Vinland the Good

by Henry Treece

  and meant no harm. Thorgunna smiled slyly and said, ‘I have met Vikings before. But you have come to the wrong place for gold, my friend. This is not Ireland. You are in the Hebrides.’

  Thorhall put on a gentle face and bowed. ‘Then we will ask leave to put off again, lady,’ he said. ‘We will trouble you no more.’

  But Thorgunna gazed at him with such cold green eyes that even the grim-faced Hunter lowered his head. And she said, ‘It is easy enough for the fly to get into the spider’s web, fellow. It is a different thing for him to get out again.’

  Thorhall began to bluster, so Thorgunna told her men to take away the oars and sail of the longship. Then she said, ‘That sort of voice may do very well when you talk to dogs and horses, seafarer, but when you talk to a great lady who is also a witch, then you must mind your manners if you want to keep a tongue in your mouth at all.’

  Leif stepped forward and said, ‘Lady, we come from Greenland and do not know the customs down here in the south. Pardon us.’

  Thorgunna smiled at him and said, ‘You are a handsome young man and should grow to be a hero, if you stop mixing with rough fellows like this ship-mate of yours. You can come with me to the steading. The others will be put into the byre under guard. I have always wanted to hear news of Greenland.’

  The spearmen took his sword and shield away, so there was little he could do. And the next day the wind changed, blowing away from Norway strongly; so Leif knew that they must make the best of it.

  Thorgunna had many brothers and cousins, who took to Leif and sat round him every night when the windows were shuttered to hear of life in Greenland. After a few weeks he became so popular that Thorgunna released the other Vikings and let

  them wander round the island as freely as they chose. As she said, their weapons were all locked away, they could not leave the island, so why should they sit in the byre uselessly when they might work for their living?

  Leif was her favourite and she showed him how she could turn a pebble into a mouse, and then back again into a pebble just by saying some words in an old language and waving her white stick. He laughed at this, but all the same was secretly afraid of her a little.

  One day, in the depth of winter, he said, ‘Can you change the winds, Thorgunna, as the Lapplanders can?’

  She nodded and took a little thong from her pouch. ‘Which wind would you like?’ she asked.

  He named various winds, and each time she looped the thong to make different knots in it - and each time the wind changed.

  When she had finished, Leif said, ‘Oh, if only you would give me a wind to Norway and let me sail on freely. How can I grow to be a hero if I am a prisoner here all my days?’

  Thorgunna said gently, ‘I would certainly give you a wind to Norway, if you swore solemnly to return here afterwards and marry me, to become the hero-lord of this island.’

  Now Leif was too young to think of such things, but he was not Eirik’s son for nothing. So he smiled and took her hand. ‘Of course I will, Thorgunna,’ he said. ‘For you are the wisest and most comely woman I have ever set eyes on. And, as a token that I am betrothed to you, I will give you a gold ring, a walrus ivory belt and a green cloak of wool woven on my own mother’s loom up in the north. They would be binding gifts.’

  Thorgunna gazed into his eyes a long while, but Leif kept his own stare steady and his lips smiling. So in the end she said, ‘So be it. I believe you. The day after tomorrow, I will raise a wind for you, and you shall set sail for Norway. But woe betide you if you break your promise to me. For then a great misfortune will come on your family. And I shall send someone after you, even as far as Greenland.’

  Leif laughed at this and kissed her cheek. It was as cold as the ice at Brattahlid in winter. But he was a brisk fellow and made no sign that he was afraid of her. And, as she had promised, she raised a westerly wind and soon the Vikings were on their way towards Bergen Haven.

  Thorhall said to Leif, ‘I could not have done better myself, lad. Well are you called Leif the Lucky. Let’s see if your luck holds in Bergen, for they tell me that the king there is a Christman. His name is King Olaf Tryggvason, and he is a very stark man to deal with by all accounts.’

  When Leif stood before the King in his long dark hall, he thought at first that he had met his match, for Olaf was a big dark-browed man who glared more like a troll-king than a Christian monarch. He always carried his sword and shield, and though he spoke gently to everyone, Leif knew that this King Olaf was not a man to offend.

