It was at the time of year when the heather is red. It grew over the
sand-hills in thick clumps. From low tree-like stems close-growing
green branches raised their hardy ever-green leaves and unfading
flowers. They seemed not to be made of ordinary, juicy flower
substance, but of dry, hard scales. They were very insignificant in
size and shape; nor was their fragrance of much account. Children of
the open moors, they had not unfolded in the still air where lilies
open their alabaster petals; nor did they grow in the rich soil from
which roses draw nourishment for their swelling crowns. What made them
flowers was really their color, for they were glowing red. They had
received the color-giving sunshine in plenty. They were no pallid
cellar growth; the blessed gaiety and strength of health lay over all
the blossoming heath.
The heather covered the bare fields with its red mantle up to the edge
of the wood. There, on a gently sloping ridge, stood some ancient, half
ruined stone cairns; and however closely the heather tried to creep to
these, there were always rents in its web, through which were visible
great, flat rocks, folds in the mountain’s own rough skin. Under the
biggest of these piles rested an old king, Atle by name. Under the
others slumbered those of his warriors who had fallen when the great
battle raged on the moor. They had lain there now so long that the fear
and respect of death had departed from their graves. The path ran
between their resting-places. The wanderer by night never thought to
look whether forms wrapped in mist sat at midnight on the tops of the
cairns staring in silent longing at the stars.
It was a glittering morning, dewy and warm. The hunter who had been out
since daybreak had thrown himself down in the heather behind King
Atle’s pile. He lay on his back and slept. He had dragged his hat down
over his eyes; and under his head lay his leather game-bag, out of
which protruded a hare’s long ears and the bent tail-feathers of a
black-cock. His bow and arrows lay beside him.
From out of the wood came a girl with a bundle in her hand. When she
reached the flat rock between the piles of stones, she thought what a
good place it would be to dance. She was seized with an ardent desire
to try. She laid her bundle on the heather and began to dance quite
alone. She had no idea that a man lay asleep behind the king’s cairn.
The hunter still slept. The heather showed burning red against the deep
blue of the sky. An anthill stood close beside the sleeper. On it lay a
piece of quartz, which sparkled as if it had wished to set fire to all
the old stubble of the heath. Above the hunter’s head the black-cock
feathers spread out like a plume, and their iridescence shifted from
deep purple to steely blue. On the unshaded part of his face the
burning sunshine glowed. But he did not open his eyes to look at the
glory of the morning.
In the meanwhile the girl continued to dance, and whirled about so
eagerly that the blackened moss which had collected in the unevennesses
of the rocks flew about her. An old, dry fir root, smooth and gray with
age, lay upturned among the heather. She took it and whirled about with
it. Chips flew out from the mouldering wood. Centipedes and earwigs
that had lived in the crevices scurried out head over heels into the
luminous air and bored down among the roots of the heather.
When the swinging skirts grazed the heather, clouds of small grey
butterflies fluttered up from it. The under side of their wings was
white and silvery and they whirled like dry leaves in a squall. They
then seemed quite white, and it was as if a red sea threw up white
foam. The butterflies remained for a short time in the air. Their
fragile wings fluttered so violently that the down loosened and fell
like thin silver white feathers. The air seemed to be filled with a
glorified mist.
On the heath grasshoppers sat and scraped their back legs against their
wings, so that they sounded like harp strings. They kept good time and
played so well together, that to any one passing over the moor it
sounded like the same grasshopper during the whole walk, although it
seemed to be first on the right, then on the left; now in front, now
behind. But the dancer was not content with their playing and began
after a little while to hum the measure of a dance tune. Her voice was
shrill and harsh. The hunter was waked by the song. He turned on his
side, raised himself to his elbow, and looked over the pile of stones
at the dancing girl.
He had dreamt that the hare which he had just killed had leaped out of
the bag and had taken his own arrows to shoot at him. He now stared at
the girl half awake, dizzy with his dream, his head burning from
sleeping in the sun.
