The Norseman

by Jason Born

  “I have saved the last three sets of gifts for three men who embody the Norse spirit. They fight. They speak plainly. They are loyal. Before I call them up before you, I need to share a story.” He again paused as if searching for the correct words with which to begin. Then he swore and started, “You men know I am a Christian and if you wish to serve me you’ll become one too. Some of you know about my conversion. For those who don’t know, a soothsayer told me my future, my destiny. Even when I didn’t believe the predictions, they came true. Becoming a king was one of his predictions.” I thought about the rest of the seer’s prediction given to me, but not Olaf, about Olaf’s short reign. I had never told him. Nor did I think I ever would. “Becoming a disciple of the true faith was another. But for many years before my conversion I followed other gods, unforgiving gods like some of you still follow today. I want to honor these last three men in terms we can all understand due to our common background. Odin would give a portion of his supernatural powers to a chosen few men, necessary men who would not flinch in battle. In the tales of old, these men would rush into battle without armor. When they held a shield they would gnaw on it in rage and growl loud enough to frighten the enemy from the field. Such are these men. They shall be called after the men of the old stories. Henceforth, they will be called the King’s Berserkers.”

  We erupted in applause again at the mention of the mythical warriors who wore bear shirts into battle and went into a mad fury at the thought of blood. Whoever these men were, they had to be terrible warriors full of courage. We cheered for a long time not knowing who was to be honored and the crowd started asking, “Who are they?” Even some of the more disinterested noblemen perked up and shouted the question to their king. Olaf smiled and let the anticipation build. More roaring came from the crowd.

  “The first man has the most powerful draw I have ever seen.” I knew who it was. “He uses his bow for the defense of the ship he commands, for the defense of his men, and for the defense of his king. He will serve on my flagship, Serpent, as my designated archer, a sniper for the king. Einar Tambarskelver!” Einar looked surprised but I thought he deserved the honor. He pushed through the shouting crowd and climbed the hill. Olaf shook his hand and bent down into the bag. He pulled out a large brown bear skin and draped the front legs over Einar’s shoulders like it was a cape. We all clapped with excitement and Olaf indicated that Einar should stay on the hill, but step aside.

  “The next man travelled very far to be a part of my army. He travelled to the end of the earth and back. This man fights and is there when you need him but there are times when days go by and you don’t notice him.” Once again, I knew the man and smiled inside. “Yet in the background he fights. He was there at Maldon in the shield wall and has been there before and since. Cnute the Reliable!” If Einar was surprised, Cnute was shocked. His face turned white and he threw up on the back of the man in front of him. That man was angry, but it made the other men laugh with joy. In front of the screaming throng, Cnute scrambled to the top of the hill and humbly received Olaf’s outstretched hand. “Cnute will be a part of my personal bodyguard aboard Serpent, too.” Olaf reached into the pack and pulled out a shiny helmet to replace the one Cnute lost in the fjord and placed it on his head. He then pulled out a bear skin and draped it over Cnute’s shoulders. Einar shuffled to the side and made room for Cnute to stand beside him.

  “I saved the final spot for the next man because he is in a category by himself. He is an enigma. He is young, but wise. He is rich in wealth, but poor in love. He is filled with rage and fury like the Berserker he is, but he is compassionate to even a thrall. He is ruthless but gentle. He was wronged, but acts righteous.” I searched my mind and couldn’t think of the man he described. “This man has sacrificed his body for his friends countless times when facing foes. Stories say that as a lad he tried to avenge his father’s death. They also say he led a fight to protect his village. He planned and led the attack at Maldon and struck down the Earl Byrhtnoth.” No. “This man ended the battle in the fjord looking like a hedgehog with arrows sticking from his mail. He lost that mail as well as a fine sword making sure our fleet pursued Haakon and this man nearly lost his life in the process. He will serve me in my bodyguard, as an archer, as an advisor, and as my son. Halldorr Olefsson!” Men around me roared their approval and congratulated me as I stumbled my way through the crowd and up the hill. When I made it to the top Olaf gave me one of the bear hugs he often gave, and even though I was taller than he, he picked me off the ground. The men laughed and cheered. While I stood dumbfounded, Olaf reached into the pack and pulled out a heavy mail shirt. It glittered in the fading autumn sun. When he placed it over my head I felt its weight and the weight of the honor down through my legs. He reached into the pack and pulled out a leather belt holding a leather scabbard, lined with fleece, containing a sword. Olaf clasped the belt around my waist and drew the sword, holding it gently across two hands presenting it to me. The blade was inches from my face and I saw the now familiar designs of the Christian stories from my trunk miniaturized on the sword. I accepted the sword with two hands and the cheering renewed. Finally, Olaf pulled out a bear skin and hung it about my shoulders. I trundled next to Cnute and Einar, both of them beaming with pride. Olaf, and even Crevan, clapped for the three of us. And I smiled.

  CHAPTER 8

  We awoke one morning during that first winter in Kaupangen with the howling wind picking up bits of ice and throwing them against Olaf’s hall. It had been weeks since we used horses and rope to pull the ships ashore for the long winter. The Yule time had passed already as well, though Crevan and Olaf forbid us from calling it that. We still burned the Yule log for days around the solstice, but Crevan insisted we were celebrating the birth of Jesus. Most of our men accepted the new faith with little effort as long as Crevan didn’t ask too much of them.

