Strange Survivals

One day Gisli went to his forge and broke a coin there with the hammer in two parts, and gave one half to Vestein, and bade him preserve it. At any time, when one desired to communicate with the other in a matter of supreme importance, he was to send to the other the broken token.

On one of his voyages, Gisli was a winter at Viborg, in Denmark, and he there picked up just so much Christianity that he resolved never again to sacrifice to Thor and Freya.

He returned to Iceland in the same week as did his brother Thorkel; and as it was hay weather, at once turned up his sleeves, and went forth with all his house churls, haymaking. Thorkel, on the other hand, flung himself on a bench in the hall, and went to sleep. When he awoke, he heard voices, and dreamily listened to the gossip of his wife and sister-in-law, who were cutting out garments in the ladies’ bower. “I wish,” said Asgerda, “that you would cut me out a shirt for my husband Thorkel.” “I am no better hand at cutting out than you are,” answered Auda. “I am sure of one thing, if it were anything that was wanted doing for my brother, Vestein, you would not ask for my help or for anyone else to assist you.” “Maybe,” said Asgerda, “I always did admire Vestein, and I have heard it said that Thorgrim was sweet on you before Gisli snapped you away.” “This is idle talk,” said Auda.

Then up stood Thorkel, and striding in at the door, said, “This is dangerous talk, and it is talk that will draw blood.”

The women stood aghast.

Soon after this Thorkel told his brother that he wished to divide the inheritance with him. Gisli regretted this, and endeavoured to dissuade him, but in vain. They cast lots, and the movable goods fell to Thorkel, the farm to Gisli. Thereupon Thorkel departed to Thorgrim, his brother-in-law.

Sometime after this came the season of the autumn sacrifice. Gisli would not sacrifice, but he was ready to entertain all his friends, and invited to a great feast. Just before this, he heard that Vestein had arrived in Iceland in his merchant vessel, and had put into a fiord some way off. He immediately sent him the half-token by a servant, who was to ride as hard as he could, and stop him from coming to Hawkdale. The servant rode, but part of his way lay along a lava chasm, and as ill fate would have it, he took the way above the rift at the very time that Vestein was riding in the opposite direction through the bottom. So he missed him, and on reaching the ship, learned that he had done so. He turned at once, and rode in pursuit till his horse fell under him just as he had caught sight of the merchant. He ran after him shouting. Vestein turned and received the message and the token that was to assure him the message that accompanied it was serious.

“I have come more than half way,” said he. “All the streams are running one way – towards my brother-in-law’s vale – and I will follow them.”

“I warn you,” said the servant, “be on your guard.” Vestein had to cross a river. As he was being put across, the boatman said, “Be on your guard. You are running into danger.” As he rode near Thorgrim’s farm, he was seen by a serf who belonged to Thorkel. The serf recognised him, and bade him be on his guard. Just then, out came the serf’s wife, Rannveig, and called to her husband to tell her who that was in a blue cloak, and carrying a spear. The serf went in, and Thorgrim, who was in the hall, inquired who had passed the garth. The woman said it was Vestein, spear in hand, wearing a blue cloak, and seated in a rich saddle. “Pshaw,” said her husband, “the woman can not see aright. It was a fellow named Ogjorl, and he was wearing a borrowed cloak, a borrowed saddle, and carrying a harpoon tipped with horn.”

“One or other of you is telling lies,” said Thorgrim. “Run, Rannveig, to Hol, Gisli’s house, and ascertain the truth.”

When Vestein arrived at his brother-in-law’s, Gisli received him, and again cautioned him. Vestein opened his saddlebags, and produced some beautiful Oriental stuffs interwoven with gold, and some basins, also inlaid with gold – presents for Gisli, for his sister Auda, and for Thorkel. Next day Gisli went to Thorgrim’s house, carrying one of these beautiful bowls, and offered it to his brother as a present from Vestein; but Thorkel refused to receive it. Gisli sighed. “I see how matters tend,” said he.