She was tall and coarsely built, not fair of face, nor light in the
dance, nor tuneful in her song. She had broad cheeks, thick lips and a
flat nose. She had very red cheeks, very dark hair. She was exuberant
in figure, moving with vigor and life. Her clothes were shabby but
bright in color. Red bands edged the striped skirt and bright colored
worsted fringes outlined the seams of her bodice. Other young maidens
resemble roses and lilies, but she was like the heather, strong, gay
and glowing.
The hunter watched with pleasure as the big, splendid woman danced on
the red heath among the playing grasshoppers and the fluttering
butterflies. While he looked at her he laughed so that his mouth was
drawn up towards his ears. But then she suddenly caught sight of him
and stood motionless.
“I suppose you think I am mad,” was the first thing that occurred to
her to say. At the same time she wondered how she would get him to hold
his tongue about what he had seen. She did not care to hear it told
down in the village that she had danced with a fir root.
He was a man poor in words. Not a syllable could he utter. He was so
shy that he could think of nothing better than to run away, although he
longed to stay. Hastily he got his hat on his head and his leather bag
on his back. Then he ran away through the clumps of heather.
She snatched up her bundle and ran after him. He was small, stiff in
his movements and evidently had very little strength. She soon caught
up with him and knocked his hat off to induce him to stop. He really
wished to do so, but he was confused with shyness and fled with still
greater speed. She ran after him and began to pull at his game-bag.
Then he had to stop to defend it. She fell upon him with all her
strength. They fought, and she threw him to the ground. “Now he will
not speak of it to any one,” she thought, and rejoiced.
At the same moment, however, she grew sick with fright, for the man who
lay on the ground turned livid and his eyes rolled inwards in his head.
He was not hurt in any way, however. He could not bear emotion. Never
before had so strong and conflicting feelings stirred within that
lonely forest dweller. He rejoiced over the girl and was angry and
ashamed and yet proud that she was so strong. He was quite out of his
head with it all.
The big, strong girl put her arm under his back and lifted him up. She
broke the heather and whipped his face with the stiff twigs until the
blood came back to it. When his little eyes again turned towards the
light of day, they shone with pleasure at the sight of her. He was
still silent; but he drew forward the hand which she had placed about
his waist and caressed it gently.
He was a child of starvation and early toil. He was dry and pallid,
thin and anaemic. She was touched by his faintheartedness; he who
nevertheless seemed to be about thirty years old. She thought that he
must live quite alone in the forest since he was so pitiful and so
meanly dressed. He could have no one to look after him, neither mother
nor sister nor sweetheart.
The great compassionate forest spread over the wilderness. Concealing
and protecting, it took to its heart everything which sought its help.
With its lofty trunks it kept watch by the lair of the fox and the
bear, and in the twilight of the thick bushes it hid the egg-filled
nests of little birds.
At the time when people still had slaves, many of them escaped to the
woods and found shelter behind its green walls. It became a great
prison for them which they did not dare to leave. The forest held its
prisoners in strict discipline. It forced the dull ones to use their
wits and educated those ruined by slavery to order and honor. Only to
the industrious did it give the right to live.
The two who met on the heath were descendants of such prisoners of the
forest. They sometimes went down to the inhabited, cultivated valleys,
for they no longer feared to be reduced to the slavery from which their
forefathers had fled, but they were happiest in the dimness of the
forest. The hunter’s name was Tönne. His real work was to cultivate the
earth, but he also could do other things. He collected herbs, boiled
tar, dried punk, and often went hunting. The dancer was called Jofrid.
Her father was a charcoal burner. She tied brooms, picked juniper
berries and brewed ale of the white-flowering myrtle. They were both
very poor.
They had never met before in the big wood, but now they thought that
all its paths wound into a net, in which they ran forward and back and
could not possibly escape one another. They never knew how to choose a
way where they did not meet.
