A long time ago in Svarfadardal, on a farm called Bakki, there lived a bond. He had three sons: Gisli, Eirik and Helgi. They became famous for their stupidity, and there are many stories about their stupid actions, although a few of them will be told here.
One day, when the brothers were already grown up, they went with their father to the sea to fish. Suddenly the old man felt so bad that he lay down.
They took a barrel of serum with them to the sea. After some time had passed, the old man asked them for the serum.
Then one of them said:
– Gisli Eirik Helgi! - they addressed each other this way because they only knew that that was their name - our father calls the barrel.
Then the second one said:
“Gisli Eirik Helgi, our father is calling for a keg,” the third repeated the same thing, and so they continued until their father died, because none of them understood that the old man was asking for a keg.
Since then, there has been a saying: “A barrel is asking,” about those who are dying.
After this, the brothers turned to the shore, removed the old man's body, tied it on the back of a bay mare that they had, and drove her away, deciding to go where she would go. They said that old Gnedushka knew where to go.
Later they found Gnedushka without luggage and without a bridle, so they knew that she had found the way, but did not bother to find out where she left the old man.
The brothers settled in Bakki after their father and were known by the name of the farm; they were nicknamed Brothers from Bakki or Durni from Bakki. They inherited Gnedushka from the old man and took good care of her.
One day a very strong wind blew, and they were afraid that Gnedushka would be carried away. So they loaded her with stones as much as she could bear and surrounded her. After that, she was not blown away by the wind, but she also could not get up.
Once, when the brothers from Bakka still had their Gnedushka, they traveled in winter across the ice in the moonlight. One rode a horse, and the rest followed the horse. They noticed a man who rode next to the rider all the time, and were very surprised that he did not utter a word, in addition, they heard that with every step of the horse he said: “Kauri, Kauri.”
They thought it was strange because they didn't know anyone with that name. Then the rider decided to leave this guy behind him.
But the faster he drove, the more often he heard: “Kauri, Kauri,” and his brothers saw that his companion always stayed close to his brother, whether he was driving slower or faster.
In the end, they came home and saw that as soon as the one riding the horse dismounted, his companion also dismounted and led the horse into the stall with his brothers, but he completely disappeared as soon as they walked inside from under the moonlight.
If one brother needed to go somewhere, they always went together. One day they went on a long journey of almost three distances to the Thing. Once they had covered two-thirds of the way, they remembered that they had intended to borrow a horse for the journey. They turned home, borrowed a horse and continued their journey.
[One distance to the Thing is the distance covered per day during a trip to the Thing (about 37.5 km)]
One day, as usual, the brothers went to the owner of their lands to pay the debt for Bakki. And one widow owned that land. They paid her the debt and stayed with her overnight. The next morning they went home and traveled a long way.
When they were halfway there, one of them took the floor and said:
– Yes, Gisli Eirik Helgi, now I remember that we did not ask this woman to wish us a good journey.
The others agreed with this. So they went back to the widow and asked her:
- Wish us a good journey!
They continued on their way home, but again they had barely made it halfway when they remembered that they had forgotten to thank the widow for her good wishes. Therefore, so that no one would laugh at them because of their bad manners, they turned back again, met the widow, thanked her with all care, and then went home.
One day, when the brothers were traveling again, they met a man who had in his hands an animal that they had never seen before. They asked what the name of this beast was and what it was for. The man replied that it was a cat, and that he was killing mice and ridding the house of them. The brothers thought this was very useful and asked if the cat was for sale. The man replied that if they offered a good price for him, he would sell him to them, and it so happened that they bought the cat at a high price.
So they went home with the cat and were very happy. When they returned home, they remembered that they had forgotten to ask what the cat was eating. They went to where the man who sold them the cat lived. It was already getting light by then. One of the brothers looked out the window and shouted:
– What does this cat eat?
The unsuspecting man replied:
- This damn cat eats everything.
With this, the brothers went home, starting to think about the fact that the cat eats everything. Then one of them said:
“This damned cat eats everything and my brothers too,” and so each of them repeated.
