THE SCENE: Any contact with the supernatural is frightening, and yet… this encounter between a group of Icelanders harboring a cursed bed-curtain lacks the visceral chills of many ghostly encounters. Perhaps it is because, in this case, the engine of supernatural vengeance is simply a curious seal.
THE TEXT: The same night that Thorodd had left, when the people at Froday came up to the fireside in the evening, they saw a seal’s head coming coming out of the fireplace. One of the servants saw it first when she came in. She took a club that was inside the doorway and struck the seal on the head. But the seal rose up with the blow and reared up towards Thorgunna’s [cursed] bed-curtains. Then one of Thorodd’s men went up and started beating the seal, but with every blow it rose up further until its flippers appeared, and then the man fell down unconscious. Everyone else who was present became very frightened.
Then the boy Kjartan rushed forward and lifted up an iron sledgehammer and brought it down on the seal’s head. It was a tremendous blow but the seal just shook its head and looked around. Kjartan kept going, with blow after blow, and the seal went back down as if he were driving in a nail. He kept beating until the seal went so far down that he hammered the floor over its head. And so it went on throughout the winter, with all the revenants fearing Kjartan the most.
– The Saga of the People of Eyri, 13th Century AD
[Image Credit: Kjartan and the Ghost Seal by Matt Smith — http://matt-illustration.squarespace.com/…/6iybpm91olc0…]
