Memoirs of an Icelandic Bookworm

By Jóna E. Hammer

Memoirs of an Icelandic Bookworm is only partly a memoir. More than half the volume consists of Icelandic folktales, many of which have never been translated into English before. These tales are uniquely presented here as part of a fabric of life extending from a long-ago past through times affected by the Second World War and to the present.

The book is a first-hand and humorous account of Icelandic culture and an Icelandic childhood. In the memoir-sections, the bookworm of the title is growing up in a small town in Northern Iceland; her emerging world-view is expanded by family-influences or challenged by sojourns into Icelandic and international literature. Her family is memorably represented, for example by her grandmother, the robust Stefana, who speaks in verse and learns to dance rockn roll, and the white-haired patriarch Jn, who steps in to save the family home from burning and introduces his great-granddaughter to an ancient feminist folktale.

The memoirs mostly describe the 1940s and 50s, but the author is constantly looking back, beyond her own memories and even the memories of her great-parents, toward an older culture, preserved in the folktales and exerting its influence through the centuries to touch her own childhood. On occasion, the authors cultural associations reach even further back, to the times of the Icelandic sagas; at other times, with periodic returns to her current vantage point in the 21st century, she touches down in the more recent past for a humorous look at Laxness or up-to-date cultural developments.

As a writer of memoirs, the author makes two general observations. The first one is that children should be introduced to imaginative literature as early as possible. Although this is not a new idea, it is illustrated here with an example of highly auspicious conditions: the bookworm and her peers grow up in a cultural climate where literature and poetry are integrated into daily life. The authors second observation is that a small and seemingly insular society may actually contain a great deal of cultural and literary sophistication, as she shows in her descriptions of daily small-town life in Northern Iceland.

The sixty-some folktales which occupy the larger part of the book are introduced as flashbacks to earlier times. Reflecting the national past and narrated by long departed country-people, the folktales run through the bookworms own present and link her living family to long-ago forebears. The human characters in these colorful tales are just like the narrators themselves: farmers and their wives, serving maids, clergymen, bishops, or hired hands: a familiar mixture in any farming society. The non-humans are a sinister lot, ranging from The Evil One himself through ghosts and ogres with whom ordinary folk must struggle as best they can. In addition, the ever-present elves are a law unto themselves: loyal as friends but lethal as foes. Being an Icelander and thus receptive to mysticism, the bookworm has ample contact with the supernatural, partly through the folktales but also as elements of daily life. Real people gifted with second sight are still commonplace in the girls own times; in fact, her family owes its very existence to the advice of such a seer. In addition, the bookworms world teems with an international cast of fictional and fantastic characters. Dickenss Mr. Bumble, Anna of Green Gables, Alice in Wonderland, a nameless drunken fisherman (courtesy of Halldr Kiljan Laxness), and the Hunchback of Notre Dame, among others, make cameo appearances next to child-stealing elf-women, man-devouring giantesses, and a dreaded ghost-monster called Thorgeirs Bull.

The first folktale, a horrific account of a legendary sorcerer, is presented by itself both as a preview of the dark supernatural mysteries in store for the reader and as a preview of the fascination and excitement such readin

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Jul 18, 2006
• ISBN: 9781462842490

Jóna E. Hammer

Jóna Edith Burgess Hammer was born and grew up in Iceland. At sixteen, she won an international essay contest sponsored by The New York Herald Tribune, which took her to the U.S.A. and Ghana and led to foreign ventures into the study of literature and language (a Smith College alumna, she received a Ph.D. from Duquesne University for a dissertation on Rider Haggard). She is married to Carl I. Hammer, a retired businessman and historian, and has spent many years teaching English as a Second Language in Pittsburgh PA, where the couple brought up their daughter, Jóhanna, and still reside.

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Copyright © 2006 by Jóna E. Hammer.

