All the Horses of Iceland by Sarah Tolmie.
Title: All the Horses of Iceland.
Author: Sarah Tolmie.
Genre: Fiction, fantasy, history.
Country: Canada.
Language: English.
Publication Date: 2022.
Summary: Everyone knows of the horses of Iceland, wild and small and free, but few have heard their story. Delving into the secret, imagined history of Iceland's unusual horses, this is a tale of a Norse trader, his travels through Central Asia in the 9th century, and the ghostly magic that followed him home to the land of fire, stone, and ice. His search for riches will take him from Helmgard, through Khazaria, to the steppes of Mongolia, where he will barter for horses and return with much, much more.
My rating: 7.5/10
My review:
♥ This is a story of another horse, one even more deserving of fame, though she has no name. This mare's story proves that one can be famous without a name, a valuable lesson. She is the most famous of all the horses of Iceland.
She is all the horses of Iceland.
..The truth about them is scarcely less strange. Every horse in Iceland, like every person, has ancestors who sailed here in a ship. What has a horse to do with a ship? In a ship, a horse cannot hold on. A horse cannot row or trim sail or bail out water. A horse has no business on the sea at all. Horses were carried here, cold ad sick and protesting, in open boats, frost riming their manes, from Norvegr and the Føroyar, from Irland and Hjaltland and the Suthreyar. Their sturdy kin can be seen in all those places, long-haired in winter, working around farms and fjords. These little horses of the North, strong as oxen, carry tall men in their endeavours of work and pleasure and war, all the way to Garthariki. The mare of whom this saga speaks, she came from a land beyond even these, a great ocean of grass. Her journey here was long and the wealth she brought with her was considerable, but no rune stones speak of them. What are the most important words, after all, that rune stones record?
Names.
♥ He saw rich towns in which men sat in comfort reading books with golden covers. Eyvind coveted the books, and not only for the gold. He understood that treasures also lay inside the covers, treasures that were hard to put a price on. While Eyvind never became a literate man, he saw as he went on that books contained words that could transform men into priests and kings and healers.
♥ "There is a saying among Khazars: 'a man with three horses is an army.'"
"We would say much the same in Iceland," observed Eyvind.
"There is a land of ice?"
"Yes," said Eyvind, "an island beyond Hålogaland but not so far as Groenland. There are farms round the edges, ice on the heights, and a fiery plain in the middle. An island of black rock and independent people."
"In the north of the steppes where the tribes of Tungusk live-they breed good horses-it is cold enough to freeze a man's eyes. Your breath falls solid ice from your mouth. Is it as cold as that?"
"Yes," said Eyvind, proudly.
♥ "The king has his own city?" said Eyvind.
"Yes," said David. "No-one ever sees it, or him. He is holy."
"How then does he rule, if the people never see him?"
"He is holy," repeated David. "It is best that holy things not be seen."
"Has he his family with him, then? His women? Servants?"
"Oh yes, there is a great household. His kin and wives and servants, and many of his guards from Khwarazem. They live in a palace on an island in the centre of the river. A most holy place. Only nobles ever set foot there, at certain prescribed times, to check on him. ..His nobles will be the ones to kill him. Eventually, at the prescribed time. But perhaps some of them might want to get it done early, and choose another king."
Eyvind found this baffling. "You mean to say, there is a scheduled uprising? And high-born men kill their own chieftain?"
"Not an uprising. A sacrifice. The bäk serves the people for a prescribed time. Then he is killed and replaced by another. His body is buried with great ceremony under running water. It is then, to speak truly, that he is at his most powerful. Every bäk so buried is a bulwark to his people, an ancestor to call on and a protector of the homeland."
"This is remarkable," said Eyvind. "And the bäk agrees to do this??'
"Indeed, he chooses the number of years for which he will rule. Or so it is said. I would not know. These secrets are known only to the noble rank, the king-tribes. Those who can approach the island."
"Who runs the army of the Khazars, then? This strong army of which you speak, that fights the Rus?"
"The qagan-bäk, the lieutenant king."
