THE HOMESTEAD AT GREENODD.
Once upon an afternoon in summer time it was that our story begins; and
so long ago that we may live perhaps to call it a thousand years since.
Swein and his people had not been ten winters yet at Greenodd; but they
had built a good house, and cleared land to farm it, and made the place
look something like home.
So one afternoon before summer was over, Unna sat rocking her baby
Thorstein to sleep, and sewing as she stirred the cradle with her foot,
and singing as she sewed. She wore a long gown of ruddy colour, long
sleeved; with a kerchief round her neck, and a housewife’s apron; but
because she was of high birth, she had a gold band like a crown round her
head, and her yellow hair was tucked around it and fell away unbraided
from under a high white cap. A silken pocket hung from her belt, and on
her finger was a gold ring; but her jewels for the most part were locked
away in a kist, against high-days and holidays. For this was a working
day, and every one was busy.
Most folk were out of doors that time of year; only the mother was at
home, minding the baby after her morning’s turn round the farm; and to
keep her company, an old nurse who, being a brisk body, was putting in
a spell of work at a standing loom of the ancient make. She threw the
shuttle slowly, and combed up the web but slackly, for the afternoon was
warm, and the sun outside beat upon the roof of the house and made it
hot. For the house was like one of our barns with its rafters and beams
unceiled: and though it was heavily thatched, the air was hot within.
It was somewhat gloomy too, in spite of the bright sheen that lay on
field and fell. Though door and porch door stood open, the rest of the
place was lit only by windows that stood high up near the roof, in a
row on either side of the long hall: and they were filled with bladder,
which kept out the sun. One spot there was which had been burst by the
stone-throwing of the boys, and not mended yet for want of hands in this
busy summer-time. Through the hole a ray of sunlight shot across the
hall, and caught on the chain of the hanging lamp, and lit up the thin
smoke that rose in the midst. For the hearth fire was never let out if
they could help. Even in summer it was needed morning and evening for
their cooking, and bad to kindle from fire-stones and rotten sticks. So
as wood and peat were plentiful, it was smothered between whiles just to
keep it alight, and thus went on from year’s end to year’s end.
The hearth was in the middle of the floor, then-a-days, raised a little
and paved with cobbles set in sammel clay. One could sit round it, as you
can still at a fire-spot in a farm-house of the right old sort. And grand
times they had of winter’s evenings with their great chat fires, or else
logs of which one end was out at the door while the other was blazing
under the black pot. There folk would sit working and tale-telling, and
watching acorns and crab apples roast, and the boiling of their porridge
in that same great pot that hung by an iron crook and a chain from the
house-beam overhead, the “rannal balk” as our folk, the Northmen’s
children, call it still.
Up through the gloom and the little space of sun went the thin blue
smoke, like a stripe of rain out of April clouds. Half way to the roof it
was met by the chimney flue, that hung down likest of ought to a great
bell hanging from the roof tree, narrow at the top and covered like a
belfry with a flagstone laid flat upon pillars, but opening out beneath
and crossed by the house-beam. And in this luffer or chimney hung the
last hams and smoked meat of the year before. For at the back end of the
year they always hung their flesh meat against the winter, and Unna was
too wise a house-wife to let them eat all up before the next store was
laid in, however plentiful the season might be.
You must know this “firehouse” (as we still say) was the main hall and
living room of the homestead. Bed-chambers there were alongside of it
behind the wall, and out-buildings; not to say lofts among the beams,
and an earth-house or cellar dug out under the floor at one end of the
hall. But the firehouse was the House, as one may say; and in a homely
spot like this backwood bigging at Greenodd a thousand years since,
everything went forward in the firehouse; cooking and eating, work and
play, business and pleasure. This was their hearth and home.
At one corner were its door and porch opening upon the garth, and at
the opposite corner there was another door: and at the back part were
out-buildings rising sharply up the hill behind. At the ends of the hall
under the gables were great arks and kists against the wall, and at one
end the aforesaid loom: but along the side were hung the men’s weapons,
spears and shields and coats of mail, and their hunting and fishing
tackle, well out of the way in a row beneath the row of windows, and over
long benches that lined the hall on either hand.
In the middle of the benches were two high seats, one on this side and
one on that over against it. They were like the great elbow-chairs or
settles you see in old farm-houses; roomy enough for three, carved on
their high backs, and with carved heads to their posts in front. The
children had a tale that one head was father and one was mother: older
folk would say the figures stood for Odin and Freya. Anyway they were
something more than just ornaments; they gave a holiness to the place,
and made the high seat of the master as it were a kind of temple-stall.
