Odinn's Child (14 page)

By late summer there was an almost continuous natural harvest along the fringes of the forest. The wild cherries were the first to bear fruit, followed by an abundance of hazelnuts and then an array of wild berries swelling and ripening on the bushes and shrubs, speckling them with red and purple, dark blue, crimson and gold. Many plants we recognised — blueberries, cloudberries, raspberries, loganberries and cranberries. But there were several which were new to us, and sometimes so highly coloured that at first we were suspicious they were poisonous. I was given the job of hiding in the undergrowth and watching to see whether the wild birds fed on them. If they did, then we gathered this fruit as well, drying what we could not eat immediately for our winter provisions.

Only the soil was a little disappointing: it was light and thin and not as rich as we had hoped, lying in a shallow skin over the estuary sand and gravel. But it was no worse than much of the soil in Greenland and Iceland, and our farmers did not complain because they were compensated by the excellence of the hunting. In the long days of summer we trapped deer on the edges of the meadows and snared wild duck, which gathered in vast numbers on the meres and bogs. Scarcely a month after we landed there was a whale drive. A small school of pilot whales ventured into the bay at high water, and we managed to get behind them in the rowing boats and drive them up into the shallows just at the critical moment when the tide turned, so that the animals were unable to retreat and lay awkwardly in the shallows. It was a slaughter. The water was striped with wavering red bands of blood as every able-bodied person waded into the water, knife or axe in hand. We must have dispatched at least twenty of the animals in a gory frenzy, with the beasts thrashing in their last agonies and the foam pink with their blood. After we had tugged the corpses ashore, skinned and cut them into pieces, we had enough meat to last three months.

Tyrkir set up his workshop and a smithy down by the river. Digging in the swamp behind the settlement, he turned up loaf-shaped lumps of a hard encrusted stone which he said he could smelt into soft iron for replacement tools when they were needed. He announced that he required an assistant to help him with the work and made sure that I became his apprentice. In his little smithy he showed me how to build the small kiln of clay and stack it with alternate layers of charcoal and the bog iron, then ignite the mixture and wait until the fierce heat had done its work, before breaking open the kiln and scraping out the lump of raw iron from the embers. As I supplied more charcoal and operated the bellows, and he refined and forged and shaped the metal, he talked earnestly to me about the Old Gods and their ways. Watching Tyrkir heat and hammer the metal, then quench it in water, I was fascinated by the almost magical process whereby our metal tools were produced, and I readily accepted Tyrkir's central theme that there is an indissoluble bond between knowledge of metalwork and magic. Tyrkir would mutter simple charms through the smoke and steam, and grunt invocations to the Gods as he scrupulously observed his craft's taboos. He never allowed two blades to lie one across the other. He sprinkled a pinch of salt on the fire when we began work in the morning, and at the end of the day he always placed his working hammer on the small altar he had built for Thor. And when he finished an item, whether a billhook or a spearhead, he would mutter a small prayer and gather a few leaves, then pound them into a green paste and smear them on the hot metal as an offering. 'The juice gives strength to the metal,' he told me as I held the cooler end of some spearhead or sickle with a cloth around

my hand and plunged it into the quenching tub with its hiss of steam.

In the smoke-grimed little smithy Tyrkir took breaks from pounding at the glowing metal to tell what he knew of the galdra, the charms and spells that make up the bulk of seidr lore. 'There are hundreds,' he told me. 'Each produces a different result suitable for a different occasion. How effective they are depends on the user's experience and skill. I know only a few, perhaps a couple of dozen, and they are mostly related to my work with metal. I never complete a sword for war, a sea knife for a sailor, or a spearhead for a hunter without reciting the correct galdra for the purpose it will serve. But these are craftsmen's galdra. There are more powerful ones, above all at times of combat. There is one to calm the rage in a warrior's heart, another to sing behind a shield as the charge is launched, which will guarantee that all your comrades-inarms emerge from the fray unscathed, while a third gives the enchanter the quickness to catch an arrow flying through the air. A fourth, if spoken over a goblet of water which is then thrown over a warrior, ensures that he survives the forthcoming battle, perhaps wounded, but alive.'

