arl Bjarmar shifts his weight in the grand chair of the high table as the two feuding farmers depart from his hall. Quarrelling over a foot of land—the affair could have been resolved that very morning if one hadn’t accused the other of moving the boundary stones. He would have welcomed the reprieve from hearing the preliminary pleas and riding out to the pasture and pacing out the field himself before a handful of witnesses. But now that honour had been offended, the two would duel in a hjolmgang in a month’s time when all the free men in Hålogaland would gather in Ofotfjord for the yearly Thing. At least they agreed the matter would be settled at first blood. Too many good men are killed senselessly in duels.
“Ongli Ongullson,” announces Asger Asmundson, as the next plaintiff rises from the waiting bench and approaches the high table.
“Jarl Bjarmar,” says Ongli, “May Odin the Wise guide your judgements.”
“Tell me of your matter.”
“It’s my wife.”
“Frida? Is she alright?”
“She’s fine if it’s her health you mean. I want to divorce her.”
“Divorce—But you just married her! It hasn’t even been six months! We’re still drinking your wedding mead!”
“I know.”
Bjarmar exhales very slowly. “On what grounds do you want to divorce her?”
“I’m a fisherman,” says Ongli, “I get up very early in the morning to sail out into the fjord to catch fish for the good people of this village. I’m hauling up bulging nets all day, rowing, weighing anchor, towing heavy lines, and by the time I come back home, I’m completely exhausted. I go to bed early to keep my body strong and fit for work. But Frida prefers to stay up late drinking mead and flirting with the young men.”
“She is here quite often. Nearly every night, wouldn’t you say?”
“At least,” says Asger, smirking, “I played a game of hnefetafl with her not too long ago, but she was so drunk it wasn’t fun to beat her.”
“That sounds like my wife to me.”
Bjarmar smiles thinly as some of the other huskarls chuckle. “Frida’s always been a drunk and giddy girl. You knew that when you married her.”
“It’s not that she’s drunk and giddy,” Ongli says, “it’s that each night I go to bed alone to get my rest, only to have Frida come stumbling home at some unspeakable hour, giggling and bumping into things, swearing loudly, and disturbing me from my otherwise peaceful and much-needed sleep. And then in the morning, when I get up quietly and slip out the door to begin my work, she’ll curse and moan about how early I’ve woken her, and why couldn’t I leave more quietly. That woman. At first, I said nothing and put up with this irritating habit, but after a while, I couldn’t stand it and had a word with her. I asked her to be considerate of how hard and long I work, and to go to bed a little earlier.”
He scowls, clenching his fists, his voice lowering in a snarl. “And do you know what she said to me? She called me a poor nursing infant! Said my mother weaned me too early and that I still need her milk to fall asleep! You know my mother’s been dead for seven years! And then! As if that isn’t enough! She says if I knew anything about pleasing girls I’d behave more like my brother Knori, and that he’s better for a woman than I am!
All the smiles have faded, and Bjarmar tenses his shoulders. “This is serious,” he says, “But tell me, Ongli, when Frida said this did you strike her and restore your honour?”
“No, if I struck that woman she’d be the one in here divorcing me. And I’d rather not be known to everyone as the kind of man who knocks his wife around.”
Bjarmar tilts his head against the back of his chair. It would have been simpler if Ongli had hit Frida and she was the one before him now. It would have been better for Ongli that way too; there would be fair grounds for a divorce, and no penalty for him striking her because of what she’d said to him. He would have needed only to give his permission for them to separate and Frida could have gathered her belongings and gone back to live with her parents. That would have been the end of the matter. However, a man sending his wife back to her father is a more complex affair.
“You’re sure you and Frida can’t be reconciled?”
Ongli scoffs. “No, I won’t live with a woman who speaks to me like that.”
“What was the bride price you paid her father?”
“Twelve ounces of silver.”
“And Frida’s morning gift?”
“A third of that.”
Bjarmar holds his breath for a moment and anxiously taps his fingers on the arm of his chair. “Ongli Ongullson I permit you to divorce your wife. Frida will return to her father’s house along with her dowry and all her belongings—
Ongli sighs with relief.
“—and an additional one pound of silver, or the equivalent in livestock or resources.”
“What! Another pound of silver! But it took me three years to save up that amount! How is that a fair judgement?”
Bjarmar leans forward in his chair, suddenly angry. “How do you think everyone will look at Frida when you send her back to her parents after only five months of marriage? She humiliated you in private, but you will be humiliating her publicly! Not only her, but her whole family, since by doing this you are saying her mother and father raised her poorly and did not teach her how to respect a man. That pound of silver is to restore their honour! Unless you’d rather take one of Frida’s brothers to the hjolm.”
“No,” says Ongli sadly, “But how am I to come up with such a sum?”
“Patience and hard work. If this is truly what you wish, I’m sure you’ll find a way.”
“Perhaps Chief Torvald?” suggests Asger.
“Yes … The Chieftain of Borg is planning a raiding voyage with some of the other chiefs of Lofoten. They’ll be leaving in the next few weeks before the Thing, but I’m sure you could join up with them since you make your living on the sea. You’ll be gone for months at the very least, but you’ll come back a rich man … if you come back. And who knows, some time apart from Frida may soften your heart.”