Before the benches on one side of the hall stood a long table, all of
oak, like the seats and the wainscotting and the rest, brown already with
age and bright with rubbing: but on the other side the tables had been
taken off their trestles and laid up to make more room, and because half
their men were abroad with Swein at sea. On this side sat Unna in her own
high seat with the cradle at her feet, and before her the hearth with its
thin smoke going up, and the sun-ray striking through it, and blazing in
the fern that was strewed on the floor. And when the sun-spot crept upon
the cradle she stooped down and moved it a little backwards, so that the
bright light should not wake the baby. And when he stirred she pushed
the cradle with her foot and sang again while she sewed at his shirt.
And the loom went clattering on with the steady noise that is good for
babies’ slumber. Nothing else was heard, except the birds singing in the
green-wood around, and far-away clamour of people working in the fields.
When the baby was sound asleep again, Unna rose, and walked softly to see
where his brothers might be: and her gown trained on the ferny floor.
She stood in the porch and called, but not too loudly, “Ho! Orm! Hundi!
where are you? what are you doing?”
But they were off. And so she sat down again and sewed till her eyelids
were heavy with the warmth and the dimness of the place.
“Eh, barn,” she said, “what makes one so drowsy? sleep by day and starve
at night, they used to say.”
“Most like a stranger is coming,” said the old woman from the loom.
For it was thought that a man’s fetch went before and brought slumber.
“Few strangers here but bad ones,” said Unna.
“May be it’s the master and the men.”
“Why, they are gone but these three weeks, and who knows when they may
come back, and how? And it’s weary waiting, and a deal on one’s hands:
let alone the chances of raid and robbery.”
“What, there’s Raud thy brother and all,” said the old woman sharply.
“And folk must live. It would be ill liked if the master never brought
home an armful of finery, or another hand or so for the farm, or a barrel
of somewhat sharper than we can brew.”
“Aye, its a lone spot: not that I complain: for Raud is a handy lad. It
will be a bad day when he takes land up-bank, as he talks of doing.”
“Nay, never heed his talk. He must light on some one fit first,” answered
the weaver: “and how will he do that hereaway, I’d like to know? As for
thy man, and my man, and the rest, they are men, with hands to their
elbows and heads on their shoulders.”
“Or had, you may say, to start with,” said Unna with a sigh.
“Heads, aye, and know their ways about. Look at my old man. These forty
winters he has come back to me the same as ever.”
“Aye, he has a cat’s life, has old Toli.”
“Not so old as that comes to, neither,” said the crone. “And thankful we
should be for our good men and for a good roof over us. Eh, child, when I
think on all we have come through.”
“No fells, no dales,” said she: “no loom, no clatter;” but she hastened
to add “I am out of sorts to-day. There’s overmuch to be done before they
come, to redd all up for the back end. There’s yon window now. I wonder
if the ladder is handy. One might do it oneself sooner than bide for
those lazy carles.” And she got up and walked uneasily to the door again.
“Nay barn, let it be: its none of thy job,” said the old woman; muttering
to her loom, for there was nobody else to hear. “The mistress is queer
and fidgetty to-day. One might think somewhat was going to happen.”
But the ladder was up against a rick in the distance, and men were on it,
thatching and shouting. Over the water, and all round, wooded hills shook
in the heat-haze. Unna shaded her eyes and looked once more for Orm and
Hundi, but nought she spied. She came back and sat on a stool against her
high-seat, and tried to sew. But the sun-spot crept on to her lap, like
some little wounded animal, dragging itself painfully to refuge there.
It shone through her work, and through her fingers, so that they seemed
blood-red: and it dived into the red stone in her ring, and made it
redder than blood: and it burned on the gold like the whole sun itself, a
blaze of mystery, a dream of glory.
Clitter-clatter went on the loom. “Poor soul,” said the old woman: “best
thing she can do”—as she saw Unna’s tired head sink back against the
post of the high-seat, and her long white throat slide out of the white
neckerchief, and her chin heaved up, like a blown wild rose leaf, warm in
the reflected sunshine.
Then in the stillness the sun-spot dragged itself off her hand and off
her lap, and tumbled to the floor again in one roundel, just like a
bubble that gathers itself together in the dark pool under a waterfall,
out of the shattering of the spray: a dream of death.
Clitter-clatter went on the loom nevertheless: and the birds sang still
in the green world outside. The mother’s dreams were soft and sweet, of
life’s love, and life’s labour, that never fail nor come to bitterness;
for these regard not glory, and fear not death.