They Came On Viking Ships

by Jackie French

  Hekja ignored him, staring at the man.

  ‘Well, daughter?’ Hekja had expected a great roar, but the big man’s voice was hoarse, like it too had worn out from yelling above the wind and sea.

  ‘It is very well, Father,’ said Freydis calmly. ‘A good voyage, and much profit.’

  ‘I know. Your brother landed two days before you.’

  Freydis’ eyes narrowed, but she kept her face steady. ‘Always Leif the Lucky,’ she said. ‘It seems I owe him a shawl. Did the other ships arrive safe as well?’

  ‘All but one. Njal Thorbjorgsson’s ship was lost and all it carried. Except for him the crew were saved.’

  In Hekja’s village the loss of any man at sea would cause an outcry, with women weeping. But Freydis only nodded. ‘It was a good voyage,’ she said. ‘And a safe one.’

  Hekja waited for her to tell her father about the storm and Snarf barking at the icebergs. But she didn’t.

  The men were unloading the ship now, with Thorvard bellowing orders. Freydis began to climb the hill with her father. Had she forgotten them?

  ‘Woof!’ Snarf’s bark was louder than Thorvard’s yells. Freydis looked around, and spied Hekja still standing on the pier.

  ‘Follow me,’ she said absently. Somehow she looked smaller here on land, especially next to her father.

  Erik the Red raised an eyebrow at her. ‘A new thrall?’

  ‘Leif didn’t tell you?’ Freydis grinned suddenly. ‘A storm drove us to shelter, and there was a village. Leif tried to catch this girl, but she outran him.’

  ‘Outran Leif!’ The old man gave a shout of laughter. ‘A girl like that!’

  ‘And now she is mine. I stopped her with the flat of my sword.’

  ‘Your sword?’ The old man glared at her. ‘By thunder, your mother never wielded a sword in her life!’

  ‘Nor did she ever go a-Viking. Mother died bearing your sons. Her only journey was following you here.’

  ‘As it should be,’ grumbled the man, and for the first time he sounded truly old. ‘And when will you have sons?’

  ‘When I am ready,’ said Freydis coolly. ‘And that is a matter for my husband and myself, not for my father.’

  ‘If Thorvard were half a man…’ Erik broke off, as Thorvard came up behind them, his arms burdened with a bale of wool, almost as large as he was, though he carried it easily. Hekja wondered what Erik meant by ‘half a man’. Thorvard was almost twice the size of any villager.

  It was impossible to tell if he had heard what his father-in-law had said. He just nodded, and said, ‘Sir. I’m glad to see you well.’

  Erik snorted. ‘Only one leg that works properly and breath that gives out if I so much as climb a hill, and he calls me well. I’m well enough, I suppose.’

  They had reached the top of the hill above the fiord now. Hekja caught her breath, for there was Erik’s farm.

  Farm? Hekja had never dreamt that even a village could be so big. There was Erik’s great long house, as big as all the village huts put together, made of stone with a roof of turf. Smaller buildings clustered about it, each one bigger than anything she’d known. There were fields with fences of twined wattles15 filled with strange new animals. There were grain fields too, and gardens filled with greens, familiar plants like kale and garlic, but others she had never seen before.

  And there were lines of dried fish flapping, cods’ tongues and whale liver, and other meat and hides hanging up to dry as well, and still more people. And the smells, so strong after the many days at sea, the familiar smells of drying fish, dunny holes and sweat, the stranger scents of boiling whale blubber and sealskins.

  And above all this were the heights of blinding snow and blue-white ice, and lower hills of green, with stunted trees with dappled leaves.16 The sun hung on the horizon, bathing it all in a golden glow.

  ‘Arf arf!’ For a moment Hekja thought Snarf was barking at the strangeness. Then she noticed a dog, almost as large as him, bounding their way. Snarf wagged his tail.

  ‘Bright Eyes!’ cried Erik. The dog bounded up to him.

  ‘Arf,’ barked Snarf again. Hekja grabbed him. She wasn’t sure how Erik would feel if Snarf sniffed his dog.

  The dog ignored Snarf, and the other humans too, and crouched down by her master.

  Erik bent and fondled her ears. ‘Good dog,’ he said absently. ‘Well, daughter, will you come to the big house?’

