Things draw on to an End
But Nial’s enemies were loth to wait for his clearing at law, and they
planned to bring about his death and the death of his sons. A man Flosi
was at the head of these conspirators, and he it was who gathered
together the party of men who had agreed to kill Nial.
They all met together in Flosi’s house, Grani, Gunnar’s son, and
Gunnar, Lambi’s son, and others with them.
Now about that time strange portents were seen at Bergthors-knoll,
Nial’s home, and from that Nial and Bergthora his wife guessed that the
end was near; but Skarphedinn laughed their fears to scorn.
[Illustration: _The Vision of the Man on the Grey Horse_]
A Christian man went out one night of the Lord’s day, nine weeks before
the winter season, and he heard a crash, and the earth rocked beneath
his feet. Then he looked to the west, and he saw a ring of fire moving
toward him, and within the ring a man riding on a grey horse. He had
a flaming firebrand in his hand, and he rode hard: he and the flaming
ring passed the watcher by and went down towards Bergthors-knoll. Then
he hurled the firebrand into Nial’s house, and a blaze of fire leapt up
and poured over the house and across the fells. And it seemed that the
man rode his horse into the flames and was no more seen Then the man
who watched knew that the rider on the grey horse was Odin, who ever
comes before great tidings. He fell into a swoon and lay senseless a
long time.
Not long after this an old wizened woman who lived in Nial’s service
went out into the yard behind the house with a cudgel in her hand.
Nial’s sons called her the Old Dotard, because she would go about the
house babbling to herself, leaning on her crutch; but for all that
she was wise in many things and foresighted, and some things that
she prophesied came to pass. She was ever murmuring about a stack
of vetches that was piled up in the yard, that they should bring it
indoors, or move it farther away, and to soothe her they promised they
would do so; but the days went on, and something always hindered it.
This day she took her cudgel and began beating the vetch-stack with all
her might, wishing that it might never thrive, wretch that it was!
Skarphedinn stood watching her, holding his sides with laughter. He
asked her why she beat the vetch-stack; what harm it had done to her.
“It has not harmed me, but it will harm my master,” she said; “for when
they need firing for the fire that will burn my master, it is to the
vetch-stack they will come, and they will light the house with it; take
it away, therefore, and cast it into the water, or burn it up as fast
as you can.”
Skarphedinn thought it a pity to waste the vetch, so he said: “If it is
our doom to die by fire, something else will be found to light the fire
with even though the stack be not here. No man can escape his fate.”
The whole summer the old woman was muttering about the vetch-stack, but
time went on and nothing was done.
One evening, as usual, Bergthora prepared the supper, and she spoke to
those about her and said: “Let everyone choose what he would like best
to eat to-night, and I will prepare it for him, for it is in my mind
that this is the last meal that I shall prepare for you.”
They asked her what she meant by that, and then she told them that
she had heard tidings that a large party was riding toward the house,
with Flosi at its head, and she thought it likely that this night
would be their last. Nial said that they would sup and that then they
would prepare themselves. When they sat down Nial sat at the head of
the board, but he ate nothing, and they saw that he seemed to be in a
trance. At last he spoke and said: “Methinks I see blazing walls all
round this room, and the gable is falling above our heads, and all
the board is drenched with blood. It is strange that you can bring
yourselves to eat such bloody food!”
Then all that sat there rose, with terror on their faces, and they
began to cry out and say that they must save themselves before their
enemies came upon them. But Skarphedinn spoke up cheerfully, and bade
them behave like men. “We more than all others should bear ourselves
well when evil comes upon us, for that is only what will be looked for
from us,” he said.
So they cleared the board, and Nial bade no man go to sleep, but to
prepare themselves for what might befall. Then they went outside the
door and waited. Counting Kari and the serving-men, they made near
thirty gathered in the yard and about the house.
As it was getting dark they heard footsteps approaching, for the men
with Flosi had tethered their horses in a dell not far from the house,
and had waited there till sundown. Nial said to his sons: “A great
body of men seems to be approaching, but they have made a halt beyond
the house. I think they are more in number than ourselves, and that
it would be better for us to go inside the house and fight them from
there; the house is strong, and they will be slow to come to close
quarters.”
Skarphedinn did not think well of that. “These men,” he said, “are come
out for no fair fight; they are come to do a foul and evil deed, and
they will not turn back till we all are dead, for they will fear our
revenge. It is likely that they will burn us out, dastards that they
are, and I for one have no liking to be stifled indoors like a fox run
to earth.”