Tyrkir failed to notice that I was not attracted by martial prowess and muscular feats and stories of bloodshed. To tell the truth I was always a little frightened of my dwarfish mentor and the hard-edged bitterness he sometimes showed when he told the more gory tales. He relished telling me how Volund, the master smith and 'prince of elves', had lured the young sons of King Nidud into his forge and, as they peered into his chest of treasure, lopped off their heads. 'You know why he did that, Thorgils?' Tyrkir asked as he fused a strip of harder steel into the soft iron blade of a sickle to give it a sharper edge. 'Volund did that to revenge himself on Nidud. Volund was so skilled at metalwork that the evil Nidud kidnapped him, then lamed him so he could not escape and forced him to work as a royal goldsmith. Volund bided his time until he could lure Nidud's greedy and stupid sons into his workshop. There he killed them and made splendid jewels from their eyeballs, brooches from their teeth and silver-plated bowls from their skulls. To their mother he presented the jewels, to their sister the brooches and to their father the bowls.' Tyrkir gave a grim smile of satisfaction. 'And in the end he seduced the Princess Bodvild and left her with child, before he cunningly fashioned wings of metal and flew away from his captivity.'

Gudrid was pregnant. People now understood why she had been seasick on the outward voyage and why she had insisted on bringing two serving women with her from Brattahlid. Most of the settlers took her pregnancy as a good omen. It meant that our little colony would flourish and grow. I wanted to be happy for Gudrid, like everyone else, but I was confused and unsure. For most of my young life I had seen myself as Gudrid's true son, and now it seemed that I was to have a rival for her affections.

In the late autumn of that first year in Vinland Gudrid gave birth to a healthy, squalling male child. He was given the name Snorri, which means 'unruly' or 'argumentative', and he was the first of our race to be born in that distant Norse outpost. Perhaps he is the only one ever to be born there. I do not know because for many years I have not had any direct news from Vinland. Nor, I suppose, has anyone else. Instead I have only the memory of the great rejoicing and excitement on the day when Snorri arrived in this world and how Thorfinn, the proud father, gave a birthday feast in our fine new longhouse. Perhaps it was the first stirring of jealousy within me, or perhaps it was my sixth sense that produced a sense of foreboding within me. But that evening, as we all gathered in the longhouse and sat along the side benches and listened to Thorfinn call toasts to celebrate the arrival of our first child, I felt a nagging certainty that those golden early days of our colony were numbered.

EIGHT

T
HE HERALDS OF
our failure came just three days later. It was almost noon on a mild sunny day and the colonists were spread out doing their usual daily tasks, some fishing, a few absent in the forest hunting and tree-felling, the majority working in and around the houses or clearing gardens. The women, I remember, were preparing food, for I recall the smell of venison roasting on a spit over an open fire. One of the builders was up on the roof of a house, checking that the turves were binding together properly to make a watertight seal, when he straightened to ease his back and happened to glance out to sea. He stopped in surprise and shouted, pointing out along the coast. His cry alerted all of us in the settlement and we turned to look. Around the end of the farthest low spit of land a cluster of small boats was approaching. At that distance they looked no more than black needles, but it was quite obvious what they were: Skraelings. Everyone stopped whatever they were doing, and a shiver of apprehension passed through the crowd. It must be remembered that we were farmers and fishermen, not seasoned warriors, and the arrival of these strangers in this isolated land sent a chill of fear down our spines. 'Be as friendly as possible. Act normally,' warned Thorfinn. 'Don't make any sudden movements, but don't let them come too close either. We'll just wait to see what they want.'