They decided that it was better for them to no longer have such a threat over their heads, hired a man to kill her and received little benefit from the purchase of the cat.
One day the brothers bought a large tub in the south of the Gorodishchensky Fjord and broke it into pieces to make it easier to transport it.
Returning home, they assembled the tub and began to use it, but it was leaking. The brothers began to study why this was happening. One of them said this:
– Gisli Eirik Helgi, it’s not surprising that the tub is leaking, because the bottom is in the south in the Gorodishchensky Fjord.
This is where the saying comes from: “It’s no wonder the tub leaks.”
One day the bishop of Khoular visited the Bakki farm. The brothers were at home, they wanted to give him a warm welcome and offered him a drink. The bishop agreed, but since the brothers did not have a better vessel than a new chamber pot, they poured cream into it for the bishop.
The bishop did not want to take this vessel or drink from it. Then the brothers looked at each other and said:
– Gisli Eirik Helgi, he doesn’t want to drink cream here in Bakki; he must prefer to drink urine.
The brothers from Bakka noticed that the weather was colder in winter than in summer, and that the house was cooler the more windows it had. Therefore, they believed that there was cold and light in the house due to the fact that it had windows.
So they built themselves a house in a new way, which had no windows, so that inside it was as pitch black as you can imagine.
They saw that this was undoubtedly a small drawback of this house, but they reassured themselves that it would be warm in winter, and they also decided to fix it in one good way.
One fine summer day, when the sun was shining brightly, they began to carry the darkness out of the house in their hats (some say in troughs), throwing out the darkness from them and bringing sunlight back into the house. They expected that it would eventually become light. But when in the evening they stopped working and gathered inside, as before, nothing was visible further than an outstretched arm.
One summer the brothers had a cow that was not calving. They were very worried about this, and they decided to find a bull for her. When the cow began to heat, they went with her to one bond, who had a bull, and asked him about it. Bond allowed them to do so and showed them the bull in the field.
The brothers took the cow to the bull and fussed with it all day. Finally, they returned to the bond and told him that his bull was not capable of anything.
Then the bond asked how they were holding the cow, and hinted to them that they were doing it stupidly, as one would expect from them.
- Oh no! - they answered. “We put the cow on its back and held it upside down.
“I suspected,” said the bond, “that you are not ordinary fools.”
The Bakka brothers were told that it was beneficial to take hot foot baths from time to time. But since they usually had little firewood, they were reluctant to heat water for this.
One day, during their journey, they were lucky enough to find a hot spring. Anticipating that they were about to take a hot foot bath, they pulled off their shoes and stockings, sat opposite each other around the hot spring and stuck their feet into it.
But when they started checking, no one could distinguish their legs from others. They wondered about this for a long time. They did not dare to move because they might take the wrong legs, and so they sat until one traveler came there.
They called him and asked him to take apart their legs at any cost. The man approached them and struck their legs with his staff, so they could tell which leg was whose.
One day the brothers went to collect brushwood; it was high up on a steep mountainside. When they collected the brushwood, they tied it into bundles to roll it down the slope.
Then they realized that they could neither see what would happen to the fagots during their journey, nor know what would happen to them when they stopped below.
Then they came up with the idea of tying one of the brothers into one bundle so that he would look after the bundles. So they took Gisli and tied him in one bundle so that one of his heads stuck out. Then they pushed the fagots and they rolled down the slope until they ended up at the bottom.
But when Eirik and Helgi went down and found their brother, they did not find the head, so he could not say anything about what happened to the fagots along the way, or where they landed.
Although Eirik and Helgi were now alone, they always addressed each other as before: “Gisli Eirik Helgi.”
The last I heard of the brothers Eirik and Helgi was that they saw the full moon rising from the sea and did not understand what it was.
Then they went to the nearest farm and asked the bond what kind of terrible beast it was.
The man told them that it was a warship. They were so frightened by this that they ran into the barn, closed the door and windows, so that not a ray of light could enter, and it is said that they starved themselves to death there for fear of this warship.
Translated from Russian · original on wisdomlib.ru