Tönne had once had a great sorrow. He had lived with his mother for a
long while in a miserable, wattled hut, but as soon as he was grown up
he was seized with the idea to build her a warm cabin. During all his
leisure moments he went into the clearing, cut down trees and hewed
them into squared pieces. Then he hid the timber in dark crannies under
moss and branches. It was his intention that his mother should not know
anything of all this work before he was ready to build the house. But
his mother died before he could show her what he had collected; before
he had time to tell her what he had wished to do. He, who had worked
with the same zeal as David, King of Israel, when he gathered treasures
for the temple of God, grieved most bitterly over it. He lost all
interest in the building. For him the brushwood shelter was good
enough. Yet he was hardly better off in his home than an animal in its
hole.
When he, who had always heretofore crept about alone, was now seized
with the desire to seek Jofrid’s company, it certainly meant that he
would like to have her for his sweetheart and his bride. Jofrid also
waited daily for him to speak to her father or to herself about the
matter. But Tönne could not. This showed that he was of a race of
slaves. The thoughts that came into his head moved as slowly as the sun
when he travels across the sky. And it was more difficult for him to
shape those thoughts to connected speech than for a smith to forge a
bracelet out of rolling grains of sand.
One day Tönne took Jofrid to one of the clefts, where he had hidden his
timber. He pulled aside the branches and moss and showed her the
squared beams. “That was to have been mother’s house,” he said. The
young girl was strangely slow in understanding a young man’s thoughts.
When he showed her his mother’s logs she ought to have understood, but
she did not understand.
Then he decided to make his meaning even plainer. A few days later he
began to drag the logs up to the place between the cairns, where he had
seen Jofrid for the first time. She came as usual along the path and
saw him at work. Nevertheless she went on without saying anything.
Since they had become friends she had often given him a good handshake,
but she did not seem to want to help him with the heavy work. Tönne
still thought that she ought to have understood that it was now her
house which he meant to build.
She understood it very well, but she had no desire to give herself to
such a man as Tönne. She wished to have a strong and healthy husband.
She thought it would be a poor livelihood to marry any one who was weak
and dull. Still, there was much which drew her to that silent, shy man.
She thought how hard he had worked to gladden his mother and had not
enjoyed the happiness of being ready in time. She could weep for his
sake. And now he was building the house just where he had seen her
dance. He had a good heart. And that interested her and fixed her
thoughts on him, but she did not at all wish to marry him.
Every day she went over the heather field and saw the log cabin grow,
miserable and without windows, with the sunlight filtering in through
the leaky walls.
Tönne’s work progressed very quickly, but not with care. His timbers
were not bent square, the lark was scarcely taken off. He laid the
floor with split young trees. It was uneven and shaky. The heather,
which grew and blossomed under it,—for at year had passed since the day
when Tönne had lain aleep behind King Atle’s pile,— pushed up bold red
clusters through the cracks, and ants without number wandered out and
in, inspecting the fragile work of man.
Wherever Jofrid went during those days, the thought never left her that
a house was being built for her there. A home was being prepared for
her upon the heath. And she knew that if she did not enter there as
mistress, the bear and the fox would make it their home. For she knew
Tönne well enough to understand that if he found he had worked in vain,
he would never move into the new house. He would weep, poor man, when
he heard that she would not live there. It would be a new sorrow for
him, as deep as when his mother died. But he had himself to blame,
because he had not asked her in time.
She thought that she gave him a sufficient hint in not helping him with
the house. She often felt impelled to do so. Every time she saw any
soft, white moss, she wanted to pick it to fill in the leaky walls. She
longed, too, to help Tönne to build the chimney. As he was making it,
all the smoke would gather in the house. But it did not matter how it
was. No food would ever be cooked there, no ale brewed. Still it was
odious that the house would never leave her thoughts.
Tönne worked, glowing with eagerness, certain that Jofrid would
understand his meaning, if only the house were ready. He did not wonder
much about her; he had enough to do to hew and shape. The days went
quickly for him.
