The Viking Saga Read online

  Jamsgar Havvarson said, ‘You make light of a serious matter. When I have a moment to spare, I shall challenge you to fight and shall cut off your head for those words.’

  Harald Sigurdson said, ‘If you fools don’t stop arguing, I shall fling you all overboard now, and let you swim home to Norway. Then you will see what a weak heart is like.’

  Gudbrod Gudbrodsson said, ‘It is all one to me. I can walk on the water, didn’t you hear? And so can Thorfinn Thorfinnson. We both learned to do it at the same time. We went to a school run by a Russian witch in a cave near the mouth of the Dnieper. We paid good money to learn the trick. I have often wondered when the chance to practise on real water would occur, for up to the present we have only been able to do it on dry land, though we know exactly what to do on water.’

  Harald went away then, for he knew that Norsemen would keep up this silly sort of talk for hours at a stretch, until they became so drunk with words that they would draw swords and hit each other, just to prove a point, or leap into the sea for a wager.

  5

  Haakon Redeye

  That night they slept again upon the ship, watching the fires burning high on the hilltops, afraid to go ashore lest such lawless men as they had already met surrounded them and killed them as they slept.

  They woke at early dawn-time to find Long Snake half full of brackish water, from a hole in her side which needed caulking.

  And as they lay, half-settled on a sandbank, filling that hole with rope strands and tarring it over, a longship swept out from behind them, down the inlet, and set course to the west.

  Seeing their plight, the ship came close to them, within an arrow-flight, and then Harald saw that Haakon Redeye was in the prow, smiling at them in mockery.

  ‘If I had more time,’ he said, ‘I would stay and help you, Sigurdson. But as it is I am behind time and must go on to visit my old grandmother who lives among the trolls. It is her birthday soon, and I have promised to take her a present. So you will forgive me, I am sure, if I do not stay to help!’

  His men lined the side of the longship, grinning above the shields, and waving in derision.

  Harald called out, ‘Stay and fight like a man. I will meet you on board your own ship, bringing only two men with me. But at least give me the chance of my revenge.’

  Haakon Redeye said, ‘No thank you, Sigurdson. I have no wish to be struck by such as you. I have just eaten my breakfast, and it would be a waste of good food to go and get killed now. Goodbye!’

  So Haakon’s longship passed away out of sight, while Harald and his men swore furiously, baling out the water and caulking the hole in Long Snake’s side.

  And when this was finished two hours later, a party went ashore and filled the empty beer barrels with fresh spring water, while others found a herd of sheep and took eight of them, having frightened away the shepherd boy by waving axes at him.

  So they struggled back to their ship with the casks and the carcasses, into which they rubbed salt immediately, so that the meat would stay reasonably fresh for the voyage they had to make now to the west.

  At last, when the sun was sinking and the tarred side seemed to keep out the water, Long Snake set forth again in the track of Haakon Redeye.

  And Harald said at sunset, ‘I don’t know where we are going, my comrades, but it would ill become such men as us to turn back now and become the laughing-stock of our women, when we are so close on the heels of the man who has done us such harm.’

  They all agreed, cold as they were; and so the chase went on.

  6

  Westering

  Ever afterwards, until it came for them to go through the oaken doorway into Valhalla, where the old warriors sat at the long table smiling and waiting for them, the men of Long Snake remembered their journey to the west like a bad black dream.

  Sometimes the deep green sea rose above them higher than a tall cliff face, then seemed to hang over them like a dark cloud before it thundered down on to them, smashing them to the boards, smiting the longship like a stick of wood in a waterfall, swirling it round and round again, until the creatures on board lost all sense of direction, all sense of the world, all sense of themselves.

  Then they might be in the clear again, rolling and bucking on the great tides, as though they ran some mad sledge race down dreamlike slopes of green death, baling half-dazed with the seawater in their rusty helmets, fighting a losing battle always against a sea that washed as it willed over their sides.