“In the old days,” said Nial, “when ye were young, it was ever my
counsel that ye sought, and your plans went well; but now I am old ye
will have your own way.”
“We had better do what our father wills,” said Helgi; “whether his
counsel be good or bad, it were best for us to follow it.”
“I am not sure of that,” said Skarphedinn, “for the old man is doting.
But if it humours my father to have us all burnt indoors with him, I am
as ready for it as any of you, for I am not afraid of my death.”
With that they all went indoors, and Flosi, who was watching what they
would do, turned to his comrades and smiled. “The wise sons of Nial
have all gone mad to-night,” he said, “since they have shut themselves
up in the house; we will take care that not one of them comes out alive
again.”
Then they took courage and went up close to the house, and Flosi set
men on every side to watch that no one escaped by any secret way. But
he and his own men went round to the front, where Skarphedinn stood in
the doorway. One of the men, seeing Skarphedinn there, ran at him with
his spear to thrust him through. But Skarphedinn hewed off the spear
head with his axe, and then with one stroke of his weapon laid the man
dead.
“Little chance had that one with thee, Skarphedinn,” said Kari; “thou
art the bravest of us all.”
“I am not so sure of that,” said Skarphedinn, but he drew up his lips
and smiled.
Then Grim and Kari and Helgi began throwing out spears, and wounded
many of those that stood round, while their enemies could do nothing
against them in return. Flosi’s men, too, were unwilling to fight,
and when they saw the old man and Bergthora standing before them, and
the brave sons of Nial, and Kari, whom all men praised, their courage
oozed away, for these all were held in great respect from one end of
the land to the other. It seemed to them a shameful thing to attack
them in their own house. Grani, Gunnar’s son, and Gunnar, Lambi’s son,
moreover, who most had egged them on, now hung back, and were more
willing that others should go into danger than they themselves; they
seemed ready on the slightest chance to slink away, for they were
cowards.
Flosi saw that if they were to carry out their plan they must try some
other means, for never would they overcome Nial’s sons with sword and
battle-axe, nor could they get at them within the house.
So then he made them all fetch wood and fuel and pile it before the
doors. When Skarphedinn saw what they were about he cried out: “What,
lads! are ye lighting a fire to warm yourselves, or have ye taken to
cooking?”
“We are making a cooking-fire, indeed,” answered Grani, Gunnar’s son,
“and we will take care that the meat was never better done.”
“Yet you are the man whose father I avenged,” said Skarphedinn. “Such
repayment as this was to be looked for from a man like thee.”
But the fire made little way, for as fast as they lit it the women
threw whey or water, clean and dirty, upon it, and extinguished it. But
one of the men said to Flosi: “I saw a vetch-stack standing outside in
the yard behind the house, dry and inflammable, and if we can stuff it
lighted into the loft above the hall it will set the roof ablaze.”
They brought down the vetch, and stuffed it under the roof, and set
fire to it, and in a moment the roof was ablaze over the heads of Nial
and his sons. And Flosi continued to pile the wood before the doors,
so that none could get out. The women inside began to weep and to
scream with fear, but Nial sustained them all, saying that it was but
a passing storm, and that it was long before they were like to have
another such. Then he went to the door, and called out to Flosi, asking
him whether he would be content to take an atonement for his sons.
Flosi replied that he would take none. “Here I remain,” said he, “until
all of them are dead; but the women and children and slaves may go
out.” Then Nial returned into the house, and bade the women go out, and
all to whom leave was given.
“Never thought I to part from Helgi in such a way as this,” said
Thorhalla, Helgi’s wife; “but if I go out I will stir up my kindred to
avenge this deed.”
“Go, and good go with thee,” said Nial; “for thou art a brave woman.”
But all grieved most that Helgi should die, for he was much beloved;
and one of the women threw a woman’s cloak over him, and tied a
kerchief round his head, and against his will they made him go out
between them.
Nial’s daughters and Skarphedinn’s wife and the other women went out
too.
Flosi was watching them as they passed, and he said: “That is a mighty
woman and broad across the shoulders that walks in the middle of the
others; take hold of her and see who she is.”
When Helgi heard that he flung off his cloak and drew his sword, but
Flosi hewed at him, and took off his head at a stroke.
Now the fire was mounting the walls, and Flosi’s heart smote him at
last that an old man like Nial should burn in his own house, who had
been so brave and noble a man. He went up to the door and called to
Nial, saying, “I offer thee and thy wife leave to go out, Master Nial,
for it is unfit that thou shouldst burn to death indoors.”
“I will not come out,” said Nial, “for I am an old man, and the time is
past when I could have avenged the death of my sons, and I have no wish
to live in shame after them.”
