Iceland's Bell Read Free Page A

bless the king,” said the old man. “All those church bells that the pope used to own, the king owns now. But this is not a church bell. It’s the bell of the land. I was born here on Bláskógaheiði.”
    “Do you have any tobacco?” asked the black-haired man. “This damned hangman’s too stingy to give a man some snuff.”
    “No,” said the old man. “My people have never had any tobacco. It’s been a hard year. My two grandchildren died in the spring. I’m an old man now. This bell—it has always belonged to this country.”
    “Who has the letters to prove it?” asked the hangman.
    “My father was born here on Bláskógaheiði,” said the old man.
    “No one owns anything unless he has letters for it,” said the king’s hangman.
    “I believe that it says in the old books,” said the old man, “that when the Norwegians arrived in this empty land, they found this bell in a cave by the sea, along with a cross that’s now lost.”
    “My letter is from the king, I say!” said the hangman. “And get yourself on up to the roof, Jón Hreggviðsson, you black thief!”
    “The bell may not be broken,” said the old man, who had stood up. “It may not be taken away in the Hólmship. It has been rung at the Alþingi by Öxará since the beginning—long before the days of the king; some say before the days of the pope.”
    “I could care less,” said the king’s hangman. “Copenhagen must be rebuilt. We’ve been fighting a war against the Swedes and those filthy bastard skulkers have bombarded the place.”
    “My grandfather lived at Fíflavellir,* some way up from here on Bláskógaheiði,” said the old man, as if he were starting to narrate a long story. But he got no further.
    “Ne’er would king with arms so stout caress her
Drape her in gems that fair bewitch
Drape her in gems that fair bewitch . . .”
    The black thief Jón Hreggviðsson was straddling the roof, his feet dangling out over the gable, singing the
Elder Ballad of Pontus.
* The bell was fastened with a thick rope around the ridgepole, and he hacked at the rope with an ax until the bell fell down into the dooryard:
    “Drape her in gems that fair bewitch
—Unless she were both young and r-i-i-i-ch . . .
    . . . and now they say that my Most Gracious Hereditary Sire has gotten himself a third mistress,” he shouted down from the roof, as if announcing tidings to the old man. He looked at the edge of the ax and added: “And she’s supposed to be the fattest of them all. That’s what separates the king from me and Siggi Snorrason.”
    The old man made no reply.
    “Your words are going to cost you, Jón Hreggviðsson,” said the hangman.
    “Gunnar of Hlíðarendi would never have run away from a pale pig-belly from Álftanes,” said Jón Hreggviðsson.
    The pale emissary took a sledgehammer from a saddlebag, placed the ancient bell of Iceland on the doorstep before the courthouse, raised the hammer up high, and gave the bell a blow, but it only slipped a bit from under the hammer with a dull and glancing sound. Jón Hreggviðsson called down from the roof:
    “ ‘Seldom break bones on hollow ground, my man,’ said Axlar-Björn.”*
    The king’s hangman repositioned the bell against the step and struck its inner edge, and this time the bell broke in two along its crack. The old man had sat down again upon the crumbling wall. He looked tremblingly into the distance, his sinewy hands clenched around his stick.
    The hangman took another pinch of snuff. The soles of Jón Hreggviðsson’s feet could be seen dangling from the roof.
    “Are you planning on riding the house all day?” shouted the hangman to the thief.
    Up on the roof of the courthouse, Jón Hreggviðsson sang:
    “Ne’er would I with arms so stout embrace her
Though her gleam might fair bewitch
Though her gleam might fair bewitch
Unless she were both fat and ri-i-ich.”
    They put the pieces of the broken bell in a bag, which they hung on a saddle-peg opposite