  She shook her head. ‘We will go to our own, Father.’

  ‘But a feast tonight!’ ordered Erik. ‘There has to be a feast.’

  Freydis gave a laugh like his. ‘A feast tonight,’ she agreed. ‘I thought you would have done your feasting when Leif arrived.’

  ‘We waited for your coming,’ said Erik gruffly, and Hekja saw that for all his disapproval Erik loved her.

  Freydis smiled suddenly. ‘Come,’ she said to Hekja. She and Snarf followed Freydis across the fields.

  * * *

  14 The glacier at the end of the fiord ground the rocks to dust—it’s called glacial flour. This is what made the water look milky, and made it sparkle in sunlight.

  15 small branches

  16 small birch trees (There were no big conifers in Greenland for roof beams or boats.)

  Chapter 17

  THE NEW HOME

  Freydis’ farm was on the other side of the fiord, through cow pasture first, then cows munching at the wiry grass. Hekja felt a pang of homesickness at their familiar chomp, chomp, chomping, and Snarf tried to sniff at every cow pat.

  The next fields had stranger animals, smaller than Snarf but hairier. ‘Sheep,’ said Thorvard briefly, smiling at Hekja’s obvious amazement. ‘Where wool comes from.’

  Raina and Reena, the chief’s daughters, had worn woollen dresses, made from cloth traded for a side of smoked beef. But Hekja had always worn cowhide.

  The sheep made a funny bleating noise, like old women complaining around the fire. Hekja peered down into the fiord. The men were still unloading the boat. The icebergs drifted by, bobbing about the milky water like Viking ships that no one had bothered to carve into shape.

  They walked over the crest of another hill, with a spring bubbling from its side, and suddenly below them there were more buildings, none as large as Erik’s, nor as many, but still amazing to Hekja’s eyes. Each one was made of stone, with a high turf roof, all covered in grass even greener than the fields, as there were no cows up there to eat it.

  There were what looked like storerooms, so many that she wondered if even Hikki’s numbers could count them. There was one that looked like a dairy, with cheeses and butter barrels along its walls, and another giant empty one. And more rooms and more rooms, so many she wondered if she would ever get used to them.

  Now there was a new noise, like seagulls clucking, but not quite like any Hekja had ever heard. They had reached the courtyard now. Tame birds17 ran around picking at the ground. They were the ones who made the new clucking sound, Hekja realised. Great long walrus-hide ropes were stretched out across the courtyard to dry, with racks of drying fish and cod tongues and meat and hides, and smoke pits draped with hard tanned skins, much like the ones Hekja had known at home. Finally they came to the biggest building of all.

  It was almost as big as a hill, but long instead of round. Three of its walls were made of straw, and one of carved wood. Then suddenly the wood wall opened!

  Hekja gasped. It was a door! The first wooden door that she had ever seen. Freydis ducked her head under the lintel and went inside, and so did Thorvard. Snarf lifted his leg on the corner of the house, and produced a proprietary dribble, then he and Hekja followed.

  It took a moment for her eyes to get used to the dimness indoors, after so many days in brightness on the sea. And then the house stretched in front of her, longer than she thought any house could be, and higher too, with great white rafters18 supporting the roof.

  The walls were lined with wood, with webs of moss poking out here and there, so hardly a breath of outside
air came in the house. The floor was dirt, swept hard and clean. Three fires flickered in a long, stone fire pit, halfway down the house. They smelt of wood and fish oil. Above the fire pit a great roast dangled on a metal chain and above that was the smoke hole in the roof.

  Beside the fire was a great carved chair. There were benches too, with sheepskins draped across them, and a big wooden table. More skins stitched together hung from the roof beams at one end of the house, marking off a private room.

  There was a platform with a strange device19 with a length of cloth draped over it, a ladder up to a loft—there had been a ladder on the ship but Hekja had never seen it used—and two more doors with skins draped across their openings.20

  ‘Welcome home, mistress!’

  ‘It is good to be home, Gudrun,’ said Thorvard, as an old woman with fat ankles waddled forward. Her face was as wrinkled as an empty sausage skin, her mouth shrunk and toothless, and her thin plaits grey. Saliva sprayed from her gums in her eagerness to talk.

