I.

IT was right up under the steel mountain wall where the farm of Kvaerk

lay. How any man of common sense could have hit upon the idea of

building a house there, where none but the goat and the hawk had easy

access, had been, and I am afraid would ever be, a matter of wonder to

the parish people. However, it was not Lage Kvaerk who had built

the house, so he could hardly be made responsible for its situation.

Moreover, to move from a place where one’s life has once struck deep

root, even if it be in the chinks and crevices of stones and rocks, is

about the same as to destroy it. An old tree grows but poorly in a new

soil. So Lage Kvaerk thought, and so he said, too, whenever his wife

Elsie spoke of her sunny home at the river.

Gloomy as Lage usually was, he had his brighter moments, and people

noticed that these were most likely to occur when Aasa, his daughter,

was near. Lage was probably also the only being whom Aasa’s presence

could cheer; on other people it seemed to have the very opposite effect;

for Aasa was--according to the testimony of those who knew her--the most

peculiar creature that ever was born. But perhaps no one did know her;

if her father was right, no one really did--at least no one but himself.

Aasa was all to her father; she was his past and she was his future, his

hope and his life; and withal it must be admitted that those who judged

her without knowing her had at least in one respect as just an opinion

of her as he; for there was no denying that she was strange, very

strange. She spoke when she ought to be silent, and was silent when it

was proper to speak; wept when she ought to laugh, and laughed when it

was proper to weep; but her laughter as well as her tears, her speech

like her silence, seemed to have their source from within her own soul,

to be occasioned, as it were, by something which no one else could see

or hear. It made little difference where she was; if the tears came, she

yielded to them as if they were something she had long desired in vain.

Few could weep like her, and “weep like Aasa Kvaerk,” was soon also

added to the stock of parish proverbs. And then her laugh! Tears may

be inopportune enough, when they come out of time, but laughter is far

worse; and when poor Aasa once burst out into a ringing laughter in

church, and that while the minister was pronouncing the benediction, it

was only with the greatest difficulty that her father could prevent

the indignant congregation from seizing her and carrying her before the

sheriff for violation of the church-peace. Had she been poor and homely,

then of course nothing could have saved her; but she happened to be both

rich and beautiful, and to wealth and beauty much is pardoned. Aasa’s

beauty, however, was also of a very unusual kind; not the tame sweetness

so common in her sex, but something of the beauty of the falcon, when it

swoops down upon the unwatchful sparrow or soars round the lonely

crags; something of the mystic depth of the dark tarn, when with bodeful

trembling you gaze down into it, and see its weird traditions rise from

its depth and hover over the pine-tops in the morning fog. Yet, Aasa was

not dark; her hair was as fair and yellow as a wheat-field in August,

her forehead high and clear, and her mouth and chin as if cut with a

chisel; only her eyes were perhaps somewhat deeper than is common in the

North, and the longer you looked at them the deeper they grew, just like

the tarn, which, if you stare long enough into it, you will find is as

deep as the heavens above, that is, whose depth only faith and fancy can

fathom. But however long you looked at Aasa, you could never be quite

sure that she looked at you; she seemed but to half notice whatever went

on around her; the look of her eye was always more than half inward,

and when it shone the brightest, it might well happen that she could not

have told you how many years she had lived, or the name her father gave

her in baptism.

Now Aasa was eighteen years old, and could knit, weave, and spin, and it

was full time that wooers should come. “But that is the consequence of

living in such an out-of-the-way place,” said her mother; “who will risk

his limbs to climb that neck-breaking rock? and the round-about way over

the forest is rather too long for a wooer.” Besides handling the loom

and the spinning-wheel, Aasa had also learned to churn and make cheese

to perfection, and whenever Elsie grieved at her strange behavior she

always in the end consoled herself with the reflection that after all

Aasa would make the man who should get her an excellent housewife.

The farm of Kvaerk was indeed most singularly situated. About a hundred

feet from the house the rough wall of the mountain rose steep and

threatening; and the most remarkable part of it was that the rock itself

caved inward and formed a lofty arch overhead, which looked like a huge

door leading into the mountain. Some short distance below, the slope of

the fields ended in an abrupt precipice; far underneath lay the other

farm-houses of the valley, scattered like small red or gray dots, and

the river wound onward like a white silver stripe in the shelter of the

dusky forest. There was a path down along the rock, which a goat or a

brisk lad might be induced to climb, if the prize of the experiment were

great enough to justify the hazard. The common road to Kvaerk made a

large circuit around the forest, and reached the valley far up at its

northern end.

It was difficult to get anything to grow at Kvaerk. In the spring all

the valley lay bare and green, before the snow had begun to think of

melting up there; and the night-frost would be sure to make a visit

there, while the fields along the river lay silently drinking the summer

dew. On such occasions the whole family at Kvaerk would have to stay

up during all the night and walk back and forth on either side of the

wheat-fields, carrying a long rope between them and dragging it slowly

over the heads of the rye, to prevent the frost from settling; for as

long as the ears could be kept in motion, they could not freeze. But

what did thrive at Kvaerk in spite of both snow and night-frost was

legends, and they throve perhaps the better for the very sterility of

its material soil. Aasa of course had heard them all and knew them

by heart; they had been her friends from childhood, and her only

companions. All the servants, however, also knew them and many others

besides, and if they were asked how the mansion of Kvaerk happened to be

built like an eagle’s nest on the brink of a precipice, they would tell

you the following:

Saint Olaf, Norway’s holy king, in the time of his youth had sailed as

a Viking over the wide ocean, and in foreign lands had learned the

doctrine of Christ the White. When he came home to claim the throne of

his hereditary kingdom, he brought with him tapers and black priests,

and commanded the people to overthrow the altars of Odin and Thor and

to believe alone in Christ the White. If any still dared to slaughter

a horse to the old gods, he cut off their ears, burned their farms,

and drove them houseless from the smoking ruins. Here in the valley old

Thor, or, as they called him, Asathor, had always helped us to vengeance

and victory, and gentle Frey for many years had given us fair and

fertile summers. Therefore the peasants paid little heed to King Olaf’s

god, and continued to bring their offerings to Odin and Asathor. This

reached the king’s ear, and he summoned his bishop and five black

priests, and set out to visit our valley. Having arrived here, he called

the peasants together, stood up on the Ting-stone, told them of the

great things that the White Christ had done, and bade them choose

between him and the old gods. Some were scared, and received baptism

from the king’s priests; others bit their lips and were silent; others

again stood forth and told Saint Olaf that Odin and Asathor had always

served them well, and that they were not going to give them up for

Christ the White, whom they had never seen and of whom they knew

nothing. The next night the red cock crew [9] over ten farms in the

valley, and it happened to be theirs who had spoken against King Olaf’s

god. Then the peasants flocked to the Ting-stone and received the

baptism of Christ the White. Some few, who had mighty kinsmen in the

North, fled and spread the evil tidings. Only one neither fled nor

was baptized, and that one was Lage Ulfson Kvaerk, the ancestor of

the present Lage. He slew his best steed before Asathor’s altar, and

promised to give him whatever he should ask, even to his own life, if he

would save him from the vengeance of the king. Asathor heard his prayer.

As the sun set, a storm sprung up with thick darkness and gloom, the

earth shook, Asathor drove his chariot over the heavens with deafening

thunder and swung his hammer right and left, and the crackling lightning

flew through the air like a hail-storm of fire. Then the peasants

trembled, for they knew that Asathor was wroth. Only the king sat calm

and fearless with his bishop and priests, quaffing the nut-brown mead.

The tempest raged until morn. When the sun rose, Saint Olaf called his

hundred swains, sprang into the saddle and rode down toward the river.

Few men who saw the angry fire in his eye, and the frown on his royal

brow, doubted whither he was bound. But having reached the ford, a

wondrous sight met his eye. Where on the day before the highway had

wound itself up the slope toward Lage Kvaerk’s mansion, lay now a wild

ravine; the rock was shattered into a thousand pieces, and a deep gorge,

as if made by a single stroke of a huge hammer, separated the king from

his enemy. Then Saint Olaf made the sign of the cross, and mumbled the

name of Christ the White; but his hundred swains made the sign of the

hammer under their cloaks, and thought, Still is Asathor alive.

That same night Lage Ulfson Kvaerk slew a black ram, and thanked Asathor

for his deliverance; and the Saga tells that while he was sprinkling

the blood on the altar, the thundering god himself appeared to him,

and wilder he looked than the fiercest wild Turk. Rams, said he, were

every-day fare; they could redeem no promise. Brynhild, his daughter,

was the reward Asathor demanded. Lage prayed and besought him to ask

for something else. He would gladly give him one of his sons; for he had

three sons, but only one daughter. Asathor was immovable; but so long

Lage continued to beg, that at last he consented to come back in a

year, when Lage perchance would be better reconciled to the thought of

Brynhild’s loss.

In the mean time King Olaf built a church to Christ the White on the

headland at the river, where it stands until this day. Every evening,

when the huge bell rumbled between the mountains, the parishioners

thought they heard heavy, half-choked sighs over in the rocks at Kvaerk;

and on Sunday mornings, when the clear-voiced chimes called them to

high-mass, a suppressed moan would mingle with the sound of the bells,

and die away with the last echo. Lage Ulfson was not the man to be

afraid; yet the church-bells many a time drove the blood from his

cheeks; for he also heard the moan from the mountain.

The year went, and Asathor returned. If he had not told his name,

however, Lage would not have recognized him. That a year could work so

great a change in a god, he would hardly have believed, if his own eyes

had not testified to it. Asathor’s cheeks were pale and bloodless, the

lustre of his eye more than half quenched, and his gray hair hung in

disorder down over his forehead.

“Methinks thou lookest rather poorly to-day,” said Lage.

“It is only those cursed church-bells,” answered the god; “they leave me

no rest day or night.”

“Aha,” thought Lage, “if the king’s bells are mightier than thou, then

there is still hope of safety for my daughter.”

“Where is Brynhild, thy daughter?” asked Asathor.

“I know not where she is,” answered the father; and straightway he

turned his eyes toward the golden cross that shone over the valley from

Saint Olaf’s steeple, and he called aloud on the White Christ’s name.

Then the god gave a fearful roar, fell on the ground, writhed and foamed

and vanished into the mountain. In the next moment Lage heard a hoarse

voice crying from within, “I shall return, Lage Ulfson, when thou shalt

least expect me!”

Lage Ulfson then set to work clearing a way through the forest; and when

that was done, he called all his household together, and told them of

the power of Christ the White. Not long after he took his sons and his

daughter, and hastened with them southward, until he found King Olaf.

And, so the Saga relates, they all fell down on their knees before him,

prayed for his forgiveness, and received baptism from the king’s own

bishop.

So ends the Saga of Lage Ulfson Kvaerk.