One night shortly after, a gale driving over the house, tore the thatch off the hall, and the rain poured in through the roof. Everyone woke, and Gisli summoned all to help. The wind had abated, but not the rain; they must go to the stackyard and re-cover the roof as best they might. Vestein volunteered his help, but Gisli refused it. He bade him remain within. Vestein pulled his bed away from the locked compartment where the water leaked in, drew it near the fire in the open hall, and fell asleep on it. Then softly someone entered the hall, stole up to his bedside, and transfixed him to the bed with a spear. Vestein cried out, and was dead. Auda, his sister, woke, and seeing what had taken place, call to a thrall, Witless Thord, to pull out the weapon. Thord was too frightened to do so. He stood quaking with open mouth. Then in came Gisli, and, seeing what had been done, drew out the weapon, and cast it, all bloody, into a chest. Now according to Scandinavian ideas, not only was Gisli solemnly bound to avenge Vestein’s death, as knit to him by oath of brotherhood, but also by the fact of his having withdrawn the weapon from the wound. He at once called his sister to him, and said, “Run to Thorgrim’s house, and bring me word what you see there.” She went, and found the whole house up, and armed.

“What news? what news?” shouted Thorgrim. The woman told him that Vestein had been murdered.

“An honourable man,” said Thorgrim. “Tell Gisli we will attend the funeral, and let the wake be kept as Vestein deserves.”

Gisli prepared for the burying of his brother-in-law according to the custom of the times. The body was placed where a great cairn was to be heaped over it. Then first Thorgrim stepped forward. “The death-shoes must be made fast,” said he, and he shod the feet of the dead man with a pair of shoes, in which he might walk safely the ways of Hela. “There now,” said he, “I have bound the hell-shoes so fast they will never come off.”

The summer passed, and winter drew on, then Thorgrim resolved on a great sacrifice to Frey at the Solstice, and on a mighty feast, to which a hundred guests were invited. Gisli would not hold a sacrifice, but he sent out invitations to a banquet.

Whilst Thorgrim and Thorkel were preparing to receive their guests, it occurred to one of them that Vestein had given splendid curtains to Gisli and his sister for hanging along the sides of the hall. “I wonder whether he would lend them?” asked Thorgrim. “For a banquet, everyone is ready to lend anything,” answered Thorkel. Then Thorgrim called to him the same thrall who had endeavoured to deceive him relative to the passing by of Vestein, and bade him go to Gisli, and ask for the curtains. “I don’t relish the job,” answered the man. Thorgrim knocked him down, and bade him go as he was bid. The man’s name was Geirmund. Geirmund went to Hol, and found Gisli and his wife engaged in hanging up the very curtains in preparation for their feast. The serf proffered his request. Gisli looked at his wife, and said, “What answer shall we make to this?”

Then an idea struck him, and taking Geirmund by the arm, he led him outside the hall, and said, “One good turn deserves another. If I let you carry off the curtains, will you leave the hall door ajar to-night?” Geirmund hesitated, looked steadily at Gisli, and said, “No harm is intended against my master, your brother, Thorkel?” “None in the least.” “Then,” said Geirmund, “I will do it.”

The snow fell thick that night, and the frost was keen. A hundred men roystered in the hall of Thorgrim. Gisli entertained but sixty men. In the night, when all had retired to their beds round the hall, and were snoring, Gisli said to his wife, “Keep up one of the fires. I must go out.” Then he drew from the chest the weapon wherewith Vestein had been murdered, and stepped forth into the night. There was a little brook ran down the vale, and he walked up the bed of the stream till he came to the well-trodden way leading to the mansion of Thorgrim. He went to that, and found, as he anticipated, that the door was not locked. He entered the hall. Three fires were burning in the midst. No one was stirring. He stood still and listened. Then he took the rushes up from the floor, wove them together, and threw them as a mat on one of the fires, and covered it. He waited a minute. No one stirred, so he went on to the second fire, and treated it in the same manner. The third was but smouldering, but there was a lamp burning. He saw a young man’s hand thrust forth from a bed to the lamp, draw it to him, and extinguish it. Then he knew that all slept save Geirmund, who had left the door ajar.

On tiptoe Gisli stepped to the closed bed-recess of Thorgrim, and found that it was not fastened from within. Thorgrim had not dreamed of danger, with a hundred guests and all his servants about him. Gisli put his hand into the bed, and touched a bosom. It was that of his sister, the wife of Thorgrim, who slept on the outside. The icy touch roused her, and she said, “Husband! how cold your hand is.” “Is it so?” answered Thorgrim, half roused, and turned in bed. Then with one hand Gisli sharply drew down the coverlet, and with the other drove the spear – still stained with Vestein’s blood – through the heart of his murderer. Thordisa woke with a cry, started up and screamed, “Wake, and up all! my husband has been killed!” In the dark, Gisli escaped, and returned home by the same way he had come.

