The
Last Autumn
Sunken and stiffened with cold, the bear’s tracks in the mud were deep. So deep that Jarl Skjar had spotted them from his horse, even though his eyesight was not what it used to be. Judging by the depth of the mark, the animal must’ve passed through here after sunrise when the earth was softer and moist with dew.
“So that’s where the fucker stays under daylight,” murmured Skjar, though he was alone, only the horse by his side.
He knew from the peasants that a great bear had begun to roam the farmlands on the edge of the town at night, disturbing the cattle, but none had dared to go after it. Skjar had gathered his men who were skilled with weapons and with hunting and had sent them out riding in search for the beast. But not even the most skilled trackers could find it.
“Don’t go alone, Uncle,” Rannveig had pleaded the day before, her copper eyebrows knitting the way they did when she was worried, “take a couple of men with you.”
At her insistence, he had promised her he would. He did not want to disappoint her or to be the cause for her concern. Although she was only fifteen, the girl had lost both her parents and her aunt; of course she’d be worried.
And, still, Skjar had gone alone, riding out after breakfast without anyone’s knowledge. He was Jarl, and he needed no one’s permission. Take men with him when there was so much work to be done on the farm… Ridiculous! He was fit to be on his own, just as he had been his entire life. Silly girl, what made her think he needed help to ride on his own damned estate? She did not know what real danger looked like.
Besides, he had always gone alone. He wanted no distractions where he was going.
The day had started bright, the sun melting the morning frost, but now clouds were gathering to obscure its warmth, so the moisture in the earth was beginning to freeze.
Skjar rode uphill until he reached the plateau covered in blonde grass and fallen copper leaves, all hardened with cold. The wind blew harder up there and the Jarl drew his hat tighter upon his ears. Upon the clearing on the plateau, a stone stood. It wasn’t like the many rocks that dotted the place, but taller and flatter, and inscribed with letters.
The man dismounted, tying the reins of his mare to a fir branch, and stepped towards it. His fingers ran over the cold surface of the stone – over the runes that were written in a long row which coiled like a serpent from outer edges of the stone to its middle – as if he were caressing a loved one.
“Good morning, Yrsa. How are you?”
Jarl Skjar made this journey every solstice, and twice more every year: once on the day when he and Yrsa had met, and once on the day of her death. This late autumn day was the latter.
He sat on the grass, in front of the stone, his thick cloak shielding him from the cold ground. He was tired already, although he had done nothing else today but ride.
The fjord was stretching beneath and around him, beautiful from up there. His little town was somewhere below and to the south, obscured by hills and forest.
“I took you up here to show you the view, remember?” he went on. “I said all this would be ours, to show you that I was going to rule over the whole district and I wanted you to share its beauty with me. And you said… you said: it already is.”
He smiled.
“Because, you said, you’d be with me, whether I become Jarl or not.”
The smile turned into laughter.
“Well, your father wouldn't have agreed with you there. But, thankfully, I made it and he didn’t have to make that choice. We made it.”
It was well past noon when Skjar stood up to leave and untied his horse. The leaves shivered above him, some submitting to the wind and floating down, others still clinging to a summer that had passed.
He was descending the slope, riding where the wood was thick about him, when the horse stirred.
Skjar’s right hand instinctively reached to where he kept his axe at the belt. But he peered around under the trees, and nothing seemed to move.
“What is it, girl?” he asked the mare, and petted her. She was a stubborn mare that had given him a lot of trouble in the past, but he had gained her trust and she was now the most loyal companion. She eased at his words and touches, and agreed to move on.
But not many moments passed and they reached a bend in the road. And, right beyond the bend, the path forward was blocked by a great dark shape.
A bear.
Skjar’s hand dashed to grab his spear and tried to make the horse step slowly backwards. But, at the sight of the bear, the mare stopped abruptly, and he could feel her tense in panic under him. The bear stood from the ground. Maddened with fear, the horse whinnied and rose on her hind legs.
Before Skjar could react, he felt heaved in the air and thrown backward from the height.
He expected the blast of great pain. He thought the fall would break his neck and the sight of copper-leaved and evergreen branches above would be the last sight he’d ever see. But though his body slammed heavily against the ground, the pain was not sharp and crippling. Instead, the force of his fall and the inclination of the ground beneath sent him flipping backwards through the soft bed of leaves, completely out of control. He grabbed onto a wooden vine with his right hand to halt his fall, and his shoulder snapped under the force of the pull, but Skjar did not let go.
The horse tossed wildly between her master and the bear for a moment and, her loyalty defeated by terror, she ran off back the way they came.
The spear had fallen from Skjar’s hand and had slipped down the slope, stopping against a rock. Not a precipice, just a steep way down a gully, far away from the road. But he still had his axe at the belt.
