Paths of the Norseman, page 14
part #2 of The Norseman Chronicles Series
With Fondness, Your Father, Olaf Tryggvason
I read the letter over and over that night, parsing every word. The package took three years to reach me. The amount of time was not the surprising part; it was that the package arrived at all. It would have changed hands many times on the journey, each time a chance for thievery. I have never learned of the path my gifts from Olaf took, I only know they came and gave me a feeling of satisfaction.
When the moon was long past the smoke hole, I at last placed my head down on the platform to rest. I fell asleep that night thinking of my meeting with the One God from some days ago. I thought of my letters from Leif and Olaf. I smiled and knew with certainty that the One God would make my life my own one day.
. . .
The summer passed us by while the new arrivals to Leifsbudir expanded its boundaries by clearing trees. The clack, clack of the men’s axes sang loudly. The logs they harvested were stacked in one of Thorfinn’s knarrs and sent back to Greenland later that year. He had gold in his eyes each time I saw him talk of trading the logs in treeless Eystribyggo.
The newcomers even dug a shallow ditch to drain part of the surrounding area to the creek to make for a drier plain. I thought this very wise now that so many Norse were there for it would allow for a clearer field of vision to protect the village from attack. I am sure that Thorfinn just thought it would make better pasture or farmland if the bogs were gone, but I still thought like a military man. Whatever the best justification for the project, I envisioned a Leifsbudir teeming with Norse in several years. The thought seemed entirely logical at the time. After all, in my life alone, I had witnessed the expansion of a Norse population on Iceland, the founding of a Norse civilization in Greenland, and the planting of a new city in the Norwegian wilderness. I rightly thought it inevitable that Norse would cover the earth. We were warriors, merchants, sailors. Who could halt our progress?
It wasn’t until very late in the autumn when I finally had the strength to move about the settlement without the aid of a crutch. My arm healed very nicely, feeling even stronger to me than before the break. However, the healing of my leg was another story altogether. It was so badly damaged following the skraeling attack that I had to retrain myself to walk, concentrating on the movement of each step. Many weeks after the wound finally closed up for good I was still weak. The left leg eventually recovered most of its strength; however I still walk with a slight limp to this day. Most people cannot tell, unless they know how tall and proud I walked before the incident.
Some of the men went exploring to the west that summer. They found more land, but the only report of any value they passed on was that they discovered a wooden grain trough on the shore of one of the lands. It had obviously been built by human hands, but they saw no other sign of skraelings.
Winter fell upon us. It was mild compared to many we had seen, but the icy wind bit. On days when the temperature varied greatly, my leg and arm throbbed somewhat, though not enough to inhibit my movement.
Christmas came and went. We all celebrated our new holiday now. Thorhall the Huntsman was the lone holdout. When we gathered for a large feast to celebrate the birth of the Christ, he stayed in another one of the newly constructed longhouses and drank until he passed out. Before-hand he even wanted to show his displeasure with the new faith so much that he went to the extent of killing his own horse and using a hlautteinar to douse himself in the animal’s blood. He spoke his own words to the old gods in the outdoors just outside the main longhouse, just so that we could hear him. However, his plan failed because the bustling celebration inside deadened his calls. I only know of his attempt because I went outside to relieve myself and could only laugh at the irritable man.
As we passed the equinox, Vinland began to spring to life. Birds I had not seen since the year past returned from wherever they had gone. I helped Thorvald provision his ship for the journey of discovery we would embark on in several weeks. My old companions from Leif’s original journey here, Folkvar and Arnkell, would join us. And Gudrid, who had spent the winter with an ever-growing belly, gave birth to a son. He was certainly passable for Thorfinn’s boy, but his eyes and Gudrid’s look told me he was mine, sprung from my seed. I now had a son – one of the joys of life I had spent years trying to bring into the world.
