The Voyage of Freydis

by Tamara Goranson

  He makes the announcement in the yard and his clansmen are so pleased that they praise him openly. From a distance, I study Ivor’s face. He is standing with his arms crossed, leaning against a post, looking cross. I swear on Loki’s statue that my ‘generous’ husband is never generous to those he loves although he treats Ivor much better than he treats me.

  As I listen to Thorvard’s speech, I watch the sheep with their scraggly wool coats, grazing on top of the longhouse, nibbling the brown grasses short. Some of Thorvard’s clansmen are studying me and I know they think my face is surly and I am slow. How is it that Thorvard convinces others to think ill of me? How is it that he makes me second-guess myself? Why does he question me about everything? Why does he blame me when things go wrong?

  Ivor sidles up to me. “It will get better. Thorvard is always at his best when there are others around.”

  “The fox inside his lair remains a fox.”

  “Lower your voice, Freydis.”

  “I can protect myself. I have a knife.”

  “Careful,” Ivor whispers without looking at me. “Your husband is the chieftain. He has the power to banish you to the north.”

  “Others would condemn him for it.”

  “Just watch yourself,” Ivor says.

  By the Feast of Dísablót – the festival honoring the female spirits of protection and fertility at the beginning of winter – the longhouse is crowded with farmers and thralls who huddle together near the hearth fire. In their company Thorvard drinks too much, but he leaves me be. The relief I feel is notable, but I still feel like I am walking on eggshells, constantly needing to protect myself.

  When Thorvard takes a thrall to his bed after getting extremely drunk one night, a sour taste fills my mouth, and I have to sit on my hands to stop them from shaking. During their outlandish coupling, the bed-slave shames me openly. Everyone can see her breasts dangling over Thorvard’s chest, her long hair trailing down her back. When I hear her wanton moans, a shiver racks my body as I fiddle with my hands and stare at the longhouse walls, wishing that I was dead.

  Éowyn tries to console me by handing me her hand spindle. I take it, but my eyes mist up and I can’t see straight. The only grace is that my kin back in Brattahlíð do not know of this great dishonor. In the hot, smoky room, I stare into the fire, not caring whether I live or die, not caring about anything.

  The next day, Éowyn finds me in the coldest corner of the longhouse wrapped inside my sealskin coat, shivering with my eyes half-shut.

  “Please take this little creature off our hands,” she says as she comes to sit beside me in the dark. She holds a caramel-colored baby goat in her arms. I scratch its head as she continues, whispering low: “This kid was rejected by its mother after a difficult birth. The poor creature needs to be fed by hand. By the gods, I know this goat will be a welcome distraction. He’ll feed your heart. It’s what you need.”

  Éowyn’s words are meant to comfort, but I despair. How is it that a worthless thrall replaced me – a bed-slave who might even be the one to conceive Thorvard’s firstborn son? Thorvard seems to have forgotten that I am his wife, that I should hold a place of honor around his fire. Curse him for not visiting my bed anymore. Curse him for loving Ivor instead of me. Curse this longhouse. Curse this life.

  The next day, Éowyn comes to sit beside me as soon as she has done her chores. Once again, she brings the baby goat with her. “Thorvard’s thrall is far too bold,” she mutters carefully. “May the gods frown on her. You must find a way to take your power back.”

  I am silent – perhaps even a little rude as I reach out and take the baby goat into my lap. The creature is an energetic little thing. He looks at me with his long-lashed eyes waiting for me to scratch the top of his bony head. An instant later he releases a high-pitched bleat, and just like that the little goat becomes my own – my entry into motherhood.

  In the coming weeks, I spoil the kid. To my delight, the little thing follows me all around the longhouse as I do my chores. In the eyes of the good people of Gardar, he is a jumper and a climber who falls off things as often as he is successful. To me, he has a playful attitude and an energetic, funny bounce which lifts my spirits and helps me forget about Thorvard’s bed-slave and her seductress ways.

  I give my goat a name: Brúsi. At night I like the way he nuzzles his little body in close to me. I tell myself that I can endure Thorvard’s disrespect as long as I have Brúsi with his soft pussy-willow ears and his bristled coat that I like to brush. When the women try to shoo him out of the weaving room, I remind them with a few well-placed words that I am the chieftain’s wife and that I have influence whereas they have none.

