An Excerpt from
Njall and the One-Eyed Lord

Prologue

In 750 CE, Helgi Halldorsson was twenty-two winters old. He was the third son of a wealthy odal family in West Agdir in the Southland of Norway. To prevent problems between his sons, Helgi’s father purchased a half-ship for him and gave him permission to take a handful of his carls and thralls to seek a new home in the isles to the west over the sea. After filling this boat with all the household goods and tools needed to establish a new farm, Helgi sailed north to Stravanger in Rogaland. There he enlisted a fisherman who had often sailed to Orkneyjar, the islands to the west. These, he was told, were inhabited by people called Petts, followers of the White Christ. Once these had been a mighty people in the isles, but now their energies and attentions were turned towards the west and south, fighting the Gael Dalverjar.

            It was the Merry Moon when the wind blew out of the northeast. With the fisherman to guide them, Helgi and his band sailed due west for two days and one night till they made landfall. These islands were mostly low and treeless, with rolling moors and plenty of green grass and only a few scrub willow in creek beds and ravines. Although there were many circular stone towers on commanding promontories all over the islands, Helgi and his band found few warriors in these brochs. The only Pett authority seemed to be exercised by the big estates farmed by the Christian papar, and this authority did not have anything to do with swords, spears, or arrows.

            Helgi and his men sailed for several days about the islands looking for a good place to live. Most of the best farming land had already been taken by previous Norsemen. Nevertheless, they found a farm on the south coast of an island the Norse called Hrolfsey after a Norwegian farmer already living on its east coast. This Hrolf was happy to have another Norse farm on the island, as long as it wasn’t on the land he had claimed. The farm Helgi found had a shingle beach where his boat could be hauled out and was protected from the winds and currents in the sound by a ness to the west. There was a cluster of low, round stone buildings almost completely sunken into the ground, the roofs of which were covered by green grass. In fact, if it weren’t for the tendrils of blue-grey smoke rising from several of these grass-covered mounds as well as the surrounding fields of barley and oats and the grazing long-haired cattle and sheep, the vikings might have thought the land unoccupied.

            The Norsemen ran their boat onto the shingle and swarmed ashore, armed with swords, shields, and spears. They killed the two men who tried to fight them and simply took over the farm. They dismantled several of the round houses to help build their own longhouse out of stone and turf. Others they left as workshops, barns, and housing for the remaining Petts whom they enthralled. They crossbred the Pett sheep and cattle with the studs they had brought from Norway, and they eventually married the Pett women on the island. Helgi named his farm Westness after the promontory to the west.

            A year later, Helgi’s Pett wife gave birth to his first son whom he named Sigvald. Over the next three years, they had two more daughters. Sigvald’s mother was Christian and his father was not particularly religious. Sigvald grew up speaking both the Dansk and Pett tongues and was baptized a Christian by the Pett papa at Byrgisherath on Hrossey. When Sigvald was nineteen, his father drowned when his fishing boat capsized in the tricky currents at the west end of Eyin Helga Sound. Sigvald took over the farm, raising barley, oats, cabbages, leeks, and flax as well as sheep, goats, cattle, and pigs. In the summer, Sigvald joined the other young Norsemen of the surrounding islands to go viking in Katanes, Sudrland, and Sudreyjar, bringing back gold and silver jewelry and bronze and iron tools, but more importantly Pett and Dalverja slaves. These were sold to a merchant who came out each fall from Bergen in Hordaland. This merchant then transhipped these slaves to Hedeby in Jylland.

            By this trade, Sigvald became the richest farmer on Hrolfsey. When he was twenty-three, Sigvald sailed the family half-ship back to Agdir to visit with his relatives. While there, his uncle made a marriage for him with a girl from a good family. Sigvald and his Norwegian bride, Thora, had two sons and one daughter. His oldest son was later killed while whaling.