The bear was gone.
Skjar tried to regain footing and stand up, hoping to climb his way back to the road. But he was heavy, weapons and thick clothes weighing him down. His body lacked the suppleness and agility it once had. And he was sore from the fall, lucky though it was. As he tried to get back on his knees, the shrub he was holding onto broke under his weight.
The mud and humid leaves made his sliding unstoppable. He tripped over roots and tumbled to the bottom of the gully on knees and elbows, until his body slammed sideways against the hard and rocky ground.
Now, there was pain.
He stood there a while, head swimming and a strange sensation in his mouth and nose.
Perhaps the copper leaves and the darkening sky would yet be the last thing he’d ever see.
Years ago, he would have stood up and pushed onwards, making noise to scare the bear away. But now, after such a fall, he could barely move. In fact, even before the fall, he always felt so tired.
When he was young, he would work all day and fall asleep like a rock, only to awake a new man ready to take on the challenges of another dawn. Now, sleep was almost as unrestful as the day. He would wake up with pains in his neck and lower back. His joints ached after he lifted weights. Sometimes, after he ate, his insides began to hurt, a gnawing pain in the centre of his belly that became worse and worse until he felt sick and vomited. His teeth ached when he ate something hot or drank something cold, and several had fallen after great distress so that he had trouble chewing hard foods.
He could scarcely remember feeling healthy and full of energy.
Suddenly, leaves rustled towards Jarl Skjar’s right. He startled and listened in tension.
“Go away! There’s nothing to be had here,” he commanded.
He saw his spear not far from where he was, its tip glinting in the half-darkness, so he propped himself against a tree and stood up with difficulty, reaching for it.
The sound of twigs snapping under heavy steps was clear. The man clutched his spear tight in his fist, still strong.
“Where are you?” he cried out, sound raspy with effort. “Are you going to lurk around all day?”
His voice was strong and bold, but he was in pain. He took out the axe from his belt and planted his feet firmly in the ground, looking round and round for the lurking beast. But his vision was blurry in the distance, and could scarcely pierce the darkness. Every rock and tree stump and play of light seemed like the dark shape of the wild beast he had just seen.
He had to walk on and seek a way out of the gully, but his hip and ribs ached so much that he limped, and he needed to use his spear to lean onto. It was getting dark, especially there under the trees. And the sensation of being watched and followed was the worst thing of all.
“Where are you?” he repeated. “Either go, or show yourself!”
He had faced bears before. He was fifteen, and his father and other men armed with spears in pursuit of a bear terrorizing their cattle, all the group fast on horseback, ready to chase and waylay and kill. And when the she-bear showed herself, young Skjar, heart racing, had put himself between his father and the beast, ready to be a man and face his fears, prove his strength of spirit and loyalty. He had succeeded, but he had not been alone: five other spears had thrust into the bear.
Now, there was no other spear but his.
He staggered towards a bend that he hoped would lead him to a milder slope back to the road. And just there, in the dark, it appeared. The great shape. Unmistakable.
“What do you want from me?” Skjar grunted, and held his spear and axe tight in hands.
The bear came closer to sniff him, not directly towards him but circling him, as if assessing, matching himself against a potential opponent.
Skjar mirrored him and turned round. He would not show his back to the beast and give him an opportunity to strike. No. He would stand tall and strong, as he would in front of any enemy.
“Stop your games!” he yelled and raised his arms to look big and intimidating. “I’m not your prey! You are mine!”
The bear seemed to understand. He stood on his hind legs. Skjar took a battle stance, ignoring all the pain etched into his body, overwhelmed by the rush in his veins, the energy of danger. He squeezed his spear and axe in his fists.
He had fought powerful enemies before, and had been victorious. And if he was to be defeated now, what opponent was worthier than a force of nature itself?
If this is my last autumn, Yrsa, he thought, my last visit to your stone, then so be it.
"Come!" he bellowed at the beast, looking him in the eyes, daring him. "Come!" And let out a roar.
The provocation did not go unanswered. The bear released a terrifying growl. And charged. He raised his great paws to maul at his enemy, to catch the man in his formidable grip or to tear him to pieces. Another growl pierced the air. But this growl was not one of intimidation: it was pain. Skjar’s spear was lodged in his stomach. The axe in the Jarl’s right hand raised and struck down at the animal’s head, embedding deep in his skull.
Skjar stepped back. The bear staggered on until, with a great thud, it fell to the ground.
But the Jarl’s arms and legs were trembling, failing under his weight that now felt immense, like a rock on his shoulders. His hand, the one that was clutched at his stomach, turned red.
Skjar, too, collapsed.