Next morning very early, Thorkel and the nephews of Thorgrim came to Hol. Thorkel led the way into the hall, and walked direct to the closed bed of his brother. As he came to it, his quick eye detected Gisli’s shoes frozen and covered with snow, and he hastily kicked them under the stool lest the nephews should see them, and conclude who had murdered their uncle.

“What news?” said Gisli, rousing and sitting up in bed.

“News serious and bad,” answered Thorkel. “Thorgrim, my brother-in-law, is murdered.”

“Let him be buried as he deserves,” said Gisli. “I will attend and greet him on his way.”

Now, at the funeral, Thorgrim was laid in a ship that was placed on a hill-top, and all prepared to heap a cairn over the dead man. Then Gisli heaved a mighty stone, and flung it into the ship of the dead, so that the beams brake, and he said, “Let none say I cannot anchor a death-ship, for I have anchored this that it will sail no more.” And all who heard him remembered the words of Thorgrim when he bound the hell-shoes on the feet of Vestein.

There are a good many passages in the sagas that refer to the press-beds. In the saga of the Droplauga-sons we read – “It was anciently the custom not to use the badstòfa (the heated room); men had instead great fires, at which they sat to heat themselves, for at that time there was plenty of fuel in the country. The houses were so constructed that one hall served all purposes for banqueting and sleeping, and the men could lie under the tables and sleep, or each in his own room, some of the bed places being enclosed, and in these lay the most honourable men.”

In the saga of Gunnlaug with the Serpent’s Tongue, we are told how that “One morning Gunnlaug woke, and everyone was on foot except himself. He lay dozing in his press-bed behind the high seat. Then in came a dozen armed men into the hall,” etc.

The Droplauga-sons saga tells us how one Helgi, Asbjorn’s son, slept with his wife in one of these closed-in beds for fear of his mortal enemies. One day a friend came to his house. In the evening Helgi said to his wife, “Where have you put Ketilorm to sleep?” “I have made him up a bed – a good one – out on the long bench in the hall.” Then Helgi said, “When I go to Ketilorm’s house, he always turns out of his press-bed and gives it up to me, so you and I must to-night lie in the hall, and give up our close-bed to him.” They did so, and that night the murderer came, and Helgi died through his hospitality.

In the saga of Egill Skallagrim’s son is a story that shows us how that some of the closed bedchambers contained more than one sleeping place. Egill, who lived in Iceland, had lost his son Bödvar, who was drowned. The grief of the old man was excessive. He retired to his locked-up bedchamber, fastened himself in, and, lying down, refused food. After three days had elapsed, his wife, in serious concern, sent for his married daughter, Thorgerthr, who, on entering the house, said loud enough to be heard, “I intend not to touch food till I reach the halls of Freya. I can do naught better than follow my father’s example.” Then she knocked at the opening into the lokhvila, and called, “Father, open, I desire to travel the same road with you.”

The old man let her in, and she laid herself down on another bed in the same enclosed place.

After some hours had passed in silence, Egill said, “Daughter, you are munching something.”

“Yes, father. It is sol (alga saccharina). It shortens life. Will you have some?”

“If it does that, I will.”

Then she gave him some of the seaweed. He chewed it, and naturally both became very thirsty.

Presently Thorgerthr said she must taste a drop of water. She rose, went to the door, and called for water. Her mother brought a drinking horn. Thorgerthr took a slender draught, and offered the horn to her father.

“Certainly,” said he, “that weed has parched my throat with thirst.” So he lifted the horn with both hands, and drained it.

“Father,” said Thorgerthr, “we have both been deceived; we have been drinking milk.” As she spoke, the old man clenched his teeth in the horn, and tore a great shred from it, then flung the vessel wrathfully on the ground.

“Our scheme has failed,” said Thorgerthr, “and we cannot now continue it. I have a better plan to propose. Compose a death-lay on your son, Bödvar, and I will carve it in runes on oaken staves.”

Then the spirit of song came on the old man, and he composed the long Wake-song of Bödvar that goes by the name of the Sonartorrek, and in singing it his grief was assuaged.

