Paths of the Norseman, page 7
part #2 of The Norseman Chronicles Series
I was most interested in the first burials in what would become the cemetery at Thjordhildr’s church. We considered it a good winter as only two of the oldest members of Eystribyggo died of illness – a husband and wife who happened to be the parents of Gudrid, Thorstein’s wife. They would need to be buried; so too would the remains of Bjarni and his crew.
When the earth had finally thawed then dried enough to dig graves, we held all the ceremonies, such as they were, on a single day. In a show of defiance to the new faith, Erik stayed inside his longhouse buried beneath a thick blanket next to his roaring hearth. Gudrid’s parents were old and did not have many family or friends so only a handful of villagers gathered to watch the proceedings. I think most of these had come to find out what a Christian funeral would look like. Thorstein and Gudrid ruled in Vestribyggo and were not even aware of the deaths in order to make the special trip. Gudrid’s father was buried on the south side of the church to protect his woman and the church from spirit invaders from the fjord. When we lowered his body into his resting place using long ropes, we were careful to be sure that his head pointed to the west so that he could see Christ’s return in the eastern sky on Judgment Day. As the lone priest in the settlement, Torleik spoke some words at the burial of the old couple. His words must have been unremarkable, for I do not recollect them today. Then we moved to the north side of the new church and lowered the woman into her grave.
As I scooped the last dirt back over top the woman’s body, Tyrkr and several thralls arrived at the church with an ox pulling a cart laden with several large baskets heaping with the boiled remains of Bjarni and the others. With our two-piece oak shovels, we began digging a single large hole immediately adjacent to the southern wall of Thjordhildr’s church that would receive all the remains at once. The widows and their children still held a look of shock as the mass grave deepened one shovel full at a time. Life in Greenland was harsh. Life in Greenland without a husband would likely prove to be crueler still. I thought they would be better off selling their husband’s lands to any bidder, leaving to find new husbands in Iceland or Norway.
When the hole was to the bedrock and the ground above was level with my chest, I and the other laborers threw our shovels out. I stayed in the pit while the laborers scampered up to stand amongst the widows and gathered family. Tyrkr then began tossing the skulls to me one by one. Out of respect to the grieving women, I saw to it that the skulls were lined up along the west end of the grave facing up. It was easy to tell the boy’s and his mother’s skulls from the rest, for his was smaller and hers had finer features, especially the brows. The skulls of the eleven men, I could not tell apart. Each one of these I set down, I wondered if it was Bjarni who looked up at me with the hollow, empty eyes. I didn’t grieve or worry for my own soul. Surely the One True God would understand the need to rid the earth of these men. The blood feud Bjarni began was done; a thing of the past.
With an extended arm, Leif pulled me out after I set the last skull down while Tyrkr and Thorvald took the remaining baskets of assorted bones and dumped them in a massive pile on the eastern end of the grave. Leif offered some assurances about the dead and the afterlife then also about the charity of the now-Christian community for needs of the living. His talk ended quickly and with nothing more to keep them at the new churchyard, those gathered began to disperse to carry on whatever business they must to survive. The onlookers’ faces seemed to say they were disappointed at the ceremony for the dead in their new faith. Torleik hiked up his robes so that he could flee the scene and return to the farm where he made his temporary home.
When we were done filling in the large grave so that it now appeared like a grand mound of loose dirt, I leaned on the turf wall of the church to rest. Tyrkr and Leif joined me, while Thorvald went off to his plain wife, Gro, and the thralls from Brattahlid went back to their own meager existences.
The three of us sat there looking out across the fjord with its waters littered with icebergs, big and small. The spring thaw brought them calving from the glaciers which stretched from the inland elevations down to Eriksfjord. Sunlight glinted off the ice chunks and water so that I had to squint to take in the sight. Water lapped repetitively at the shingle. It was a rare beautiful day in rocky, treeless Greenland.
After a time, Leif spoke. “You’re not at home here with my family any longer, are you Halldorr?”
“How can you say that? Your family is my family. I love you all,” I retorted.