He was mine, but I would never be able to call him my own, of course. I soothed my feelings by thinking that one day, when he was of age, I might take him hunting with me deep into the forest and tell him the truth. I would tell him that I loved his mother. I would tell him that I loved his father, though I wasn’t certain of this at the time. I would tell him that I was a part of him – that the blood of a Berserker coursed through his veins.
The boy was born large, likely weighing a fjordungr or more. He was bald except for three stray hairs that remained plastered to his shining head the first time I saw him. Thorfinn named the lad Snorri, after two men who shared the name. One man was his long dead grandfather; the other was his closest friend, Snorri the Elder, son of Thorbrand, who had come with him all the way from Iceland. In fact, the son of Thorbrand was there next to me while I looked at his namesake with pride.
“I see a tear in your eye, Halldorr,” he whispered to me while Thorfinn talked with those gathered to see the baby.
Wiping it away, I confessed, “Aye, he’s a strong boy. I had hoped to have my own boy by now.” Gudrid and her husband Thorfinn nodded in understanding.
Snorri the Elder tapped my shoulder, “You don’t want that, old man. The brats just die when they come from such seed as old as yours. And what woman young enough to bear children would have you?”
I am certain now that he meant only humor by his remark, but that day I would have none of his joke. So I created an enemy. With my fist balled into a rock-like fierceness, I cracked him on his nose without warning. Snorri the Elder fell onto his ass with blood streaming from his now broken nose. He jumped up to face me but found himself on the ground, lying on his back when I punched him again in the broken nose. When he tried to return to his feet unsuccessfully yet again, Thorfinn spoke in a matter-of-fact tone, “Snorri, friend, I think the man means for you to stay down. You would be wise to obey his commands. He is after all, the leader of this busy camp.” I huffed to myself, thinking I had no more control over this camp than I did my own fate.
The bloodied Snorri just looked at me with contempt. His own tears from the tremendous pain I had administered to his face were mixed with the blood to make quite a mess. My eyes burned a hole through his face while I returned the stare. Pointing to my chest with a thumb, I said, “You would be wise to listen to this old man, you whimpering, castrated sheep!” Then I turned and gave the new parents and baby Snorri a heartfelt, “Congratulations to you all. May the boy be a blessing from the One God to you for all your days, Thorfinn.” I bowed and walked away without another word.
As I limped away, I heard Thorfinn groan while he lent a hand to pull Snorri the Elder to his feet. “Snorri,” said Thorfinn, “I like that man. He is wise at times and strong always, but most of all he is faithful. He is an adopted son of Erik and a brother to Leif and Thorvald. I expect no disagreements between the two of you.” Snorri’s attempt to protest was immediately cut off by Thorfinn, “Quiet. Now go see that a thrall tends to your face. You’re dripping blood all over my wife’s blanket.”
A satisfied smile curled behind my blonde beard as I made my way to Thorvald’s ship, Glorious Discovery, to finalize preparations for our voyage.
CHAPTER 7
Thorvald recently changed the name of his ship to Glorious Discovery. He bestowed it with the new moniker just before they came to Vinland, wanting it to convey all of his hopes and dreams for this journey, but also to express his vigorous support of the new faith in the One God. I thought the new name a bit overstated; the Huntsman absolutely despised it. I liked simple names taken from tangible goods or powerful creatures. Some of my favorites from the past were my own Charging Boar, Olaf’s Long Serpent and The Crane, The Goat, et cetera. I often thought that if given the opportunity to name another vessel, I would call her Leviathan. Most boats should be named after an animal, and the beast from the tales of our new god seemed fitting enough. Glorious Discovery was originally called Floating Louse when he acquired it from an old settler who no longer had a need for long travels. I do not jest about its initial name. I would never have thought of such a designation myself, so I appreciate its creativity, while simultaneously cringing at the thought.
