The Voyage of Freydis

by Tamara Goranson

  After he leaves, Logatha and I sit around the fire and talk some more about the missing helmsman, about our fate, about all the comforts we so desperately miss. Despite the fire, the bugs are bad. A mosquito lands on me and I swat at it. When I look down, there is a streak of blood smeared across my palm. In the silence, the fire crackles and pops as Logatha adjusts her furs. Her face is a rosy glow in the firelight.

  “I am with child,” she murmurs softly. I am so pleased for her that my throat chokes up. Immediately I think of carving a protection rune for her on a whalebone I saw sitting on the beach.

  “Does Finnbogi know?” I manage with a smile. She nods her head. Unexpectedly, my eyes begin to tear and she reaches out to grab my hand. I squeeze it and feel her callouses.

  “These are early days, but we are blessed. Praise Freyja, the Great Mother, the Giving One! I never thought this day would come. Oh, Freydis, how I hope for a boy to carry on Finnbogi’s name.”

  “Finnbogi would like that very much,” I say with another wobbly smile, thinking back to when I myself was thick with child. I remember the kicks, the swollen nipples, the bone-wrenching pain. In the end I had nothing but scars from Thorvard’s fists.

  Logatha gently brings me back. She asks me questions about giving birth. I tell her how it was for me. I walk her through the long months ahead: the surprises, the hardships, and the pain.

  We talk like squawking geese, gobbling up each other’s story threads, until it grows late and the midnight sun sinks into the western sky. When the fire starts fizzling out, I gaze out across the glassy sea, grateful that the gods have brought us together, amazed that an Icelander and a Greenlander have been forged into friends.

  In the morning, the sun skips across the water, twinkling brightly in the cool breeze. Finnbogi and Helgi instruct their oarsmen to row us out to open waters, and Greenland fades into a misty haze of rocky outcrops, bleak mountain peaks, and glacier fjords. At first the bobbing of the ship is tolerable, but after endless hours of seeing nothing but greyish-blue water melding into the flat blue skies, I grow bored.

  For days we travel in favorable winds before catching sight of land. As the seagulls circle around the mast, the crew cheers wildly and I allow myself a crooked smile. There are hundreds of seabirds soaring over cliffs silhouetted black against the setting sun, a hazy orange-red orb reflected in the glassy sea. Finnbogi advises that we set down anchor for the night just offshore to avoid having to navigate the rocks when the crew is tired.

  That night I dream of red-faced skraelings capturing and burning me alive. I watch them eating my roasted flesh and crunching on my brittle bones, smiling at me with Thorvard’s face. I wake gasping. My throat is parched and my back is drenched in sweat. In the dim light cast from the rising sun yawning hazy shades of purplish pink along the horizon, I study the silhouetted forms of the sleeping Norsemen sprawled across the deck. Olaf Goðthjælpsen, the blacksmith, is keeping watch with his back to me. Ignoring him, I breathe in the smell of the ocean air to clear my head.

  Just as I am stretching widely to unkink the muscles in my legs, I hear an ethereal noise: a puff of air that bounces melodically across the sea followed by another bloated whoof that quickly fades into the quiet. Standing, I see nothing but an endless stretch of blue in the black pre-dawn light until I move to the gunwales and peer overboard. The ocean is so calm that I can see my reflection shimmying. For a long time, I stand peering across the water waiting to hear another swish of air. By the time it comes, the others are stirring.

  “Look, o’er yonder,” Logatha whispers. I see nothing. A moment later she points to a patch of sea that sparkles in the rising sun.

  “We are in whale feeding grounds,” I murmur breathlessly. Unknowingly, Olaf steps in front of me and blocks my view just as two of the gentle giants pop up to feed on krill. I wiggle underneath his arm and see them slip beneath the depths with their tails flicking water and curving gracefully, as if waving, right before they dive down deep.

  “They are so near to land,” Finnbogi mumbles from the helm.

  Again, we hear a deep, drawn-out puff of air that quickly fades into silence. It is so strange and mysterious that a shiver runs through me. A host of gods must be orchestrating this ocean concert for the mermaids and the selkies. Wildly I look around, searching for those seals in the water that can take on a human form, but I see nothing – just the water, the endless blue of it.

