The Death of Egil Skallagrimsson

The Death of Egil Skallagrimsson

Mosfell, Iceland c 990 AD

            The steading was silent when I woke, the hearth fire cooled to white ash, the rats asleep in their nests in the rafters, and my kinsmen slumbering in their blankets, far from the deathbed of an old man. Far from my deathbed. I watched them by day, as I bored them with my tales of times gone and strength stolen by the malice of the fates, and I saw the look in their eyes. The callous greed, the impatience, the flickering hope with each racking bloody cough and croaking wheeze. The old man will die soon they were thinking, and then I will be rich. Ingrates. Bastards. With such casual indifference did they sow the seeds of loss, forgetting what they owed to me, forgetting the deeds of courage and valour sung of me by the skalds that very night, that they will reap a deserved harvest of ash and bone. For I am Egil, and I do not suffer dishonour.

          “It is time” I said, waking my old servant Ref. Alone among my people – both kinsmen and thralls - he remembered me as a man, instead of a dribbling embarrassment. He was there when I burned the hall of the Courlanders who had thought me safely bound and gagged, and warmed his hands on the ashes of my former captors even as I carried the hard-won gold to my sea-chest in the longboat. At Brunanburh he tended my wounds, and cleaned my war-sword Adder of the blood of screaming Scotsmen slain in the brutal slaughter. After the battle, he helped me dig the grave of my brother Thorolf, slain in glory, sword in hand and gone to join the glorious army of Einherjar in Odin’s Hall. Now, he would help me bury the silver that Thorolf’s death had won, a gleaming hoard worthy of Bragi’s verse, given to me by Aethelstan of England, in a distant land, in distant youth.

            Old and dying I may be, but I have strength enough for this one last task that men will speak of in tales around their hearth fires in the long dark winter. Of how a dying man’s final wish was spurned, his last hopes of glory snatched away by treacherous greed. Of how he rose from his deathbed to deny his unworthy progeny in a final act of defiance.

Would that I could carry my silver to the national meeting of the Althing, to address the pioneers of the Iceland settlement one last time. I would tell them to honour their traditions, to give glory to Odin and make our land great. Then finally astonish them by throwing my treasure into the gasping crowds - a glittering blizzard of English coin to brighten the grimmest grey day. The strong would push aside the weak, the quick would snatch what they could and rest would leave poor and unhappy, but such is the way of the world. None would forget the man that threw his treasure to the people, the final golden weft in the saga of Egil Skallagrimsson.

            The dreich mirr of afternoon rain had given way to the sharp chill of a clear autumn night, and I felt the cold like needles of ice sinking deep into my aching bones. A dancing curtain of blue-green light shimmered in the sky, and I knew that the Valkyries travelled through the stars on their magical steeds to wherever brave men died this night. They had been busy in recent days, for on the lawless frontier there are always bloodfeuds, raids and quarrels settled by Holmgang duels. I knew that their hoofprints would hang red in the sky before this night was done.

I trudged slowly through the thick sucking mud of the trail, the chest of silver an awkward burden that caused the wasted muscles of my arms to burn and throb until the pain faded to a dull numb sensation. With each slip on the trail – my dignity betrayed by knees made feeble by time’s slow decay - I could feel the edges cut through my thick bearskin cloak, and sometimes some coins would spill out, but I left them to sink into oblivion in the mud. Ref followed a few paces behind, and I cursed him mercilessly for a clumsy fool each time he tripped on a hidden rock, and mocked him for falling behind, though I could scarcely expend the breath. But what does an old man have but memories and pride, and I refused to allow my exhaustion to show, forcing myself to walk faster against the pulsing protest of my frantically beating heart. I will be ten paces ahead of Ref at that boulder I told myself and forced the pace to make sure I did it. I will be 15 paces ahead at the cliffs I then told myself, and when I reached that point I shouted for him to hurry, smiling at the look of wonder and desperate toil on his face, for Ref was almost as old as me.