The invasion of the Northmen, of Dane and Viking of Norway, that made the Saxons tremble, was an invasion of something more than marauders – it was one of four-post beds. They did not, indeed, bring their press beds with them in their “Long Serpents,” but no sooner did they establish themselves in the land – Ragnar Lodbrog’s sons in Northumbria, and King Knut in England – than they set up their four-posters, and made themselves both secure and comfortable. They shut themselves in for the night, pulled the bolt, and were safe till next morning. We do not half understand the horrors of St. Brice’s Day, 1002, when the Danes were massacred throughout the dominions of Æthelred, unless we introduce these closed beds into the picture. We must imagine the Saxons storming the closed and bolted boxes, and the Danes within, unable to escape, as the axes and crowbars crashed against the oak doors and hinges of their lokhvilur. They could but muffle themselves in their feather beds, and endeavour to burst forth when the entrance was forced.

The cairn, or tumulus, that covered a dead Norseman was heaped over a sort of wooden or stone bed made after the fashion of a lokhvila. In the Grettis saga we have the story of the hero breaking into the cairn of an old king, and he found him enclosed in a box of boards – stout oak planks – very much as he had been shut in every night when he retired to sleep. The kistvaens of stone, oblong boxes of stones set on end, and covered over with great slabs, to contain the dead, are nothing other than stone four-posters. And the modern coffin is nought else but the wooden enclosed lokhvila– the Scandinavian close bed reduced to the smallest possible dimensions. There is no particular sense in the coffin, but it is a reminiscence of what the beds of our Scandinavian forefathers were, and will continue to be used long after the four-poster is banished from our bedrooms.

In the Völsunga saga is a ghastly story of two men buried alive in a kistvaen. Sigmund was the sole surviving son of King Völsung, who had been killed by King Siggeir of Gothland. Siggeir was married to Signy, the sister of Sigmund. The duty to revenge the death of Völsung lay on Sigmund, and Signy was by no means indisposed to further this vengeance-taking. Sigmund and his son Sinfjotli came secretly to the hall of King Siggeir, and concealed themselves in full harness in an outhouse behind a cask of ale. The two boys of the king, running out, saw them hiding there, and raised the alarm, whereupon Sigmund and Sinfjotli cut them down. King Siggeir called together his men, and they closed round Sigmund and his son and took them alive. Then the King of Gothland declared he would bury them alive. Accordingly he ordered his men to erect large stones set on end, and to cover them over with flat stones, and then he placed the two men, Sigmund and Sinfjotli, in the chamber thus formed, and heaped over them a cairn of earth and small stones. Now, just before the last stone coverer was placed on this living grave, Signy, the queen, flung in a big bundle. When the cairn was raised the two men who were entombed alive felt the bundle, and discovered that it consisted of a stout rope wrapped round the sword of Sigmund. That gave to them hope. With the blade they dug at the bases of the upright stones, and, raking out the small stuff between them, managed to pass the rope round them, and drew them down. By the fall of these stones a gap was made, the top of the cairn ran in, and the two entombed men crawled out. They at once went to the hall of the king, heaped wood about it, and set it on fire. As it flared, Signy came out, kissed her brother, and his son, refused life, and went back into the flames to die with her husband and his men.

The Völsunga saga is valuable, as it carries us back to the pre-Christian condition of life in the semi-mythical period. The Völsungs are kings of the land of the Huns: they are not Huns themselves, but belong to the Odin-born conquering race. The historic Huns have the rude stone monuments attributed to them in Hanover, Pomerania, and Mecklenburg, but they had nothing to do with their erection. These monuments belong to a far earlier race.

When King Harold Fairhair converted Norway into a single monarchy, many of the old chiefs fled the land rather than submit; but one, Herlaugi, in Naumudal, went alive with twelve of his men into a cairn that contained a kist, and had it closed upon him.