Library of Congress Control Number:     2006904831

ISBN:     Hardcover     1-4257-1775-6

Softcover      1-4257-1772-1

ISBN:    ebk     978-1-4628-4249-0

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Contents

INDEX

PREFACE

CHAPTER I

CHAPTER II

CHAPTER III

CHAPTER IV

CHAPTER V

CHAPTER VI

CHAPTER VII

CHAPTER VIII

CHAPTER IX

CHAPTER X

CHAPTER XI

CHAPTER XII

CHAPTER XIII

CHAPTER XIV

CHAPTER XV

CHAPTER XVI

CHAPTER XVII

CHAPTER XVIII

This book is dedicated to my daughter, Jóhanna, who has always pestered me to write about what it was like when I was a child. It is also dedicated to my husband, Carl, a discerning and formidable critical reader and a constant source of support. Last but not least, it is dedicated to the memory of my beloved family: my great-grandparents, Jón and Sveinbjörg; my grandparents, Páll and Stefanía; and my mother, Gilla; who together gave me a wonderful send-off into the world of imaginative literature.

INDEX

COVER, clockwise from bottom: Bookworm with great-grandparents Sveinbjörg Kristjana Pálsdóttir and Jón Jónsson; grandmother Stefanía Einarsdóttir; great-grandfather Einar Friðfinnsson (Stefanía´s father); grandfather Páll Hólm Jónsson (Stefanía´s husband, son of Jón and Sveinbjörg); great-great-grandfather Jón Jóhannesson (father of Jón); mother, Jóhanna Geirlaug Pálsdóttir (daughter of Páll and Stefanía, granddaughter of Jón and Sveinbjörg).

PREFACE

EVERYTHING BUT THE KITCHEN SINK

This book will probably not include any sex-scenes, at least not many nor very explicit; it will also, definitely, not include any footnotes. To find sex-scenes elsewhere, I am sure you don’t need my help, but, if it is footnotes you pine for, go read my Ph.D. dissertation (henceforth referred to as D), where you’ll find footnotes galore. The other thing is this: I wouldn’t call myself a liar; in fact, I do have a certain fondness for Truth (and Beauty, of course, being an English major), but sometimes I may exaggerate a tiny bit, just because it makes the story better. Making the story better has always been important to me. Everything I’m telling you is true—trust me on that, footnotes or not—just slightly embellished around the edges.

There are different ways to read this book. Readers who like memoirs but not folktales can simply skip the latter while those who prefer folktales to memoirs can skip the memoirs (simple, isn’t it?). Those who like both may, of course, read everything if they have the stamina and plenty of spare time. The original audience—you—is my daughter, Jóhanna, who has been pestering me for family-stories since she was small, but, now that several other readers have got into the act, the you includes you as well.

As a lifelong teacher of English composition to international college students, I am, officially, a sworn enemy of the unsupported generalization. DO NOT give me assertions! DO NOT give me stereotypes! I harangue my students, usually in the first or second meeting of my writing course. (My fellow English teachers, comrades in arms, I know you are nodding your heads in approval, or at least you should be.) However, as soon as the students have dispersed, their hearts trembling with fear of falling into sin, I peel off the mask of my professional pedagogue persona and settle back to my private indulgences—I love to make unsupported generalizations and frequently do.

Here is an idle one: Men do not like to be made fun of by women, not even when the laughter is affectionate, not even when the joke is told by women who love and cherish these same men. (Perhaps the Y chromosome makes its bearers especially worried about looking foolish.) When I dance around my husband and he says, "Now, why does this put me in mind of Fantasia? I don’t get offended; I just say, Oh, you mean the beautiful elves in the ‘Waltz of the Flowers’?"; then I dance on with abandon (I mostly have to dance with Abandon anyway; my husband does not like to dance). But when he himself pulls on his hand-knitted Icelandic wool cap which makes him look like a troll and our daughter and I start to titter or even just LOOK at him, he pouts. He and my Smith College roommate, Diana, have dined out for decades on a story they co-fabricated out of whole cloth, about how I arrived at Smith, fresh off the plane from Iceland and, supposedly unaware that Smith was a women’s college, supposedly asked my roommate at the end of the first month: When do the boys get here? Do I get pouty when they tell this story (which they always do the minute a conversation touches on single-sex schools, international students in the U.S., the social life of 19-year-olds, what-have-you)? Of course I don’t; I smile and generously allow them their laugh—I merely whisper to the uninitiated who are hearing the story for the first time, they are stinking liars, just for the record.