The little Skraeling flotilla — there were nine of their skin boats — slowly paddled closer. The boatmen seemed to be as surprised and cautious as we were. They slackened their pace and drifted their boats gently through the shallows, keeping about fifty paces offshore as they watched us, staring curiously. Neither side said a word. There was a tense silence. Then one of the Skraelings stood up in his boat - it was a narrow, trough-shaped vessel, not very well made — and began to wave his arm in circles above his head. In his hand was some sort of blade, which made a low humming sound, halfway between a gentle roar and a mutter.

'What do you think that means?' Thorfinn asked his second-in-command, a man called Thorbrand Snorrisson.

It could be a sign of peace,' he replied, 'They don't seem very hostile.'

'Then we had better respond in the same way,' answered Thorfinn. 'Take a white shield and go into the water up to your knees. Hold up the shield so they can see it clearly.'

A white shield is our standard signal of peace, recognised and used even among the wild Irish and distant German tribes. A red shield displayed means war. Anyhow, the Skraelings seemed to understand the gesture; they gently turned their boats towards us and paddled inshore. We all stood motionless as they touched land, and the men climbed out of their boats and advanced hesitantly up the beach.

We could see that they were exactly like the people that my uncle Thorvald's crew had attacked and killed. The men — there were no women in the party — were dark-skinned and a little smaller than us in stature. They had the same almond-shaped eyes and lank, very black hair worn long and loose, right down to their shoulders. Their cheekbones were high and prominent, and this gave their faces a menacing look. I noticed that their eyes were uniformly dark brown, almost black. They must have been a hunting party because there was very little in the boats except for some hunting spears and nondescript bundles wrapped in rawhide. Thorfinn suspected that they were as startled as we were by the encounter. At any rate, there was a very long silence, while both parties looked one another over, and then the leader of the Skraelings called out something in an unintelligible language and the entire group deliberately got back into their boats, shoved off and paddled away, from time to time looking back over their shoulders.

As the Skraeling boats disappeared on their original route up the coast, we returned to our chores. You can imagine the chatter and speculation about when the Skraelings would reappear and what they intended. No one doubted that this was only the preliminary encounter.

The Skraelings took us even more unawares on their next visit by appearing from the landward side of the settlement. It must have been about six months later, and how they got so close to the settlement without being detected was alarming. At one moment we were going about our usual routine, and the next instant a couple of dozen Skraelings were walking down from the edge of the woods towards us. They seemed to have sprung from the ground. It was lucky that they came peacefully for we were taken totally off guard. Indeed, we were all dithering, not knowing whether to run for our weapons, cluster together or go forward to meet the Skraelings with another peaceful gesture, when, as luck would have it, our bull began to bellow. He was with the cows in the nearby meadow, and possibly the scent of the Skraelings — for they did smell rather powerfully - disturbed him. He let out a series of thunderous bellows and this terrified our visitors. Glancing back over their shoulders, they scampered for the safety of our houses as though pursued by a monster. Several of our more timid men had already taken up position inside the houses, the better to defend themselves, and had already shut the doors. The next thing they knew, the terrified Skraelings were beating on the door planks, crying out in their strange language, pleading to be let in. The Norsemen, thinking that an attack was in progress, pushed desperately against the doors from the inside, trying to keep them shut. For us who were outside the situation, once so fraught, was now totally comic. It was clear that the Skraelings meant no harm, and the fainthearts inside the houses were in a panic at the unseen onslaught. Those of us who could see what was happening burst into roars of laughter. Our guffaws reassured the Skraelings, who calmed down and began to look sheepish, and after a few moments the frightened house defenders began to peek out to see what had happened, only to make us scoff even more loudly. This ludicrous situation proved to be the ideal introduction — there's nothing like two sides making public fools of themselves and accepting the fact for a sense of mutual understanding to develop. With sign language and smiles the Skraelings began to open the packs they had been carrying. They contained furs, splendid furs, the pelts of fox and marten and wolf and otter. There were even a couple of glossy black-bear pelts. The quality was like nothing we had seen before, and we knew they would fetch a premium price in any market in Norway or Denmark. There was not one of us who did not begin to wonder what we might trade with the Skraelings in exchange.