He turned to face me with a sad smile, “I know you speak the truth. I know you love Erik and his. But I also know you mean to leave us.” He had done this to me since our friendship began. He was more right about my thoughts than I was. “You’ve finished your revenge on Bjarni and mean to return to Europe.”
So Leif knew. I looked at Tyrkr to see if he caught the revelation. If he had, he did not betray any special concern. Leif continued, “But what is there for you? Olaf is gone to the Holy Land. Will you return to Dyflin and pillage for the remainder of your days, landing on a foreign beach using your sword as a cane? Will you be celibate like some old monk forever? Nothing is there for you.”
I was angry. “Dyflin was a fine place. I still have treasure hidden under my home there. I can return and buy my own ship and live a profitable life. That’s all life is anyway; profit or death. I can find a woman and rut and lick her tits, too. What do you know of what I will do?” The last was the wrong question to ask Leif, who always knew what I would do.
“Do you remember the feast Olaf held in his hall after I came to Kaupangen last year?” Leif asked.
“Of course, I do. I stopped drinking so much ale by then,” I answered, confused by his change of tack.
“Before the speeches, ale, and banquet began, we talked at the end of the hall. Do you remember what we talked about?”
I was exasperated, “Yes. You told me I’d come back to Greenland with you, but you didn’t know how that would happen. Well, almost everyone I cared about is now dead and those who yet live are in hiding. Are you happy that I could come?”
Leif looked like at me like I was a confused child. He remained calm, almost soothing trying to coax me to understand what he was saying. “Halldorr, I am happy you’ve come back with us, but it saddens me deeply that so many close to you were killed.” He paused as several puffins swooped in close, caught a draft of air, then swung back out over the fjord to fish. Tyrkr carelessly tossed a stray stone in their direction, missing widely. “I also told you then that I would buy Thor’s Treasure from Bjarni to explore the lands he skipped when he first came to Greenland. Now I don’t even have to buy the boat as it has no owner. I want you to come with me to explore the lands Bjarni saw.”
My mind turned on the idea. New lands? I listed the kingdoms I had visited so far in my life. I had already seen Iceland, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Wendland, Frankia, Ireland, England, Scotland, and Wales. What did they have to offer me? A new adventure could be what my mind needed to see the world fresh again. Going back to Europe, no matter how rich I became, would take my thoughts to a perpetual frozen Hel. Kenna’s death. Olaf’s defeat. My despair. “Aye, I’m going with you, but there are conditions.”
“Name them, and they’ll be so,” said Leif.
“No women.”
Tyrkr frowned and crossed his arms across his chest making a displeased harrumph sound. Leif smiled broadly and said, “Done. What else?”
“You’ll still buy Bjarni’s boat. If you need money, I’ll give you some for the purchase. You should also buy the supplies and see that all the money for both the knarr and supplies goes to the widows of his crew members.”
Leif eyed me uncertainly, but his smile returned shortly, and he said, while shaking his head, “I don’t need your money, but thank you for the offer. You are a complicated man, Halldorr. First you kill Bjarni and his men, then you want to make sure their women are all taken care of. I’ll do it.”
Tyrkr’s frown turned to a look of surprise with wide eyes. In his German-accented Norse he said, “What are you talking about Leif? It was a bear-man! Have you had too much ale this morning?”
Leif and I looked at one another, then back to Tyrkr. We both erupted in laughter as we rose to walk back to Erik’s longhouse to make the plans for our next journey.
STRAUMSFJORD
PART II – Explorers!
1,001 – 1,006 A.D.
CHAPTER 4
The year of the bear-man was a difficult one for Gudrid. As I have shared, her parents both found their way into the new Christian graveyard in Eriksfjord. They were aged, every bit of fifty, so had they been the only deaths she had to endure, she would likely have recovered quickly. But they weren’t the only deaths from sickness that year. In Vestribyggo, where she lived, over sixty people died. Among them was Leif’s youngest brother and Gudrid’s young, adventurous husband, Thorstein.
