
troubles about your dead eyes! This is a death for wolves--but not for
men who love to lie snug among their fellows."
These were his thoughts at the worst; at the best he felt that before
long he must hit upon a sign of life.
He was now on level ground, and true it was that he came at last upon a
clearing. A broad green road ran on either side of a ford in the river.
Here he stood and looked up at the blue sky, and saw how the sun made
the tree-tops seem cut out of gold. He forgot his emptiness, his
loneliness and dark forebodings. "Oh, now I see that the sun is a God
who loves men!"
As if that was true, and he was to be assured of it, a shaft of sunlight
struck the ford and turned his eyes that way. It clarified the water and
brought the stones into sight. Presently he saw a better thing: a
goodly fish lay in the deeper part, faintly swaying his tail. Gunnar
made a wide cast over the river and crawled up the bank on his belly. He
lay motionless, watching his prey, and then, inch by inch, approached
his hand to the belly of the fine fish. Inch by inch he went upwards to
the head; then, judging his time, snapped his fingers together into the
gills and jerked him out of the water. Here truly was a prize awarded
him by the sun. The fish was good eating. He ate him all but the head
and bones.
Now he must decide what to do, whether he should follow the river or the
road. If he followed the road, by which hand should he be guided? He was
not long in deciding the first issue. The sun and the sky were too dear
to him to be lost again. For the second, he was for following the sun,
which was high in the heavens. If it was noon, the road which ran into
the sun would lead him to the South. On the South also was the sea.
Besides all that there was to be said that the road had been cleared by
men, and must lead to the dwellings of men.
Strong in this assurance, he went briskly along a good green track. Now
he could tell night from day; now he saw birds flying overhead;
presently a fox trotted across the way in front of him, saw him and sat
up to watch. He barked shortly once or twice and then galloped into the
thicket. But Gunnar felt enheartened by the sight of him. After that he
heard wolves howling afar off, as their custom is at sunset. But the
great event of all was on the next day, when he saw two things, one
after the other, which made his heart beat. The first was a dog, which
the moment he caught sight of him pelted away up the track with his tail
clapped to his hinder parts; the second was a young woman. As he came
round a curve in the road she was standing in the middle of it at a
bowshot's distance. She was very pale, black-haired, short-kirtled and
barefoot. He stopped immediately to watch; but at that moment she saw
him and slipped among the trees. Gunnar ran with all his might; he
called; he shouted. No answer. He couldn't find her anywhere. No matter.
Sweden was inhabited. He would not die lonely. His heart was high to be
sure of that, and he went on rejoicing.
Next he came to an open place, a clearing in the trees where men had
lately been. He saw the ashes of their fire, bones, the skin of a goat.
He saw leaves and branches which had been slept upon; he saw the prints
of hoofs--ponies' or donkeys' hoofs. So he journeyed on, and at last
smelt the friendly smell of burning wood. "Now to accost the Swedes," he
said. "What will they make of me? Or I of them?"
Guided by the smell he was not long before he saw men about a great
fire. There may have been eight of them there. They looked black, and he
knew that they were charcoal-burners--which in fact they were. Taking
his life in his hands he went directly towards them, and when they saw
him, and scrambled to their feet in amazement, he lifted his hand in
greeting and came among them. They were cooking over their fire; a great
pot was bubbling. Their dogs came smelling about his calves; but they
themselves stood speechless where they were. "Do these blacks intend my
death?" he asked himself. He hoped not, but did not draw the sword.
Seeing that they did not move, and that their very dogs had now
withdrawn themselves and were barking uneasily at a distance, Gunnar
advanced with friendly gestures. Hereupon the men with one accord fell
to their knees and stooped their bodies until their faces touched the
earth. "Good souls, they take me for a God," he thought. He was now
fairly within the line of them, and stretching his hands over the fire.
The smell from the pot tickled his nostrils and brought water into his
mouth. How long was it since he had tasted cooked food? It was too much
for him. Forgetting the dangers of manhood and the honours of godhead
alike, he fished in the pot for a morsel, sat down and began to eat. He
found himself ravenous, and in good case to better himself; he might
have eaten the contents of the pot, but that by cautious degrees the
charcoal-burners began to consider him. He found bright eyes peering at
him from between sooty fingers. Finally one bolder than the rest lifted
his head, and fairly asked him if he were a man or a God. He spoke
hoarsely, but could be understood.