  Those in Olaf’s household troop, which now included me, and the commanders of his best ships slept in his great hall. Some of those men brought their families back to Norway and, they too, joined us in the hall. Other families swiftly built homes in our new city before the weather set in. Still others had to sail back to Norse settlements in Dyflin or Jorvik because they did not have time to complete homes before winter.

  That morning I awoke earlier than the rest of the hall from a headache brought on by a bad barrel of ale that was tapped the night before. Others would soon be awake, I was sure. I sat up from my place on the floor and peered across the hall using the dim light provided by the central hearth. Bundles of wrapped bodies were scattered over the hall trying to stay warm. Platforms, like those in our homes in Greenland, lined the long walls. They too contained men of Olaf’s court and their women. As a rule, the children occupied the floor, but I chose to sleep there too because I didn’t have anyone with whom to share a bed.

  I kicked off my blanket and walked across the floor to the hearth. I wrapped my cloak around me to fight the cold as I carefully stepped over the new sails the women were working on that winter. It took them an entire season to make one new sail. We had enough women in the hall and surrounding village that we would likely be able to make two this winter. My sail, the red and white striped sail on the Boar, was old and worn, but I kept it well patched since I was still attached to the cloth. The welcomed heat from the embers grew as I came closer.

  As I picked my way over the people sleeping on the floor, I paused for a moment looking at two sisters curled up to one another for warmth. The oldest was fiery and beautiful. She had the womanly curves of Freydis and I sometimes lusted after her when I saw her across the hall. Her name was Thordis and she was about three years younger than I. She became a widow at the battle in the fjord when her husband was killed by Haakon’s men, and so she came to live in the hall with her father and mother. Her father, Meili, was commander of one of Olaf’s ships, a veteran of many battles with the scars to prove it. He had weather worn skin and a similar personality, but he had become rich working with Olaf. The seco
nd daughter was quiet and reserved. This one was not nearly as flashy as her sister, but still pleasing enough to the eye. She went by the name Kenna. She was about twenty and still not married. Rumor said she had learned to read in several languages when she lived in Dyflin. I had never even talked to Kenna, but I and other men had spent many nights talking with Thordis around the hearth. As I stood staring down at their pretty, sleeping faces I thought that Thordis would be married in the spring, so plentiful were her suitors.

  When I made it to the hearth I used an iron rod to stir the coals and set more logs on the fire. I sat quietly, listening to the wind howl, the breathing of the men and women sleeping, and the pounding of my head. My thoughts drifted to Olaf. He gave me a tremendous honor by naming me to his personal guard, but it would mean less freedom and less time on the Boar. I could sell the ship, but I wasn’t ready to part with one of my ties to Erik. I still had his ring-pin for my cloak and wore it that morning. Then my mind wandered to nothing.

  A throat cleared behind me and Crevan walked up to the hearth, holding his hands out to the flames for warmth. The wind picked up an instant and the thatch was pelted with an extra dose of ice pellets. Crevan was a friendly man, but prone to periods of sullen gloom. I wondered which priest was standing next to me that day. He whispered simply, “Headache.”

  I grunted and added, “Bad ale.”

  “Indeed,” he replied and rubbed his hands together then used them to rub his temples. He hiked his robes up a bit and sat on the hearth next to me. We quietly sat looking at the dark hall until Crevan said, “I saw you looking at Thordis and her sister while they slept. What’s the sister’s name again?”

  “Kenna.”

  “Yes, yes that’s it. The woman Thordis makes me question whether or not I should renounce my vows,” he said. I nodded for she would make any man turn his head, though I am sure she would never have a man like Crevan. I never thought vowing celibacy made sense for a man, nor did I understand how it made the Christian God happy, but then I had a lot to learn about my new faith. The Christians had universal writings and rituals they followed in their faith. The old gods required none of that. Stories were passed down through generations by our oral traditions. Each village or clan added their own nuance to the stories as time went by. “But it’s not my fate to be married to a woman. I’m married to my faith in the Church.”

  “I didn’t think Christians believed in fate or destiny,” I said.

  Crevan thought about that for a minute. “Perhaps I used the wrong word. Maybe it’s not fate, nor fortune, nor destiny, nor even doom; maybe I should have said it’s not part of the plan of Providence that I should be married to a woman.” He was using many words now, but they all meant the same to me. They meant Odin or God or someone had the reins of your life in their hands. “But you believe in destiny, do you not?”

  “I have no choice but to believe in fate. Fate has ruled my life since I was born. My plans mean nothing to my life. If they did, I would be in Rogaland and making love to my wife right now. Instead, I was chased away from my home to Iceland, then to Greenland, then to Ireland. Olaf led me here. None of it due to my design,” I answered.