            For the next four generations, Sigvald’s children’s children lived at the bu of Westness, farming, fishing, trading, and raiding. The family’s most lucrative commodity was Westman slaves transshipped eastward. In 839, a mighty hersir named Thorgils came out viking from Norway. This Thorgils stopped in Hjaltland and Orkneyjar to enlist more men for his expedition. Sigmund, the oldest son of current the owner of Westeness, joined this expedition and sailed with Thorgils to Írland. Thorgils established a kingdom in Mumanstadir and seized Ard Macha in Uladstadir. Sigmund was with Thorgils when he plundered the monastery at Cluin-mic-Nois where Thorgils wife Aud presided over a blood sacrifice to Odinn and a casting of the runes on the high altar. Sigmund had also sailed in the longships which had plundered Laiginstadir and driven the Dalverjar out of Isley and its sound. Eventually, however, Sigmund missed his family and farm in the northern isles, even with its never-ending wind and horizontal rain. When Sigmund returned three years later to the farm at Westness, he had a twelve bench longship, a chest full of Irish hacksilver, half a dozen Irish slaves, and an Irish concubine.

            Sigmund was now a rich man by the standards of the Western Isles. As the man with the most goods amongst the Norse of Hrolfsey, Sigmund’s farm became the center of the community, and, though he had been baptized a Christian in his youth, Sigmund took over the role of godi, officiating at the main blot or blessings throughout the year. Sigmund had three statues carved in Norway, one of Thor, one of Njord, and one of Frey. These he placed on a shelf, with Thor in the middle, at the opposite end of the longhouse from his bedroom.

            In 853, when Sigmund’s second son, Ulf, was eighteen winters old, this son joined the hird of Olaf the White, and, like his father before him, went viking in Írland. Olaf routed the Danes who had taken over Dyflinn from the Norwegians the year before. Olaf’s men raided inland but had been thrust time and again back to Dyflinn. One of the Irish kings offered Olaf his daughter in marriage. Olaf also married Aud, the daughter of Ketil of Raumdall, but Aud divorced Olaf soon after her son was born. Ulf had escorted Aud back to one of her father’s steadings in Sudreyjar. Six years later, Ulf was back in Orkneyjar, married to a pure Norse Orkneyinga of good family from Sandey. For the next ten years, Ulf spent his winters at Westness on Hrolfsey and his summers viking in Sudreyjar, Kumbreyar, Sthraclaed Walas, Menig, Mon, and Nordwalas with Onund, later called Tree-foot, and Ketil, called Flatnose, whom he had met when he returned Aud to Raumdall. Ulf was especially proud to say that he had been at the great sea battle between Onund and the Gael king, Kjarval, off the island of Barra. Besides his Norse wife with whom he had a son and two daughters, Ulf had two concubines, one a Dalverja Gael and the other a Orkneyinga Pett. With these he had three other children, two boys and a girl.

            However, in his mid-thirties, Ulf decided he had had enough of swords, spears, and shield walls. His father had just died of the coughing sickness, and he was now the richest man on Hrolfsey and the island godi. Ulf loaded up the longship he had inherited from his father with a number of his housecarls and all the wool, Irish silver, and Pett slaves they could carry and sailed to Agdir to visit with his second and third cousins. He traded his longship for an all-purpose karve, larger than his family’s half-ship but not as deep-keeled and with more oars. Ulf’s relatives in Agdir advised him to take his cargo to Hedeby in Jylland and Birka in Svealand. Ulf took to the life of a trader and, from that point on, spent his summers trading between Orkneyjar, Norway, Hedeby, and Birka. Once he even sailed to the far end of the Eastern Sea and visited Staraja Ladoga, while some years he sailed up the coast of Norway to the Northlands to hunt walrus for their skins and ivory.

            Because of his yearly trips to Norway, Ulf knew all about the boy king Harald. Harald’s father, Halfdan Gudrodsson, had been raised in Agdir. From there, Halfdan had embarked on a long series of campaigns against the kings of Vingulmark, Raumarike, Hedemark, Gudbrandsdal, Toten, and Hadaland. Unfortunately, Halfdan died at forty leaving his ten year old son, Harald Halfdansson, under the regency of his brother-in-law, Guthorm Sigurdsson. When Harald was sixteen, he met Gytha, a princess of Hordaland. When he tried to court her, Gytha told him she was not interested in marrying a petty princeling. So Harald decided to conquer all of Norway and show this haughty Gytha who he really was.

