Unn stepped towards the witch then hesitated. Her top teeth bit into the flesh of her lower lip. Her fingernails dug into her palms. Her right forefinger, the nail chewed ragged, cut a red crescent in the heel of her hand, breaking through even the leather-hard skin years of toil had grafted. Her question burned in her breast like she had swallowed too-hot soup but yet she dared not speak.
In the gathering gloom the witch looked terrifying. The orange glow of the embers in the hearth cast long black shadows up her craggy, age-lined face. Her long white hair straggled around her shoulders, brushed straight and held away from her face by a comb on either side of her head like she was an unmarried maiden. Her long black dress seemed to merge with the shadows that stole from all corners to claim the longhouse of Unn Kjartinsdottir. Here and there the firelight glittered on little gems, seashells and other trinkets sewn into the material so it twinkled like the night sky. The skin of her face and forearms was covered in red-brown splatters of dried blood.
What are you scared of? Unn chided herself. She was no slip of a girl, nervous that the fortune teller would predict she would never find a good husband. She was well past that, husband and all. She was Unn. She had arrived in this foreign, harsh island at the edge of the world with nothing much more than a bag of gold and her son Einar, then just a newborn baby, in her arms. She had claimed the land her longhouse now stood on. She had built her own farmstead in the bleak soil, surrounded by the heathens whose pagan Gods seemed to still hide in the burial mounds and the black rocks of the mountain crags. She had spent eighteen winters in this strange land where hot water boiled up from the ground, rivers of ice ground their way down from the mountains, the sun shone all day in summer and never rose in winter, when the sky was haunted by weird, flowing, shimmering lights. Now she was a woman of substance. She owned land, a farm and beasts. She had raised a fine son. She had survived against all that Fate had thrown at her so far, and so far Fate had been vicious. Why then was she now scared to ask what Fate was about to hurl at her next?
She glanced around at the others, her friends and neighbours, who lay snoring on the benches and around the long fire that stretched from one end of the longhouse to the other. Like most Icelandic longhouses, Unn’s was, as the name suggested, much longer than it was wide. The roof arched along the middle and reached almost to the ground at the walls, as if the building was crouching into the landscape for shelter from the brutal climate.
Tonight it had been filled with warmth and the folk from the surrounding farmsteads in the Midfjord district, who had made it their custom to gather at Unnsstaðir – Unn's farmstead – to celebrate the festival of Dísablót, the first day of winter, ever since she had arrived among them eighteen winters before. They had welcomed her, and when she had told them she was a widow, alone in the world, they had banded together to help her establish her farmstead. They knew she was not of their people but still they had helped her. Iceland was still a very young country. They were all settlers here. Many were fugitives. They needed to band together if they were to survive. It was not just the climate that was out to get them. Coming to her farmstead for Dísablót had just been another way of them showing their acceptance of her and Unn had reciprocated. She did not approve of their religion but Unn had always been a hospitable host. They all had to get on, after all.
Like the witch, her neighbours’ skins were speckled with dried blood. To Unn these were the marks of false Gods but she knew these were important, holy even, to them. Earlier in the day, in celebration of the Dísablót, the witch had killed the beasts who would not make it through the winter. She had pulled the sharp blade across their throats. She called out to the Dísir, the spirits of the land, to accept the souls of the animals as their flesh parted and their warm blood dribbled out into a deep wooden bowl. After dipping a branch into the bowl and singing prayers to their Thunder God, the witch had flicked the branch over the congregation, sprinkling them with a gory shower that they let dry, wearing the splatters as badges of their faith.
Feasting followed. With so many slaughtered animals there was much meat and Unn had provided enough ale along with it to drown a giant. Then, as the last night of autumn drew in, they had settled around the fire to hear the songs of a skald, Snorri Thorketelsson, who Unn had paid for. Then the witch had been called on to tell fortunes. One by one Unn’s friends and neighbours had sat before the old woman, listening agog to her predictions and rantings, her whispers and her gulders. Now they all lay in the darkness, their stomachs gorged, their thirsts drowned by ale and their hearts warmed by tales of old, sung well into the night.
Unn had waited until the last guest fell asleep and the thralls had gone to their beds before daring to approach the witch. If the vǫlva had an answer for her she wanted no one else to hear it. The last flames in the hearth guttered, as if the bitter wind outside was reaching cold fingers into the longhouse, eager to stifle any warmth. It buffeted against the turf that covered the roof, making strange thumping sounds like someone was walking over the house. Unn’s shoulders shivered like a rat had scurried down her spine.
Taking a deep breath, Unn sat down facing the witch across the dying embers.
The time for her to ask her question had come.