♥ "Your bäk is Jewish, then?"
"He is," replied David, "and so is his court. Many nobles. Some merchants. Myself, for instance. But not everyone in the empire, by any means. Not even Alp Tarkhan. There are many religions here. We in Khazaria are caught in a trap of God: Christians to the north and west of us and Sarks to the south. Those of us who prefer one God have chosen the God of the Hebrews. He is very old and we prefer old things. I have heard old men say that the God of the Israelites, whose name is not to be uttered aloud, is like the ancient Kök Tengri, the god of the blue sky. He is widely worshipped here and right across the steppes, as far north as Bjarmland."
"I despise gods," said Eyvind. "I see no need for them. Men, animals, ghosts, and luck. That is what the world is composed of."
"But who makes the luck?" asked David.
"The interactions of men, hosts, and animals."
♥ "Still, a land without farmers is a poor land. Fasrming is the most important profession of all."
♥ "Some of the women think you are an albino. A freak of nature."
Eyvind decided it was best to say nothing.
"The qan, however, has seen light-skinned men before, Rus and others. He is used to them. He will command his folk to tolerate you. Albinos, you should know, are usually killed. They are unlucky. Still, you may find that some people will assume you are blind because of your blue eyes."
"I appreciate your telling me," said Eyvind. He was put out. It was all very well to expose children who were deformed, he thought, but how are blue eyes or pale skin deformities? It was unpleasant to be classed with weaklings.
♥ Eyvind relaxed somewhat after he had consumed the food. Rarely will a man kill you directly after he has fed you. It is not polite.
♥ The qan assigned a boy of about nine winters and an old woman to Eyvind, in order to help him learn the language. They became his personal property. Though the qan had many bondspeople and this was no hardship for him, Eyvind appreciated the gesture all the same. After a length of time Eyvind understood the wisdom of this choice, as there is nothing that a child of nine and an old woman, between them, cannot teach you about village life. Matters of trade, such as men discuss, he learned about from David.
♥ Finally he asked the old woman about it, "Those horses," he said to her, "the ones who go crazy from time to time. I have never seen animals behave that way. Is it some disease?"
"No," said the old woman.
"Where I come from," went on Eyvind, "we would say they were entrolled."
"What is that?" asked the old woman.
"Under the influence of a bad magic," replied Eyvind feeling foolish. He did not usually discuss trolls. It is best not to. Still, he did not want to purchase troll-ridden horses.
♥ Nobody prospers wit a ghost around.
♥ Eyvind barely spoke the language. Her voice was faint and windy and most of the time her lips moved soundlessly. This annoyed him. He kept trying to get close to her so that he could see her face clearly. He could not reach her, though it was a very small tent. It struck him that she was evasive for a ghost. In Iceland, ghosts are bust. Mostly they just clobber you. He had always been terrified by any mention of ghosts when he was a boy-at the people they beat black and blue and the goods they stole and the fertile valleys they sequestered for their own use. What use did they have for such property, anyway? That was the thing about ghosts. They were utterly senseless.
♥ To deal with ghosts you must be a magician or a lawyer and he was neither.
♥ He recommended that Eyvind not get mixed up in magical business. "Do not presume to advise the qan on matters of his own religion. He has priests for that and you know nothing about it," he told him.
"What does a ghost have to do with religion?" asked Eyvind. "Death is the other half of life. It happens to everyone. It makes no matter what gods they believe in."
"It matters what gods they obey, and what priests can invoke them. In death or life. Don't be a fool, Eyvind."
♥ He knew that he, Eyvind, had no magical power. Yet he still felt compelled-by a mixture of greed for his own advancement and compassion for the ghost-to act. For the first time, he felt that magicians might occupy an awkward and thankless place in the order of things.
♥ Everyone was aware that between-world matters could be time-sensitive. Conditions are prone to decay.
♥ Hoë'lün followed him to his own tent without protest. "Do you see that horse?" he demanded. The horse was hard to miss. Hoë'lün looked past it. Past her.