We sliced through the water with the oars stowed at mid-deck in their T-shaped rack, as the dirty blue sail billowed with invisible wind to push us on our way. Befitting the new name for his ship, Thorvald had his wife Gro and other women from the Greenland settlement sew on a black cross in the center of the sail’s cloth before embarking. In a plain demonstration of the haste they must have put into the project, the cross sat a full one and one-half ells off-center. Additionally, one of the lateral arms was already pulling free, now flapping in the breeze and making a constant slapping sound that I found quite irritating. Thorvald ignored its imperfections and often looked up proudly to his wife’s work. Love! Hah!
Thorfinn did not join us on this voyage. Around the mead table one night, he informed me that he would stay behind with his wife and new son. A curious decision, I thought, for I had never heard of a man staying home when the sea or adventure called, but on the deck that day while at the steering oar of Glorious Discovery, Thorfinn’s judgment seemed sound. How many more days could I have had with my Kenna if I had just come to a similar conclusion? Would I now be married to the fair and strong Gudrid if I made the choice rather than coming with Leif to Vinland? I shrugged to myself, as I have often done when thinking of the past while questioning my actions. Such activity made no sense so I pushed it from my mind.
Thorfinn would go a-Viking, however, this very year. He told me he would sail in the opposite direction that Thorvald chose to go, but Thorfinn would leave later in the summer when he was confident all was well with Gudrid and little Snorri.
I was not certain if I would be back in Leifsbudir to see him off given my current trip. But, I was assured that Thorfinn would go west and south because Thorvald pointed Glorious Discovery north and east as we let the tide lift us from the sandy earth beneath the waves. That had been six days ago.
We were thirty-one men in total. The five women who now inhabited Leifsbudir had stayed behind, making Thorhall very happy indeed. He showed his joy by singing songs to the old gods while holding onto the lion figurehead on the prow as we cut through the surf. The Huntsman left his own ship sitting on the bank back at Leifsbudir, awaiting his return. The men on this particular voyage were all very close to one another, all having come from the fjords of Eystribyggo. I had known almost all of them at one time in my life, but my years of exile had made it difficult for me to relate to them. I found it difficult to relate to most men. Thorvald was very much like my own flesh and blood, so I loved him like my brother. Yet I found myself drawn to the self-isolated Thorhall as my closest friend onboard, despite the generally unkind words that he often sent in my direction.
As I have said, when we left Leifsbudir, we sailed north around the point of land where Leif and I supposedly drank the sweet dew from the grasses with our hands. Thorvald then pointed us in a southeast direction. We maintained that heading for four days, camping on land one or two of the nights, before finding that the land turned abruptly to the west. Slowly we changed our heading to keep the Vinland within eyesight so that we now sailed almost due west. After another day or two we lost sight of the land, as it fell off our starboard quarter, yet continued on our way.
On the sixth day I had been watching an ominous set of clouds rolling toward us from the southwest when Thorhall’s song from the prow suddenly halted. “Land!” he shouted. “Port bow!” Squinting, I confirmed that at the horizon’s edge was a dark mass that must be land. After his announcement Thorhall plopped down on the raised deck of the bow and jammed a cold piece of smoked fish into his mouth, satisfied that he had seen the new land first. I gave him a nod and smile, to which he gave a silent reply of a hand gesture considered vulgar among my people.
A flash from the clouds I was observing told me a thunderstorm was approaching. Within moments the land we had so briefly seen was enveloped by the coming weather, disappearing as if it had never been.
Thorvald shouted from the beam, “Halldorr, make your course to that land. I mean to explore it.”
“We may want to lower our cloth to protect it from the storm,” I yelled as the first wind from the gale smacked me in the face like a dive into the fjord.
Thorvald leaned out to look ahead to where the land was visible only moments ago. “I think not,” he said. “The land was just ahead, we’ll be able to beat the worst of the storm and wait it out on shore.”
