by Per Holbo
***
Tjalfe held a pitch fork in his hands as he was doing his morning chores. He shoveled the dung as fast as he could without covering himself in it while he listened to the sound of his mother humming by the fire place.
To Tjalfe and his sister, Roeskva, this was the most comforting sound in the world, and even though his mother knew, how much they loved it, she rarely noticed herself when she was humming. In fact, she would more often than not look rather surprised if one of them made a comment about it. Then she would stop humming for a moment, out of sheer embarrassment, but after a while, the humming continued as if it had its own life and she wasn’t able to control it.
From time to time Tjalfe paused in his work and took a peek toward the kitchen to keep himself updated on how long it would be before her amazing oat meal was ready.
She was so beautiful, his mum. At least Tjalfe thought so. Her long blond hair went all the way down to her waist and his sister often stood at her side playing with it. Tjalfe just couldn´t wait for breakfast. Not that he was all that hungry, he just wanted to get it over with and go to the Gods’ Fortress up the hill.
“Take it easy, son”
His father, Egil the Bowman, had just entered the house and was now standing in the door.
“There´s no point in shoveling dung from the floor if it’s going to end up being attached to the walls instead, is there?” Tjalfe looked down.
“No, sir,” he said with a smile, “I’ll be more careful.”
Tjalfe’s dad seemed satisfied with his answer and turned around to give his wife a hug and a kiss.
“Good morning, my wonderful Groa” he said and lift up Roeskva, placed her on his shoulder and started spinning with a big laugh on his face. Roeskva was not the least bit less happy. She was absolutely thrilled and chuckled to her father’s content.
“Good morning, my caring husband” Groa smiled back and started pouring steaming hot oat meal into bowls and placed them on the table beside the wooden spoons Tjalfe had carved her the winter before last. Tjalfe threw the last fork full of dung onto the pile and grabbed the handles on the wheel barrow. It was kind of heavy. He´d put way too many forks full on it because he wanted to finish as quickly as possible and the less trips to the mitten, he´d thought, the better. He almost regretted it now, but he managed with difficulty to get it outside and carried it to the big pile of older dung behind the house. There he unloaded the wheel barrow and put it back in the stable, where it belonged. Then he went to the courtyard and washed himself thoroughly.
What a wonderful day this was! Despite the fact that it was still early in the morning the sun had already warmed up the soil and everything on it. Tjalfe had even put his cape over the small center axle trailer Tjalfe and his father used when going to the market to sell vegetables, because it was too hot to wear it. Tjalfe stole a quick glance up in the sky hoping to catch a glimpse of Svalinn. He imagined it would hang up there somewhere. Of course, he couldn’t know for sure, but Thor had told him about it. The gods had ships that could sail through air and even though it sounded incredible, Tjalfe was sure he could trust Thor to tell the truth.
He ducked his head entering the house through the low door. The rest of the family was already placed around the table and Tjalfe quietly found his usual seat across his father, whose place was at the end of the table. His oat meal was still steaming hot and ready to eat. Tjalfe smiled. His mother’s oat meal was the best!
“Careful, now, Tjalfe,” Groa said as he almost shoveled in his food, “You´ll end up burning yourself. You can’t be that much in a hurry, can you?”
His dad leaned forward in his seat. “I am sure the gods will have enough patience to wait for you, Tjalfe,” he said in a firm voice. Tjalfe knew they were right. He was a little too eager. But these daily visits by the Fyrkat Fortress were just something he really looked forward to. It was the last thing on his mind before he fell asleep at night and it was the first thought coming into his head when he woke up in the morning. Being with Thor, Loki, Sif and the other Aseir was more gratifying than anything he had ever done before in his life and even though he went there every single day, going there never got old.
There was so much to see and even more to learn, but most importantly, the Aseir never stayed indefinitely. Their last visit was three summers ago and before that they had been gone for more than a hundred summers. Or at least that was what the elders in the village said. Tjalfe wasn’t sure what to think. Yes, the Aseir were amazing and they had stunning abilities that no one in the village could even understand a fraction of. But still… Immortality? Naah… that was a bit over the top. Besides, what the villagers believed to be magic or godly powers was really not all that mysterious if you began examining it, he thought.
Tjalfe had asked Thor about it one day, but he hadn’t seemed too eager talking about it. “Magic?”Thor had looked surprised at Tjalfe. “Why do you ask if it is magic?”