My husband, on the other hand, to this day, gets unhappy when his womenfolk tell the umbrella story. This story—in contrast to where are the boys?—is entirely true, an account of a long-ago visit to London, where we stayed with my cousin Jónína. She and I were up early in the morning, drinking tea and chatting cozily and softly so as not to wake the sleepers, when my husband suddenly materialized in the dining room doorway, wearing rumpled pajamas and a scowl. In response to mine and Jónína’s chirpy duet of good morning, good morning, dear, he trained a baleful eye on us and gruffly demanded Where is my umbrella? I ask you, breathes there a woman who could have kept a straight face—or refrained from telling this tale again and again down the years? My husband doesn’t like me to tell it; he doesn’t think it is funny at all.

Other men I know also seem to share this trait. My late stepfather, for once shamed by the younger generation into taking his own dinner plate to the kitchen instead of thrusting it imperiously at my mother, was in the act of depositing the plate on the kitchen counter when my mother spotted, through the dining room window, an acquaintance passing on the street and called out to my stepfather, Bjarni, look; there is Maja with her new coat on! to which my stepfather, in the injured tones of someone suffering a grave injustice, retorted, I can’t see much; I’m in the kitchen, whereupon his wife, stepdaughter and daughter-in-law burst into howls of laughter which put him in a snit for the rest of the day.

My great-grandfather, Jón, was no exception either. He was a farmer who had moved into town in his middle age and, at the time of this story, was living with my great-grandmother Sveinbjörg in a small ground-floor flat with windows facing onto the sidewalk. One night, Jón had just taken off his pants and shirt in preparation for getting into bed, wearing the long, grey, hand-knit woolen underpants and ditto vest typically worn by Icelandic farmers of his vintage 24 hours a day, summer and winter. Meanwhile, Sveinbjörg, tugging on the string of a blind in one of the windows, found the blind to be stuck at the top. Great-Grandfather Jón, to the rescue, climbed onto the windowsill and took a firm stand—legs planted wide, knees in a slight crouch, arms stretched upwards, head thrown back—to work on the blind. Passers-by on the sidewalk, two feet away, were thus treated to a full frontal view of a headless but clearly male torso whose woolen long-johns (knitted in times when elastic wasn’t always available) hung uncertainly from somewhere below the waist, threatening to slither down Jón’s legs at any moment as he jerked the blind vigorously back and forth in its groove. Elegantly suited, hatted and gloved townspeople (this was a very prim and proper town) interrupted their evening stroll to stare, speechless, at this apparition. Great-Grandmother, a true Icelandic country-aristocrat and a prim and proper lady, kept hissing frantic directives at Great-Grandfather: to hitch up his underpants, to get out of the window this instant, to stop causing a scandal, to stop ruining her life—all to no avail. Jón continued to stand his ground, as did, fortunately, his long-johns, until the blind had been conquered. I, a very young witness to this scene, was consumed with hilarity by the time Great-Grandfather climbed down—he became angrier with me for laughing than with my mortified great-grandmother for telling him that he had compromised their good name for ever. As I said, I love to make unsupported generalizations.

I see I have started digressing already—back to my subject! Here is another of my favorite generalizations and one I REALLY like to make: It is always an excellent idea to be born an Icelander but especially so for writers, teachers of English, and bookworms of all sorts.