  “Not even the best cowhorn player can puff out air like that,” Logatha sighs as she comes up behind me and hooks herself into my arm for warmth. Silently we watch the whales pass by our ship. Their barnacled backs rise gracefully out of the water before they slip into the depths.

  When the sun finally breaks over the horizon, Finnbogi orders the crew to raise the anchor. It is a highly valued iron-bound wooden shank brought from Iceland with two large rings to accommodate the cable lines. Just as Birger tries to lift it up, one of the lines breaks and the anchor drops.

  “You incompetent, short-witted fool!” Finnbogi yells.

  Birger struggles to hold onto the one good line, but his eyebrows arch and his eyes grow wide.

  “Turkeys have more brains than you,” Finnbogi spits as he pushes past a group of stunned Norseman so that he can get to Birger. His tone commands authority and I pull back instinctively. Amidst the commotion on the deck, my eyes find Logatha. Her face is white.

  “Swine’s piss! Pull it up!” Finnbogi continues in a rage. “Call on Thor for strength and use your muscles, man! Haul it up before the anchor sinks!”

  “If we yank on it, the remaining line will snap,” some lippy sailor shouts over many heads. Finnbogi’s face turns wild.

  “Are you blind as bats? We need that anchor back right now, you flittering moths. If that anchor sinks, it will be lost forever in Njörd’s underworld. By Óðinn’s beard, I won’t allow any sea god to rob me of that iron treasure. I need a volunteer to dive down deep and figure out where the line is snagged.”

  Logatha reaches for her husband’s arm but Finnbogi shrugs her off. His gesture guts me, and I am suddenly drinking poison and living through another of Thorvard’s fits, remembering that he struck me when his mood was black.

  “That anchor was not cheap to make,” Finnbogi rants as he grabs a coil of hemp rope with his other hand. He cusses loudly as a sudden breeze rips alongside the hull. I jump, feeling startled and disoriented.

  “I need someone strong to pull it up,” Finnbogi barks as he looks around.

  “I’ll dive for it,” Snorri the Greenlander says. Grinning widely, he pushes his way through the gathering crowd and marches over to the gunwale, and peers way down.

  “By Óðinn’s beard, the water will be very cold, but I haven’t had my morning swim yet,” he quips as he disrobes.

  In silence we watch him take the plunge. As the ripples from his entry point spread out, I find myself staring at the bubbles that dot the surface of the sea.

  For a long time, nothing happens. The water stills. The Norsemen freeze. An instant later, Finnbogi transfers his position on the line to another man and strips off his shirt to reveal a hairless chest, goose-pimpled in the freezing cold.

  “Gods’ bread, you can’t go too. It’s too dangerous,” Logatha groans as she tries to hold her husband back. Finnbogi will have none of it.

  Just then Snorri resurfaces, holding up the anchor with water sluicing down his hairy arms. The crew cheers and whistles, and Finnbogi laughs, but he gets distracted when Groa pushes past. After she wraps her shivering husband in a warm fur hide, someone gives him a drink of ale. He takes a gulp just as Finnbogi smacks him good-naturedly on the back.

  “The blasted thing almost fell, but I got it back,” Snorri says through chattering teeth with a steady stream of water dripping down his face.

  “You did it, man,” Finnbogi says, but he can’t stop grinning from ear to ear. Without waiting, the helmsman turns from us to go supervise the Norsemen who are working hard to reattach the line.
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  “I’ll make an offering to the gods when we arrive in Leifsbidur,” I say to Logatha. “I’ll thank them for making Snorri brave enough to make the dive.”

  She rubs her stomach. “I’m just glad that the sea god didn’t have it out for me. The ocean could have stolen everything. Truly, Snorri should be honored for his courage and his strength.”

  I release a bloated sigh. I had once hoped to marry such a man.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Fog fingers

  With the anchor raised, the ship is easy to turn around. Eventually we make our way towards the shore where the mountainous cliffs dwarf our ship. Finnbogi seems certain that we have arrived in Helluland, the place of rock that Leif so aptly named. He begins to look for a place to land as the longboat pitches in the ocean swells, but the rock walls are a barrier and there are large glaciers covering the highlands that spread out to sea.

