A red fox ran into the empty church. In the middle of the floor he sat
up and looked around. Nothing stirred--not the painted figures on the
wooden walls, nor the boy who now stood in the doorway. This boy was
gray-eyed and flaxen-haired, and might have been eleven or twelve years
old. He was looking for the good old priest, Father Ansgar, and the wild
shy animal eyeing him from the foot of the altar made it only too clear
that the church, like the village, was deserted.
Father Ansgar was dead of the strange swift pestilence that was called
in 1348 the Black Death. So also were the sexton, the cooper, the
shoemaker, and almost all the people of the valley. A ship had come into
Bergen with the plague on board, and it spread through Norway like a
grass-fire. Only last week Thorolf Erlandsson[1] had had a father and
mother, a grandmother, two younger sisters and a brother. Now he was
alone. In the night the dairy woman and the plowmen at Ormgard farm had
run away. Other farms and houses were already closed and silent, or
plundered and burned. Ormgard being remote had at first escaped the
sickness.
Thorolf turned away from the church door and began to climb the
mountain. At the lane leading to his home he did not stop, but kept on
into the woods. It was not so lonely there.
Up and up he climbed, the thrilling scent of fir-balsam in his nostrils,
the small friendly noises of the forest all about him. Only a few months
ago he had come down this very road with his father, driving the cattle
and goats home from the summer pasture. All the other farmers were doing
the same, and the clear notes of the lure, the long curving horn, used
for calling the cattle and signaling across valleys, soared from slope
to slope. There was laughter and shouting and joking all the way down.
Now the only persons abroad seemed to be thieving ruffians whose greed
for plunder was more than their fear of the plague.
A thought came to the boy. How could he leave his father's cattle unfed
and uncared for? What if he were to drive the cows himself to the saeter
and tend them through the summer? He faced about, resolutely, and began
to descend the hill.
Within sight of the familiar roofs he heard some one coming from the
village, on horseback. It proved to be Nils the son of Magnus the son of
Nils who was called the Bear-Slayer, with a sack of grain and a pair of
saddlebags on a sedate brown pony. Nils was lame of one foot and no
taller than a boy of nine, although he was thirteen this month and his
head was nearly as large as a man's. He had been an orphan from
baby-hood, and for the last three years had lived in the priest's house
learning to be a clerk.
"Hoh!" called Nils, "where are you going?"
"To the farm to get our cattle and take them to the saeter. There is no
one left to do it but me."
"Cattle?" queried the other interestedly, "She will be glad of that."
"She!" said Thorolf, "who?"
"The Wind-wife[2]--Mother Elle, who used to sell wind to the
sailors--the Finnish woman from Stavanger. She has gathered up a lot of
children who have no one to look after them and is leading them into the
mountains. She has Nikolina Sven's daughter Larsson, and Olof and Anders
Amundson, and half a score of younger ones from different villages. She
says that if it is God's will for the plague to come to the saeter it
will come, but it is not there now, and it is in the valleys and the
towns. She has gone on with the small ones who cannot walk fast, and
left Olof and Anders and me to bring along the ponies with the loads.
I'll help you drive your beasts."
Without trouble the lads got the animals out of the byres and headed
them up the road. Norway is so sharply divided by precipitous mountain
ranges and deeply-penetrating fiords, that it may be but a few miles
from a farm near sea level to the high grassy pastures three or four
thousand feet above it where the cattle are pastured in summer. The
saeter maidens live there in their cottages from June to September,
making butter and cheese, tending the herds and doing such other work as
they can. The saeter belonging to Ormgard and its neighbors was the one
chosen by Mother Elle as a refuge for her flock.
The forest of magnificent firs through which the road passed presently
grew less somber, beginning to be streaked with white birches whose
bright leaves twinkled in the sun. Then it reached the height at which
evergreens cease to grow. The birches were shorter and sparser, and
through the thinning woodland appeared glimpses of a treeless pasture
dotted with scrubby low bushes and clumps of rushes. A glint of clear
green water betrayed a small lake in a dip of the hills. And now were
heard sounds most unusual in that lonely place, the high sweet voices of
children.
