Where the Shadows Lie (Fire and Ice)

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CHAPTER TWELVE
    Í SILDUR AND GAUKUR were two brothers who lived at a farm called Stöng. Ísildur was strong and brave with dark hair. He had a hare lip and some people thought he was ugly. He was a skilled carver of wood. Gaukur, although two years younger than Ísildur, was even stronger. He had fair hair and was very handsome, but he was vain. He was an expert with a battleaxe. Both brothers were honest and popular in the region.
    Their father, Trandill, wanted to pay a visit to his uncle in Norway and to go on Viking raids. Their mother had died when the boys were small, so Trandill sent them to a friend, Ellida-Grímur of Tongue, to be fostered. Ellida-Grímur agreed to manage the farm at Stöng in Trandill’s absence. Ellida-Grímur had a son, Ásgrímur, who was the same age as Ísildur. The three boys became fast friends.
    Trandill was away for three years, spending the summers raiding and trading in the Baltic and in Ireland, and the winters with his uncle, Earl Gandalf the White, in Norway.
    One day a traveller returning to Iceland from Norway arrived at Tongue with a message. Trandill had been killed in a fight with Erlendur, Earl Gandalf’s son. Gandalf was willing to pay the compensation that was due to Trandill’s sons, and to hand over the inheritance if one of the brothers would come to Norway to collect it.
    When Ísildur was nineteen, he decided to travel to Norway to visit his great uncle and claim his inheritance. Gandalf and his son Erlendur welcomed him with great warmth and hospitality. Gandalf said that Erlendur had killed Trandill in self-defence when Trandill had attacked him in a drunken rage. The other men at the court who had witnessed Trandill’s death agreed that this was the case.
    Ísildur decided to spend the summer on Viking raids with Erlendur. They went to Courland and Karelia in the East Baltic. Ísildur was a brave warrior and won much booty. After many adventures, he returned to the house of Gandalf a wealthy man.
    Ísildur told Gandalf that he wanted to return to Iceland. Gandalf gave Ísildur the compensation he was owed for his father’s death, and also Trandill’s treasure. But the night before Ísildur was due to set sail, Gandalf said he had something else to give him. It was locked in a small chest.
    Inside was an ancient ring.
    Gandalf explained that Trandill had won the ring on a raid in Frisia when he had fought the famous warrior chieftain, Ulf Leg Lopper. Ulf Leg Lopper was ninety years old, but he appeared to be no older than forty and he was still a fearsome fighter. After a long struggle, Trandill felled him. He saw the ring on Ulf Leg Lopper’s finger and chopped the finger off.
    Despite the fact that he was dying, Ulf Leg Lopper smiled. ‘I give you thanks for relieving me of my burden. I found this ring in the River Rhine seventy years ago. I have worn it every day since then. During that time I have won great victories and wealth in battle. Yet although I wear the ring, I feel that the ring owns me. It will bring you great power, but then it will bring you death. And now I can die, in peace at last.’
    Trandill examined the ring. Inside were inscribed in runes the words ‘The Ring of Andvari’. He was going to ask Ulf more about the ring, but when he looked down, Ulf was dead, a smile on his face, no longer a great warrior, but a wrinkled old man.
    Gandalf told Ísildur the legend of the ring. It had belonged to a dwarf named Andvari, who used to fish by some waterfalls. The ring was seized from Andvari, together with a hoard of gold, by Odin and Loki, two ancient gods. Andvari laid a curse on the ring, saying it would take possession of its bearer and use the bearer’s power to destroy him, and would continue to do so until it was taken home to Hel. [Translator’s footnote: Hel was the domain of Hel, the goddess of death and Loki’s daughter.]
    Odin, foremost of the gods, reluctantly gave the ring to a man named Hreidmar as compensation for killing his son. The ring had drawn great power from Odin. In the following years the ring fell into the possession of a number of keepers, each of which was corrupted, including Hreidmar’s son Fafnir, who became a dragon; the hero Sigurd; the Valkyrie Brynhild and Sigurd’s sons Gunnar and Hogni. Everywhere it went it left a trail of treachery and murder in its wake, until finally it was hidden by Gunnar in the Rhine so that his father-in-law Atli could not get hold of it.
    There it lay for