One afternoon, when Jofrid came over the moor, she saw that there was a
door in the cottage and a slab of stone for a threshold. Then she
understood that everything must now be ready, and she was much
agitated. Tönne had covered the roof with tufts of flowering heather,
and she was seized by an intense longing to enter under that red roof.
He was not at the new house and she decided to go in. The house was
built for her. It was her home. It was not possible to resist the
desire to see it.
Within it was more attractive than she had expected. Rushes were
strewed over the floor. It was full of the fresh fragrance of pine and
resin. The sunshine that played through the windows and cracks made
bands of light through the air. It looked as if she had been expected;
in the crannies of the wall green branches were stuck, and in the
fireplace stood a newly cut fir-tree. Tönne had not moved in his old
furniture. There was nothing but a new table and a bench, over which an
elk skin was thrown.
As soon as Jofrid had crossed the threshold, she felt the pleasant
cosiness of home surrounding her. She was happy and content while she
stood there, but to leave it seemed to her as hard as to go away and
serve strangers. It happened that Jofrid had expended much hard work in
procuring a kind of dower for herself. With skilful hands she had woven
bright colored fabrics, such as are used to adorn a room, and she
wanted to put them up in her own home, when she got one. Now she
wondered how those cloths would look here. She wished she could try
them in the new house.
She hurried quickly home, fetched her roll of weavings and began to
fasten the bright-colored pieces of cloth up under the roof. She threw
open the door to let the big setting sun shine on her and her work. She
moved eagerly about the cottage, brisk, gay, bumming a merry tune. She
was perfectly happy. It looked so fine. The woven roses and stars shone
as never before.
While she worked she kept a good look-out over the moor and the graves,
for it seemed to her as if Tönne might now too be lying hidden behind
one of the cairns and laughing at her. The king’s grave lay opposite
the door and behind it she saw the sun setting. Time after time she
looked out. She felt as if some one was sitting there and watching her.
Just as the sun was so low that only a few blood-red beams filtered
over the old stone heap, she saw who it was who was watching her. The
whole pile of stones was no longer stones, but a mighty, old warrior,
who was sitting there, scarred and gray, and staring at her. Round
about his head the rays of the sun made a crown, and his red mantle was
so wide that it spread over the whole moor. His head was big and heavy,
his face gray as stone. His clothes and weapons were also
stone-colored, and repeated so exactly the shadings and mossiness of
the rock, that one had to look closely to see that it was a warrior and
not a pile of stones. It was like those insects which resemble
tree-twigs. One can go by them twenty times before one sees that it is
a soft animal body one has taken for hard wood.
But Jofrid could no longer be mistaken. It was the old King Atle
himself sitting there. She stood in the doorway, shaded her eyes with
her hand, and looked right into his stony face. He had very small,
oblique eyes under a dome-like brow, a broad nose and a long beard. And
he was alive, that man of stone. He smiled and winked at her. She was
afraid, and what terrified her most of all were his thick, muscular
arms and hairy hands. The longer she looked at him the broader grew his
smile, and at last he lifted one of his mighty arms to beckon her to
him. Then Jofrid took flight towards home.
But when Tönne came home and saw the housc adorned with starry
weavings, he found courage to send a friend to Jofrid’s father. The
latter asked Jofrid what she thought about it and she gave her consent.
She was well pleased with the way it had turned out, even if she had
been half forced to give her hand. She could not say no to the man, to
whose house she had already carried her dower. Still she looked first
to see that old King Atle had again become a pile of stones.
Tönne and Jofrid lived happily for many years. They earned a good
reputation. “They are good,” people said. “See how they stand by one
another, see how they work together, see how one cannot live apart from
the other!”
Tönne grew stronger, more enduring and less heavy-witted every day.
Jofrid seemed to have made a whole man of him. Almost always he let her
rule, but he also understood how to carry out his own will with
tenacious obstinacy.
Jests and merriment followed Jofrid wherever she went. Her clothes
became more vivid the older she grew. Her whole face was bright red.
But in Tönne’s eyes she was beautiful.