  “Are you certain there is no estuary or beach that will comfortably hold the longboat’s keel?” Logatha asks from her barrel perch as I tilt my head back and look way up into the massive cliffs.

  “I can’t see one,” Finnbogi mutters as he scans the rockface up ahead. “In truth, it looks as though there is no land on this stone slab to explore.”

  Unless we climb a rôst or more into the sky, I grumble in my head.

  “For all we know this chunk of land marks the beginnings of bifröst. It is strange that this would be the site of that burning rainbow bridge that could lead us all from Midgard to Asgard. Me, I’d like to see where the gods reside,” Gunnar says to Egil, a Norseman with a missing tooth.

  “Too bad the cliffs are too high. We could climb and take a look,” Snorri says. For a moment the crew is quiet.

  “Óðinn’s Asgard is not a place for me quite yet,” Finnbogi announces in a booming voice that echoes against the jagged mountain scarp that flanks our ship.

  As the men stand around debating what to do, Logatha shivers. Sidling up to her, I wrap my arms around her shoulders to give her warmth.

  “I was hoping to get off this cursed longboat and stretch my legs,” she says as a yawn scoops up her words. “This little one inside of me does not like the sea. I feel so sick.”

  “The sickness eventually passes,” I say. Just ahead, the seabirds are swerving wildly in the wind.

  “Oh gods, I crave wild game that has been slowly smoked over an outdoor fire,” Logatha continues.

  “Me too,” I say. “I wish I could follow a moraine into some tarn where I could wash my feet.”

  The tinkle of Logatha’s soft laughter pings off the rocks. “Remember the hot pools?” she says longingly. The memories of Faðir’s farm come unbidden. I close my eyes.

  “I didn’t mean to upset you.” The waves are slapping against the strakes.

  “I’m thinking about Thorvard.”

  “He is not your husband anymore.”

  “Neinn, he will always be my husband. He is just not here.”

  “May Hlin, the goddess of protection, keep you safe.”

  “Hlin married a mortal man for love, renouncing her Aesir birthright and that of her sea mother Rán. I have never loved a man and I will never renounce my birthright. I am an Eiriksdöttir who is beginning to think that I am not in need of the gods. Worshiping them never seems to help.”

  Logatha is silent as she points to a bird’s nest stuffed into a crevice between two rock walls. “When we next hit landfall, I’ll offer sacrifice on your behalf,” she says.

  I turn my head away from her.

  “It is important not to anger them.”

  “May Finnbogi help us find a route that will lead us all to sandy shores,” I say carefully as I glance at her. “May you give birth to a healthy bairn who has Óðinn’s wisdom and the strength of Thor.”

  “I hope my bairn will be as loyal as his mother’s dearest friend,” Logatha announces to the air.

  From the bow, Finnbogi orders the oarsmen to stop rowing. A dense white mist is swirling around the ship and slinking across the riveted planks. I draw my mantle closed.

  “Stop the ship,” Finnbogi orders. A hush falls over the entire crew as we strain our eyes to look for blocks of ice with fragile dendritic arms floating past. The sea is too calm and flat, and the fog is making it hard to see. In front of me, two Norsemen are working to bail out water from the bilge.

  “Helgi,” Finnbogi calls when we are almost on top of the other helmsman’s stern. The fog is growing thicker, shrouding everything in mist.

  The two longboats pull alongside and in the fading light I catch a glimpse of Helgi’s face. He is a thin man, tall in stature like his brother, with a commanding voice.

  “Brother, if I could use my sword, I swear to you that the brewer of fog would meet his end.”

  “Helgi, you lack the power and the strength to fight against this killer of ships. You must go slowly,” Finnbogi replies, but he sounds agitated and he can’t stand still.

  The hair on my arms rises. I imagine hitting a tilted block of ice with creviced walls, a mountainous cliff of pure white ice. I know that the massive ice carvings can be larger than Helluland’s rocky cliffs. I’ve seen them from a distance.

  “Should we anchor here?” Finnbogi asks as the longboat bobs up and down in the gentle swells.

  “Not here. We are too close to the rocks, and the water seems to be very deep,” Helgi replies as he looks around.

  “The fog makes it difficult to determine what lies ahead,” Finnbogi frets.

  “I think we should keep going and see what the sea goddess has in store for us.”