Ongli strokes his beard. “I’ve never gone on a raid before. But now that you suggest it, I think it could be good for both of us.”
“You have my blessing if you want to go. Come back rich and boasting of your courageous deeds.”
“Thank you, Jarl Bjarmar.”
As Ongli Ongullson turns to leave, Svafa and Frodmar get up from the waiting bench and approach the high table. The sight of his daughter and her husband lightens his mood and he relaxes a little bit. After them, there is only one more plaintiff: a distraught young man fidgeting anxiously with a strip of yellow cloth.
“May Odin the Wise guide your judgements,” Svafa and Frodmar say together.
Bjarmar sighs gladly. “Good to see the two of you. Tell me Frodmar, how’s the barn coming? I haven’t been up to see it yet, but I mean to, when I’m not busy.”
“It’s going well. I’ve let the boys do most of it, right from the planning stage to laying out the foundation, measuring, cutting, directing the thralls. They make me proud.”
“The gods have blessed you Frodmar. And Svafa, what about the wool I sent you? “Have you and Hervor started working it on the loom? No, too soon I suppose. The way she spins yarn you’ll be lucky to dye it before the end of summer.”
There’s a twitch in Svafa’s face and she’s about to speak, but her father cuts her off.
“Which reminds me,” Bjarmar says, “I’ve been meaning to speak the two you. Now, of course I’d ask Hervor how she feels about this, but I’d like to know what you think first. Myr Naglison will soon be succeeding his father as the Chief of Malangsfjord. Myr isn’t a warrior, but his family is held in high esteem and in recent years has become quite wealthy through trade. I thought, that since he’ll be looking for a wife, and that, well, since Malangsfjord isn’t too far north of here …”
Svafa shifts uncomfortably as she and her husband exchange an awkward glance. “It’s actually because of Hervor that we’re here.”
“Of course it is,” Bjarmar grumbles as he slumps against the back of his chair, reconsidering whether Myr Naglison would be a suitable match for his hot-headed granddaughter. “She’s been fighting again?”
Despite his stern look of disapproval, a small smile forms on Asger’s lips that could almost be interpreted as a sense of pride in Hålogaland’s princess.
“No—well yes, but, she’s run off.”
“Well,” he chuckles, “I can’t have Asger track her down every time she takes off into the woods. She’ll come home again when she’s ready. She always does.”
“I know. But this time—”
Frodmar interrupts her. “She’s been gone five days, lord.”
“Five—” Bjarmar bolts upright. “Five days! My granddaughter has been missing in the woods for five days, and you only think to tell me now?”
“We had a fight,” says Svafa, “I said some things I shouldn’t have. I thought it would be best to let her have some time to cool off and think.”
Frodmar shakes his head, his eyes filling. “Some thrall told my little girl that her real father is a swineherd. That she’s a bastard!”
“That’s an outrageous lie!”
Asger looks at the man next to him. “That runaway thrall you recaptured the other day …”
The huskarl nods. “Folki.”
“It’s worse than that,” says Svafa as she wrings her hands. “She was convinced by what they said, and confronted me in a panic. I had no choice. I told her it was true.”
Bjarmar turns white. “Gods in Asgard! No wonder …” He sits back down in disbelief. “Five days and nights she’s been out there believing she’s some thrall’s bastard daughter. She must be beside herself with grief! Who knows what kind of things she’s gotten into her head! Svafa, if she’s hurt herself …”
Frodmar puts his arm around her as Svafa hangs her head miserably. “I didn’t want to disobey you by telling her the real story,” she says.
“Oh, to Hel with all that! At this point I’d rather that you told her! Loki, Svafa!”
“Which way did she go?” asks Asger, “I’ll go after her right now.”
“Northeast,” she says, “toward the valley.”
Asger’s face darkens with concern, and all eyes turn to the back of the hall as the young man stands up from the waiting bench.
“Forgive me,” he says, “but I am from northeast of here, from Garvik.”
“Your name?” says Asger.
“Bjarni Karlson.”
“Speak, Bjarni Karlson.”
“Four days ago my brother Geiri went hunting. That night, when he didn’t return, we all thought he’d spent the night in the forest. But in the morning my wife found this washed up on the bank of the Sorgstrøm.”
The hall goes very quiet and Bjarmar turns as pale as bone as Bjarni Karlson holds up the shredded remains of a bloodstained yellow tunic. “At first we thought a bear got him, or wolves, but—”
“What sort of beast takes a man out of his clothes?” says Frodmar.
Svafa looks anxiously between her father and husband. “You don’t really think it could be …”
Asger takes the tunic from the young man, and an old hatred ignites in his eyes as he looks it over. “Svangur,” he snarls.
Svafa covers her mouth. Bjarmar’s hands tremble on the arms of his chair. “Ready the horses! Fetch the hounds! Send word to the neighbouring villages—I want every male between the age of twelve and sixty armed and dressed for battle! Frodmar, my mail and my helm!”
As the huskarls leap to action with grim urgency, Asger Asmundson storms out of the hall onto the wooden steps overlooking the fjord-side village, and lifting the ram’s horn from where it’s slung across his chest, his cheeks swell with a deep, resounding blast.