  So when, in the feasting that evening, Olaf said, ‘You are too brisk a fellow to go on worshipping old Thor, you should be properly converted and christened,’ Leif smiled and agreed. Olaf sent for his bishop straightway, and when Leif and his comrades left that feast-hall, they were all Christians. All except Thorhall, that is. He broke into such a sweat when the holy water was sprinkled on him that his head steamed. King Olaf saw this and said dryly, ‘Well, here is one that has escaped the net. But he looks too good a man to knock on the head, heathen or not. You must try to convert him on the voyage Leif Eiriksson. Will you do that?’

  Leif said he would, but all the time he spoke he kept his fingers crossed so that Thor would not hold it against him.

  Then the King said, ‘I need a good missionary to spread Christ’s word through the far north. You shall be that man, Leif. I shall rely on you. See that you do not fail me for my arm

  is a long one. This is one oath you cannot break. Do not forget.’

  After that King Olaf gave Leif many presents, but the most valuable of them all were two Scotch slaves, a man and wife called Haki and Hekja. They were swifter than the deer at running, and were the best spies and message-carriers in the north. And before Leif sailed back to Greenland, he picked up another friend - an elderly German from Bremen called Tyrkir, who was a clever craftsman at carving either wood or ivory. Such a man would be of the greatest value in Greenland, decorating ships’ prows, or carving the walrus tusks that the traders took to Iceland for the summer fairs there.

  So, when the year turned and the sailing weather got better, Olaf wished Leif God-speed, and he set course homewards.

  One strange thing happened during that voyage; as they were rounding the Greenland coast, a great wind came out of the north and swept them out of land-sight for some days. Thorhall said that this was because they had become Christians, and some of the men in the longship straightway asked Thor to forgive them and threw their little wooden crucifixes overboard to the sea. Leif was angry at this, but he knew better than to offend Thorhall.

  Then something happened to make him forget his anger. Out in the middle of the sea, in the fog, they heard men shouting in terror. So they steered towards these shouts and saw four men clinging to a rocky skerry with the waves trying to tear them off. These men wore half-dead and the clothes were all ripped off them by the hungry sea. Leif took them aboard and when they had eaten and drunk and had put on warm sheepskins, their leader told him that they had been to the edge of the world and had seen a land where wild wheat grew in abundance, together with vines and maple-trees. But when they tried to get back to Iceland, the winds had taken them and

  flung them on to the skerry, where their ship had gone down without a trace.

  After he had heard this, Leif went to the after-cabin and sat gnawing his knuckles. Thorhall came to him and said, ‘There is no mistake about it, lad, there is something out there to the far west. First Bjarni, now these poor fools tell us. I shall not rest till I have been to see for myself.’

  Leif nodded, ‘Aye, Hunter,’ he answered, ‘that is in my mind too. But first I must fulfil my oath to King Olaf. I do not mind breaking my word to a witch, however pretty she is; but a king is something different. And I did not like the look of that long iron sword he always carried over his shoulder. That sword could reach as far as Greenland, and farther.’

  Swarthy-faced Thorhall laughed then. He said, ‘I’d back old Thor’s hammer against Olaf’s sword any day.
But each man to his own sort of fish. As for me, I’ll stick to old Red Beard. He has never let me down yet.’

  After that they had good luck and got safely into Eiriksfjord even before their ale had run out.

  8. The Church at Brattahlid

  Leif’s mother was so glad to see her son back safely that she accepted Christ as soon as Leif told her of his promise to the King. She said, ‘At last I have something to believe in that might send away the bad dreams I have. The Whitechrist will light the terror that grins at me from the northern wilderness every night.’

  She set the folk gathering rocks and building, and only two hundred paces from the steading at Brattahlid she had a little church set up. It was not a grand church, and was only sixteen feet long; but its walls were four feet thick and it would stand for ever, she said. And close to it she had a graveyard walled round, with enough space in it to bury a hundred folk decently.

  And when she had done this, she made a habit of praying regularly and of shutting herself away from other folk, so that she could prove to the Whitechrist that she meant every word she said.