Tjalfe had felt some suspicion on Thor´s part and had looked down as he had tried to find the right words.
“Well,” he had begun, “I don’t know…It’s just that… Well, that´s what they´re telling me. They are saying that…”
“The elders in the village, you mean?”
Tjalfe had nodded in embarrassment and had almost regretted even mentioning it.
“Hmmm…The elders…” Thor had frowned as he had said that word: “elders.” You couldn’t really blame him. Even though Tjalfe didn’t believe the Aseir were immortals, he was sure Thor had to be at least 100 summers old and even the village elders couldn’t expect more than 70 summers - and then only if they were really lucky. Calling people so much younger than himself “elders” really couldn´t sound right. Furthermore Tjalfe had a feeling Thor didn’t exactly look up to the elders. Sometimes Tjalfe had gotten the thought he might even despise them a bit. On several occasions he had said things that lead Tjalfe to believe Thor thought they were a little too afraid of everything.
“You really shouldn’t take them too seriously, Tjalfe - at least not when it comes to knowing about the Aseir” Thor had said and there was something in his voice that told Tjalfe it would be a bad idea to go further into the subject. And so Tjalfe suppressed his urge to know more and didn’t ask more about it that day. Coming home he tried talking to his dad about it. He hadn’t seemed to keen talking about it either and the matter was soon closed. Thinking about it now, Tjalfe wondered if his dad was more than just unwilling to talk about it. In fact, he had almost looked worried. Maybe he too, like the elders, were a bit afraid of the Aseir.
“The gods have existed ever since Odin and his brothers created the world and that’s all there is to it,” Tjalfe’s dad had said and it was clear that he didn’t want to discuss it further. Tjalfes father, Egil, wasn’t the only one beside the village elders, who was very careful when talking about the Aseir. The whole village was struck with awe and their fear of them, however unwarranted, was quite vivid. Tjalfe couldn’t for the world understand that fear. He himself at least had never had any reason to be afraid of Thor, Sif or any of the other Aseir he had met at the fortress. Still, after a while he got tired of asking the elderly about the gods and even after the Aseir had returned and welcomed Tjalfe in the fortress of Fyrkat, he hadn’t told anyone about all the things he had experienced with them. Except Roeskva, of course. Roeskva he could tell about it.
Tjalfe loved telling Roeskva stories and now that he had some really amazing stories to tell her, he found it to be an irresistible mental valve telling her everything. This way, he wouldn’t pile up everything inside and he knew she could be trusted not to tell anyone about it. In that way, Roeskva was different than any other girl he knew, including women being several summers older than his sister. She was only 9 summers old, but as long as she knew these stories to be a secret between the two of them, she would keep it to herself.
So he told her everything. Usually it was when they were both lying in bed and their parents thought they were sl
eeping. And she loved listening to his stories. She knew, she would never be allowed to go with him to the fortress and join him in his adventures, but listening to him telling these amazing tales was the next best thing. Every day as he left and went for Fyrkat, she couldn´t hide the fact that more than anything else in the entire world she would like to accompany him, but still she accepted this had to be the way of things. And when he told her the tale of the day, it was almost like being there herself. She had told him so on more than one occasion.
Tjalfe finished his oat meal as fast as he could without getting into trouble. Finally he put his spoon on the table.
“May I be excused?” Tjalfe looked at his father, waiting for his acceptance.
“You may,” Egil nodded and Tjalfe got to his feet. “But remember to behave – and don’t ask too many questions, you hear?”
Tjalfe grabbed his hunting bag and swung it over his shoulder.
“I understand, dad,” he said and ducked his head exiting the house, “I’ll be good.”
Eager to reach Fyrkat, Tjalfe went over the top of Fox Hill and continued toward the forest. The sun was shining and the heat was continuously building up, so the cape he´d brought mostly for his mother´s sake was way too warm for wearing. Instead, he had tied it round his waist from where it was hanging loosely with its edges flapping against his legs. He looked to the sky where he knew Svalinn was hanging somewhere. He still didn’t understand how the gods could live up there, floating high above the clouds in that circle shaped thing. But that was what Thor had told him and he never doubted this was the truth.
At the moment, with the sun shining from the sky, Svalinn wasn’t visible, but sometimes when it was dark and the glowing coals from Muspelheim showed themselves like small dots on the Midgaard Dome, the observant person could get lucky enough to catch a glimpse of Svalinn. Of course, even the most observant people wouldn’t have the slightest idea about what it was. For everyone else, Svalinn wouldn’t stand out in any way. To them, it would look like any other Muspelheim Coal and they wouldn’t think anything of it. But Tjalfe knew better. And he knew what to look for. Svalinn had a slightly different color and if you really looked for it, it was quite clear.