  In ten leagues they had lost their mast and sail. In twenty leagues they had lost all knowledge of their names. Speech would not come to their frozen lips. They moved like men in a deep trance that could only end in death.

  But by some miracle death did not come, yet.

  Again and again he threatened, opening his wide foamy jaws as though to munch up Long Snake. And then he withdrew …

  And once Harald saw Haakon Redeye’s longship, rolling far before them on a tide like the side of a green mountain, stumbling like a stallion with an arrow in its heart.

  But he told no one. Indeed, for a while he could not recall the name of the man who sailed in her, the man he had set forth to destroy. It was like that, in those days of the journey; men forgot what their task was, the object of their journey, the name of their blood-enemy …

  And then, when it seemed that even death would be better than such voyaging, the sky cleared and the white birds came down again over the rocking boat, and the tall seas grew smooth as glass for a time – a sheet of glass as broad as the world, as muscular as a giant’s flank.

  And one evening, towards dusk, Long Snake grated beside a skerry, a low heap of rocks set lonely in the vastness of the seas. Then every man who had the power of speech leapt ashore shouting, dragging at the ropes with feeble hands to bring the longship to anchor.

  And there, on that lonely skerry, with the darkness coming down over them like a grey cloak, the Vikings broke up a barrel and struck flint to iron and somehow made themselves a fire to sit about.

  In the depths of the oceans the men of the Long Snake sat on that tiny isle and tried to remember the names of the ten men they had lost in the days of storm-wrack. But before they could bring their brine-sodden brains to bear upon this business, the white birds came down upon them out of the darkness, sweeping them with their wings; and then a man screamed out, ‘To the ship! To the ship! This island is sinking!’

  Then they knew that the water was up to their knees, and then to their waists. They saw their fire swamped and the little skerry fall into blackness.

  And those who still had strength of arm and speed of mind struck out in the wild waves to where the longship wrestled with its ropes.

  That night five more men were lost, and over the creaking, leaking, battered longship the seabirds whirled and cried like mocking furies.

  Harald said, as he lay by the shield-wall, ‘It ill becomes any man to lead his fellows so far out into the hidden seas on so bootless a quest. Once again, Grummoch, I have done wrong.’

  Giant Grummoch sprawled, groaning in the scuppers, but turned his great matted head to say, ‘Harald Sigurdson, no man may see into the future. No man may choose his fate. His life egg is held in ghostly hands and is outside his reach.’

  But others, such as Gudbrod Gudbrodsson, muttered that in the old days it was the duty of a chieftain to let himself be sacrificed when his people fell on evil days. Another man, who lay beside him, said that Harald owed this to his henchmen, who had left their homes to sail with him on his voyage of revenge.

  Grummoch shouted above the rising wind to them, telling them that they had left no homes, since there were no homes to leave after Haakon’s visitation with fire; and that the revenge they sought was not Harald’s alone, but equally their own.

  The grumbling stopped then, and Grummoch crawled to the axe chest, where all the weapons were stowed away from the salt water, greased with mutton fat and wrapped about with cloths. He took from this chest his own axe, Death Ki
ss, which he held before him now and said, ‘I am oath-brother to Harald Sigurdson and it is both my duty and my right to stay by his side. Let any three of you come forward now and hold an axe conference with me to settle this argument.’

  But no one stirred, then or the next day. And the day after that, as Long Snake ran in among a shoal of rocky outcrops, they saw such a thing as took all thought of mutiny from their minds.

  Lolling lazily between two pointed rocks, the dark green weed already dragging about it, was the prow of a longship, its bow-post carved in the shape of a dragon’s head with teeth of walrus bone.

  Beside it on a rock lay an axe, already brown with salt-rust.

  Harald gazed over the side and said, ‘The man who burned my village has time a-plenty to consider his wickedness now.’

  As they ran past Haakon’s longship, Gudbrod Gudbrodsson said, ‘Mother Sea punished him, Harald; what more is left for us to do?’