            During his many campaigns, Harald allowed his hair to grow long and tangle into dread-locks, vowing that he would not cut his hair again until he was king of all Norway. Thus he had become known as Harald Mop-hair, at least behind his back. At first, Harald ruled primarily in the Southlands and Uplands. However, eventually he formed an alliance with Hakon Grjotgardsson, Hladir-jarl, ruler of the northern coast and a powerful sea king. This Jarl Hakon’s family had originally come from the northern part of Halogaland but had established themselves at Agdanes in the Trondelagen at the mouth of Trondheimfjord. Harald knew that to conquer the Westlands he would need Hakon’s sea power. Jarl Hakon and his comrade, Rognvald of Mere, had originally fought against Harald Mop-hair, but eventually they realized that they had more to gain as Harald’s allies than his enemies. Harald made Rognvald Jarl of North and South Mere and of Raumdall after his victory at Solskiel over Hunthjof, King of Mere, and Nokve, King of Raumdall. When Harald had finally conquered all of Norway, it was Rognvald Eysteinsson, Mere-jarl, who cut Harald’s hair and gave him the new name, Harald Fine-hair.

            Wherever Harald conquered, he appropriated all the odal rights or hereditary estates. All farmers had to pay him scat and he appointed a jarl to govern every fylki in the north and herred in the south. These jarls kept one third of all the scat they collected for themselves. Each jarl had four hersar under him and each jarl provided sixty men for Harald’s army, while each hersir provided another twenty men. All this increased the taxes so much that Harald’s jarls grew rich and the previous odallers grew both poor and resentful. In addition, Harald imposed new laws against piracy which effectively put an end to a lifestyle along the coast which was several generations old. Those odallers and sometimes vikings who could not stomach this new regime left for the northern isles where they thought they could live their lives the way their fathers and grandfathers had. But Harald Fine-hair’s ambitions were bigger than the coastline of Norway.   

1

The afternoon sunlight sparkled off the surface of the water as the Merry Moon breeze blew through Njall’s hair. Njall was rowing his mother back to their farm at Westness. His mother’s name was Grella. She was Njall’s father’s concubine. Grella was a Dalverja, brought back from a raid in the Sudreyjar. Each week, Njall and one of the farm thralls, an Orkneyinga Pett named Drust, would row his mother over to the hermit’s hut on Eyin Helga. His mother would pray with the aged papa. Later they would sit in the sun against the leeward side of the old man’s hut and talk in the Gaelic tongue. Njall had learned Gaelic from his mother and some of the farm thralls. Sometimes he would listen, but often he would play by himself at the water’s edge, barely noticing the ever present wind which constantly scoured the treeless islands of Orkneyjar. Njall was twelve winters old and his father was a man of goods, the richest bondi on Hrolfsey, the owner of the bu of Westness.

            Today, Njall couldn’t wait to get back to the bu. While his mother and the papa were praying, Ketil Flatnose’s fifteen bench longship had sailed into the sound and landed at Westness. This was not a costal trading knarr or even an all-purpose karve, but a real longship made only for war. Its lines were long, low, and sleek, and its red and white checked sail billowed proudly in the wind. Njall knew that there would be feasting tonight at the bu with his father’s viking friends and former comrades. There would be new swords to marvel at, new riches to admire, and new stories to hear. Njall told Drust the thrall to pick up the stroke as they rowed their four-oared hide-sheathed skiff across the wind towards the shingle beach in front of the bu.

            When Njall and his mother landed, Njall told the thrall to beach the boat and store the gear in the farm’s naust. Being Ulf Sigmundsson’s second concubine, Grella went first from shed to byre to tell Grelaug, Ulf’s first wife, that she had returned and to ask what needed to be done. Njall ran immediately to the longhouse. Clustered around the door were a half dozen of the housecarls’ and thralls’ wives. Squeezing his way past these, Njall jumped down over the step to the floor of the main hall where he landed in the midst of five of his six brothers and sisters. The familiar smell of the longhouse, a mixture of peat smoke, damp wool, seal oil, iron, and salt, made Njall immediately feel at home. Njall nudged his brother Sigurd who turned and punched him in his arm with a smile on his face. Sigurd was a winter older than Njall and the son of an Orkneyinga Pett concubine. Njall, smiling, hit his dark-haired brother back, then turned his attention to the grownups in the hall.