They were not so poor as many others of their class. They ate butter
with their porridge and mixed neither bran nor bark in their bread.
Myrtle ale foamed in their tankards. Their flocks of sheep and goats
increased so quickly that they could allow themselves meat.
Tönne once worked for a peasant in the valley. The latter, who saw how
he and his wife worked together with great gaiety, thought like many
another: “See, these are good people.”
The peasant had lately lost his wife, and she had left behind her a
child six months old. He asked Tönne and Jofrid to take his son as a
foster-child.
“The child is very dear to me,” he said, “therefore I give it to you,
for you are good people.”
They had no children of their own, so that it seemed very fitting for
them to take it. They accepted it too without hesitation. They thought
it would be to their advantage to bring up a peasant’s child, besides
which they expected to be cheered in their old age by their foster-son.
But the child did not live to grow up with them. Before the year was
out it was dead. It was said by many that it was the fault of the
foster-parents, for the child had been unusually strong before it came
to them. By that no one meant, however, that they had killed it
intentionally, but rather that they had undertaken something beyond
their powers. They had not had sense or love enough to give it the care
it needed. They were accustomed only to think of themselves and to look
out for themselves. They had no time to care for a child. They wished
to go together to their work every day and to sleep a quiet sleep at
night. They thought that the child drank too much of their good milk
and did not allow him as much as themselves. They had no idea that they
were treating the boy badly. They thought that they were just as tender
to him as parents generally are. It seemed more to them as if their
foster-son had been a punishment and a torment. They did not mourn him
when he died.
Women usually enjoy nothing better than to take care of a child; but
Jofrid had a husband, whom she often had to care for like a mother, so
that she desired no one else. They also love to see their children’s
quick growth; but Jofrid had pleasure enough in watching Tönne develop
sense and manliness, in adorning and taking care of her house, in the
increase of their flocks, and in the crops which they were raising
below on the moor.
Jofrid went to the peasant’s farm and told him that the child was dead.
Then the man said: “I am like the man who puts cushions in his bed so
soft that he sinks down to the hard bottom. I wished to care too well
for my son, and look, now he is dead!” And he was heart-broken.
At his words Jofrid began to weep bitterly. “Would to God that you had
not left your son with us!” she said. “We were too poor. He could not
get what he needed with us.”
“That is not what I meant,” answered the peasant. “I believe that you
have over-indulged the child. But I will not accuse any one, for over
life and death God alone rules. Now I mean to celebrate the funeral of
my only son with the same expense as if he had been full grown, and to
the feast I invite both Tönne and you. By that you may know that I bear
you no grudge.”
So Tönne and Jofrid went to the funeral banquet. They were well
treated, and no one said anything unfriendly to them. The women who had
dressed the child’s body had related that it had been miserably thin
and had borne marks of great neglect. But that could easily come from
sickness. No one wished to believe anything bad about the
foster-parents, for it was known that they were good people.
Jofrid wept a great deal during those days, especially when she heard
the women tell how they had to wake and toil for their little children.
She noticed, too, that the women at the funeral were continually
talking of their children. Some rejoiced so in them that they never
could stop telling of their questions and games. Jofrid would have
liked to have talked about Tönne, but most of them never spoke of their
husbands.
Late one evening Jofrid and Tönne came home from the festivities. They
went straight to bed. But hardly had they fallen asleep before they
were waked by a feeble crying. “It is the child,” they thought, still
half asleep, and were angry at being disturbed. But suddenly both of
them sat right up in the bed. The child was dead. Where did that crying
come from? When they were quite awake, they heard nothing, but as soon
as they began to drop off to sleep they heard it. Little, tottering
feet sounded on the stone threshold outside the house, a little hand
groped for the door, and when it could not open it, the child crept
crying and feeling along the wall, until it stopped just outside where
they were sleeping. As soon as they spoke or sat up, they perceived
nothing; but when they tried to sleep, they distinctly heard the
uncertain steps and the suppressed sobbings.