  There was a torrent of words after that, from Gudrun to Freydis, most of which Hekja found hard to understand. It seemed to be about the farm and people and animals, but too many words were new. Beside her Snarf sat on his haunches and stared at the roast meat, in case someone decided to take it away.

  Finally Gudrun stopped talking. Freydis waved a hand at Hekja. ‘Gudrun, this is Hekja. She’s a runner from the islands. I don’t know what else she’s good for. She may need training before you find her much use.’

  Gudrun peered short-sightedly at Hekja, and ran her hand across Hekja’s face as though examining her features. She looked down at Snarf dubiously.

  ‘Arf,’ said Snarf. He rolled over at Gudrun’s feet in his dead dog position. Hekja recognised his way of saying, ‘I am at your command.’

  Old Gudrun smiled, and rubbed his tummy with her booted foot. Then she looked back at Hekja.

  ‘Well, girl?’ she demanded, a bit indistinctly, as Thorvard and Freydis lifted the skins and went into their room at the other end of the house. ‘What can you do, hey?’

  Hekja hesitated. ‘At home I minded the cows on the mountain. I made butter and cheese. I dried the fish with Ma and collected shellfish and…’ Her voice broke off. She wouldn’t cry. She wouldn’t! But the tears ran nonetheless at the thought of home and Ma.

  Hekja waited for Gudrun to laugh at her weakness, as Freydis might. But Gudrun patted her arm awkwardly instead with her age-spotted hand. ‘And where is your ma now, hey?’ she asked gently.

  Hekja shook her head. She made no other reply, but Gudrun understood. ‘Well,’ she said, even more gently, ‘there are cows to watch and cheese to make here as well as in your homeland. Perhaps your life won’t be so different after all.’

  Hekja’s face was wet. ‘You are a thrall too?’ she whispered.

  Gudrun nodded. ‘All my life, and my mother’s too, and my grandmother, since the beginning of time. I came with the old master’s wife from Iceland. But I’ve known others be taken from Ireland or the islands. You’ll find it hard at first, but you’ll get used to it. There’s food enough and shelter. What more can we ask for, hey?’

  Hekja said nothing. The old woman patted her arm. ‘Are you hungry? There’s food if you like.’

  ‘Arf!’ said Snarf enthusiastically. He’d recognised the word.

  Hekja shook her head.

  ‘Arf,’ Snarf barked again. He sniffed towards the hanging roast, as though it was a hare he’d hunted.

  Gudrun laughed, and patted his head. ‘You’re hungrier than you know, after all those days of dried fish,’ she said to Hekja comfortingly. ‘You’ll feel better when you’ve eaten.’

  She made her way to a cupboard—its door carved with tinier shapes than Hekja had thought a knife could make—and pulled out some cheese and a barley loaf, just like what she used to eat at home, but much more plentiful, and a large hunk of cold meat too. Snarf knelt before her and slobbered on the floor.

  Gudrun pulled at the small knife on the chain on her belt, and hacked off some pieces of meat and cheese. She handed them to Hekja, then threw the rest of the meat to Snarf.

  Gudrun was right. The food stopped Hekja’s tears. And meat! All the meat she wanted, and meat for Snarf too, given so easily by one who was a thrall as well. So far Greenland was better than she had hoped.

  After she’d finished eating, Gudrun ordered Hekja to the outbuildings, to help store the goods that had been unloaded from the ship. The size of everything confused Hekja at first, so Gudrun told her to sit and wipe the new weapons and tools with fish oil. Meanwhile the men carried the ship to its cradle in the giant empty shed, where it would be stripped of barnacles and caulked with rotted birch leaves to stop the water coming through the cracks.

  Snarf bounded at everyone’s sides, as though he was making sure that he was everywhere at once—in case a wolf attacked or an iceberg decided to invade the land. He kept an eye out for places he’d missed lifting his leg on, and snapped at passing butterflies or the tail feathers of the hens.

  It was late by the time everyone had finished, though the sun still hovered near to the horizon. Despite all that had happened it was still not far from mid-summer, when the days were longest.

  By now the smell of meat roasting for the feast floated across from Erik’s farm. It seemed that only Freydis and Thorvard were going to go. Freydis changed her dress and put on a necklace and more bangles and different brooches made of shining metal and encrusted with sparkling stones, then she and Thorvard walked across the fields to Erik’s without a word to Hekja. Freydis had more important things to do now than talking to a thrall.