            Njall saw his father sitting in the owner’s seat in the middle of the far side between the two pillars dedicated to the disir. To his father’s right sat Somerled, Ulf’s oldest son, eight years older and worlds apart from Njall. On the bench directly across from Ulf sat a huge old man with a nose which had long ago been flattened by fist, shield, or club. This was the self-styled King of the Isles, Ketil, whom everyone called Flatnose. To Ketil’s right was his grandson, Thorstein the Red. Sitting on the other benches on either side were his father’s men and Ketil’s hird, thirty-five in all.

            Up until five years ago, Ketil had been a powerful odaller in Raumdall. Ketil had watched as Harald Mop-hair had picked off one king or jarl after another in his drive to become the sole king and overlord in Norway. Once beaten by the young conqueror, these one-time lords had only two options, submit on bended knee and do the new king’s bidding or die. Some, like Herlaug had proudly entombed themselves rather than submit, while others, like Herlaug’s brother, Hrollaug, had accepted Harald’s rule and paid him scat. After beating the kings of the Uplands, Harald had forged an alliance with the powerful Hakon of Hladir, jarl of Agdanes in the Trondelagen. Between these two, King Harald Mop-hair and Jarl Hakon had rolled up all the petty lords along the coast, from the Southland to the Westland.

            Seeing the omens in the clouds, Ketil had gathered together his sons and daughters to ask them what they wanted to do. All agreed they’d rather leave their homeland than submit to this young dread-locked upstart. Two of his sons, Bjorn and Helgi, decided to sail to the recently discovered Ísland where they had heard the fishing was good and there was plenty of empty land for the taking. But Ketil had said he was too old to go fishing. He preferred to sail to the isles west of the sea where he had spent so many of his summers raiding.

            This is exactly what Ketil had done. He had made Byrgisherath on the north coast of Hrossey his homestead. He had moved in next to the Pett papar whose lands he had largely appropriated for himself and his family under the guise of offering protection. Many other disaffected noble Norwegians and their hirds also removed to the isles during these years rather than submit to Harald. These more recent immigrants had taken over the lands of the remaining Pett farmers and had enthralled all the non-Norse population. In the summers, Ketil, Thorstein, and their hird sailed to Sudreyjar and thence on down to Írland, Kumbreyar, Sthraclaed Walas, and Mon, raiding and trading, mostly in slaves. The rest of the year, Ketil spent in his hall at Byrgisherath.

            A couple of years after Ketil had arrived in Orkneyjar, Harald Mop-hair had fought a great battle near Stravanger with a group of Western lords who refused to accept him as king. Among these were Thori Longchin, King Kiotvi, and Onund, later called Tree-foot. The two opposing fleets had met at Hafrsfjord in Rogaland and Harald had won. By this victory, Harald secured the overlordship of all Norway. After the battle, Harald, his dread-locks shorn and, now called Harald Fine-hair, sent an ambassador to Ketil offering him the jarldom of the isles in return for yearly scat. Harald could not afford to absent himself from his recently conquered domain to personally bring Ketil to heel, but figured a negotiated settlement with this prodigious old viking was better than nothing. Ketil, buying time, had agreed. After all, Ketil was in the isles, while Harald had his hands still full back in Norway. The next year Ketil “forgot” to send Harald Mop-hair his scat. After another year had gone by and Ketil had still heard nothing from Harald, Ketil proclaimed himself King of the Isles. All this Njall had heard before, sitting round the fire after the night meal.