  My vindictiveness flares one day when I announce to a group of Norsewomen that Thorvard’s thrall, a thin, plain-looking maiden, is not of woman born. The thrall is cooking stew. To my delight, I see her head snap up and I continue berating her, feeling gleeful that I can shame her with some well-placed words.

  “I hear tell that she was sired by a giant and that she sucked the blood out of cold corpses before she came to Thorvard’s farm.” My words slip out as easily as a musician’s prickly bone-flute trills.

  The women gawk. The chatter stops. Thorvard’s bed-slave hangs her head. Her hands are shaking as she stirs the pot.

  That day I lose another piece of myself when I take pleasure in belittling her. As the weather worsens and the snowdrifts bank so high that the top of the byre is hardly visible from the longhouse door, I work hard to make the thrall’s life miserable. I task her with dumping the urine bucket and dealing with a hunk of spoiled foul-smelling meat. I know that I am hard on her, but by publicly rebuking her, I restore my seat around Thorvard’s fire, which forces Thorvard back to me.

  One morning I wake to the howl of a brutal wind and blowing snow. The sky is bleak, but my husband convinces his men to go out hunting with him anyway. The party returns empty-handed, which brings great disappointment. What is worse is Thorvard’s red frostbitten foot. Mairi worries that he’ll lose some toes. After mixing herbs, she tends to him while muttering prayers to Hlin, asking Frigga’s handmaiden to lay her hand on Thorvard of Gardar and heal him.

  Someone has carved Hlin’s figure into a piece of bone that sits upon a longhouse beam. I stare at it and take note of the sword and shield in her hand, and she inspires me. There is a wood-axe hanging on the wall. I could use it to strike Thorvard on the foot. I could thrust it through him. I could deal him a death wound. I am capable.

  I imagine striking him on the spine and splitting him in two. The thought brings a tiny smile that quickly fades.

  Afterwards, they would banish me.

  When the storms persist, I can’t stop worrying. There is Leif’s absence and Faðir’s leg. I even fret about starvation setting in on Faðir’s farm. If Thorvard’s food supplies are low, Faðir’s must be low as well.

  One night when I have trouble sleeping, I turn to Thorvard, who is lying beside me in the dark and breathing heavily, half-awake. “I can’t stop thinking about my kin. What if they are faring poorly in this spell of cold weather?”

  “Freydis, I can hardly walk, but if I could, you know that I would do my best to ensure that all was well on your faðir’s farm. I am sure that they are well-provisioned. Even if my toes weren’t black, there is no way that we could travel to your faðir’s farm. There is simply too much snow.” He grimaces as he repositions himself on our bed of furs, shifting so that his back is facing me.

  I feel my heart thudding heavily. Suddenly I see myself as a little girl sitting around Faðir’s fire, listening to him sing a song about a far-off land, about a princess who leads a vyking expedition to the north. It is sad to think that that life held sweetness then and that Faðir thought of me as his most precious pearl. He said I was worth more than a storage shed full of his finest pelts.

  I dream that night of being at home in Brattahlíð with my kin, listening to the skald telling stories about my pathetic life. When I wake, a shiver
runs through me, but I get up and go about my chores. As I stoke the fire, I watch my little goat working hard to break the thin sheet of ice on the water bucket. Afterwards he comes and nuzzles my hand for food. Sadly, I have nothing to feed him. There is only my skin for salt. That afternoon when Thorvard brings up the need to ration food, Brúsi lets out a long, noisy bleat that startles me.

  We pass a rule that until the weakened sun passes noon and the shadows begin to lengthen on the walls, we cannot eat. Feeling desperate, I petition the gods, but they fail to help. A few days later as I am carrying a bucket full of snow inside to melt, I overhear two Norsemen speaking quietly amongst themselves in the dark back corner of the longhouse.

  “The animals are growing lean and weak. Have you seen the cattle’s bones?”

  “Gudrun tells me the chickens are no longer laying eggs.”

  “The chieftain ain’t gonna be pleased when you tell him that. Soon we’ll be forced to eat his horses if we can’t get us meat.”