  Crevan chuckled like a father laughing at the answer of a child, “Halldorr, you don’t give yourself enough credit. Maybe destiny led you to Olaf, but you seized the destiny given to you by Odin or Thor or the One True God. Olaf loves you like a son, you know.” I had hoped it was so, but it embarrassed me to hear Crevan talk of it. “He’ll always be a sea king and my guess is that we’ll spend a lot of time between Dyflin, Jorvik, and Norway and Sweden in the coming summer. Olaf will need someone to help lead. Someone intelligent. Someone who can read.”

  “If you think that someone is me, it’s not. I can’t read. Leif is the man he wants.”

  “Leif is not here is he? Besides, Olaf wants you to do it.” That was it, wasn’t it? Olaf wanted it. I didn’t plan for it. Like a beast cresting from the sea, fate was rearing its head again. “I will teach you to read and write during the winter months. We can fit the instruction in during summer months whenever we are at sea for an extended time.”

  I had never had a formal teacher before. As a youth I remember hearing about nobles occasionally sending their children away to be taught their letters. They would practice their writing and learn history sitting at a desk with an instructor watching over their shoulders, occasionally smacking their pupils’ hands. It sounded dreadfully boring, yet there I was sitting in the corner away from my men, away from the women laughing over the slowly progressing sail cloth. Crevan found me a three-legged stool and brought the table from Serpent for my desk. At the corner of my desk sat a low square stone that had been dished out to hold fish liver oil. Its cottongrass wick flickered as the winter wind slipped through a nearby crack in the wall. Every bit of the small amount of light it provided was welcome.

  I practiced my Latin alphabet on a vellum page set before me. The membranes on which we wrote were as rare as writing was in Norway at that time, so I became practiced at writing a tiny script. I used a pinion from a goose that had first been buried in hot sand for a time. This made the feather less brittle. The flights of the feather had been removed by Crevan to make handling it easier. I used a small knife to cut the nib and re-sharpen it whenever necessary. I also used the knife to erase minor mistakes from the vellum as well as hold it in place so that I did not leave behind greasy fingerprints. My ink well was also a hollowed out stone, this one containing brown ink made from iron and the galls from oak leaves.

  When we first began my lessons, I protested that I should learn to write using Norse runes; after all, I spoke Norse. Crevan said that my language, the language spoken by everyone I knew, was the past. Latin was the universal language and writing to use if we were to make Olaf’s kingdom great. Olaf overheard and came over to settle the argument saying that I would learn both. This solution made neither the teacher nor the student happy, but Crevan promptly replied, “Yes, lord,” and it was decided.

  Today I wrote the following across my page:

  A B C D E F G H I K L M N O P Q R S T V W X Y Z

  When I was finished I put down my quill and stretched my hand. Crevan stood behind me and said, “Excellent work Halldorr.” He was genuinely happy teaching me the Roman alphabet. I think he looked forward to speaking the tongue with another person. Then he asked, “Now which of the letters is new to the alphabet so that we can write words in your native language?”

  I scanned the twenty-four letters trying to recall what I had been taught in our last lesson. As I reached the end of the line of letters it hit me as obvious, “W,” I said. “It is just a ligature of two V’s to represent our “wuh” sound that doesn’t exist in Latin.”

  I knew I was right even before Crevan nodded and smiled. He moved to step away while I continued my lesson then paused and said, “May fides rector vos.”

  He stood with a hopeful look on his face that I would be able to interpret his Latin. I stumbled a bit then said, “May fate be your guide?”

  He smiled and answered, “You are close. Fortuna is fate, Halldorr. Fides is faith. Servo fides. Servo fides.” Then he walked to chat with the women who were sewing the new sails. I noticed that he wedged his way in to sit next to beautiful Thordis. While he listened to the women tell stories, I remained isolated and went back to my lessons.

  The equinox brought welcome warmth and blooming wildflowers and we pushed our boats back into the still icy waters of the fjord from their places on the banks. Two of the longboats had new sails and the blue dyes the women used on the cloth looked brilliant in the sunlight. The Charging Boar bobbed up and down next to one of the boats with a new sail, its faded red and white striped sail looking sad and tired. I wasn’t on the Boar but stood on the pebbles watching her crew prepare to leave for a trading expedition. She was rented to level-headed Randulfr and commanded by Brokk, a man from Randulfr’s crew. He was an experienced seafarer and would treat my ship right, but I hated to see
her go without me onboard. Crevan, my teacher, waved from my ship for he was travelling with Randulfr’s two crews to stop and visit Sigurd on Orkney as Olaf had promised last year.

  A tug on my badly scarred right ear made me turn to see my two fellow Berserkers. Einar said, “Halldorr, you should have sold that floating turd instead of the Goat.” Cnute chuckled and I laughed too. The two turned and walked together to where Olaf and Vigi stood on the shore preparing to leave in Serpent. After one last look at the Charging Boar I joined them. Olaf planned to travel south around Norway, into his original homeland, the Vik, to further secure his reign this year. A fleet of twenty-five warships would accompany him on his journeys while many men and their ships would be like Randulfr and go out trading or raiding. A force of about one thousand men would stay with their families in Kaupangen to build and defend the city. They would clear land and begin farming grain and sheep and goats. It would be a much more hospitable place upon our return in the fall. Something particularly pleasing to Olaf and Crevan was the construction of the first church of our capital city which was begun the previous week.