Hoë'lün looked at him with pity. "Foreigner," she said, "you have done us a great service, so for this one time I will speak frankly. This horse that you imagine yourself to see, standing here, is unnatural. If she were here, she would be a flesh and blood animal, able to carry riders and bear foals. If she were here, she would be a fine investment. If such an animal were to exist, she would be a wind horse: a human soul, now in a horse's flesh."
"A troll!" interrupted Eyvind.
Hoë'lün continued as if he had not spoken. "Such an animal is impossible. If it should ever happen to exist, it would doubtless have remarkable powers. In the event that such a horse were ever discovered here, we would be required to sacrifice it. Fortunately, I myself, and the tribal magicians, have confirmed to the qan and his people that no such animal could ever be found here. For as you know, and the herders have confirmed, this is a tribe with no white horses. You will therefore find that, regardless of whatever you imagine yourself to be seeing, nobody will be prepared to accept it being there."
Eyvind could see that he had been thoroughly trapped. On the other hand, he had a free horse. She was fine specimen. "Does this horse pose any danger to me?" he asked.
"Such a horse would not," replied Hoë'lün. "Such a horse, having the vestige of a human being inside her-a soul, for example. Such as the one that belonged to my daughter Bortë-would possess unusual intelligence, resourcefulness, and luck. These qualities would, in most circumstances, communicate themselves to whomever was the master of such a horse."
"This mare is Bortë?" asked Eyvind.
Hoë'lün looked horrified. "Hoses have no names! This white mare, should she happen to exist, could not possibly have a name! Bortë was the name of my daughter, who is dead. Do you understand?"
"Yes," said Eyvind. "The mare has no name."
♥ "Magician to magician, I may be able to help you with a problem that you have. I am willing to do so because you have done me a great favour."
"What is this problem? said Eyvind.
"Sterility," replied Hoë'lün.
Eyvind was ashamed. "Why do you say such a thing?" he asked.
"It is not uncommon among male magicians," said Hoë'lün, with a trace of smugness. "Their manhood may be compromised by their profession."
..The next morning Hoë'lün gave him milk to drink but no other food. She called to her two senior herdsmen. Together, all four of them approached the camp's herd. Hoë'lün picked out a young animal that she owned, a stud colt of nearly two years. "That one," she said. The two men caught it with rope and pole. This took a long time. Eyvind was by this time quite hungry, but knew better than to complain. "Geld it," said Hoë'lün. The two men threw the horse down in a skilled fashion, tied one of its hind legs to its forelegs, and gelded it with a sharp knife. The horse, stunned, did not scream or thrash. As soon as they removed the cords binding its leg, it was on its feet again. One of the herders cut a short section of cord and tied one testicle to the horse's tail. Then he released the horse, and it bolted off, the testicle dragging and bouncing behind it. The other he was about to place in a bag at his waist, but Hoë'lün said, "Give it to me." The herdsman at once handed it over. Both of the men looked at each other and then at Eyvind. Eyvind could sense a joke in the air but could do nothing about it. He turned and followed Hoë'lün, who was already walking away.
"Why did he tie the testicle to the tail?" asked Eyvind.
Hoë'lün looked at him in same surprise. "By the time it has dried the wound will be healed," she replied. "Do you not do that in your herds at home?"
"I have never heard of it," said Eyvind. "It is a good trick. As to the other, I expect I will have to eat it?"
"Exactly," said Hoë'lün.
"Cooked?" said Eyvind.
"No," said Hoë'lün.
Eyvind was unsurprised. Magic was not about comfort but symmetry. If his balls were cooked, this task was about making them raw again.
♥ The horses native to the qan's country were exactly the kind to thrive in the rocky ice and fire of Iceland, if he could only get them there, all the way overland and then by river-boat and then by ship over the ocean. They were small, hairy, and tough. They needed no shoes. They lived wild in low temperatures and found their own food, even in snow. They were the horses of heroes, thought Eyvind. Or at least, the horses of heroes who aspired, in the end, to be farmers in a land far from any king, no matter how harsh that land was.