CHAPTER I

OF OUR FOREBEARS

Icelanders are blessed with a national language—Icelandic—spoken by fewer than 300,000 people. Fifteen hundred years ago, the Danes, Swedes, and Norwegians were also speaking this language, more or less, but, over the centuries, they became lazy, lost the complex grammar with all its genders, numerous case-endings, and elegant verb-conjugations, and now have to make do with mere watered-down derivatives. For Icelanders, on the other hand, nothing would do except the original and best, but, since so few non-Icelanders can share the best, Icelanders, wanting to be friendly and accommodating, begin early to learn foreign languages. When I was a girl in Iceland, a new foreign language was added every year of my four-year gymnasium (which is not a place where people toss balls around or strut on balance beams but an old European kind of prep school) until I graduated with, supposedly, functional knowledge of literary Danish, English, German, Latin and French (not to mention a grasp—in my case only alleged—of the deeper mysteries of old Germanic sound-changes: Verner’s law, Grimm’s law, etc.). Not that I could actually speak a word or understand anything said to me in these languages (those were the days of the old grammar-translation teaching method). I didn’t think this would matter, since I could more or less rattle off by heart the famous texts that begin, respectively, To be or not to be, Gallia omnis in partes tres divisa est and Ein Englaender der kein Wort Französisch sprechen konnte reiste nach Paris (in French I never made it much beyond Sur le pont/ d’Avignon/ l’on y danse tout en ronde). Later I realized that it would be hard to sustain a conversation about the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune or the three kinds of soup that the hapless Englishman was served in the Paris restaurant, unless, of course, I happened to be conversing with a German about French cuisine or with an English-speaking military strategist about medieval weaponry (I never expected to run into any ancient Romans to discuss how they had carved up old Gaul). A great benefit of this language-education was the preparation it provided for the very special and humbling experience of arriving in a country whose national language I had studied several hours a week for six years—earning scholastic awards and honors for my proficiency—and finding that I did not understand a single spoken word unless people were patient enough to write it down and hand it to me on a piece of paper. This experience is truly essential for a future language teacher (and, of course, for those who plan to teach the deaf).

Speaking of language teaching—all the ð’s and þ’s in the Icelandic names coming up are pronounced like the English th-sounds in there and thin, respectively, and the funny vowels with accents above them are long. See, you can now speak Icelandic—painless, wasn´t it? Perhaps, then, you are ready for this: the Icelandic telephone-directory and all alphabetical lists of personal names are organized by FIRST names—people’s last names being merely their father or (nowadays) mother’s first name with the possessive s and -son or -daughter added. (Learned people used to call such naming a system of patronymics; in this age of gender-equality and political correctness, we should probably be calling it p/matronymics). Thus my great-grandfather was Jón Jónsson; his son and my grandfather was Páll Jónsson; Páll´s daughter, my mother, is Jóhanna Pálsdóttir. Questions? Yes, of course we can find whomever we are looking for in the phonebook—nothing to it. Did you ever try to look up someone named Smith or Brown in an English-language phonebook, where, for good measure, married women still often disappear without a trace? Shortly after my husband and I moved to Pittsburgh, I met at a party a very interesting woman whom I later wanted to call and invite for tea—I knew her last name was Brown but didn’t know her husband’s first name—needless to say, I was unable to find her among the six or so pages of Browns in the Pittsburgh phonebook—now, this could NEVER have happened in Iceland, where she would have been boldly listed among the S’es under her own first name: Stephanie.

Those who have missed the boat on being born Icelanders might like to know something more about Icelanders (although I can’t hold out much hope for foreigners wanting to infiltrate that exclusive group). In years long past, Icelanders used to be easy to spot abroad. Once, at Heathrow airport, I saw, near a bar, a group of middle-aged men standing around, swaying gently together with hands on each other’s shoulders, gazing deep into each other’s brimming eyes, singing Blau ist ein Bluemelein and then launching into Integer Vitae, in mournful two-part harmony. I knew instantly that these were Icelanders—the fact that they were singing in German and Latin meant that they were gymnasium-educated; otherwise they would have been singing the same songs in Icelandic. (Typically, this was a male-only group.) Icelanders used to be country-dwellers at heart, not city-folk. The singing men were an older generation of Icelanders who brought their country ways with them to town and have now burst on the international scene (just watch the beginning of Friðrik Þór Friðriksson´s 1990 movie Children of Nature for an example); furthermore, Icelanders of that generation were used to restricted official access to liquor at home (other than a lethal local brew appropriately called Black Death) and had to make the most of any opportunity to bend the elbow. Nowadays, Icelanders are much harder to spot abroad because they have pretty much stopped singing at airports.

