God bless you, old salt, I thought. You thoroughly deserved to cleave through the cold waters of Iceland in a shapely frigate.
The boat heeled over gracefully and floated over the waves like a gull with its wings outstretched. We stood there watching, without a move, until she disappeared behind the headland.
GUNNAR GUNNARSSON
FATHER AND SON
The two of them lived just outside the They were both called Snjolfur, and they usually distinguished as old Snjolfur and little Snjolfur. They themselves, however, addressed each other only as Snjolfur. This was a habit of long standing: it may be that, having the same name, they felt themselves bound still more firmly together by using it unqualified in this way. Old Snjolfur was something over fifty, little Snjolfur only just over twelve.
They were close together, the pair of them—each felt lost without the other. It had been like that ever since little Snjolfur could remember. His father could look further back. He remembered that thirteen years ago he had lived on his farm within easy riding distance of the village; he had a good wife and three sturdy and hopeful children.
Then his luck turned and one disaster after struck him. His sheep went down with pest, his cattle died of anthrax and other diseases. Then the children got whooping-cough and all three died, close enough together to lie in one grave. To pay his debts Snjolfur had to give up his farm and sell the land. Then he bought the land on the Point just outside the village, knocked up a cabin divided into two by a partition, and a fish-drying shed. When that was done, there was enough left to buy a cockle-shell of a boat. This was the sum of his possessions.
It was a poor and dismal life they led there, Snjolfur and his wife. They were both used to hard work, but they had had no experience of privation and constant care for the morrow. Most days it meant putting to sea if they were to eat, and it was not every night they went to bed with a full stomach. There was little enough left over for clothing and comfort.
Snjolfur's wife worked at fish-drying for the factor in the summer months, but good drying-days could not be counted on and the money was not much. She lived just long enough to bring little Snjolfur into the world, and the last thing she did was to decide his name. From then on, father and son lived alone in the cabin.
Little Snjolfur had vague memories of times of desperate misery. He had to stay at home through days of unrelieved torment and agony. There had been no one to look after him while he was too small to go off in the boat with his father, and old Snjolfur was forced to tie the boy to the bed-post to keep him out of danger in his absence. Old Snjolfur could not sit at home all the time: he had to get something to put in the pot.