  My thoughts swirl into dust devils of despair. When they finally spot me standing half-hidden behind a barrel, they offer an apology for speaking about my husband behind his back. I wave them off, but I understand beyond all doubt that the situation is very dire. I can only pray that we won’t be forced to boil hides for soup to fend off starvation. Fie! Eating hide-soup would be ludicrous. Surely it won’t come to that.

  As soon as the snow stops, Thorvard organizes another hunting party to go out in search of meat. The huntsmen leave at dawn. By early afternoon when the shadows begin to snake up the wattled walls, I fear that the men are lost – or worse, that they lie frozen and buried in a bank of snow.

  Outside it is deathly quiet, deathly cold. I am so vexed that I make a sacrificial offering to Thor, hoping that he will protect the men from the winter hunting god, Skaði. I place the offering – a piece of my hair cut from the forelock – on the hørg and lie prostrate in front of it. The altar of heaped stones has not been used in many days because there has been nothing to sacrifice – no remaining sheaves of wheat, no she-goats for the offering.

  “Hail to thee, defender of us all. We humbly ask that you protect us from the frost giant’s döttir, she who hunts on skis. Mighty Thor, hasten to help us. Give our hunters strength to bring home meat. With blithe eyes look on us and prevent the god of winter from robbing our hunters of victory. Help them so they don’t freeze to death in the snow. Make them victorious in the hunt and help them return to us by nightfall.”

  After that we wait in silence, stoking the peat fire when it burns low. The room grows cold as darkness falls. When we finally hear a barrage of muffled voices at the door, I quickly stand. The sound comes again. Soon after, the huntsmen stumble inside, bringing with them a rush of cold air that slithers up my skirt. Their beards and moustaches are covered in thick white frost. Their leggings are frozen hard and dusted over with matted snow that clings to their hides in clumps.

  “We didn’t find any caribou,” wheezes Thorsen, a large barrel-chested man. He drags himself closer to the fire as the melting snow slips off his furs.

  “No meat again?” Thorvard grouches as he struggles up from his trading desk. In silence, he limps across the flagstone floor.

  “The daylight was too meagre. We could barely see,” Thorsen replies as a puff of steam billows from his tunic.

  “Are any of you fisherfolk? When you couldn’t find game, could you not have tried your hand at fishing?” Thorvard bellows irritably. Wincing, I pull back into the shadows.

  “It was impossible to crack the ice,” Ymir, a tall, lanky huntsman, mumbles as he pulls off his coat. “I broke the tip of my harpoon trying.” His voice sounds tired and almost hoarse. He glances at Thorvard. I hold my breath.

  Hild, a Norsewoman whom I hardly know, is standing beside me and she leans in closely with her baby screaming at her breast. “We’ll starve to death if they keep returning empty-handed,” she whispers as she rocks her child back and forth. Ignoring her, I study the men standing around the fire.

  “It was hard to break a path through all that snow, but we labored hard until Gulbrand’s snow blindness made us all turn back. He is lucky we didn’t leave him stranded in a snowbank,” Thorsen says. He thrusts his hands towards the fire for warmth. When I see his red fingers, I glance at my husband.

  “The next man who brings back meat will be greatly rewarded,” Thorvard announces as he wipes his nose across his hides. His eyes narrow into slits. “There again, the next man who returns here empty-handed will be punished. We can’t afford to fail at this. I expected someone to bring back meat.”

  Hearing the bite in his voice, I take another step backwards and unexpectedly bump into Einar’s chest. Éowyn and her children are huddled on a bed platform looking hungry. One of her girls throws me a toothless smile.

  “The gods have truly abandoned us,” Einar mutters in my ear. “The flax is gone, only a handful of dried fish is left, and there is no more seal blubber in the pot.”

  “The gods are fickle,” I respond.

  “They don’t like something in this longhouse, I’m sure of it. Why else would we be cursed?”

  “Einar, I beg of you,” Éowyn whispers to his back. “The gods will certainly hear your words and double-cross us just for spite. It is better to hold out hope than to blame the gods.”

  I crank my neck. “He didn’t blame the gods.”

  She drops her eyes. “He always does,” she simply says.