That which they had not wished to believe, but which seemed a
possibility during these last days, now became a certainty. They felt
that they had killed the child. Why otherwise should it have the power
to haunt them?
From that night all happiness left them. They lived in constant fear of
the ghost. By day they had some peace, but at night they were so
disturbed by the child’s weeping and choking sobs, that they did not
dare to sleep alone. Jofrid often went long distances to get some one
to stop over night in their house. If there was any stranger there, it
was quiet, but as soon as they were alone, they heard the child.
One night, when they had found no one to keep them company and could
not sleep for the child, Jofrid got up from her bed.
“You sleep, Tönne,” she said. “If I keep awake, we will not hear
anything.”
She went out and sat down on the doorstep, thinking of what they ought
to do to get peace, for they could not go on living as things were. She
wondered if confession and penance and mortification and repentance
could relieve them from this heavy punishment.
Then it happened that she raised her eyes and saw the same vision as
once before from this place. The pile of stones had changed to a
warrior. The night was quite dark, but still she could plainly see that
old King Atle sat there and watched her. She saw him so well that she
could distinguish the moss-grown bracelets on his wrists and could see
how his legs were bound with crossed bands, between which his calf
muscles swelled.
This time she was not afraid of the old man. He seemed to be a friend
and consoler in her unhappiness. He looked at her with pity, as if he
wished to give her courage. Then she thought that the mighty warrior
had once had his day, when he had overthrown hundreds of enemies there
on the heath and waded through the streams of blood that had poured
between the clumps. What had he thought of one dead man more or less?
How much would the sight of children, whose fathers he had killed, have
moved his heart of stone? Light as air would the burden of a child’s
death have rested on his conscience.
And she heard his whisper, the same which the old stone-cold heathenism
had whispered through all time. “Why repent? The gods rule us. The
fates spin the threads of life. Why shall the children of earth mourn
because they have done what the immortal gods have forced them to do?”
Then Jofrid took courage and said to herself: “How am I to blame
because the child died? It is God alone who decides. Nothing takes
place without his will.” And she thought that she could lay the ghost
by putting all repentance from her.
But now the door opened and Tönne came out to her. “Jofrid,” he said,
“it is in the house now. It came up and knocked on the edge of the bed
and woke me. What shall we do, Jofrid?”
“The child is dead,” said Jofrid. “You know that it is lying deep under
ground. All this is only dreams and imagination.” She spoke hardly and
coldly, for she feared that Tönne would do something reckless, and
thereby cause them misfortune.
“We must put an end to it,” said Tönne.
Jofrid laughed dismally. “What do you wish to do? God has sent this to
us. Could He not have kept the child alive if He had chosen? He did not
wish it, and now He persecutes us for its death. Tell me by what right
He persecutes us?”
She got her words from the old stone warrior, who sat dark and high on
his pile. It seemed as if he suggested to her everything she answered
Tönne.
“We must acknowledge that we have neglected the child, and do penance,”
said Tönne.
“Never will I suffer for what is not my fault,” said Jofrid. “Who
wanted the child to die? Not I, not I. What kind of a penance will you
do? You need all your strength for work.”
“I have already tried with scourging,” said Tönne. “It is of no avail.”
“You see,” she said, and laughed again.
“We must try something else,” Tönne went on with persistent
determination. “We must confess.”
“What do you want to tell God, that He does not know?” mocked Jofrid.
“Does He not guide your thoughts, Tönne? What will you tell Him?” She
thought that Tönne was stupid and obstinate. She had found him so in
the beginning of their acquaintance, but since then she had not thought
of it, but had loved him for his good heart.
“We will confess to the father, Jofrid, and offer him compensation.”
“What will you offer him?” she asked.
“The house and the goats.”
“He will certainly demand an enormous compensation for his only son.
All that we possess would not be enough.”
“We will give ourselves as slaves into his power, if he is not content
with less.”