Birch trees, little trees, dwarfed by sharp winds and poor soil,
encircled a level space perhaps ten feet across, carpeted with new soft
grass, reindeer moss and cupped lichens. Here sat seven or eight
children eagerly listening to a story told by an older child as she
divided the ration of fladbrod,[3] wild strawberries from a small basket
of birchbark, and brown goat's-milk cheese.
"And Freya came from Asgard in her chariot drawn by two cats--"
Nikolina the daughter of Sven Larsson of the Trolle farm was known
through all the valley, not only as the sole child of its richest
farmer, but for the bright blonde hair that covered her shoulders with
its soft abundance and hung to her waist. Her father would not have it
cut or braided or even covered save by such a little embroidered cap as
she wore now. Her scarlet bodice, and blue-black skirt bordered with
bright woven bands, were of the finest wool; the full-sleeved white
linen under-dress had been spun and woven and embroidered by skilful and
loving fingers. Nikolina had lost the roof from over her head, and a
great deal more than that. Now she was giving her whole mind to the
little ones of all ages from four to eight, crowding close about her.
[Illustration: "'And Freya came from Asgard in her chariot drawn by two
cats'"--_Page_ 4]
"Hi!" called Nils, "where is Mother Elle? See what Thorolf and I have
got!"
The children scrambled to their feet and gazed with round eyes, their
small hungry teeth munching their morsels of hard bread. Nikolina
plucked a bunch of grass for Snow, the foremost cow, and patted her
as she ate it.
"The little ones were so tired and hungry," she said, "that Mother Elle
said they might have their supper now, while she and Olof and Anders
went on to the saeter. This is wonderful! She was saying only this
morning that she feared all the cattle were dead or stolen."
Within an hour they came in sight of the log huts with turf-covered
roofs that sloped almost to the ground in the rear. A broad plain
stretched away beyond, and the new grass was of that vivid green to be
found in places which deep snow makes pure. Hills enclosed it, and
beyond, a gleaming network of lake and stream ended in range above range
of blue and silver peaks. The clear invigorating air was like some
unearthly wine. The cows at the scent of fresh pasture moved more
briskly; the pony tossed his head and whinnied. Not far from the
cottages there came to meet them a little old woman, dark and wiry, with
bright searching eyes. Her face was wrinkled all over in fine soft
lines, but her hair was hardly gray at all. She wore a pointed hood and
girdled tunic of tanned reindeer hide, with leggings and shoes of the
same. A blanket about her shoulders was draped into a kind of pouch, in
which she carried on her back a tow-headed, solemn-eyed baby.
"Welcome to you, Thorolf Erlandsson," she said, just as if she had been
expecting him. "With this good milk we shall fare like the King."
No king, truly, could have supped on food more delicious than that
enjoyed by Nils and Thorolf on this first night in the saeter. It is
strange but true that the most exquisite delights are those that money
cannot buy. No man can taste cold spring water and barley bread in
absolute perfection who has not paid the poor man's price--hard work and
keen hunger.
When Nikolina, Karen and Lovisa came up with the smaller children the
place had already an inhabited, homelike look. There was even a wise old
raven, almost as large as a gander, whom Nils had christened Munin,
after Odin's bird. The little ones had all the new milk they could drink
from their wooden bowls, and were put to bed in the movable wooden
bed-places, on beds of hay covered with sheepskins and blankets. All
were asleep before dark, for at that season the night lasted only two or
three hours. The last thing that Thorolf heard was a happy little pipe
from the five-year-old Ellida,--
"Now we shall live in Asgard forever and ever."
For all it had to do with the experience of many of the children the
saeter might really have been Asgard, the Norse paradise. The youngest
had never before been outside the narrow valley where they were born.
Ellida and Margit, Didrik and little Peder, could not be convinced that
they were anywhere but in Asgard the Blest.
Norway had long since become Christian, but the old faith was not
forgotten. The legends, songs and customs of the people were full of it.
In the sagas Asgard was described as being on a mountain at the top of
the world. Around the base of this mountain lay Midgard, the abode of
mankind. Beyond the great seas, in Utgard, the giants lived. Hel was the
under-world, the home of evil ghosts and spirits. Tales were told in the
long winter evenings, of Baldur the god of spring, Loki the crafty, Odin
the old one-eyed beggar in a hooded cloak, with his two ravens and his
two tame wolves, Freya the lovely lady of flowers, Elle-folk dancing in
the moonlight, and little rascally Trolls.