There used to be four things Icelanders claimed to be famous for and would proudly point out to foreigners:

a) beautiful women

b) the Icelandic sagas

c) H.K. Laxness (after he had been forgiven for treating the sagas irreverently)

d) beautiful women.

When foreigners visited Iceland in the second half of the twentieth century, journalists would rush to interview them so newspaper readers might learn what Mr. Smith from Pasadena or Mr. Jones from Liverpool thought of Iceland. After a series of what-did-you-think-of questions about scenery, hot springs, glaciers, food, etc., a standard question directed by male Icelandic interviewers at male foreign tourists used to be and what do you think of Icelandic women? When Icelandic women became galvanized by feminism, at least one woman, whose name escapes me, wrote scathingly in Icelandic newspapers about this practice; now the our-beautiful-women-question appears to have subsided although it echoes in some of the come-ons of the Icelandic travel industry (but then, sex sells everything, doesn’t it?). As to Laxness and the sagas, non-Icelanders under 40 are now more likely to have heard of Björk.

However, some enterprising souls are still reading Independent People and Njál’s saga in translation; such readers might like to know that those monumental literary works are connected by centuries of folktales reflecting a kind of national soul. Unlike the sagas, now thought to be the works of individual writers, these folktales are a kind of supernatural national heritage, told and retold by the plain folk of old before finding their way to the printed page. The nature of a bookworm is developed by nurture—which is why my family and my old Akureyri will be taking up a great deal of space in these pages—but, of course, books are essential to a bookworm, and many bookworms are especially fond of stories from the past. Furthermore, as a true Icelander, I firmly believe that it is healthy and even necessary to keep in touch with the supernatural (and I am not talking religion although religion is fine, too). In fact, I think the supernatural is so important to everyone that I am going to throw into these pages my translations of true supernatural tales that I grew up with and Icelanders used to know well—some of these events took place among the farms of Eyjafjörður where my ancestors lived. The English language, as everyone knows, is full of allusions to Shakespeare and the Bible—well, the Icelandic language and Icelanders themselves are full of allusions not only to the sagas but also to these folktales.

Although the older members of my own family told me some of these tales, complete with their own explanations and digressions, most of the folktales came to me in printed form, recorded on the printed page much as they had been told by people who lived before my great-grandparents were born. Please note how careful these narrators are to account for different versions and pass the stories on as accurately as possible; they even tell additional versions, different from their own, just in case these other versions might be more truthful. They also try their best to pass on historical details—names of places and characters, genealogies—just as their predecessors, the saga-writers, used to do so diligently. I have tried to be faithful to these old narrators in my English versions of their stories, which are based on a well-known collection: Jón Árnason´s Íslenzkar þjóðsögur og ævintýri [Icelandic Folk—and Faery-Tales], first published in 1862.

Personally, I prefer tales that include the names and dates of the historical figures who lived them. Then you can really be sure the stories are true (and I am married to a historian, so I know about these things). Of course, we Icelanders KNOW, anyway, that these stories are true—why else would our God-fearing nineteenth-century ancestors have passed them on, and why else would the collectors—Jón Árnason and Magnús Grímsson, inspired by the example of the Grimm brothers—have so carefully documented the origins of all the stories they recorded? (The narrators inherited their respect for truth from saga-writers, and the collectors themselves also made some historical annotations, which I am passing on to you as necessary.) Many of the stories show how Icelanders used to live and reason and how peculiarly Icelandic they were (and continue to be, centuries later); some stories also show kinship to a common body of myth and folklore all over the world (even at their most insular, Icelanders have always had a wide cosmopolitan streak). I am very partial to our homegrown sorcerers and ghosts, so I´ll make sure to incIude my favorite stories about them, but, being an equal-opportunity story-teller, I plan to also include stories about other Icelandic minority groups: giantesses, elves and outlaws. There is some (perhaps not evident) method in the order of the stories, but deserving readers (even undeserving ones) may, of course, read them in any order they choose.