He became ill in late winter and died in the spring, shortly after the Scots arrived with news of the One Faith. Thorstein accepted the One God with exceptional vigor given his weakened condition and saw to it that Haki and Haekja spread the word throughout the fjords under his leadership. He himself converted while reclined in a lake of his own sweat, bedridden, after the thralls told of King Olaf’s conversion to the faith on Scilly. If he thought the conversion would save him from his illness, he was mistaken.
Even though the last time I had seen him, Thorstein was but a boy, I knew I would miss Thorstein, the man, greatly. He was intelligent and quick-witted as a youth, and I expected those traits became enhanced as he matured. All who spoke of him, spoke highly.
Those of us in Eystribyggo were made aware of the news when a knarr, laden with walrus tusks and whale blubber for lamps, from the Western Settlement stopped in on its way to Iceland. The commander of the ship brought Gudrid with him so that she could stay with her parents. Instead, she would stay with Erik’s family because her father’s farm, known as Stokknes, was now desolate.
Erik and Thjordhildr took the widow in with welcome arms. Erik offered to see to it that Stokknes was well-tended so that any livestock or crop production went for her benefit. Thjordhildr, upon hearing the news of her youngest son’s death fell deeper into her newfound faith in the True God. She often went to the church which bore her name to quietly sit upon the hard wooden benches and pray. Women from neighboring farms came to sit and grieve with her. Torleik would come by the church in the afternoons and read a Psalm in Latin from his Bible. He then said a Latin prayer to Mother Mary. No one in attendance could understand it. I was most likely the only other person in all of Greenland who could comprehend the foreign tongue.
Erik fell into a deep depression, withdrawing from those he loved. That spring he did not go hunting with Thorhall the Huntsman. Nor did he lead a fishing expedition to the icy northern waters as he had every year before. Thorstein’s death even drove a more profound wedge between Erik and Thjordhildr. She had her faith, but he was even more unwilling to discuss the One God with her than before the news from the Vestribyggo arrived. Erik would meander around the house, mumbling to Thor under his breath. His normal gregarious nature seemed to be replaced by a quickened ill-temper.
All this went on while Leif and I simultaneously prepared to go a-Viking once again and built a longhouse for him and his family. As we had discussed, Leif purchased Thor’s Treasure by giving a fair price to the widows of Bjarni’s crewmen. He also made sure to buy supplies and even a couple of horses from their farms, even though we had plenty from Brattahlid.
One evening Leif and I returned to Erik’s home from our work on the longhouse. Thjordhildr had not returned from her church, yet. Gudrid was visiting the pregnant Freydis, next door. Erik sat grumbling on a short stool next to the hearth. Two young women who were owned by Erik, one German, Alverad, one a Frank, I forget her name, prepared a simple meal for the family. Normally Erik would have taken the opportunity to slip a hand under one of their dresses or, at the very least, steal a lecherous glance. Not now. He stared at the skipping flames with a blanket pulled around his shoulders. Back then, I felt it was much too mild to sit that way, but approaching one hundred years on this earth, I have known for some time that the bones ache with the slightest of chills.
We walked to a basin filled with water in order to rinse off the grime for the evening meal. While dipping his hands in the basin, Leif said, “Halldorr, I think adventure is the purest form of living.”
He said no more and so I replied, “That’s likely.” Looking back, I should have had a better response – perhaps disagreeing and then saying something about furrowing his sister or killing a man in battle as examples of pure living.
But I didn’t, so he continued, “Adventure acts like a balm. It keeps a man young or takes an aged man back to his youth. It even takes away pains of the heart. A man should go exploring when he feels he has lost his way.”
“Hmm,” huffed Erik, without looking away from his flames.
Leif flashed me a smile because he now knew Erik was listening. Finally understanding Leif’s intention, I took up the charge, “You’re right! Once the exploits of youth creep into a man’s blood, they aren’t easily removed. I think a man who discovers new lands, fights to settle them, and then leads people to them, must eventually find his way to new discoveries. If not, he is doomed to while away like a toothless old woman in the confines of a longhouse. If an adventurer found himself doing such a thing, it would be better for him to be dead.”