  ‘Here, boy! Sit!’ Gudrun beamed at Hekja. ‘What a good dog he is! He comes when he is called!’

  Hekja smiled tiredly. Snarf came so eagerly because he smelt the roast hanging from its chain.

  ‘Good dog,’ said Gudrun approvingly, patting his head. ‘He’s bigger than any dog I’ve ever seen. Do you know how to cook meat?’ she asked Hekja.

  Hekja shook her head. ‘I can cook barley bread, and fish stew. But I’ve never roasted meat before.’

  ‘Just keep the meat turning, then, and turn the pot so it doesn’t get too hot, or the pudding will burn. You understand?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Hekja. She poked the great roast of meat carefully. It spun gently as she touched it, and juice dripped down into the pot of grains and greens below.

  Then a group of men came in—two thralls, and three free men who worked on the farm. They looked curiously at Hekja, but asked no questions. Hekja was grateful. Her tongue felt thick with tiredness, and she was afraid that if anyone asked about where she came from she might cry again. The men sat by the smoky fire and talked about straying sheep and a sow that almost crushed a piglet—more words that Hekja didn’t know. The two thralls also spoke to each other in a language the others didn’t seem to understand.

  ‘They are from Ireland,’ Gudrun whispered, as she passed with a platter of barley bread. Hekja nodded, though the word Ireland made no sense.

  Gudrun put the meat down onto a platter and sliced it up. Her portion was minced into tiny bits, as she had no teeth to chew with. There were slabs for everyone else and the meaty bones and scraps for Snarf. Snarf gulped the meat scraps then rolled over, panting, so Gudrun could scratch his belly with her booted foot.

  Each person had a spoon to eat the pudding from the pot. Hekja had never seen spoons so small. She watched how the others used them before dipping in her own.

  The pudding was the best thing she had ever eaten, rich with cream and meat juices, sweet with fruit and honey, the soft grains melting with the greens. Even toothless Gudrun was able to eat it with ease, as it needed no chewing at all.

  The fire burnt low, till it was only coals. The house was dark, except for the twilight through the door. The men rolled themselves in sheepskins from the benches and went to sleep beside the glowing fire. Gudrun nodded to Hekja to do the same.

  She felt stranger than she ever
had—stranger even than on the boat, the smells of meat mingling with the scent of a foreign land, mixed with the scent of ice and smoke. But Hekja was too tired to stay awake, and the sheepskin was the softest, warmest thing that she had ever felt. She fell asleep with Snarf by her side, and didn’t even notice when he rose to investigate more smells from outside, including Erik’s bitch.

  Even when Freydis and Thorvard returned she didn’t wake, till Thorvard stumbled against one of the sleeping men, then kicked him drunkenly.

  ‘Wake up, you lazy louts!’ cried Thorvard, as he staggered past.

  Hekja started to her feet, but Thorvard and Freydis were already in their room. The great wood door had been left open. Outside the sun was rising above the storerooms, and the hens were running after insects. The sheep were bleating, and the cows calling to be milked.

  Her life in Greenland had begun.

  * * *

  17 hens

  18 whale bones

  19 A loom, for weaving.

  20 storerooms

  Chapter 18

  GREENLAND

  They ate leftovers for breakfast—cold meat and cold bread and fermented milk. Hekja milked the cows as they stood with their heads through the stalls and munched at a handful of hay, while Gudrun watched.

  Finally Gudrun nodded. ‘You know what you are about, girl,’ she said, hauling herself off the milking stool and onto her swollen feet. ‘Finish the milking yourself, then take the cows out beyond the barley fields, and stop them straying. I’ll ring the bell when it’s time to bring them in.’

  ‘What’s a bell?’ asked Hekja, stumbling over the new word.

  Gudrun shook her head. ‘What place have you been living in, hey? A bell is…a bell is…when you hear a loud noise, girl, a ding-ding-ding, then you’ll know it’s time to milk again.’

  ‘Arf,’ said Snarf, wagging his tail in case Gudrun had another hunk of meat with her. She patted him on the way out, and slipped him a bit of barley bread from her apron.