To give you an introduction, I’ll start with a very popular tale which happens to include my favorite elements: the raising of ghosts (and such awesome ones!), and much delving into eldritch lore as one of my favorite twentieth-century fantasy writers, H.P. Lovecraft, would have put it (he really loved the word eldritch). These ventures were undertaken by one of the best-loved Icelandic sorcerers (no relation to Faust). For a bit of historical orientation: Gráskinna (Greyhide) was a famous book of the black arts. Rauðskinna (Redhide), was a sort of sequel, containing stronger stuff for advanced sorcerers. A witch-ride is a rather crude process whereby a witch or sorcerer casts a spell on a human being, then bridles and rides the victim like a horse for great distances. The farmstead Hólar is the site of the cathedral in the old northern bishopric and also the site of one of the first two grammar schools or seminaries where young Icelanders could prepare themselves for study at the university in Copenhagen (the other such site was Skálholt in the southern bishopric). Deceased bishops of the cathedral (among them Gottskálk the Cruel, who died ca. 1520) were customarily buried underneath its floorboards. The sorcerer himself, Loftur Þorsteinsson, is said to have graduated from the cathedral school in 1722. Here is his story; it is definitely not for the faint of heart, but we might as well plunge in with both feet.

Loftur the Sorcerer

There once was a student at Hólar named Loftur. He spent all his time on witchcraft and persuaded others to join him although they could only dabble in it. Loftur was the leader of his schoolmates and egged them on to play various magic pranks on other people.

One year at Christmas Loftur went home to his parents. He took a servant-girl at Hólar, shod her like a horse, put a bridle in her mouth, and forced her to carry him in a witch-ride both ways. The girl was ill from wounds and exhaustion for a long time afterwards, but as long as Loftur was alive she was unable to tell anyone what had happened. Another time Loftur made a girl at Hólar pregnant and killed her with sorcery. She was carrying a large tray with bowls of food back and forth between the kitchen and the main room when Loftur caused a wall to open up in front of her. The girl entered the opening but then hesitated in fear. Her hesitation allowed the spell to take effect, and the wall closed behind her. A long time later, when the wall was torn down, a female skeleton with the bones of a fetus inside and a heap of bowls in its arms was found standing upright within.

The Dean, Þorleifur Skaftason (1683-1748), who served the cathedral at the time, admonished Loftur but to no avail. Afterwards Loftur tried to attack the Dean with sorcery but was unable to harm him because the Dean was so pious that no evil could affect him. One day the Dean rode to church and had to cross the river Hjaltadalsá which was on flood. Suddenly his horse stood stock-still with fright, so he had to dismount in mid-river. He took the bag with his frock, waded ashore unharmed and held a service as scheduled. On that occasion a verse was composed:

In my surprise I must exclaim

At the tale I´m told here:

The Dean on foot to Hólar came

His frock upon his shoulder.

Loftur did not stop until he had learned everything written in Gráskinna. Then he sought out several other sorcerers, but none of them knew more than he did himself. He became so vicious and so steeped in the black arts that all the other students were afraid of him and did not dare cross him although they were repelled by his behavior.

Early one winter Loftur approached a student whom he knew to be a brave man and asked his assistance to raise the ghosts of the early bishops. The student resisted, but Loftur threatened to kill him him if he did not oblige. The student asked how he could be of any help, knowing no witchcraft. Loftur said that all the student had to do would be to stand in the steeple, never stir from the spot nor take his eyes off Loftur himself, and pull the bell-rope when Loftur signaled with his hand. I’ll tell you the details of my plan, said Loftur. "Those who have learned as much witchcraft as I have can use it only for evil purposes and will be damned when they die. But, if someone learns more than this, the devil loses all power over him and has to serve him without reward as he served Sæmundur the Wise, and whoever learns that much is able to use his knowledge for good deeds if he chooses. It is no longer possible to reach this level of learning since the Black School went out of existence and bishop Gottskálk the Cruel had Rauðskinna buried with him, so I´m planning to raise Gottskálk´s ghost and force him to hand Rauðskinna over to me. All the early bishops will rise while I´m casting the spell because they can´t hold out against the potent incantations which Gottskálk can withstand. I´ll make them tell me all the old lore they knew in their day; it´ll be easy because one can see from their faces whether they ever knew any witchcraft. I can´t raise the later bishops because they were all buried with Holy Writ on their chests. You must stand fast and do exactly as I tell you. Don´t ring the bells too soon or too late because my eternal salvation is at stake. I´ll reward you so well that you´ll surpass all other men."