The songs and legends repeated by the old people or chanted by minstrels
or skalds were more than idle stories--they were the history of a race.
Children heard over and over again the family records telling in rude
rhyme the story of centuries. In distant Iceland, Greenland, the
Shetlands, the Faroes or the Orkneys, a Norseman could tell exactly what
might be his udall right, or right of inheritance, in the land of his
fathers.
On Nils and Thorolf, Anders, Olof, Nikolina, Karen and Lovisa, who were
all over ten years old, rested great responsibility. Mother Elle always
managed to solve her own problems and expected them to attend to theirs
without constant direction from her. She told them what there was to be
done and left them to attend to it.
All were hardy, active youngsters who took to fending for themselves as
naturally as a day-old chick takes to scratching. In ordinary seasons
the work at the saeter was heavy, for the maidens must not only follow
the herds over miles of pasture land, but make butter and cheese for the
winter from their milking. The few cows that were here now could be
tethered near by; the milk, when the children had had all they wanted,
was mostly used in soups, pudding or gröt (porridge). A net or weir
stretched across the outlet of the lake would fill with fish overnight.
The streams were full of trout. Mother Elle knew how to make fish-hooks
of bone, bows and arrows, ropes, and baskets of bark, how to weave
osiers, how to cure bruises and cuts, how to trap the wild hares,
grouse and plover and cook them over an open fire. The children found
plover's eggs and the eggs of other wild fowl. They raised pulse, leeks,
onions and turnips in a little garden patch. They gathered strawberries,
cranberries, crowberries, wild currants, black and red, the cloudberry
and the delicious arctic raspberry which tastes of pineapple. Some
stores of salt and grain were already at the saeter and the grain-fields
had been sowed, before the pestilence appeared in the valley.
In the long summer days of these northern mountains, one has the feeling
that they will never end, that life must go on in an infinite succession
of still, sunshiny, fragrant hours, filled with the songs of birds, the
chirr of insects and the distant lowing of cattle. There is time for
everything. At night comes dreamless slumber, and the morning is like a
birth into new life.
There was a great deal of singing and story-telling at odd times. A
group of children making mats or baskets, gathering pease or going after
berries would beg Nils or Nikolina to tell a story, or Karen would lead
them in some old song with a familiar refrain. But some of the songs the
Wind-wife crooned to the baby were not like any the children had heard.
They were not even in Norwegian.
Thorolf was a silent lad, who would rather listen than talk, and hated
asking questions. But one day, when he and Nikolina were hunting wild
raspberries, he asked her if she thought Mother Elle meant to stay in
the mountains through the winter. Nikolina did not know.
"'Tis well to be wise but not too wise,
'Tis well that to-morrow is hid from our eyes,
For in forward-looking forebodings rise,"
she added quaintly. "I have heard her say that it is colder in Greenland
than it is here."
"Has she been in Greenland?"
"Her father and mother were on the way there when she was little, and
the ship was wrecked somewhere on the coast. The Skroelings found her
and took her to live in their country. That is how she learned so much
about trees and herbs, and how to make bows and arrows and moccasins."
"Moccasins?"
"The little shoes she made for Ellida. And she made a little boat for
Peder, like their skiffs."
This was interesting. For a private reason, Thorolf held Greenland to be
the most fascinating of all places.
"Can she speak their language?"
"Of course. I asked her to teach me, and she said that perhaps she would
some day. The songs that she sings to the little ones are some that the
Skroeling woman who adopted her used to sing to her when she cried for
her own mother. One of them begins like this:
"'Piche Klooskap pechian
Machieswi menikok.'"
"What does it mean?"
"'Long ago Klooskap came to the island of the partridges.' Klooskap was
like Odin, or Thor. The priests in Greenland told her he was a devil and
wouldn't let her talk about him, but the Skroelings had runes for
everything just like the people in the sagas,--runes for war, and
healing, and the sea."
"How did she ever get away?"
"Some men came from Westbyrg to cut wood in the forest, and when they
saw that she was not really a Skroeling they bought her for an iron pot
and one of them married her. But he was drowned a long time ago."
"I wish I knew the Skroelings' language. Some day I mean to go to
Greenland."