  Harald said, ‘What can we do, but sit here in this ship, our helmets in our hands, to bale out water? Both sail and oars have gone now. Do you expect me to turn Long Snake about by magic and guide her back to our fjord?’

  As he spoke, a long low coastline jutted jagged over the green horizon, and a wind freshened and drove Long Snake onwards towards it.

  Harald said, ‘That is your answer, Gudbrod Gudbrodsson. We go where the Fates send us; and the Fates send us to a land no man has ever spoken of before.’

  And it was in this manner that Long Snake at last came to the land which men called Greenland in after years.

  7

  Innuit

  Long snake landed under the beetling crags in late Spring. By late summer the men who were left, thirty of them, had gathered driftwood from the swirling fjords and had made a new mast and new oars, clumsy but fit for use on the high seas by men whose hands were stronger than most.

  Out of stones and driftwood, turfs and the skins of whale, walrus and bear, they made their sleeping bags and hangings, for they were able men with the needle, and each man carried his own sewing case of deerhide filled with needles – of hard-wood, hare’s tooth, fishbone. It would ill become a Viking, they said, to have to go home to his wife every time his breeches needed patching!

  For food they ate what meat they could come by, even fox, though this did not please some of the younger warriors who had been brought up delicately on a diet of pig and sheep.

  Yet one day, in private council, Harald said to Grummoch, ‘This goes well enough for men who are born at the outer edge of the world; but I have noticed that a chill wind blows down from the north these last two mornings, and with it comes the smell of snow. Stay we here a month longer and I give it as my opinion that this fjord will become icebound, and what few roots and berries we can find will be hidden with a thick blanket of snow from our eyes and hands.’

  Grummoch said, ‘Last night I heard the howling of dogs, which I did not like. I went to the brow of the little hill, above the strange humped mounds, and saw a long line of dogs racing away to the west. Not the dogs of our country, but big round-bodied dogs, carrying much fur and running with their tails curled up, in a most undog-like manner.’

  ‘Running in lines?’ asked Harald Sigurdson, amazed.

  Grummoch nodded his great shaggy head. ‘In lines,’ he repeated. ‘As though they followed a leader. And I will tell you more, Harald oath-brother, though I beg you not to tell the others, lest they call me a madman and pelt me with bones; it seemed to me, in the moonlight, that these dogs ran with two-footed creatures, hardly men, but more like trolls.’

  Harald said, ‘Describe them, friend, for this is most interesting – more interesting than the lays which Thorfinn skald makes up about the fire at night:

  The brown snake glides the green hillocks,

  Seeking the red-eyed wolf;

  But, finding wolf rock-battered, makes

  Its resting-place above the weed-clogged fjord.

  That was his last one, meant to tell our story.’

  Grummoch snorted. ‘It is rubbish,’ he said. ‘I have known byre-boys to make better songs about the names of their cattle. In Orkney once, I heard a man sing this …’

  But Harald stopped him and said, ‘Another time, oath-brother. That song will wait, but your news must not grow cold. Tell me about the trolls who ran with the dogs last night.’

  Grummoch snorted a little, but put on a good face as a Viking should, though angry, and said, ‘You will not believe me when I tell you that these trolls seemed hardly taller than my waist, but as thick round as my own body. Their heads were great and round and covered with fur. They made no sound as they ran with the dogs. I think they carried spears, but I am not sure now.’

  Harald answered, ‘We have fought the men of Frankland and Spain, and also the men of Miklagard. We have outwitted the wild horsemen who ride along the Dnieper. It would ill become us to grow fearful of small trolls with furry heads who run with curly-tailed dogs in the moonlight, think you?’

  Grummoch said, ‘It depends on their numbers, and on the strength of their magic. However strong a Viking, he must not hope to struggle on if fifty trolls smother him. Nor can any man, Viking or not, as is shown in the saga of Olaf Skragge, lift axe against magic, if it is brewed and cast the right way. It is my counsel that we should lie with our swords at our sides by night, and that we should sleep with one ear open.’