Thor had even showed Tjalfe how to make a looking tube, or a looking glass, as he had called it. With this looking glass you could see objects far away as if they were very close. It was right after the Rusen had come to the village after a many weeks journey. When Thor had seen the transparent balls the Rusen had brought from Miklagaard, he was suddenly very excited and bought the whole shipment on the spot. He didn’t even bother to hassle about the price, which struck everyone around them as being outright insane.
Thor had explained to Tjalfe, how the balls were made by throwing lumps of sand into fire and then shape them like balls. As they cooled down they became transparent and you could see through them. Glass, he called it.
Tjalfe always had the looking glass in his hunting bag and quite often used it for hunting. It was extremely useful. With it, he could see a deer clearly from far away, which was a great advantage when he wanted to plan how to get closer.
He crouched and opened the bag, grabbed the leather piece and placed it flat on the grass. Then he took the two glass balls and placed them in opposite corners like Thor had shown him. Finally he rolled the leather piece firmly around the balls. The looking glass was ready.
He put one end of it to his right eye and turned the other end toward the sky in direction of where he believed Svalinn was. He was careful not to look straight at the sun, as Thor had warned him he could harm himself doing so, but surely it couldn’t hurt to try finding Svalinn as long as he was careful?
It wasn’t easy, though. Using the looking glass was very different than just using your eyes, because everything was shown distorted in them. Thor had explained to him how the balls bent the light and this was why things seemed to be closer than they really were. How clearly you could see through it depended on the quality of the glass balls. The finer the surface of the glass, the clearer things appeared. Even the slightest unevenness would make the image blurry.
There it was! The Svalinn. Tjalfe watched it closely while trying to imprint its shape in as much detail as possible inside his mind. It was round with a sort of outset in one side and in what Thor had explained was the front it looked like someone had taken a bite of the ship. Almost like when Roeskva greedily took the first bite of one of their mother’s flat bread that she used to bake on a stone by the fireplace.
Tjalfe put down the looking glass on the ground carefully, so it wouldn’t fall apart. He then reached into the hunting bag to grab his drawing of the Svalinn and placed it beside the looking glass. Based on memory alone, he added further details to the drawing with great skill and then used the looking glass again to search for Svalinn. It was much easier to find the second time around, but something was different from before. He saw not only Svalinn, but also some smaller ships sort of dancing around it. It reminded him of the village children playing tag at the plains, zigzagging back and forth, except on the sky it wasn´t one chasing the others, but rather looked as if Svalinn was being chased by most of the smaller ships. Then Svalinn started moving across the sky at great speed.
Oh, no! Not that! Not already! Tjalfe thought to himself. Of course, he knew this day would come eventually. The day when the gods would leave Fyrkat and the village to return home… home to Asgard. He knew it, but he had hoped it would be in a long time from now. Watching the Svalinn move across the sky made him feel sad. Not only because the Aseir were about to leave. That was inevitable. And fair. No, Tjalfe was sad, because he felt let down by his new found friends. He was disappointed. Sif had promised they would say a proper goodbye before leaving. And now it looked as if they weren’t going to keep that promise. They were leaving right now with him standing far away, not being able to do anything about it and he wouldn’t have a chance to say goodbye. Hey, wait! Maybe they hadn’t left completely! Maybe he could make it to Fyrkat, before they finished packing all their stuff! After all, they did have a whole lot of equipment...
Tjalfe threw the drawing and the looking glass inside his bag, grabbed hold of the cape and secured it to his waist. Then he ran as fast as he could in direction of Fyrkat. He had a chance, and he was going to grab hold of that hope. It wasn’t certain that the Aseir were already on the ship. He had seen them use the stone in the center of Fyrkat. Touching that stone in a certain way they were able to move from one place to another in the blink of an eye. The first time Tjalfe saw it he got really scared. Sif and Baldur had been standing close to the stone and suddenly there had been a flash - and then they were gone! Tjalfe had tried hard as he could to hide his fear, but Thor had seen it in his eyes and made an effort to calm him down. He had explained that the very moment they disappeared here, they re-appeared somewhere else.
“Where?” Tjalfe had asked.