At these words Jofrid was seized by cold despair, and she hated Tönne
from the depths of her soul. Everything she would lose appeared so
plainly to her,—freedom, for which her ancestors had ventured their
lives, the house, her comforts, honor and happiness.
“Mark my words, Tönne,” she said hoarsely, half choked with pain, “that
the day you do that thing will be the day of my death.”
After that no more words were exchanged between them, but they remained
sitting on the doorstep until the day came. Neither found a word to
appease or to conciliate; each felt fear and scorn of the other. The
one measured the other by the standard of his own anger, and they found
each other narrow-minded and bad-tempered.
After that night Jofrid could not refrain from letting Tönne feel that
he was her inferior. She let him understand in the presence of others
that he was stupid, and helped him with his work so that he had to
think how much stronger she was. She evidently wished to take away from
him all rights as master of the house. Sometimes she pretended to be
very lively, to distract him and to prevent him from brooding. He had
not done anything to carry out his plan, but she did not believe that
he had given it up.
During this time Tönne became more and more as he was before his
marriage. He grew thin and pale, silent and slow-witted. Jofrid’s
despair increased each day, for it seemed as if everything was to be
taken from her. Her love for Tönne came back, however, when she saw him
unhappy. “What is any of it worth to me if Tönne is ruined?” she
thought. “It is better to go into slavery with him than to see him die
in freedom.”
Jofrid, however, could not at once decide to obey Tönne. She fought a
long and severe fight. But one morning she awoke in an unusually calm
and gentle mood. Then she thought that she could now do what he
demanded. And she waked him, saying that it should be as he wished.
Only that one day he should grant her to say farewell to everything.
The whole forenoon she went about strangely gentle. Tears rose easily
to her eyes. The heath was beautiful that day for her sake, she
thought. Frost had passed over it, the flowers were gone, and the whole
moor had turned brown. But when it was lighted by the slanting rays of
the autumn sun, it looked as if the heather glowed red once more. And
she remembered the day when she saw Tönne for the first time.
She wished that she might see the old king once more, for he had helped
her to find her happiness. She had been seriously afraid of him of
late. She felt as if he were lying in wait to seize her. But now she
thought he could no longer have any power over her. She would remember
to look for him towards night when the moon rose.
It happened that a couple of wandering musicians came by about noon.
Jofrid had the idea to ask them to stop at her house the whole
afternoon, for she wished to have a dance. Tönne had to hasten to her
parents and ask them to come. And her small brothers and sisters ran
down to the village for the other guests. Soon many people had
collected.
There was great gaiety. Tönne kept apart in a corner of the house, as
was his habit when they had guests, but Jofrid was quite wild in her
fun. With shrill voice she led the dance and was eager in offering her
guests the foaming ale. There was not much room in the cottage, but the
fiddlers were untiring, and the dance went on with life and spirit. It
grew suffocatingly warm. The door was thrown open, and all at once
Jofrid saw that night had come and that the moon had risen. Then she
went to the door and looked out into the white world of the moonlight.
A heavy dew had fallen. The whole heath was white, as the moon was
reflected in all the little drops, which had collected on every twig.
There Tönne and she would go to-morrow hand in hand to meet the most
terrible dishonor. For, however the meeting with the peasant should
turn out, whatever he might take or whatever he might let them keep,
dishonor would certainly be their lot. They, who that evening possessed
a good cottage and many friends, to-morrow would be despised and
detested by all, perhaps they would also be robbed of everything they
had earned, perhaps, too, be dishonored slaves. She said to herself:
“It is the way of death.” And now she could not understand how she
would ever have the strength to walk in it. It seemed to her as if she
were of stone, a heavy stone image like old King Atle. Although she was
alive, she felt as if she would not be able to lift her heavy stone
limbs to walk that way.