"Perhaps Mother Elle will teach you. I'll ask her."
The Wind-wife was rather chary of information about the country of the
Skroelings until Nikolina's coaxing and Thorolf's silent but intense
interest had taken effect. The country, she said, was rather like
Norway, with mountains and great forests, lakes and streams, but far
colder. There were no fiords, and no cities. The people lived in tents
made of poles covered with bark, or hides. They dressed in the hides of
wild animals and lived by hunting and fishing. They had no reindeer,
horses, cattle, sheep or goats, no fowls, no pigs. They could not work
iron, nor did they spin or weave. The man and woman who had adopted her
treated her just like their own child.
The stories she had learned from these people were intensely interesting
to her listeners. There was one about a battle between the wasps and the
squirrels, and another about the beaver who wanted wings. One was about
a girl who was married to the Spirit of the Mountain and had a son
beautiful and straight and like any other boy except that he had stone
eyebrows. Then there was the tale about Klooskap tying up the White
Eagle of the Wind so that he could not flap his wings. After a short
time everything was so dirty and ill-smelling and unhealthy that
Klooskap had to go back and untie one wing, and let the wind blow to
clear the air and make the earth once more wholesome.
Wild apples fell, grain ripened, nights lengthened. Long ago the
twin-flower, violet, wild pansy, forget-me-not and yellow anemone had
left their fairy haunts, and there remained only the curving fantastic
fronds of the fern,--the dragon-grass. Then had come brilliant spots and
splashes of color on the summer slopes--purple butterwort, golden
ragweed, aconite, buttercup, deep crimson mossy patches of saxifrage,
rosy heather, catchfly, wild geranium, cinnamon rose. These also
finished their triumphal procession and went to their Valhalla. Then one
September morning the children woke to hear the wind screaming as if the
White Eagle had escaped his prison, and the rain pelting the world.
All summer they had been out, rain or shine, like water-ouzels, but now
they were glad to sit about the fire with the shutters all closed, and
the smoke now and then driven down into the room by the storm. Before
evening the little ones were begging for stories.
"I wish I could remember a saga I heard last Yule," Nikolina said at
last. "It was about a voyage the Vikings made to a country where the
people had never seen cattle. When they heard the cattle bellowing they
all ran away and left the furs they had come to sell."
"Tell all you remember and make up the rest," suggested Karen, but
Nikolina shook her head.
"One should never do that with a saga."
"I know that tale," spoke up Thorolf suddenly, although he had never in
his life repeated a saga. "Grandmother used to tell it. In the beginning
Bjarni Heriulfson the sea-rover, after many years came home to Iceland
to drink wassail in his father's house. But strangers dwelt there and
told him that his father was gone to Greenland, and he set sail for that
land. Soon was the ship swallowed up in a gray mist in which were
neither sun nor stars. They sailed many days they knew not where, but
suddenly the fog lifted and the sun revealed to them a coast of low
hills covered with forest. By this Bjarni thought that it was not
Greenland but some southerly coast. Therefore turned he northward and
sailed many days before he sighted the mountains of Greenland and his
father's house.
"Years afterward returned Bjarni to Iceland, and in his telling of that
voyage it came to the ears of Leif Ericsson, who asked him many
questions about the land he had seen. There grew no trees in Iceland or
Greenland, fit for house-timber, and Leif was minded to find out this
place of great forests. Thus it came that Leif sailed from Brattahlid in
Greenland with five and thirty men in a long ship upon a journey of
discovery.
"First came they to a barren land covered with big flat stones, and this
Leif named Helluland, the slate land. Southward sailed he for many days
until he saw a coast covered with wooded hills, and there he landed,
calling it Markland, the land of woods. Then southward again they bore
and came to a place where a river flowed out of a lake and fell into the
sea. The country was pleasant, with good fishing. Leif said that they
would spend the winter there, and they built wooden cabins well-made and
warm.
"Then at the season when the leaves are blood-red and bright gold came
in from the woods Thorkel the German, smacking his lips and making
strange faces and jabbering in his own language. When they asked what
ailed him he said that he had found vines loaded with grapes, and having
seen none since he left his own country, which was a land of vineyards,
he was out of his senses with delight. Therefore was that country named
Vinland the Fair. In the spring went Leif home, well pleased, with a
cargo of timber, but his father being dead he voyaged no more to
Vinland, but remained to be head of his house.