♥ He gave the old woman to Hoë'lün. He had seen that her tent was comfortable and life there untroubled. Hoë'lün said that she would keep her for as long as she could be said to do any work. If she did not die in the tent as a worker she would be exposed. This had always been her fate. Eyvind was well acquainted with the extent to which what Hoë'lün said became what was. The old woman would live a long life.
♥ Then they were in Khazaria. They packed up and organized their train and the free horses with their herdsmen. As they worked, for the first time, Eyvind heard the Khazars sing all together, a song in their own language. Hitherto they had sung little and often only fragments of scurrilous songs in the river-language, perhaps out of deference to Eyvind. Now they sang a long and complicated song of which Eyvind understood not a word. Of David's language he knew only ät and tebe and a few common words for utensils and horse's tack. It was an impressive language with strong sounds, but Eyvind could not see into it. That was the way it was with languages, Eyvind had observed once he left home and realized how many there were: some he could see into and some he could not. Listening to them was like looking down into a stream. Sometimes the water was muddy and sometimes clear. Hearing their song, Eyvind understood that the wind of their home country was acting upon the Khazars.
♥ "You and Benjamin, both, it seems to me, have uttered blessings and prayers in my hearing," said Eyvind. "Have you no prayer or invocation you might say for the dead?"
"Yes," said David. "I could speak an ancient praise poem, but there must be nine Jewish men with me."
"Or your god will not hear you? He requires compurgation? He is a stickler, you god," said Eyvind.
"As I did not make this rule, I cannot break it," replied David.
"Have you no other options?" asked Eyvind. "What do people say at burial?"
"There is a prayer, true, for a funeral, at the time when a tithe is paid towards a charitable cause," replied David, thoughtfully, "though the name of the deceased is supposed to be uttered within it. I am not certain it would be valid."
"About that I cannot advise you," said Eyvind. "But if you bury this coin with the name of Moses and say these words over it with great conviction, in the name of Jews who have died in Khazaria, perhaps it will suffice. After all, you will have both a funeral and a donation."
..The mare nudged him again. This time David noticed. He gazed at the white horse for a long time. Then nodding farewell to Eyvind, he departed.
"I don't think he wanted your advice," Eyvind said to the mare. "There are no women priests in Judaism."
♥ The men were grim. Eyvind pictured himself riding through Eyri and seeing only desolation. He kept that image firmly in mind on the occasion of his getting into a fight with a Khazar, Adal, who refused to serve him food one night at the cooking fire. Yabanci, said the man, and spat into the flames. This led to a fistfight, but one that remained private and did not escalate. It is unwise to let yourself be subject to insult, but at the same time it is unwise for a man who is being singled out to act disproportionately. Eyvind knocked the man down and walked away.
♥ Eyvind observed him staring at the white mare for long periods. Eyvind caught a number of Khazars staring at him the same way when they thought he would not notice. Magic cuts across all faiths.
♥ David laughed sourly and said to Eyvind, "He is asking if you are a Christian. I told him you were not."
"Why would he want to know that?"
"Because then, if you chanced to be the one who prepared the food, he could eat it. As he can if I do, or Benjamin does. We are people of the book, as he is."
"What do books have to do with food?" Eyvind would eat any food that a host gave him, provided that it was not poisoned. This was the only sane way of proceeding. Good was hard to come by, usually.
"He is a follower of the prophet Mohammed and his religion has many laws concerning food, as does Judaism. They are, in fact, most stringent."
"Do you observe these rules?" asked Eyvind.
"As best I can, in the circumstances," David replied.
"Is that what you were talking to him about before?" asked Eyvind, curiously. "These rules? He ate the food, I notice. Who prepared it?"
"I did," said David.
"How fortunate," said Eyvind. "What if I had?"
David looked at him severely. "You are a pagan. He would not have eaten it."
Ibrahim looked inquiringly over at them. David spoke to him and they had a brief exchange. "He says that he might if it were a matter of necessity," said David.
"He sounds like a lawyer."