With the last, I took it too far. Now that I am truly aged, about twice as old as Erik was at the time, I sit wrapped in a blanket in my lodge for days at a time. I pray for death. It doesn’t come. Nonetheless, when I finished speaking, Erik demonstrated the fire for which he was known. He flung the blanket from his shoulders. When he stood the stool tipped over backward and bounced across the hard-packed earthen floor to settle against the wall. Erik shouted, “You boys think I don’t know what you’re doing! I’m not going on your damned adventure out of shame from you two women! But I will go on your damned journey and, no doubt, teach you a thing or two about the subject!” He finished his thoughts by spitting at the fire.
The thralls had stopped their work to stare at Erik and one another during his outburst. Erik turned his head to look at them and smacked the Frank on her ass, shouting, “Get on with it!” They immediately returned to preparing the meal while Erik brushed past us to the door. “I’m going to the barns to prepare my hudfat.” He nearly ran over Gudrid as she walked in the door. Erik said nothing to her, but, instead, slammed the door behind him.
To Leif and me, Gudrid asked, “What’s come over him? I haven’t seen him move like that since I returned.”
Leif gave a hearty laugh and said, “He has decided to return to the seas.” Leif then followed his father’s example and walked to the door saying, “I’ve decided I’ll eat with my family and my sister’s family tonight.” He left Gudrid and me looking at one another.
Except for the occasional clatter from the evening meal cooking, the house was quiet for a time. Gudrid took off her light green cloak, hung it on the wall beneath some reindeer antlers, and said, “I do love those men. Erik and his sons have such passion. I hope Erik has found his again.” I moved to sit at the table to await Thjordhildr, while Gudrid sat across from me. “You were raised like one of Erik’s sons, Halldorr. But you seem distant, not as passionate. It’s like your mind is somewhere else.”
I had not really gotten to know her since her return from Vestribyggo. She was bold. That was, likely, one of the qualities her dead husband found wonderful about her. Gudrid was beautiful, too. All men noticed her thick, golden hair, but as I sat across from her while she sized me up, I became aware of her face for the first time. Her complexion was fair as I would expect. Her skin was exceptionally smooth, but not perfect for she had a small scar on her forehead. It was usually hidden behind a shock of hair, but today I saw it and wondered what put it there. Her eyes were pale blue. They were cheery, but I knew that behind them was a genuine sadness from losing her husband and parents in a single year.
I thought about how to respond to her accusation and decided to be honest. “I think you misperceive me.” Pointing to my chest I said, “My passions are in here. They are not for anyone else. I happen to be selfish that way. I love adventure in the salty air of the sea. I love speaking with friends in Latin or Gaelic or Swedish or other languages.” I held up the medallion Kenna gave me to use as Olaf’s official seal then said, “I love reading and writing. I’ve done so for kings, you know.” For some reason my ardor grew as I spoke, so I added, “I also love rutting women like the stag of the forest does a helpless doe.”
Except for a slight widening of her eyes at the last, my outburst brought no indignation from Gudrid. She reached across the table, putting her hand atop mine, saying, “Halldorr, I meant no offense. I’ve heard you lost a wife and still grieve.” Her hand lingered while the silence between us resumed. Then she added, “You can read and write all those languages? How?”
My mind bubbled like a hot spring along a mountain pass. Thoughts and feelings of the past years rushed to my consciousness. Then I shared my story with her. Of course, I kept the details of Bjarni’s role in my life to myself, but I did share Freydis’ part. I talked about my fathers, Olef, Erik, Olaf. I spoke of Dyflin. I talked of Maldon and London. She learned how I built ships and about how Crevan the old Irish priest taught me my first letters. We talked for a long while. She shared with me details of her life, her father and mother, her love for Thorstein. I told her stories I recalled from Thorstein’s youth that made her laugh to tears of joy. They quickly turned to tears of sadness and it was my turn to reach across the table to put my hand upon hers. We sat quietly like that until I, at last, related tales of my too-brief time with Kenna.