            Ulf’s first wife, Grelaug, her finery reflecting both her status and her husband’s wealth, pushed through the crowded door, followed by Ulf’s two concubines, Njall and Sigurd’s mothers, plus two other female thralls. These latter four were carrying buckets of beer and baskets full of drinking horns. Bowing to Ketil and then to Ulf, they served these two leaders, then Ketil’s hird, and finally the bu’s men. Before anyone took a drink, Ulf stood up. Holding his drinking horn in his left hand, he dipped his right ring finger in the beer and then flicked it three times towards the three statues at the end of the hall.

            “To Odinn, may he grant us victory. To Njord, may he grant us fruitful harvest. To Frey, may he grant us peace. Welcome Ketil Flatnose and you dreng. You do me and mine much honor by your visit. Drink the drink of friendship and tell us what brings you here.”

            “Thank you old friend and comrade, Ulf Sigmundsson. May the Vanir and Aesir bless your hall and all who dwell within. This morning my cousin, Gunnar Gizursson, landed at Byrgisherath with disturbing news. He says that the nithing Harald is sending some white-livered Asbjorn to take these isles from me. Gunnar set sail as soon as he heard this news and believes that Asbjorn will arrive any day. I’ve come to ask your help.”

            “Disturbing news indeed. The last thing we Orkneyingar want is this Harald Halfdansson taking away our odal rights.”

            “Having lost my family’s lands in Raumdall, let me tell you. If Harald has his way in the isles the same as he has in Norway, then all our rights are not worth a bucket of sheep piss.”

            “Agreed. Harald can’t rest but everyone must do him homage. Nevertheless, my fighting days are over. My bones ache and I can’t raise my right arm over my shoulder, let alone a sword. But any of my men who choose are free to fight with you.”

            At that, Somerled stood up. Twenty years old and itching for adventure, Somerled was tall and strong. Because his mother was pure Norse, he had a long face and a full head of golden hair. Tending sheep and planting barley was not the work of a young man who was brought up on the tales of his father’s, grandfather’s, and great grandfather’s viking.

            “Lord Ketil, all my life I’ve heard my father’s tales of his viking with you. I will join you as will, I’m sure, several of our carls. And I will bring at least three thralls. We have our own swords and axes, shields and spears. When do we sail?”

            Ketil smiled at Somerled, then turned to his old friend Ulf. “What do you say, Ulf? Somerled’s your oldest.”

            Ulf looked at his son with obvious pride. “Somerled has sailed these past four years on my summer voyage. He’s not afraid of a fight and he knows how to use a sword. As far as I’m concerned, he’s free to go with you and any of this bu who choose to follow.”

            Njall and Sigurd looked at each other desperately wanting to join the expedition but knowing they would never be allowed, not this year.

            The men spent the rest of the afternoon drinking beer and sharpening their weapons, the sound of metal rasping on stone punctuating their stories of summer raiding. At one point, smiling expansively, his face flushed with the beer, Ulf got up, wiped the pungent seal oil off his hands with which he been oiling his sword, and went into his bedroom at the far end of the longhouse. When he came out, he was carrying a helmet. The helmet was an antique ridge helm with eye guards, nasal, and a ringmail aventail in the back.

            “Somerled, it’s time Helgi Haldorsson’s helm became yours. It was old long before it came into the land-taker Helgi’s possession. May you be blessed by Thor’s strength and Odinn’s cunning and may all your wounds be in front.”     

            That evening, instead of the usual barley porridge, skyr, and beer, two sheep were killed and boiled in the stone-lined pit outside the longhouse. Sigurd and Njall were given the task of heating the stones and dropping them into the cooking pit to keep the water boiling. The women busied themselves cooking oatcakes on the griddle over the fire in the longhouse. In addition, dried cod were served spread with freshly churned and salted butter. The beer continued to flow and the longhouse was filled with poetry and songs, jokes and boasts about the coming confrontation with Harald’s lackey, Asbjorn. Sigurd and Njall eventually fell asleep next to the hearth on the floor of the longhouse, their usual benches taken by Ketil’s dreng.

            The next morning, Ketil set sail with his hird along with Somerled and his eight men, carls and thralls from the bu of Westness. Ketil said they would next sail to Egilsey, Westrey, and Sandey, raising as many men and ships as they could. His plan was to ambush Asbjorn among the northernmost isles.