She turned her eyes towards the king’s grave and distinctly saw the old
warrior sitting there. But now he was adorned as for a feast. He no
longer wore the gray, moss-grown stone attire, but white, glittering
silver. Now again he wore a crown of beams, as when she first saw him,
but this one was white. And white shone his breastplate and armlets,
shining white were sword, hilt, and shield. He sat and watched her with
silent indifference. The unfathomable mystery which great stone faces
wear had now sunk down over him. There he sat dark and mighty, and
Jofrid had a faint, indistinct idea that he was an image of something
which was in herself and in all men, of something which was buried in
far-away centuries, covered by many stones, and still not dead. She saw
him, the old king, sitting deep in the human heart. Over its barren
field he spread his wide king’s mantle. There pleasure danced, there
love of display flaunted. He was the great stone warrior who saw famine
and poverty pass by without his stone heart being moved. “It is the
will of the gods,” he said. He was the strong man of stone, who could
bear unatoned-for sin without yielding. He always said: “Why grieve for
what you have done, compelled by the immortal gods?”
Jofrid’s breast was shaken by a sigh deep as a sob. She had a feeling
which she could not explain, a feeling that she ought to struggle with
the man of stone, if she was to be happy. But at the same time she felt
helplessly weak.
Her impenitence and the struggle out on the heath seemed to her to be
one and the same thing, and if she could not conquer the first by some
means or other, the last would gain power over her.
She looked back towards the cottage, where the weavings glowed under
the roof timbers, where the musicians spread merriment, and where
everything she loved was, then she felt that she could not go into
slavery. Not even for Tönne’s sake could she do it. She saw his pale
face within in the house, and she asked herself with a contraction of
the heart if he was worth the sacrifice of everything for his sake.
In the cottage the people had started a new dance. They arranged
themselves in a long line, took each other by the hand, and with a
wild, strong young man at the head, they rushed forward at dizzy speed.
The leader drew them through the open door out cm to the moonlit heath.
They stormed by Jofrid, panting and wild, stumbling against stones,
falling into the heather, making wide rings round the house, circling
about the heaps of stones. The last of the line called to Jofrid and
stretched out his hand to her. She seized it and ran too.
It was not a dance, only a mad rush; but there was pleasure in it,
audacity and the joy of living. The rings became bolder, the cries
sounded louder, the laughter more boisterous. From cairn to cairn, as
they lay scattered over the heath, wound the line of dancers. If any
one fell in the wild swinging, he was dragged up, the slow ones were
driven onward; the musicians stood in the doorway and played the
faster. There was no time to rest, to think, nor to look about. The
dance went on at always madder speed over the yielding moss and
slippery rocks.
During all this Jofrid felt more and more clearly that she wished to
keep her freedom, that she would rather die than lose it. She saw that
she could not follow Tönne. She thought of running away, of hurrying
into the wood and never coming back.
They had circled about all the cairns except that of King Atle. Jofrid
saw that they were now turning towards it and she kept her eyes fixed
on the stone man. Then she saw how his giant arms were stretched
towards the rushing dancers. She screamed aloud, but she was answered
by loud laughter. She wished to stop, but a strong grasp drew her on.
She saw him snatch at those hurrying by, but they were so quick that
the heavy arms could not reach any of them. It was incomprehensible to
her that no one saw him. The agony of death came over her. She thought
that he would reach her. It was for her that he had lain in wait for
many years. With the others it was only play. It was she whom he would
seize at last.
Her turn came to rush by King Atle. She saw how he raised himself and
bent for a spring to be sure of the matter and catch her. In her
extreme need she felt that if she only could decide to give in the next
day, he would not have the power to catch her, but she could not.—She
came last, and she was swung so violently that she was more dragged and
jerked forward than running herself, and it was hard for her to keep
from falling. And although she passed at lightning speed, the old
warrior was too quick for her. The heavy arms sank down over her, the
stone hands seized her, she was drawn into the silvery harness of that
breast. The agony of death took more and more hold of her, but she knew
to the very last that it was because she had not been able to conquer
the stone king in her own heart that Atle had power over her.
It was the end of the dancing and merriment. Jofrid lay dying. In the
violence of their mad rout, she had been thrown against the king’s
cairn and received her death-blow on its stones.