  Harald laughed and said, ‘Man who sleeps not, fights not. If the trolls come, then we must take our chance; but we must not frighten ourselves to death, lying in wait for them. Look, friend, I counsel that tomorrow we begin to caulk Long Snake in readiness for a voyage back home, while the seas are still free of ice. Others can go hunting for meat so that we may feed well on the journey. Then, if we are lucky, we might sail before the wind changes and before the week is out. What say you?’

  Grummoch nodded. ‘We cannot sail too soon for some of the men. This daily diet of fish and snow-bear meat is making them unwell. Their skin is dry and flaking with the salt, and many of them have such boils on back and buttocks that they will not find the task of rowing a joyful one. Yes, let us go at the first chance.’

  When they went back to the men, they found them sitting about the fires, grumbling and wishing they could see their wives and children again.

  Thorfinn skald was standing in the firelight, chanting the latest song he had made, to amuse them:

  ‘Danish men have great big feet;

  Reindeer meat is good to eat;

  Irishmen have long red noses;

  What can equal the smell of roses?

  I have met a man who can

  Swallow the biggest cooking-pan;

  I have met a man who knows

  A man who knows

  A man who knows

  A white-eyed king with twenty toes,

  And on each toe a white-eyed cat –

  And what do you think of that?’

  Grummoch said, ‘I think very little, friend! Now listen to sense, my fellows. Our leader, Harald Sigurdson, has news that will interest you more than this stuff of Thorfinn’s cat!’

  So Harald sat by the fire and explained to the Vikings what his plan was, and they all agreed, though some who still bore the scars of their last voyage expressed the hope that this time things would go better.

  Thorfinn sulked in a corner, and the young ones called out, ‘Pussy! Pussy!’ to him, while others mewed like cats.

  It was while they all sat listening to Harald, and arguing among themselves, as shipmen always do before a voyage, that Grummoch suddenly looked up and gave a cry of surprise, pointing into the dusk.

  All men followed his finger and then they, too, gave cries of surprise, and their thoughts of voyaging faded to the backs of their minds as snow fades when the first sun of Spring breathes down upon the northern hills.

  Round them, just beyond the firelight, stood men – but such strange men that none of the Vikings had seen their like.

  They were as short as dwarfs and
their faces, ringed round with fur, were broad and flat and yellow. The eyes that they looked from were little more than slits in the skin of their faces, and their mouths were broad.

  Each one was round in the body and wore the skin of the white snow-bear. Each one carried a short lance tipped with narwhal bone, cruelly barbed.

  There were many of these men, perhaps a hundred, and behind them stood dogs, hundreds of dogs, all staring silent and green-eyed at the Vikings round the fire.

  Harald said, ‘Here are your trolls, Grummoch. I would like to see the hero who could take on this lot, even with his axe – and our weapons are all in the hut, where we cannot reach them easily.’

  Grummoch began to rise, lazily, saying, ‘I will go amongst them and kill a few dozen of them with my bare hands. Then perhaps they will go away.’

  But even as the giant got to his knees, six of the trolls stepped forward noiselessly, and levelled their harpoons at his breast, without speaking, without a change of expression on their flat, slit-eyed faces.

  Grummoch sat down again, thinking twice of his previous offer now.

  Then, at last, a wizened troll shuffled forward, his thick legs ragged with hare-skins and deerhide. He carried in his hand a club made of the jawbone of a narwhal, set with the tusk of a walrus so that the weapon looked most formidable.

  He went from Viking to Viking, gazing at each one carefully, as though he had not seen their like before.

  Close behind him walked four great dogs, with curly tails, and these creatures sniffed at every man the troll halted by.

  The Vikings did not move, but sat as still as stones. No one liked that war-club, or those sniffing dogs with fierce eyes and curly tails. But Harald signalled to them with his eyes to remain seated and not to offend the troll or his dogs.

  Then, at last, the old troll went back to his many followers and began to talk to them in a strange harsh voice, using many small words and waving his club at each pause.