  One week later, Einar finds Thorsen lying frozen in the far corner of the yard. We figure that he came out of the byre when the visibility was poor and lost his way in the blowing snow. Poor Thorsen. Reflecting on the futility of life and on the stupid ways in which men die, I can’t help but thank the gods for one less mouth to feed.

  Burying my face in Brúsi’s coat, I take comfort in the way the bristles tickle me. Then I scratch his little head. He responds by licking me.

  “We’ll wrap his body and store it behind the shed,” Thorvard tells his kin. “When the spring thaw comes, we can send Thorsen off to the next life by pushing his body out to sea on a burial barge.”

  Just then, his voice cracks, and a sob escapes, and Brúsi crawls into my lap and tries to nibble at my hair.

  Nothing is better than having a little goat. Nothing.

  A few weeks later when we run out of food, Thorvard makes the decision to slaughter some of the livestock in the byre. The meat is stringy and tasteless because the animals have gone hungry for far too long, but at least we eat. As I am sucking the last of the gristle off the bones, I can’t stop worrying about everything.

  When the next hunting party returns empty-handed, Thorvard is livid. He throws an axe and narrowly misses hitting Einar’s child. Ivor tries to calm him down while I stand in the doorway to the women’s room, feeling sick. Eying Thorvard, I take a breath.

  “I’ve walked the hills in summer. I know where to find bull caribou. I could go out hunting. I could bring back food.” The men shoot me a waspish look before they start muttering.

  “She is capable,” Ivor announces. I catch a whiff of smoke radiating off his grimy furs. “Thorvard’s woman has a damn good eye. She can shoot an arrow twice as far as the rest of you.”

  Thorvard spits a wad of phlegm between his boots. “Truly, Ivor, do you believe that my wife is trustworthy enough to go out hunting with all these men? Is she good enough to score a kill?”

  “Your wife possesses good hunting skills. If it were me, I’d let her go.”

  “Your tongue drips too much flattery,” Thorvard chastises. He turns to me, and my back goes stiff. “Wife, I’ll give permission just this once, but only because your trainer speaks so highly of you.”

  I bow my head and bite my tongue and hate myself for being so weak in Thorvard’s presence.

  “You can take my crossbow when you go,” Ivor says as he reaches out to stop me with his arm.

  “I will find us meat, I promise you.” My husband is staring at the two of u
s. Lifting my chin, I square my shoulders and stand up tall and glare at him. Then slowly, I take a breath. “Ivor, you should come with us,” I boldly say.

  “Freydis, be off with you,” Thorvard orders in his harshest voice.

  “Husband, if I could be so bold—”

  “Freydis, I thought we had an understanding. Did my commission bid you to forget yourself? Now, be off with you and leave us be. Ivor will stay right here with me. I need him in my counting room. I need him to help me because of my poor feet.”

  That night I barely sleep. I can’t stop thinking about how my husband makes me feel so troublesome. I am so wound up when I rise in the morning that I almost forget to say far vel to my little goat, who likes it when I scratch behind his soft little ears just before I go outside. As I am tying up my boots, Brúsi comes to me, trying to get underneath my arm to nibble at the leather drawstrings in my hands. Gently I push him back.

  “These leather tassels aren’t for you,” I whisper. When he looks up with his round, sober eyes, he releases another playful bleat. Laughing, I lean into him, knowing that my little goat has melted the ice around my heart and broken into that part of me that is not quite dead. I have survived this place because of him.

  Just before I slip outside, Brúsi scampers away with a spark of energy I do not possess. I watch him go before I pick myself up off the ground and retrieve my hunting spear. Soon after, all thoughts of Brúsi fade as I slip outside where I am met with a blast of cold that sucks the breath right out of me. Immediately, the snow starts eddying around my feet, and I hear the cry of the winter wind hissing in my ears as I stare into a sea of white. For as far as the eye can see, there is only frozen earth and ice-blue sky.

  We leave the yard on snowshoes, tracking through the ice-hardened snow that crunches underfoot, making our way to a stretch of open land. Along the way the frigid air burns my nose and sears my lungs, but I am grateful to be outside in the open air where I am free of Thorvard of Gardar.