  “I fear her ire. Just look at the fog closing in.”

  “Be strong, brother. We have been in situations like this before.”

  At that, Helgi moves back to his position at the helm and gives orders for his oarsmen to pull away. To my relief, Finnbogi is as cautious as he is vigilant. He is slow to follow Helgi’s longboat and he navigates the dangers of the sea like a seasoned sailor who has witnessed shipwrecks and handled fog.

  Helgi pushes on, and we soon lose sight of him. Then a shout from the watchmen warns us that there are rocks ahead.

  “There are too many dangers in the dark,” Logatha says in a worried voice as she joins Finnbogi at the helm. “By Óðinn’s eye, I think it might be too risky to carry on.”

  “Nonsense, woman. It seems like the mist is clearing, and Helgi has owl eyes.”

  The bitter cold rises up from the frigid sea and I shiver as the mist swirls around my feet. I look around and all I see is an ethereal world of white that swallows everything in sight. The fog is moving closer, looming for as far as the eye can see. Soon it will suffocate. I can just make out Logatha clinging to her husband’s arm.

  “These waters could be studded with turreted blocks of ice,” Logatha whines.

  “We can travel slowly,” Finnbogi reassures. “I will post lookouts through the night.”

  “The ocean has been known to sever brother from brother,” Logatha warns.

  “We could go back and try to find a place to land on that rock of an island called Helluland.”

  “I am not going back there,” Logatha mutters. “Gods’ bread, I don’t have a good feeling about all of this.”

  “Hush, woman,” Finnbogi pleads. He nods for me to come and take his wife away, and I step forwards and tug her gently on the arm.

  “Come,” I whisper as I watch my breath fog swirling in the mist. “Let Finnbogi do his work so he can guide us to safer waters.”

  For half the night we travel at a slow but steady pace under a curtain of heavy fog. When the mist finally lifts, I see the sea rising to meet the nighttime sky, black on black. There is no horizon, just a sea of twinkling stars reflected on the surface of the sea.

  Huddled next to Logatha for extra warmth, I listen to the water slipping off the heavy oars in the quiet stillness of a frigid night in the middle of the open ocean. Finnbogi has told us all to look for ice, but it is like looking for a giant’s grain of
salt sprinkled in a bowl of soup.

  Sometime in the wee hours of morning, I fall into a restless sleep and travel to another land of ice and fog, a place where only the frost giants live. I conjure the mist to hide me in a thick white veil, and for a moment all is quiet. Then, out of the stillness, I register the sound of panicked men.

  “Bring to! Bring to! Heave astern!”

  Groggily I stir awake just as the lookout blasts his cowhorn. Instantly, the men spring up. There is ordered chaos on the deck.

  “Hard rudder to starboard!” a Norseman yells.

  “Avast! Avast!”

  “In Óðinn’s name, what is happening here?” I ask. Beside me, Logatha’s face looks white.

  “Helgi’s ship is bilged,” she says through quivering lips. “By the sounds of it, a large chunk of ice scraped against the wooden strakes beneath the waterline. Helgi’s lookouts failed to see it in the dark.”

  In the dim grey light that marks the coldest time before the break of dawn, I peer across the water and see the hazy outline of Helgi’s longboat stopped directly in front of us.

  “Bear away! Bear away, boys!” Finnbogi shouts. “We don’t want to gain the wind on her.”

  The oarsmen bring the ship up short. Ahead of us we see Helgi’s men silhouetted black against a lavender-colored sky at the break of dawn, trying to force their vessel to list to the starboard side. Then we hear their anxious shouts, their panicked voices, the baying of an agitated cow.

  “It sounds as though their sails are hanging sideways all fouled in the lines,” Gunnar says as he sidles up next to us.

  “I will row out to see what happened. Who will come?” Finnbogi asks. I help Logatha adjust her sealskins, then I grab her mittened hand.

  Finnbogi and Gunnar depart in a small rowboat while the rest of us return to worrying. We hear panicked bleats and bellows, shouts and groans, the splash of a heavy barrel thrown overboard. Impatiently we wait for someone to bring us news. In the pre-dawn light, I lean over the gunwales, but the other ship is too far away and it is still not light enough to make out anything clearly. When I turn back, Logatha is staring out across the sea.