[Dream Gate] [Poet Glas]

Haltr Rithr Hrossi

This piece is set in the last decade of the ninth century, at the time of the founding of Iceland. The title comes from the first line of an Old Norse poem:

The halt may ride a horse; / the handless be herdsman
the deaf man may bravely fight. / A blind man is better
than a burned one, aye / of what gain is a good man dead?

from the Old Norse Havamal, c. 9th cent.

Three things cover unsightliness:
good manners in the ill-favored;
skill in a serf; and wisdom in the misshapen.

from the Triads of Ireland, c. 9th cent.

When north I came in dancing boat to that fair land called Ice,
I was not Lochlannach who fled the wrath of Haarfagr;
Nor was I one of Leo's men with Mikligardish spice;
I was but one lone Scottish man; no trouble did I stir.

The land was green yet rocky still where I cleared out my stead,
And quick was I with kindly word for those who helped the task;
Yet Arnar was the best of them, the one whom first I fed,
Though Ragoland had left his face a terrifying face.

He told me how at Hafursford he stood against his king,
How Harald Haarfagr had marched against those Norse with land;
He spoke yet kindly of the man whose fine hair hid a sting
That left Arnar half a man, who used a crutch to stand.

Though battle-scarred and crippled yet, still Arnar was no shell;
We talked of lands through which I'd been, and those of which he'd heard;
How Helgi was the prince of Kiev, and Cormac of Cashel,
And how the men of Jorvik could not net Alfred the bird.

We talked of Charles the Frank, called Fat, who'd built his castles well,
And laughed at tales of Dallan's poems of kingly Cerball's sword;
And late at night I'd help him stand, a victim of war's hell,
While in his twisted hand he held my sword and battered board.

From Arnar I learned many things, the least of which is not
That wisdom can be any man's, no matter what his state;
That wizened man knew all there was of life, both cold and hot,
And never would he argue with the wyrd dealt him by fate.

One night when cold gusts howled through crags I sought him at his place
And in the pale light of the moon I met my darkest fears:
A dragon prow, though not of ours, lay beached in awkward grace
Below his hut, while on the strand strange men marched out with spears.

I saw them break into his house with torches in their hands,
And set to fire all the thatch with which he'd roofed his stones;
They meant no kindness to the man who'd made that beach his lands--
Had he been in his hovel then, they'd surely break his bones.

And then my ear turned to a yell, a warrior's brazen shout:
Old Arnar had hid midst the rocks above his ravished home;
The moonlight showed me Arnar's pride, who'd sailed with Ketil Trout,
As in the rocks he lodged his crutch, to make the still rocks roam.

His battered frame a great heave gave, and boulders started down,
And then the old fool jumped atop the rocks that charged like boars;
Old Arnar who without his crutch could hardly crawl to town
Danced on the rocks like once he'd pranced above the beating oars.

The men below made haste like rats to drag their ship to sea,
While I and Arnar sat above and laughed and howled all night;
We later that men from Manx had brought unwitting glee,
Not knowing that their swift depart was quite our joyfull sight.

Old Arnar has a new hut now, it sits above my stead;
And often when we have our guests we tell them of that joke:
How one old man with crippled limbs was Manxmen's fearsome dread,
And how that man had ridden rocks like horses with a yoke.

AFTERWORD TO "HALTR RITHR HROSSI"

Set as it is in the ninth century, not all may know the following references from this piece:

  • Lochlannach. Gaelic for "Dane," used for any Norseman.
  • Leo. Leo VI, "the Wise," emperor of Byzantium.
  • Harald Haarfagr. Harald "Finehair," the king who united Norway; among the last of his great battles was Hafursford in Ragoland (SW Norway), where he subjugated the landholders who opposed him. Many nobles sailed to Iceland rather than oppose him.
  • Helgi. Oleg, successor to Rurik, prince of Kiev.
  • Cormac. Bishop-King of Cashel in Ireland; noted leader and linguist.
  • Jorvik. York (from "Eoforvic," Boar-Town), center of the Dane-Law (Norse rule) in NE England.
  • Alfred. Alfred the Great, king of Wessex, and later all of Saxon England.
  • Charles the Fat. Last Carolingian king to rule all of Charlemagne's empire (France, Germany, and northern Italy); deposed because he could not keep the Norse at bay. He gave permission to his nobles to build castles against the Viking.
  • Dallan. Dallan mac More, chief bard to Cerball (Carroll) mac Muiregan, king of Leinster and the Foreigners, in the east of Ireland; Dallan wrote a famous poem on Cerball's sword.

copyright 27 Sep 1989 (AS XXIV), by Earle B. 'Glas' Durboraw

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