I merely nodded, but was forced to turn the rudder to the right then, after a time, to the left to fight the wind’s new heading. Despite the excitement of navigating against the wind, a feeling of anticipation set in. When a sailor shouts, “Land,” it is often tempting to think that the land is nearly upon you. However, a man’s eye, even one as old as the Huntsman’s eye, can see quite far. It would be several hours more before we would slide into the beach. Normally, when serving Olaf, we would have spent the time tending our weapons with a whetstone and securing our mail. There would be no time for the mind to build in expectations. Not so this day.
. . .
After two hours of cutting our zigzag path in the quickly roughening seas, Thorvald finally agreed to lower our sail. Except for more of Gro’s cross tearing away, no real damage was done to the cloth up to that point. Our westward progress was simply negligible because of the need to constantly change tack in the face of the storm. The driving rain had begun; the day had become black as night. Just as the men put their backs into the first several rounds of rowing, a frightening crack sounded, not from above in the clouds, but below the waves. It was accompanied by a temporary halt in our forward progress, sending more than one man to the deck, myself included.
Then as quickly as it came, the sound and arrest in our movement passed. But I knew what happened. We had hit a rock or shoal close to the water’s surface. The prow now sat at an abnormal angle to the direction we drove the ship, implying that the stem had likely been badly damaged. Within moments, I was shouting at the men fore of the mast to pull up the planking on which they stood. Doing so, they found that we were taking on seawater in the bilge.
Panic hit the men. To his credit, Thorvald remained calm, but it was clear he didn’t know what we should do. A din of voices all shouting different words at the same time made understanding impossible. Luckily, Thorhall took charge of the men at the prow while I commanded those men aft, from my position at the rudder. The Huntsman screamed above the terrorized crew, naming five men to procure rope-handled wooden buckets from the hold, and begin bailing. He put two more to work at finding any cookware or the like to provide for more bailing vessels. Finally, Thorhall had two of the biggest men, Njordr and Volundr, walk shin-deep in the water spilling in to lift the large ballast stones that had been wedged between the boat’s ribs at its launching many years before. These last two worked together on wavering legs in the pitching seas to lift the back-breaking rocks. One was so heavy they had to roll it slowly, one grueling step at a time, up the ribs and over the gunwale. Eventually, their concerted effort showed true progress and our bow seemed to level off, no longer plunging toward the sea’s bottom.
Compared to Thorhall’s fight, mine was much less difficult. I needed to shout words of instruction and encouragement to the men who remained on their aft rowing benches. The instruction was necessary as I could see the swells which came toward us while the rowers, who faced me, could not. The encouragement, of course, was needed because the men’s faces told me they feared a certain death as they fought to control Glorious Discovery in the tossing waters.
I, too, thought we would all swallow the salty water, so I did something to take my mind off our troubles. My voice rang out above the roar of the storm to sing a rowing song we used to sing while serving Olaf. It was unfamiliar to the men so that more than a few tilted their heads, giving me a questioning glance, a unique sight among the chaos. After two rounds singing solo, first Folkvar, then Arnkell, then all the men, even those bailing with Thorhall, joined me in the song. A full hour passed while we sang the song over and again, remaining focused on our individual tasks, before we crept within sight of the dark shore.
Soon, and with little fanfare we slid into shore on a narrow beach of sand just as the storm abated. The surf still pounded the shore, but the clouds parted to reveal the sun shining brightly. I thought this a tremendous omen after what had just transpired, for we could have all perished the salty death. But now the sun told me that grand adventures were likely to be had on this new land of Thorvald’s.
After exchanging uncertain peeks at one another, someone started a chuckle of relief. In short order, the hesitant laugh gained momentum, infecting all the men. Soon backs were slapped and Thorvald was congratulated on getting us to land safely. At that, Thorhall and I passed a half-smile to one another and shook our heads. Such was the life of a captain. He receives the glory for good and the doom for bad.
With the sun now out in full force causing the longboat to steam as the water burnt off her, we were now able to get a better view of the land on which we found ourselves. We sat at the very tip of a long headland extending out to sea. Within ten paces of the lapping sea a dense forest of pines started, blanketing a hillside that quickly sprouted from the beach.
