On Værøy, right next to Røst, once lived a poor fisherman named Isak. He owned nothing but a boat and a couple of goats, which the old woman kept alive by waste of fish and the blades of grass they could gather around the mountains. But he had the whole cabin full of hungry children. Yet he was always satisfied with it as Our Lord made it for him.
The only thing he complained about was that he could never really have peace with his neighbor. There was a rich man who thought he should have everything better than such a caterpillar as Isaac, and so he wanted him away, so that he could have the harbor that Isaac had outside his hut.
One day Isaac was out fishing a few miles out to sea, a dark shod came upon him, and just as it was, a storm broke out so violent that he had to throw all the fish overboard to lighten the boat and save his life. He twisted the craft quite beautifully both between and over the high seas, which were ready to suck him down at any moment. When he had sailed at such speed for five or six hours, he thought that he would soon have to hit land somewhere. But the storm and the darkness only got worse and worse. As it was, he heard a terrible cry in front of the prow, and he thought it was the draugen singing his funeral hymn. He prayed Our Lord for his wife and children, because now he realized his last hour had come. As he sat and prayed, he caught a glimpse of something black, but when he got closer, there were only three cormorants sitting on a driftwood log, and voila! he passed by them. So it went on both long and long, and he became so thirsty and so hungry and tired that he did not know what to do, and almost sat asleep with the tiller in his hand.
But just as it was, the boat scoured towards the beach and support. Then Isaac opened his eyes. The sun broke through the shutter and shone over a lovely land; The hills and mountains were green right up to the top, fields and meadows sloped up towards them, and he thought he smelled plums and grass, as sweet as he had never known before. “Thank God, now I am saved; this is Uttrosis,” Isaac said to himself. Just before him lay a barley field with ears so large and full that he had never seen the like, and through it there was a narrow path up to a green, peaty turf turf turf that lay above the field. At the top of the turf hut grazed a white goat with gilded horns. Outside, a little man dressed in blue sat on a stool, munching on a snack; He had a beard so big and long that it reached far down on his chest.
“Welcome to Utrøst, Isaac,” the caller said.
“Bless the meeting, father,” Isaac replied. “Do you know me, then?”
“That may be,” said the caller; “You want a house here tonight, don’t you?”
“If it was so, the best was good enough” said Isak.
“It’s bad with my sons, they can’t stand Christian male smell,” the caller said. “Haven’t you met them?”
“No, I have met nothing but three cormorants, who sat and screamed on a driftwood,” Isaac answered. “
Yes, it was my sons,” said the caller, and then he knocked out of the pipe and said to Isaac, “You may go in so long; You can be both hungry and thirsty, I can think.”
“Thank you for bidding, father” said Isaac.
But when the man opened the door, it was so gilded inside that Isaac was completely blindsided. The table was set with the most splendid dishes, sour cream cakes and liver flour with syrup and cheese on it, whole heaps of Bergen pretzels, spirits, beer and mead, and all the good stuff. Isaac ate and drank as much as he could, and yet the plate was never empty, and all that he drank was still full. The guy he didn’t eat much, and he didn’t say much either. But just as they were sitting, they heard a scream and a bang outside. Then the call went out. In a while, he came back in with his three sons. Isaac was a little shaky as soon as they came through the door, but the man had probably managed to stop them, for they were quite cheerful and good-natured. Isaac got up and wanted to leave the table, but then they said that he must keep table manners and sit and drink with them. He joined them, and then they drank dram upon dram, and in between they took a sip of the beer and of the mead. They became friends and got along. Then they said that he would do a couple of sea trips with them, so that he could take some home with him when he left.
The first sea weather they did was in an over-handed storm. One of the sons sat at the helm, the other sat at the neck, the third was a middleman, and Isaac had to use the big ladle so that the sweat fell off him. They sailed like they were crazy; Never did they hoist the sail, and when the boat was full of water, they cut open the stretchers and sailed it back so that the water stood out of the back bulkhead like a waterfall.
After a while the weather calmed down, and they began fishing. It was so thick with fish that they could not get the ironstone at the bottom for the fish mountains that stood below them. The sons of Utrøst went away at once; Isak also felt good bites, but he had taken his own fishing tackle, and every time he got a fish to the scratch, it let go again. When the boat was full, they went home to Utrøst, and the sons cooked the fish and hung it on racks, but Isaac complained to the man that his fishing had gone so badly. The caller promised it would probably go better next time, and gave him a couple of angles.
In the next storm, Isaac pulled as fast as the others, and when they had returned home, he got three racks full of fish on his lot. Then he got sick at home, and when he was about to leave, the man gave him a new eight-ring, full of flour and other useful things. Isak said both thank you and glory for himself, and then the caller said that he would come back for the ejection. He wanted to go to Bergen with a lead, and then Isak could join in and sell his own fish. Yes, Isak wanted to, and then he asked what kind of course he should take when he came to Utrøst again. “Right after the cormorant, when it flies out to sea, you keep the right course,” said the caller. “Good luck on the journey.”
But when Isaac had set out and wanted to look around, he saw Uttrøst no more. He saw nothing but the sea far and wide.
When the time came, Isaac showed up for the ejection. But he had never seen such a thing before. It was so long that when the mate, who stood looking out at the helmsman’s mountain in the bow, was about to shout to the helmsman, the fellow could not hear it. And so they had put a man in the middle of the vessel too, close to the mast, who shouted the helmsman’s cry to the helmsman, and still he had to scream as hard as he could. The part that belonged to Isaac they put forward in the jekt, but he could not understand how it happened, because there was a new fish on the racks instead of the one he took away. And when he left, they were as drunk as when he came.
When he came to Bergen, he sold his fish, and he got so much money for it that he bought himself a new jekt in full condition with cargo and all that belonged to it; for that is what the call advised him to do. And late in the evening before he was to go home, the caller came on board to him and told him not to forget those who lived after his neighbor, for he himself had become, he said. Then he predicted Isaac both good luck and fortune with the jekt. “All is well, and everything is as it stands,” he said, and by that he meant that there was one on board whom no one saw, but who bumped under the mast with his back when it was difficult.
Isak always had luck on his side since then. He knew well where it came from, and he never forgot to give a little good to the one who kept the winter watch when he set up the jekte in the autumn, and every Christmas evening it shone so bright out of the jekt, and they heard fiddles and music and laughter and noise, and there was dancing in the jekte venge.
Text: Bjørg Arntzen | Photo: Aurora Borealis Multimedia AS
