The days encountered him heavily and sulkily. It seemed as if all their endeavours were directed to show him in earnest how empty and tedious and intolerable they could be, if they seriously set about it. The bright, cloudless summer days sneered at him when they met him with ice-cold scornful light from sunrise to sunset. Grey and rainy days, on the other hand, showed him without disguise their dull side. Hjor-Leif could not come to an agreement with himself which of the two kinds of days was really the more intolerable. They were all alike impossible. The one point he was clear about with regard to the days was that he had without doubt still the worst remaining. He cursed them with oaths which were powerful both in length and strength, and derived from an inexhaustible supply. But they were no help—not even momentarily. In the battle with the days he suffered one defeat after another; they were far stronger than he. They were invincible. And they possessed, although he daily experienced that, in spite of all, they did pass, a peculiarity of appearing endless, which deprived him of all hope.
Hjor-Leif tried in every way to put a little meaning into them.
He set his freemen to build a winter dwelling, a house nineteen fathoms long. It was to contain them all, together with their wives. He had only taken young, newly married people with him from Norway, with the single exception of his old headman. Hjor-Leif did what he could to take a little interest in the work. But it was only self-deception. The days did not for a moment let go their wild-beast clutch on his neck.
He set the serfs to build a house eighteen fathoms long, and bullied them till they quailed and shivered and fell into helpless embarrassment merely at the sight of him. Yes, he instilled a wholesome terror into the Irish serfs. They slunk about, and hardly knew whether to walk upright or on all fours. And they had no eyes—at any rate, there seemed no more any sight in their eyes. Regarding them, he felt sure that he had made them harmless for ever. But it brought him no comfort either to treat them like dogs or to realize their harmlessness. That did not bring a spark of his spirits back. There was nothing to rouse them in that quarter.
One of the items in Hjor-Leif's despairing and hopeless struggle with the days was going along the shore and choosing driftwood for his buildings. When he found a stout, solid plank, he marked it with a stroke of his ax; then he bade the serfs find the planks so marked and bring them home.
Sometimes in these wanderings, Hjor-Leif found himself standing and hewing wildly and meaninglessly at a plank, as though his life depended on cutting it into a plaything for the winds. Whenever he awoke from such an attack of frenzy he looked round him with a shamefaced expression, and began eagerly, with a strong sense of humiliation, to efface the traces of it, watched by the evil eye of a hostile day.
Hjor-Leif had one hope, and only one. His longing, strongly reinforced by his despair, had treated with the rocky pride of his soul, and the result was a reasonable agreement.
Therefore he went everywhere and searched for Ingolf's high-seat pillars. Not in order to do away with them by means of fire, but to get an excuse for seeking Ingolf at once, and so obtaining an honourable and acceptable victory over all that pained and plagued him. Hjor-Leif wanted to see what the day would look like when by finding the pillars he was able to escape from his wretchedness with a bound.
This hope sustained him. But day after day passed without his finding the pillars. Not even the sea and tides were friendly disposed towards him. He talked in a loud voice with the sea, and reminded it of all the honourable bouts they had had with each other. But either the sea did not hear or would not recognize him. It had perhaps become hostile towards him, like everything else in heaven and earth. Hjor-Leif had been as far eastward along the coast as the impassible glacier streams would let him go. Now he turned westward. He took food with him, and remained away four days and nights. During his expedition he came to know a new part of the country which he liked, and where he could well imagine himself settling.
Below the green mountains, which first in a steep ascent and then with a more gradual incline rose towards the white glacier which with its two domes reminded one of a female giant's breasts, the low land stretched with fertile meadows and picturesque bush-covered valleys and luxuriant pastures towards the shining sea. In the south-west green precipitous isles rose from the sea. Hjor-Leif gave the mountains names after these islands, which simultaneously limited and enriched the view, and called them Island-mountains. The western dome of the glacier he named the Island-mountains' Glacier; the eastern he had already, after a more eastern district, baptized Myrdals-Glacier. Hjor-Leif did not turn round, for he saw the land open into a wide bay towards the west. He examined the shore outside the Island-mountains and Myrdal very closely. It was a great disappointment to him that the pillars had not drifted on shore here.