In the saga of Egil and Asmund is a queer story of two men who swore brotherhood with each other, that he who survived the other should spend three nights in the cairn with his dead brother, “and then depart if he liked.” The saga goes on to tell how that one of these, Aran, was slain, then his fellow, Asmund, “threw up a cairn, and placed by the dead man his horse, with saddle and bridle, and all his harness and his banner, his hawk, also, and his hound; Aran sat in the high stool in full armour. Then Asmund had his chair brought into the cairn and sat there, and the cairn was closed on them. In the first night Aran rose from his stool and killed hawk and hound, and ate them both. In the second night Aran stood up and slew his horse, and tore it in pieces, rending it with his teeth, and he ate the horse, the blood running over his jaws. And he invited Asmund to eat with him. The third night Asmund felt heavy with sleep, and he snoozed off, and was not aware before the dead man had gripped him by both ears and had torn them off his head. Asmund then drew his sword, hewed off the head of Aran, took fire, and burned him to ashes. Then he went to the rope and was drawn up, and the cairn was closed. But Asmund carried away with him all the treasure it contained.”20

The Norsemen were buried seated in their chairs or in their boats, but the builders of the megalithic monuments were interred lying on their sides, with their hands folded, as though in sleep. Their great dolmens and covered avenues were family cemeteries. The slab at the east end was movable, so as to allow of admission into the tomb on each fresh death in the family. A hole in the stone at the foot is very usual. Of that elsewhere. The latest interments in a dolmen are always nearest the opening; sometimes the more ancient dead have been removed farther back in the monument to make room for the new-comers. There is an allusion in Snorn’s Heimskringla to these holes in the kists containing the dead: “Freyr fell sick and his men raised a great mound, in which they placed a door with three holes in it. Now when Freyr was dead they conveyed him secretly into the mound, but told the Swedes he was alive; and they kept watch over him for three years. They brought all the taxes into the mound – through one hole they thrust in the gold, through another they put in the silver, and through the third the copper money that was paid.”21

It is probable that the Scandinavians followed to some extent the usage of the race that preceded them, and used their megalithic monuments, much as we know that tumuli were employed for later interments, and by races different from that which raised the tumuli. That the idea of sleep was connected with death in many cases of burials, is certain, from the position given to the corpse, the hands are folded and the knees drawn up.

We cannot say for certain that the dolmens, as the French call the monuments which we term cromlechs, were reproductions in stone of the closed beds of the men of the polished-stone age, but it is probable. The great family dolmens were cemeterial big Beds of Ware to accommodate a number, and the small kistvaens were single beds for old bachelors. Some of the largest dolmens contain as many as forty sleepers. Under Brown Willy, the highest point of the Cornish moors, is one long kistvaen, and beside it a tiny one for a baby – the mother’s bed and the cradle, side by side, for the long night of death.

It has been supposed that the cromlechs, or dolmens, and the kistvaens, represent the ancient dwellings of the neolithic men. I do not think so. The position of the bodies shows that they were intended, not as dwellings, but as beds. If they resembled anything used in life, it was the bed-compartments in the huts, not the huts themselves. These bed-compartments were backed, walled, and roofed with stone.

I was once offered in Antwerp a very beautifully carved oak bed; it was but an oblong box, with an opening on one side only, which could be closed with a curtain, and very much like a berth in an old-fashioned steam-packet.

The reader will remember the graphic description, in “Wuthering Heights,” of a very similar close-bed of boards as used in Yorkshire. That Yorkshire bed was a lineal descendant from the lokhvila of the Scandinavian colonists of Northumbria.

When danger of assassination in bed ceased, men began to sleep easier, breathe freer, and dispensed with the door and its bolts. They shut themselves in with curtains instead; and as there were practical inconveniences in making beds, where the bed maker could not go round to the wall side, cautiously and with hesitation suffered the bed to be pulled out, so that it might stand free on all sides save the head. Then head and top alone remained of board, two sides and foot were left open, or partially open; they could be closed with curtains, and the sleeper could and did convert his bed into a sort of box when he retired to rest.

So beds remained throughout the Middle Ages and to last century. Some ancient beds had gabled roofs over them, and many remained fixed in on all sides save one. But at the same time there was the truckle-bed for the servant; even the iron bedstead without tester, precisely like those turned out by every ironmonger. Viollet le Duc gives an engraving of one such in his “Dictionnaire du Mobilier Français,” from a miniature of the tenth century. He gives also a representation of an iron bed thrust under a roof-like covering, with curtains, and ventilating windows, on which Solomon is shown asleep, from a MS. of the twelfth century. It would almost seem that in the Middle Ages a contest raged between the four-poster and the bed without tester, and in the MS. from which the illustration just mentioned is taken the wisdom of Solomon is represented as combining both fashions.