“Anywhere you like. Mostly aboard Svalinn, but sometimes even further.”
“Further than Svalinn?”
Thor couldn’t help laughing when he saw the disbelief in Tjalfe’s face. He just couldn’t comprehend it. Svalinn was so far away you had to use the looking glass to even notice it. With the naked eye it didn´t look like anything but an insignificant spot in the sky - and now Thor claimed they could go further away than Svalinn? It was almost too much and at first it didn´t make any sense.
“Yes,” Thor had finally answer through his laughter, “further away than Svalinn. In fact, that´s why we are here. To try improving its range.”
Tjalfe listened to Thor as he explained, but he just couldn´t wrap his head around it.
“See, the problem is,” Thor had continued, “right now, we are able to transport people at a distance of here to Svalinn times three. We are working to increase that distance, make the device move us even further. And if we succeed - when we succeed - we should be able to move as far as from here and to any of the stars you can see with your own eyes.”
It was all very strange, but in some odd way, Tjalfe knew Thor was telling him the truth. And just as strange as it all sounded, it was equally wondrous and marvelless. Just to imagine that out there, far beyond the heavenly arch, there were people in the thousands of thousands of thousands of... and they were living their lives much like he did!
Still, the Fyrkat device was something different and even though he had seen it so often, he really didn´t get how it could work. Whenever the circle around the stone began glowing, everyone knew that one of the gods were about to appear out of nothing right there in the middle of the Fyrkat Fortress and they would move away from it to give room for the new arrivals. To the Aseir this was nothing special, just a natural thing happening every day, but to Tjalfe it was absolutely amazing!
Exciting as the Fyrkat device was, however, he had never completely gotten over his fear of it and he had tried to avoid coming too close to it. Instead, he had watched it from a distance as he tried to build up the courage to satisfy the curiosity eating him up from within.
Little had he imagined that the device would be the one thing he clinged to in an effort to keep up hope. With the Fyrkat device, there was still a chance that they hadn´t all left yet and he just had to hold on to that hope. They had to still be there. They just had to!
Tjalfe reached the end of the path that snaked through the landscape and he was now at the edge of the forest. The sun hung low on the sky blinding him as he passed the last row of trees. Twitching his eyes and holding up a hand to shield against the strong light he ran in the direction he knew the fortress was.
Shortly after he got used to the light and was able to at least make out a blurry version of Fyrkat. Something wild was definitely going on in there. Usually they had guards posted on the palisades to ensure no intruders could get in unnoticed, but right now there wasn´t a single Aseir in sight. Inside there were lots of things going on. Though he couldn´t see anything, he could clearly hear the rattling noises coming from the other side of the palisades.
A clanking and a scraping told him they were busy packing everything in a hurry and the sound of a deep voice, he was sure he hadn´t heard before was shouting orders in a language he didn´t understand. It sounded almost like the language of the Aseir, but then again slightly different. And who was it? He thought about it for a while. Could it be someone he knew? No, he was sure. This was not a voice he had ever heard before.
Suddenly an ear deafening noise blasted through the air above him! Tjalfe jolted and because he didn´t see the big boulder right in front of him, he hit it hard with his left foot. The ground jumped toward him and he smashed his head full face into a pile of cow dung. He just managed to notice it was old and dry - big relief - before hitting the ground with the rest of his body.
He was just about to get to his feet when he heard a deep humming sound and decided in the last minute to make do with discretely lifting his head to see what was going on. It proved to be the right decision. A red hot glowing light squeezed through the cracks in the palisade wood around the fortress, changed to a strong yellow, then a bright white and then - BLAM!
He felt the ground shake violently underneath and by pure instinct he lifted up his body to stand on all four. He barely made it, before a blow of light and air exploded in every direction including his own. He was hit with such a force that he was tossed back and whirled through the air in a backwards summersault as if he was merely one of the wooden dolls he had so often made for Roeskva to play with. Finally he landed behind a small elevated area in the rugged terrain. Pump! He felt the air being blown out of his lungs as his ribs met the stony ground. He took a few seconds to catch his breath before looking up. That was when the dreadful sight of Svalinn roaring over his head with a tail of fire and smoke behind it appeared. Bursting across the sky with a horrific noise it continued in a low descent and disappeared in the horizon.
Tjalfe fought to get up, but it was an impossible endeavor. His eyelids were increasingly heavy and he felt a jolt of pain in his head just before he lost his consciousness and everything went pitch dark...