"Next went Thorvald, Leif's brother, to Vinland and stayed two winters
in the booths that Leif built, until he was slain in a fight with the
men of that land. His men buried him there and returned sorrowfully to
their own land.
"Next went Thorestein, Leif's second brother, forth, with Gudrid his
wife, to get the body of Thorvald but he died on the voyage and his
widow returned to Brattahlid.
"Next came to Brattahlid Thorfin Karlsefne, the Viking from Iceland, who
loved and married Gudrid and from her heard the story of Vinland, and
desired it for his own. In good time went he forth in a long ship with
his wife, and there went with him three other valiant ships. They had
altogether one hundred and sixty men and five women, with cattle, grain
and all things fit for a settlement. This was seven years after Leif
Ericsson found Vinland. Among the stores for trading was scarlet cloth,
which the Skroelings greatly covet, insomuch that one small strip of
scarlet would buy many rich furs. But when they came to trade, hearing a
bull bellow, with a great squalling they all ran away and left their
packs on the ground, nor did they show their faces again for three
weeks. Snorre, the son of Thorfin Karlsefne, born in Vinland, was three
years old when the Northmen left that land. They had found the winter
hard and cold, and in a fight with the Skroelings many had been killed,
so that they took ship and returned to Iceland.
"They had gone but a little way when one of the ships, which was
commanded by Bjarni Grimulfsson, lagged so far behind that it lost sight
of the others. The men then discovered that shipworms[4] had bored the
hull so that it was about to sink. None could hope to be saved but in
the stern boat, and that would not hold half of them.
"Then stood Bjarni Grimulfsson forth, and said to his men that in this
matter there should be no advantage of rank, but they would draw lots,
who should go in the boat and who remain in the ship. When this had been
done it was Bjarni's lot to go in the boat. After all had gone down into
the boat who had the right, an Icelander who had been Bjarni's companion
made outcry dolefully saying, 'Bjarni, Bjarni, do you leave me here to
die in the sea? It was not so you promised me when I left my father's
house.' Then said Bjarni, for the lot was fairly cast, 'What else can be
done?' Then said the Icelander, 'I think that you should come up into
the ship and let me go down into the boat.' And indeed no other way
might be found for him to live. Then answered Bjarni making light of the
matter, 'Let it be so, since I see that you are so anxious to live and
so afraid of death; I will return to the ship.' This was done, and the
men rowing away looked back and saw the ship go down in a great swirl of
waves with Bjarni and those who remained.
"This tale my grandmother heard from her father, and he from his, and so
on until the time of that Thorolf Erlandsson who sailed with Bjarni
Grimulfsson and went down into the sea by his side singing, for he
feared nothing but to be a coward."
Thorolf's eyes were as proud and his head as high as were his Viking
forefather's when the worm-riddled galley went to her grave with more
than half her crew, three hundred and forty years before. In the little
silence which followed the fire crackled and whistled, the gusty
rain-drenched wind beat upon the little hut. And then Nils repeated
musingly the ancient saying from the Runes of Odin,
"'Cattle die, Kings die,
Kindred die, we also die,--
One thing never dies,
The fair fame of the valiant.'"
Some one knocked at the door. A real Viking in winged helmet and
scale-armor would hardly have surprised them just then. But it was only
a tall man in a traveler's cloak and hat, and they made quickly room for
him to dry himself by the fire, and brought food and drink for him to
refresh himself.
"I thought that I knew the way to the old place," he said, looking
about, "but in this tempest I nearly lost myself. Which of you is
Thorolf Erlandsson?"
The stranger was Syvert Thorolfson, a merchant of Iceland, Thorolf's
uncle. He brought messages from Nikolina's grandmother in Stavanger, and
from the Bishop, who was ready to see that all the children who had no
relatives should be taken care of in Bergen. Within three days Asgard
the Beautiful was left to the lemming and the raven. Yet the long bright
summer lived always in the hearts of the children. Years after Thorolf
remembered the words of the Wind-wife,--
"Make friends with the Skroelings--make friends. Friendship is a rock to
stand on; hatred is a rock to split on. In the land of Klooskap shall
you be Klooskap's guest."