  Red Eirik did not take well to this. He said to Thorhall, ‘Is she my wife or is she not? When she prayed to Thor she did as I said. Now she has a mind of her own.’

  Thorhall shrugged his shoulders and said, ‘No good can come of these new-fangled ideas, Eirik. This Whitechrist is sweeping the northlands as far as I can judge, and before long you and I will be spoken of like wild beasts. I can see the time coming when, if a man goes out with a sword across his shoulder, he will get clapped into prison. Men will get to be so soft, with all this gentle praying.’

  Eirik slapped him on the back and said, ‘Well, old friend, as long as we can keep going in the old ways, we will. I’m not having any young dog coming back to Greenland with these women’s ways to ruin my hard-headed settlers. And when my daughter Freydis marries the man she has chosen, little Thorvard of Gardar, I’ll see that she makes her wedding-vows before Thor’s image, and not before the gentle man on the cross.’

  But Eirik did not have his way. Freydis was married in her mother’s church, with Leif acting as the priest. Although this must be said, that while the ceremony was going on, Freydis kept her right fist clenched, so as to let Thor know that she still believed in his hammer, as her father did. As for Thorvard of Gardar, he had a silly pale face and teeth like a rabbit’s, and he was too afraid of women to disobey Thjodhild in her black gown. So he took all the Christian vows and did not dare clench his fist. In fact, never in his life did that slight man clench his fist, except only to hold his porridge-spoon.

  And when it was all over, Leif went to Eirik and said, ‘Look now, old one, times change. Let’s have no more sulking. You used to be the Red Hand in this family, but now I have seen a bit of the world, I am quite prepared to look after this house, while you go into the chimney-corner and tell yourself tales of what you used to be.’

  Eirik would have taken this from no one else in the world. But he looked at his son’s thick red beard and he burst out laughing. ‘Thor, Thor,’ he said. ‘You may call yourself a Christman, son, but you didn’t get given that beard for nothing. Very well, call your god what you like, and we are all friends. Now what is on your mind?’

  Leif said, ‘Only this: I am going to the west to see what these rovers are talking about. Twice I have heard about this green land they have seen out there, and if I don’t go and look for myself, I shall end up as shrivelled and weasely as this Thor-vard, my new brother-in-law.’

  Eirik said, with one eye on Thorhall, ‘A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush, Leif. You could end out on a lonely reef, with the green water biting at you and the fogs smothering your cries for help.’

  But Thorhall was looking away over the fjord, so Eirik got no support from his old bailiff. Then Leif said, ‘Did you stop to consider what might happen to you when you went to fetch your bench-boards back?’

  Eirik nibbled his greying beard and then shook his head. ‘I was young and brisk with the axe then, lad,’ he said.

  Leif said, ‘And now you are a little older and, because you are more cunning with age, you do not need to be so brisk and jump about so much. You wait and let the other man come to you. Or am I mistaken? Have I got a tired old bull for a father?’

  Thorhall began to roar with laughter. Eirik looked stark and said, ‘Thor’s bones! Thor’s bones! If you weren’t my oldest son, I’d see what was inside your skull for that.’

  He was jumping about on the hard turf like a madman.

  Leif turned to Thorhall and said, ‘He could still knock a horse down, this old man.’ Now he was laughing again.

  Thorhall nodded. ‘Aye,’ he said, ‘I never doubted it. The three of us are the only northmen left. Not counting your sister

  Freydis! Now, she has a touch of the old Red Hand in her, as that little husband of hers will find out.’

  But Leif pushed him aside. ‘I do not care for that girl,’ he said frowning. ‘She will bring trouble to somebody before she is finished. I’m going down to see Bjarni and to buy that ship of his. If it made the voyage to the edge of the world once, then it can make it twice. A good ship knows the way.’

  Eirik stared after his son, shaking his head. ‘What can you do with a young stallion like that?’ he said. ‘By Thor, to see him and hear him is like living my own life all over again.’

  Thorhall gripped him by the shoulder and said, ‘That’s the way, old comrade. We will go with him and keep him on the right course, and we will have our youth again. That is what sons are for, didn’t you know?’