"Friend," Gunnar said, "you may see by my procedure that I am a man and
a hungry one, though not now so hungry as I was."
The man, at this, punched his neighbour of either side, and said, "Up,
for this is a man like ourselves." Presently they were all up and about
him, very curious.
"You come from afar off? You are not of this country? Whence then do you
come?"
Gunnar said that he was from Norway. They had never heard of Norway. One
of them said that he had lived all his days in the forest country and
had never seen a stranger before.
Gunnar pointed to the West. Norway, he said, lay over there, beyond the
mountains. They replied that he must be mistaken, because on the level
of the mountains was a great lake of snow and water in which the sun
dropped every night and was quenched with a furious hissing. They said
that you could hear it when the wind came that way, and that the
mountain-tops were covered with steam thrown up by the dying sun, which
sometimes stayed there for days at a time.
"And yet," Gunnar said, "every day the sun comes up again. How do you
account for that?"
They said that was easy to understand; for the lake had no bottom.
Therefore the sun dropped through, and when it had emerged kindled again
upon its flight through the air. And this went on for ever.
Gunnar said, "You tell me marvellous things. Now let me tell you some."
So he spoke of Norway and Iceland, and of the great ocean beyond Orkney;
and of Ireland, and the poets and holy men there. Then he went on to
talk of the inland sea where there were no tides, but only rushing
currents, and whirlpools and desperate storms. Lastly he spoke of
Micklegarth and of a sea beyond that again, which is called the Black
Sea, and of the terrible folding rocks which are on the edge of that.
To all of this they listened with open mouths.
When they inquired what had brought him into Sweden he frankly told them
how it was. They said that he was safe enough here, and that nobody
would do him any harm. "Few men fight here," they said. "The worst that
may happen to you is that you will go into the cage and be offered up to
Frey. But that is reckoned an honourable way of death. You serve Frey,
and you serve Frey's people, and you may be sure that Frey won't forget
it."
"It may be true," Gunnar said, "that Frey won't forget me, but we know
very little about Frey, never having seen him at any time; and for my
part I should not care to risk it."
They all looked at him in wonder. "But," said one of them, "everybody
has seen Frey."
"I assure you," said Gunnar, "that I have not--for one. And I'll answer
for every man in Norway."
"We know nothing of the Norwegians, of whom we hear for the first time,"
he was told; "but the people of this part have good reason to know Frey,
and to fear him, seeing he lives among them, and is now a day's and
night's journey from here. I myself," the speaker said, "saw him but
fourteen days ago, in his holy place."
"What is his holy place?"
The man said, "It is his temple where he lives when he is not upon his
rounds. All the winter he lives there with his wife, and the people
worship him and make feasts for him. But when the winter is over, and
the rains come to wash the world clean for the sun, Frey goes off in his
wagon and visits all the villages in turn, and blesses the grain and
makes it fertile. That is how the world goes on, and men get food for
their pains."
Gunnar was amazed. "Do you say that Frey has a wife?"
"I do say so, since it is true. But as yet she is not fruitful, which
vexes Frey."
"Let Frey consider himself," said Gunnar. "It is not always a wife's
fault if she is not fruitful."
"You may be sure that the fault is not Frey's," they said.
"I am not at all so sure," said Gunnar. "Does Frey do his duty by her?"
They said, "For certain he does. He has been married to her these two
years."
"There's time yet," said Gunnar; "these are early days. Is she a young
woman?"
"She is in the flower of her age. She must be sixteen years old."
"And is she of this country?"
"It is not certainly known. A woman from the South had her. She said
that her husband had been slain on the sea-coast; but no one here can
say anything of it because no one has ever seen the sea. Well, when the
girl was of marriageable age Frey chose her; so she was given him."
"And how did Frey choose her?"
"He took her."
Gunnar thought all this very remarkable, and said that he should himself
go to see Frey. They answered to that, that undoubtedly he would; for if
he did not they would be bound to take him, as an offering, since that
was Frey's pleasure.
"Does Frey demand human sacrifice?" Gunnar asked. They said that he did.
Gunnar said, "He shall be baulked of me; but I have a very handsome
cloak about me, which I shall give him as a present if he pleases to be
benevolent to me."
"All depends upon his wife," they told him. "She has the power of choice
in these matters." Gunnar said, "Leave me to deal with Frey's wife. I
have a way with women."