He knew not how long he had lain there, unconscious. All he knew was that his head throbbed.
It was not the bruise, the mark of his skull slammed against the ground. It was more like pressure that wanted to crush it, to split it open and spill out every blurred thought and distant memory. It made the fight and the fall and ride to the runestone and the last view of his house blend together like a fleeting dream, until he began to doubt the reality of it. Was the bear dead, or was it waking up, vengeful? Had he truly fought it, or had he simply imagined it while lying on the rocky ground where he had fallen? Was he truly in the woods, or was the numbness of his body but the paralysis of a nightmare?
Or was it the cold that was dulling his senses?
He knew that, under great cold, one could go insane. Once, many years ago, a man from his village had been lost in the woods in winter, and they had found him days later completely naked, clothes not ripped off by a beast or an enemy but undressed by his own hands under a strange sensation of heat.
Funny, how old people tend to remember happenings from their youth so clearly, but last week’s memories all blended together. Perhaps this happened because life was more memorable to them when there was still novelty in it.
Or, perhaps, the stiffness slowly gripping his body was death itself.
As a young man, death had always been far from his mind. How ironic, he thought now. He had witnessed it many times and had rushed into it with the heedlessness of youth, empowered by ideals he had never questioned. How many times he had brawled without thinking of blows that may leave him incapacitated or cuts that may leave festering wounds; even something as mundane as a horse ride may kill, as it had his sister Solveig - Rannveig’s mother. A simple - and fatal - mischance. When he was young, the afterlife had been an exciting and blissful - but faraway - place.
But now, those ideals seemed far away, almost like something childish that one used to like but now cannot remember why. His young heedless self had repeated the old tales before charging into danger, not once pondering enough to question them; yes, he smiled to himself, the old tales had fulfilled their purpose.
And on those nights when he couldn’t sleep, he’d just lie there thinking – of youth, of the days when he was champion of all games and skirmishes, when he earned the hand of the woman he loved, when he ruled over the district with his family beside him, happy and whole. Yes. His had been a full life.
Now, he expected no valkyries nor sounds of horns to welcome him into Valhǫll, no benches lined with hay or feasts prepared in his honour. All he wanted was peace. No pain or tiredness, no worry or longing. Just rest. That wholesome sleep he had not had in years.
His body was now like stone, and something akin to sleepiness came over him, lulling him like the caress of a loved one, and the pain and cold faded away. A safe embrace in which to finally lose yourself. He smiled, or thought he did.
How fitting, Yrsa, that I’d die on the same day as you.
Warmth overwhelmed him. But it was not the tormenting heat of the man insane with cold, no. It was soothing. Like he was bathed in light.
Was it Valholl, its doors open and welcoming?
The land beyond the Rainbow bridge?
The shine of Óðinn’s armour?
The warmth of Yrsa’s embrace?
He opened his eyes. The glare of the sun made them scrunch and sent a jolt of pain through his head, so he shielded his face from the sun with a hand soiled in dried blood. And there, at his side, under the sun peering through the leaves, stood his horse. His loyal mare.
“Of course the gods wouldn’t let me rest,” he murmured but, instead of words, only a heavy grunt came out as he staggered on his feet with the aid of his friend.
Yet, if he could smile, he would’ve. He was never happier to see her.
The carcass of the bear was there, Skjar’s spear and axe still lodged in it.
Somehow, he climbed on the saddle, and he didn’t know when he reached the outskirts of the village. But, as if in a dream, animated voices sounded and he opened his eyes.
And there, a long distance away, he saw flowing copper hair. Rannveig. The girl looked at him for what seemed like moments, as if unsure whether he was real or a draugr – a walking dead – and then let out a cry. She galloped towards him on horseback, calling out. A horn sounded and men gathered from all over. His people had been searching for him.
As soon as they helped him down, Rannveig threw her arms around him with no heed to his wounds, burying her head in his chest – the way she used to do when she was a little girl missing her parents - so tightly and abruptly that the hat fell off her copper curls:
“I told you to take someone with you,” she whispered, chiding, and for a moment she seemed not a child but a grown woman, and Skjar felt the wisdom and weight in her voice.
“You did. And I should’ve listened.”
Then she lifted her eyes to him and her freckled cheeks wet.
“Please, don’t leave me, Uncle. Not you, too.”
The pain awakened by her tight embrace was soothed by her warmth and tears tenfold. This embrace, this look, the love of this child that had suffered enough.
Óðinn can wait. And you, too, dear Yrsa.
“I’m here, sweetheart,” he said, squeezing her tight with his sound arm and kissing her forehead. “Wouldn’t leave you for the world.”
Yes. He had, yet, something to live for.