  Eirik smiled sadly. He said, ‘Now I know why my old father Thorvald went round with me so much, to feasting and fighting. I am sorry he died alone in that byre at night. I should have been there with him, fending off the ambushers. Thank you, Thorhall, for teaching me good northern sense. I will sail to the end of the earth with my dear son, Leif, though he calls himself a Christian.’

  9. They Start Off

  The upshot was that Leif bought Bjarni’s longship from him, after asking him many questions about winds and currents, and then set to and found himself a crew of thirty-five seasoned rovers to sail in it. In this he had no difficulty, for all the younger men were only too anxious to be away from Greenland and to see the place where wheat and vines grew without any hard work at tending them.

  Leif’s brother Thorstein was the worst of the lot. He thought of nothing else but the journey they were to make to the world’s edge.

  But Thjodhild, on her knees praying most of the day in her little stone church, cast cold water on their voyage. She said, ‘Better to go to Iceland and build churches there, Leif my own. Nothing but bad can come out of all that fog and those treacherous skerries. Mark my words, you will end up on one of those rocky places, howling your head off for Christ to hear you, and only the green water about you, and the fogs over you, and the birds laughing at you. But I tell you this, you shall not take my youngest son with you into perdition. Thorvald shall stay with me at Brattahlid. And, little as I like her, so shall Freydis. I cannot lose you all at one swoop.’

  Leif hugged his mother and said, smiling, ‘You are welcome to both of them, Thjodhild. But, mark my words too, one of these days I can picture you asking when we shall set forth again, so that you can see the edge of the world with your own eyes. Who knows, you might build churches galore up and down those sunny coasts, with the vines growing over their roofs and the golden wheat pushing into the nave!’

  Thjodhild gave him a stern look and went back to her prayers. ‘Never,’ she said. ‘This is my place. Here I am, and here I stay. The Whitechrist would not wish me to move away from Greenland now, I know. What he wishes for your father, I do not know. I can only hope that Red Eirik will come to his senses and be baptized, and will forget this mad idea of voyaging again.’

  Half of her prayer was answered in a strange way, though Eirik never became a Christian. However, as the voyagers set off down to where the longship gnawed
at its moorings by the fjord, Eirik’s horse suddenly reared at a fox that started from the tall grasses, and flung him on to the ground. Leif rode back to him and said, ‘What, are you so tired already that you will not get up? Do you want us to carry you, old man?’

  But Red Eirik groaned and held his side. ‘I think one of my ribs is broken on this hard ground,’ he said. ‘And my shoulder seems to be out of joint.’

  Leif got off his horse and stood over him. The sweat stood out on Eirik’s face and head as he spoke again. ‘This is as far as we shall go together, son. Now I know that I was never meant to discover any other land than Greenland. Old Red Beard has spoken to me in his own rough way.’

  Leif nodded gravely. ‘There is more in old Thor than I believed, father,’ he said. ‘Certainly he leaves one in no doubt when he speaks, or in the way he speaks.’

  As the thralls carried Eirik back to Brattahlid on a cow-hide, he called after Leif, ‘I shall be with you in spirit, son. I shall eat out my heart until you come back up the fjord. Take old Thorhall as your adviser in all things to do with voyaging. And accept the German, Tyrkir, as your foster-father in place of me. He is no fool; he will give you good advice. I have had some long talks with that man about what is what.’

  Leif bowed before his father’s words, then went aboard the longship he had bought from Bjarni. So, with the wind at their back, they went off down the long fjord, and sang merrily all the way to the open sea. Even the rowers sang, as though the slip and slide and drag of the ashen oars was a pleasure to their hands and not a penance.

  Thorhall whispered slyly to Leif the Master, ‘Nay, lad, but these Vikings could teach any Christian choir of monks a good lesson in singing! I am all for the gay rowing songs; not these dreary old dirges droned down the nose after long fasting.’

  Leif said smiling, ‘I’ll not deny you could be right. But, on the other hand, I’ll not agree. I can still remember old Olaf’s long iron sword. But let us stop this talk of religion, it spoils the good voyaging.’