“Ah, it’s my business partner!” said Tyr. “Have you got anything for me this time?”
“I certainly do,” replied Jón, and he gave Tyr his five percent.
“My, my,” said Tyr, marveling at the weight of the purse he’d been handed. “You’ve done well for yourself!”
“I’d do even better if you could get me another obsidian box,” said Jón.
“That could be arranged,” said Tyr, “but if I give you another, you’ll have to give me ten percent of your profits, rather than five.”
The higher commission meant Jón would earn a bit less on each transaction, but with two boxes he’d be able to do twice as much business. “You have a deal,” he said.
Tyr smiled, disappeared in a puff of smoke, and returned a few minutes later with a new box, nearly identical to the first.
Jón made another trip into the highlands. He was able to harvest twice as much sunlight, and he left regions of darkness behind him so vast it looked as if a solar eclipse had occurred. He sold it all, went back to harvest more, and made a handsome profit. He bought the largest house in Egilsstaðir to live in and hired a pair of armed guards to watch over his growing pile of money. But just when it seemed to Jón like the world was finally beginning to repay the debt it owed him, the ash clouds over Egilsstaðir began to abate.
Day by day, the sun was breaking through, and as it did, demand for Jón’s product dried up. It seemed his run of good luck had ended. He had only half a box of sunlight left, but it was selling so slowly that he didn’t bother making the long trip to the highlands to harvest more.
Then Tyr paid him a visit. Jón was smoking a pipe in his most comfortable chair when the strange man walked into his sitting room unannounced, startling Jón half to death.
“You might try knocking!” said Jón, leaping out of his chair. “And how did you get past my bodyguard?”
“Never mind that,” said Tyr. “I hear you’ve given up. It wasn’t part of our agreement that you could simply stop when you felt like it. If you’re not going to use them, you’ll have to give me my boxes back.”
“I’m not giving up,” Jón said irritably. “No one’s buying.”
“You disappoint me,” said Tyr. “I thought you wanted to be rich.”
Jón looked around the room—the well-made furniture, the bearskin rugs, the roaring fire— and said, “I am rich.”
Tyr laughed. “I mean really rich.”
“Of course,” said Jón, “but what am I supposed to do? The sun’s back. People aren’t going to pay for something that’s shining down from the heavens for free.”
“Why, certainly they are,” said Tyr.
“Oh yes?” said Jón. “Have you some book of spells to cast? Some dark enchantment to cloud their minds?”
“Nothing of the sort,” said Tyr. “All you need is the magic of advertising.” And he sidled up close to Jón and whispered in his ear.
When he’d finished Jon said, “Do you think they’ll really fall for that?”
Tyr shrugged. “Would it hurt you to find out?”
Armed with Tyr’s advice, Jón made a secret arrangement with a few of the farmers. He paid them to continue using his sunshine even after the ash clouds dissipated, and to tell their friends how much they loved it. To make sure their sales pitches were effective, Jón hired Snorri Sturluson, a young writer who was just getting started in his career, to pen some convincing lines. Here are a few:
“Nothing outshines Jón Jónsson’s boxed sunshine. It’s even better than the real thing!”
“My crops have never been so healthy, and their yield is through the roof! Why, my vegetables almost look good enough to eat. Ha-ha-ha!”
“The trouble with natural sunshine is that it never seems to fall when you need it to. But with Jón Jónsson’s boxed sunshine, I’ve made nature my slave!”
The campaign worked like a charm, and even after the ash clouds disappeared, the farmers of Egilsstaðir were still clamoring for Jón’s sunlight. They used it even when the sun was shining, convinced that the additional brightness infused their crops with extra nutrients. Whether or not it was true, enough people believed it so that the farmers who used Jón’s sunshine were able to charge a premium for their crops at market, while the reputations of those who didn’t suffered. Their vegetables were eaten only by those who could not afford the more expensive “double-sunshine-fortified” ones.
Demand was so high that Jón began to have supply problems. In exchange for an even higher percentage of Jón’s profits, Tyr gave him a third obsidian box, but now he was harvesting the highlands’ sunshine faster than it would grow back. The places he’d grown accustomed to collecting it from had gone permanently dim, which forced Jón to venture deeper and deeper into the barren wilderness in search of light. He tried to use the increasing difficulty of harvest as a pretense for raising his prices again, but this time the farmers pushed back.
“Why are you going so deep into the highlands to make your harvest?” said Grettir “Blood-Axe” Thorsson, the farmers’ designated negotiator. “If it’s expensive for you to travel so far, why not make your harvest closer to Egilsstaðir? Then you won’t have to raise your prices.”
“Because the highlands are the only place I can go that’re completely uninhabited,” said Jón.
“I can’t take sunshine from where people live.”
“Nonsense,” said Blood-Axe. “There’s a valley near Seyðisfjörður that’s uninhabited, or nearly so, and it’s only a half-day’s ride from here.”
“Nearly uninhabited isn’t the same thing as uninhabited,” said Jón. “I don’t want to make enemies over this.”
“You won’t,” Blood-Axe said. “It’s only a couple of families, and if they have complaints, they can come talk to me. They know which side of the toast their halibut paste is smeared on, if you take my meaning.”
Jón didn’t take his meaning, but he gave up arguing regardless. He didn’t want to make those exhausting trips into the highlands any more than the farmers wanted to pay more for their sunlight, and he didn’t really care about the families—he just didn’t want trouble. To make certain there was none, Blood-Axe went along with Jón for the harvest.
When they reached the valley, it was not as sparsely inhabited as Jón had been led to believe. There were about a dozen houses dotting a grassy basin two miles square. How would they react when Jón stripped away all their sunlight in the middle of a golden day?
He quickly found out: he’d only harvested an acre when people came running out of their houses, waving their arms in panic. Jón left off harvesting while Blood-Axe went to speak with them. At first there was shouting, but things soon calmed down—in part, Jón assumed, because Blood-Axe was a near-giant and carried an axe on each hip. After a few minutes, the people returned to their homes.
Blood-Axe walked back to where Jón sat astride his horse. “You may continue,” he said.
“What did you say to them?” Jón asked.
“Let’s just say they came away from our conversation a lot wiser and a little wealthier,” said Blood-Axe, cracking his knuckles.
Within a few hours, Jón’s boxes were nearly full. He had stripped the entire valley of its sunlight. Amid the gloom, the houses were visible now only by the hearth-flames that glinted orange in their windows; all else was black.
“We can’t leave them like this, can we?” said Jón.
Blood-Axe had already turned his horse toward Egilsstaðir. Jón sighed and began to join him, but before he could leave a woman came running up with a crying child in her arms.
“Sir, I beg you!”
Jón pulled his horse’s reins and looked down at her. “What’s the matter?” he said.