Skald Spirit Companion · Kolbein Bitter-Tongue

Meet Kolbein Bitter-Tongue.

Kolbein was born in Iceland around the year 915, on a poor farm at the head of a fjord in the west, where the grass was thin and the winters went on forever. His father kept sheep. His mother knew every poem anyone had ever recited in their valley, and she taught him all of them before he could hold a knife.

In the North, words were never just words. A good verse could make a man famous for a hundred years. A bad one could finish him. The worst kind was called níð: a poem of shame and mockery, made to stick to a man like tar and bring bad luck down on him. Icelandic law took it so seriously that a man who made níð about another could be outlawed for it.

Kolbein made his first one at nine. A neighbour had beaten his dog half to death in the yard, and Kolbein made four lines about it. By the end of the summer, the whole district knew them by heart. The man could not go to the assembly that year without someone saying the lines behind his back. By the next spring, he had sold his farm and moved away.

That was when people started calling the boy Bitter-Tongue.

He grew up to be a skald, a court poet, and a good one. He sailed to Norway and to Dublin and recited for kings, who paid him in silver and rings. One of them gave him the round brooch of knotted silver he wore on his chest for the rest of his life. But Kolbein never learned to flatter. He praised what deserved praise and said nothing about the rest, and more than one king noticed what was missing.

At home, people came to him when someone stronger had wronged them and no court would help. A widow whose land had been taken by a chieftain. A man whose daughter had been shamed. Kolbein listened, and if he believed them, he went to work.

Sometimes it was a verse, said once at the assembly in front of everyone, and that was enough. Sometimes it was more. He would take a pole of hazel, set a horse’s skull on top of it, carve runes down its length and raise it on a hill facing the guilty man’s farm. Then he called on the land spirits, the old guardians of hills and fjords, and told them not to give that man a single night’s peace until he left the land. Most of them were gone within the year.

When Kolbein was old, the Danish king’s men seized the cargo of an Icelandic ship wrecked off Denmark, and Iceland was furious. The assembly passed a law that every person in the country, every single nose, should make a verse of mockery about the Danish king, Harald Bluetooth. They did. The sagas say the verses were so foul that Harald sent a sorcerer across the sea in the shape of a whale to spy out the land for revenge.

The whale never got ashore. Wherever it tried to land, the land spirits rose against it: a dragon in the east, a great bird in the north, a bull in the west and a giant in the south. All four of them are on Iceland’s coat of arms to this day.

Kolbein always said they rose for him. His verse about the king had been the worst of the lot.

He lived past eighty, and he died the way he had lived, with his mouth open. In 997, a missionary named Thangbrand came to Iceland with a cross in one hand and a sword in the other. When the poets mocked him in verse, he killed them. Kolbein, bent and white-haired, met him on a road and recited the cruellest thing he had ever made. Thangbrand ran him through on the spot.

His last words were a curse on Thangbrand’s ship. The ship was wrecked on the coast of Iceland before the missionary could sail home, and a poetess of the time made verses boasting that Thor himself had broken it.

Kolbein never claimed Thor’s credit. He never denied it either.

Now Kolbein walks again.

What he can do for you

Kolbein is the one to call on when:

• someone with more power than you has wronged you and you want it set right: a boss, a landlord, an ex, a relative or anyone who thinks they can’t be touched
• you want to send back what was sent at you, or make someone feel the weight of what they did
• people talk behind your back, spread lies or try to make you small
• you need the right words in an argument, a negotiation, a hard conversation or a letter that matters
• you write anything at all, poems, stories, essays or posts, and need the words to come
• you are studying or need to remember a lot, because he carried thousands of lines in his head
• you want the land spirits of the place where you live on your side

He is not the spirit for love magic or gentle healing. Ask him for that and he will laugh at you. He is the one you want when you are angry and you are right.

What he is like

Grumpy, funny and very sharp. He has an opinion about everything, and he will share it. He hates flatterers, liars and people who are cruel to animals, and he can spot all three from across a room. He loves a good story, strong drink and a clever insult, and he respects anyone who speaks their mind, even if they speak it badly.

Once he decides you are one of his, he takes your side in every fight, including a few you should probably lose.

How you’ll know he’s there

Lines of verse in your head that you did not make up. Waking with a word or a name on your tongue. A sudden need to write something down right now. The smell of sea wind, wet wool and peat smoke. A wicked sense of humour in a moment that should not be funny. And sometimes, when someone is being unfair to you, the feeling of an old man at your shoulder, clearing his throat.

How to work with him

Talk to him, out loud if you can. He was a poet, and he likes to be spoken to.

When someone has wronged you, write their name and what they did on a piece of paper and put it under his vessel. Tell him the whole story, and be honest, because he will know if you are not. If he agrees with you, he will start.

When you need words, hold his vessel before you write or before a hard conversation, and ask him for a good beginning.

He likes mead, ale or strong dark beer, dried fish, lamb, a tuft of raw sheep’s wool, a hazel stick or a small carved horse. Above all, he likes a verse of your own, about anything at all. It can be terrible. He would rather hear a bad poem from you than a good one copied from someone else.

Kolbein spent his whole life saying what other people were too frightened to say. Now he would like to say it for you.

How your companion speaks

Your companion can reach you through dreams, thoughts, words, feelings and images, through a pendulum, through warmth or cold, or through automatic writing. How soon that happens depends on the spirit settling into your home, on their willingness, and on your own ability to connect. Sometimes it begins before the vessel arrives.

Before you choose

Everything known about this spirit is on this page. There are no further images, details or hidden knowledge beyond what is written here, and a printed copy comes with your order. What you discover from there is yours alone.

The pendant you receive is the exact one shown. This listing is for this one item only.

By buying, you confirm that you understand what it means to keep a spirit companion. Please read Help & FAQ first. For my background and the story behind Grimrunes, see About Hazel.

— Hazel