“Come thou out, housewife,” called Flosi to Bergthora; “for I would not
for anything in the world have thee burn indoors.”
[Illustration: _“Come thou out, housewife,” called Flosi to Bergthora_.]
“I was given away to Nial when I was young,” she answered, “and I
pledged my word to him then that we twain should share the same fate
together. But thou, child,” she said to Thord, Kari’s son, who had
stayed yet beside her, for he had the undaunted heart of his father
in him, “I would that thou shouldst go out while there is time; I
cannot brook to see a lad like thee burned.”
“Thou hast promised me, grandmother, that so long as I desired to be
with thee, thou never wouldst send me away; and I think it now much
better to die with thee and Nial than to live without thee after thy
death.”
So they turned back into the house. “What shall we do now?” Bergthora
said to Nial.
“We will go to our bed,” said Nial, “and lay us down; I have long been
eager for rest.”
Then they laid themselves down on their bed, and the boy lay between
them, with his arm round the old woman’s neck.
“Put over us that hide,” said Nial to his steward, “and mark where we
lie, for I mean not to stir an inch hence however the smoke or fire
torment me. Here in this spot you will find our bones, if you come
afterwards to look for them.”
The steward spread the hide over the bed, and then he went out with the
others. Then Nial and Bergthora signed themselves and the boy with the
cross, and confided their souls into God’s hand, and that was the last
word that they were heard to utter.
Skarphedinn saw how his father laid him down, and laid himself out, and
he said this: “Our father goes early to bed to-night, and that is meet,
for he is an old man.”
Then for a time Skarphedinn and Kari and Grim stood side by side,
catching the brands as they fell and throwing them out at their
enemies; and Flosi’s men hurled spears from without, but they caught
them and sent them back again. But in the end Flosi bade his men cease
throwing their spears, and sit down till the fire had done its work.
One man only escaped from the burning, and that was Kari, who leaped
out on a fallen cross-beam, Skarphedinn helping him. “Leap thou first,”
said Kari, “and I will leap after you, and we will get away in the
smoke together.” But Skarphedinn refused, and would not go until Kari
had got safe away, for he had run along under the smoke, his hair and
his cloak blazing; and he ran till he came to a stream, and threw
himself into it, and so put out the flames; and he rested in a hollow,
and got away after that.
But when Skarphedinn leaped to follow him the cross-beam gave way in
the middle where it had been burnt, and he was thrown backward into the
house; and with a great crash the end of the roof fell above him so
that he was shut in between the gable and the roof and could not stir a
step.
All night the fire burned fitfully, sometimes blazing up and sometimes
burning low, and those outside watched it till dawn. And they said that
all in the house must have been burned long ago. Then Flosi told them
to get on their horses and ride away, and they were glad to do that.
But as they rode from the place they heard, or thought they heard, a
song rising from far down in the fire beneath them, and they shuddered
and looked each in the other’s face for fear.
“That song is Skarphedinn’s, dead or alive,” they said.
Some of them were for turning back to look for him, but Flosi forbade
them, and urged them to ride away as quickly as they could, for there
was no man he feared so much as Skarphedinn.
But when, many days afterwards, they sought among the embers, they
found Skarphedinn’s body upright against the gable-wall, but his legs
burned off him at the knees. He had driven his axe into the gable-wall
so fast that they had much ado to get it out.
Nial and Bergthora lay beneath the hide dead, but unburned by the fire,
and a great heap of ashes above them; also of the boy only one finger
had been consumed.
This is the Story of the Burning, and of the death of Nial.
[Illustration: BRITISH ISLES in the time of the Northmen.]
THE DANISH KINGDOM OF ENGLAND
(1013–1042)
_We continue, in the following chapters, to use the Sagas of the Norse
Kings as supplementary to the accounts in the English Chronicles. That
they are not always accurately informed in regard to the actual course
of events in England is not surprising when we consider that reports
were not regularly transmitted by authorized means, as in our own
days, but were carried from country to country by chance travellers or
poets who recorded only what they had themselves seen or heard. Yet
to ignore the Norse accounts is to limit ourselves to one side of the
picture only, and only to half understand the causes and motives of
what was going on in Britain. Detached from their Danish history, Sweyn
and Canute were mere foreign adventurers whose power in England lacks
explanation._
_From the social side, the brilliant and spirited accounts in the Sagas
of the Kings of Norway are absolutely invaluable; and even as regards
actual occurrences we are inclined to rely upon them to a greater
extent than Freeman allowed himself to do. They bear the impress of
truth._