The bargain was struck. Shortly after the household had retired, Loftur and the student rose and went to the church. The church was lit by the full moon. The student took his position in the steeple, and Loftur went into the pulpit and began to conjure. Soon a man rose up through the floor. He looked grave but kind and wore a crown, so the student took him to be the earliest bishop. The ghost said to Loftur: Stop, wretched man, while there is still time! My brother, Gvöndur, will crush you with his prayers if you disturb him. Loftur paid no attention and went on chanting. All the early bishops now rose from their graves, dressed in white shrouds with crosses on their breasts and staffs in their hands. They all exchanged words with Loftur, but the story does not mention what was said. Three of them wore crowns, the first, the last, and the one in the middle (probably Guðmundur Arason, although the dating is somewhat faulty). None of them knew any witchcraft. Gottskálk resisted all this and did not appear.

Loftur now began to chant with all his might, directing his words at Gottskálk alone. He recited the Psalms of David—addressing them to the devil—confessing all his own good deeds and asking the devil´s forgiveness. Meanwhile the three crowned bishops stood farthest away, facing Loftur with their hands raised, but the other bishops turned their backs to him, looking towards the crowned bishops. Suddenly a roll of thunder sounded. A man burst up through the floor with a staff in his left hand and a red book under his right arm. He had no cross on his chest. Gottskálk frowned at the bishops but grinned at Loftur, who was chanting as if possessed. Then Gottskálk moved closer and said, contemptuously: "You sing well, my son, better than I expected, but you shall never have my Rauðskinna." At his words, Loftur went berserk and now conjured as he never had before, chanting the Benediction and the Lord´s Prayer, addressing both to the devil, so the church creaked and trembled from floor to ceiling. The student in the steeple thought he saw Gottskálk advancing towards Loftur and offering him, reluctantly, a corner of the book. Frightened as he had already been, the student now trembled with terror and almost fainted. The bishop seemed to hold out the book and Loftur to reach towards it with his hand. The student took this for his signal and pulled the bell-rope. All the bishops sank instantly through the floor with a fearful din.

Loftur stood in the pulpit for a moment with his head in his hands as though he were stunned. Then he descended slowly, walked towards his accomplice, moaned and said, All is now lost, although you are not to blame. I should have waited for the dawn when the bishop would have been forced to yield up the book to me. He wouldn´t have thought it worthwhile to keep the book at the cost of his grave closing to him; it wouldn´t have been permitted, anyway, for the sake of the other bishops. Yet he has prevailed because, when I saw the book and heard his mockery, I lost control of myself and thought to wrest it from him immediately with my incantations. I didn´t know what I was doing until I had gone so far that, if I had chanted one more strophe, the church would have sunk, as Gottskálk intended. At that moment I was jolted by a glimpse of the crowned bishops´ faces. I knew you would faint and pull the bell-rope as you collapsed, but the book was so close that I thought I could seize it; I touched a corner and only needed a better grip to hold onto it. But all things must go as they are fated. There will be no reward for you nor salvation for me.

After this, Loftur grew very silent and almost went insane, not daring to be alone, needing always a light by his side at dusk. He was overheard muttering, On the Sunday in mid-Lent, I´ll be burning in Hell. People advised him to seek refuge with X, the minister of Staðastaður (my source mentioned the name but I have forgotten it). X was an old man, very pious and a good minister; those who had lost their reason or been hurt through witchcraft were restored to health by his blessing. This minister pitied Loftur and took him into his