David translated this and the man grinned. He looked at Eyvind and said something. David went on, "And he says further that all of the people of the book must be lawyers at heart."
"So are Icelanders," said Eyvind. "In fact, so are the people of the qan. Their life is full of laws."
"But not books," said David.
♥ "Look," said Eyvind, "what is the difficulty? Hoë'lün spoke the words in her language, and the man wrote them using these signs. They were the ones he knew. So that is the magic they enacted between them. We just have to eke the sounds back out of the skin.
"That is the magic of reading, yes," sad David, sounding superior.
♥ The Khwarezmian looked very serious. He spoke and David translated: "Do not lose it. The written word is a key to many doors." Eyvind nodded and stowed the calfskin roll carefully away among his other goods. He was surprised at the interest it had elicited. Among people he knew, things written down were usually tallies. On grave markers or rune stones, they were genealogies. True respect was reserved for words spoken aloud, in oaths or in poems. Significant men could muster a poem for any occasion. He himself had never been good at it. But then, he was not significant.
♥ The home is absolute and high and everywhere,
A green oasis I could not exhaust this night.
Deserts are in the mind. There men may dry and parch,
Belovèd horses die, their maned wind-tossed, this night-
♥ The one time that I ever left Iceland, to receive ordination at Nidaros, I, too, was lost in the terrible forests of the mainland. Trees are inimical to men. It has never surprised me that our grandparents Adam and Eve were brought low by the fruit of a tree. A forest at night, all whining whispers in a vile darkness without stars or horizon, is enough to strike terror into the heart of an Icelander. So it was with me, at least. Lost in the valley of Opdal among the black trunks of trees, hearing wolves howling, I said: "O blessed Thorlak, hear the prayer of your countryman, Jór! Get me out of these woods!" Soon after that light came down from a crack in the forest canopy and illuminated footsteps in the snow, leading away up the valley. They glowed slightly, these footsteps, and it came to me that they were the tracks of Thorlak, from the time when he himself went to Nidaros to be consecrated bishop. I stepped onto the track and felt immediately secure. Soon enough I was safe in the church at Vang. In my opinion Saint Thorlak led me through that wilderness in the same way that the mare with no name led Eyvind. Holy powers will sometimes intervene to get an Icelander where he needs to go.
♥ It was a good farm. At one edge of it was a hot spring, where Eyvind had his bath and a place to cook bread. There, also, he often saw ghosts. As a rule he did not fear them. They were in a peaceable mood and had come to get warm. It is less trouble if ghosts come to your bath than your house, as you are not expending fuel on them. He told a number of them whom he encountered on a regular basis that they were free to use it when he was not there. This seemed to satisfy them. People, whether living or dead, require clarity about matters of property. Very occasionally a ghost would steal his bread, if he left it there too long. On a couple of occasions he went so far as to threaten them with a door-court, then left them for a couple of days to wrangle among themselves. The threat of being charged with trespass and losing a comfortable situation was always effective. They would apologize about the bread and assure him that better discipline would be kept. One ghost named Thorir, punctilious by nature, offered to replace it. Eyvind was pleased at this offer but declined, thinking that the bread of the dead was unlikely to be wholesome.
♥ Like many women from the Suthreyar, Thorgunna was prophetic. She did not make a big fuss about it and nor did Eyvind. As he always said, for various reasons he had become used to uncanny women. One evening she came out to call him in to the evening meal. The white mare was there with her newest colt. Thorgunna touched her neck. Thereafter she was silent for a long time. That night, as Eylimi and Eír were in their bed and the two of them in theirs, she said: "You, Eyvind, are a barren man who yet has two sons; you perform seithr. You and your life are far from nothing. But that mare whom you have brought to Iceland, she who has no name, this I can tell you about her. Nearly a thousand years from now, this island explodes in blood and fire. Almost all the horses die. And those who live, every single one, are her descendants, the horses of magic and wisdom and luck. And in the ash and darkness of the succeeding time, there are just enough horses and just enough men for life to go on here. Just enough."