The Viking Saga Read online

  Grummoch did not answer, so great was his grief.

  Thorgeif said again, ‘Or if he fell into the boughs of a tree, they would save his life, perhaps.’

  Then Grummoch turned upon the man and swore at him, harshly, not meaning to hurt him, but too full of grief to hold his tongue. Then Thorgeif was silent, and ran with the sweat coursing down his face and his thin jaws set.

  And at last they found Harald Sigurdson, not on a bed of moss, or in the boughs of a tree, but on the toothed edge of a rock shoulder, lying like a broken doll, but still breathing.

  At his feet lay Heome, smiling but dead, the broken drum still about his neck, and the sword Peacegiver through him.

  Thorgeif said in his simple way, ‘Harald must have rammed this message home even as they fell. There was never such a fighter before.’

  Then Harald, from the rock from which Grummoch dared not try to move him, said in a whisper, ‘I have struck many shrewd blows, Thorgeif Rammson of Lakkesfjord, where the flax grows better than anywhere else in the Northland, but this was my masterpiece. It had to be done swiftly, or the wolf might have gone scot-free to trouble others.’

  Grummoch laved Harald’s head with water from the lake.

  ‘Lie easy, brother,’ he said, ‘and do not talk.’

  Harald smiled and nodded gently. But in a short while he whispered again, ‘That was a good blow, was it not, Grummoch? Did you ever see a better blow? And all done in the air! Where is Thorfinn? He should make a song about it. Where is Thorfinn?’

  While Thorgeif knelt down and began to weep, Grummoch told Harald that Thorfinn was in the woods, looking for a hare for dinner, though the words almost choked him to speak.

  Harald said, smiling, ‘He was always a great fellow for his stomach, that Thorfinn … I remember, out on the seal-skerries beyond Isafjord, one autumn … I remember … I remember …’

  But Harald Sigurdson did not say what he remembered, for those things suddenly seemed to be of little importance to him.

  Then, with the grave-faced red men about him, he whispered again at last, ‘Asa Thornsdaughter, and my two sons, Svend and Jaroslav, are waiting above the fjord to see Long Snake come in to haven, Grummoch. I have just seen them, and they send their dear love, my friend.’

  Now the giant Grummoch turned away his tangled tawny head and let the salt tears run as they pleased. He heard Harald say, ‘On the way home, let us pick up poor Havlock Ingolfson from the skerry. He will be mighty cold, Grummoch … mighty cold now, after a winter in the icy seas.’

  Old Gichita was carried on his litter to Harald’s side, and touched the Viking, with fingers as gentle as those of a woman, upon the ruined forehead.

  ‘Go easy, my son,’ he said, ‘you have nothing to fear. You are a man. The gods know that and wait for you.’

  And though he spoke in the red men’s tongue, Harald heard him and understood him and opened his eyes for the last time and said, ‘Red Father, I go easy and my hand is in the hand of my brother, Wawasha. He stands beside me now, smiling that we are together again.’

  Then Harald gave a little shiver and shook his head a time or two. At that moment, a skein of geese flew over the pine woods, the air whistling in their pinions.

  Harald’s voice came from far away and his eyes were closed now.

  ‘The Shield-maiden has come with her swans,’ he said. ‘Do you not hear them?’

  Grummoch bent over him and clasped his cold hand. Then all the braves bowed down their feathered heads as they passed the rock on which the Viking lay, in their last homage.

  And at last, when it seemed that the world had stopped in its courses through the sky, Gichita lifted up his head and wiped his eyes.

  ‘The three of them shall go together,’ he said. ‘At last Heome shall be with warriors.’

  And so Long Snake was brought to shore by the braves, and her deck piled high with the resinous wood of the fir tree; and Harald was laid with his sword, Peacegiver, in his right hand, and with Wawasha on the one side of him and Heome on the other.

  In Wawasha’s hand the red men placed a war-axe; but Heome’s hands were still stiff and useless, even now, and they were forced to lay his axe upon his chest, beside the broken war-drum.

  As the sun was sinking below the far hills, the red men flung tarry torches among the dried wood, and then set Long Snake off on her voyage, with the wind of evening in her parched sail.

  She was twenty bowshots away when the red flames leaped the length of her mast and ate up the wood and the hide of the sail; she was thirty bowshots away when the flames ravened down to her waterline.

  And then, still flaring like a great furnace, Long Snake slipped below the surface of the lake, just as the distant sun fell from sight behind the hills.

  Thorgeif said softly to Grummoch, ‘I have sailed with Harald Sigurdson since he was a lad – by North Sea, White Sea and Middle Sea. But I never thought to see him sail away and leave me in a strange land, among foreign men.’

  Grummoch turned from the lake and put his great arm about Thorgeif’s shoulders.

  ‘We shall have each other to speak Norse to in the evening time,’ he said slowly. ‘A man must be thankful even for small mercies in this world.’

  Then, to cover their grief, they walked together, chanting an old feast-hall ditty from Jomsburg, about a man who put his arm round a bear in the darkness, thinking it was his sweetheart.

  But before they reached the bright fires of the Beothuk encampment, they were silent again. For a while there would be nothing worth saying. They knew that well enough.

  1911 Henry Treece is born 22 December at Wednesbury, Staffordshire. He goes to the high school there, and then wins a scholarship to Birmingham University

  1933 Graduates from Birmingham University after studying English, History and Spanish. During this time he begins writing poetry

  1934 Starts teaching English, working in several schools. When war breaks out, he joins the Royal Air Force and works in Bomber Command intelligence

  1939 Marries Mary Woodman and settles in Lincolnshire where he becomes a teacher at Barton-upon-Humber Grammar School

  1940 His first book of poetry is published by Faber and Faber, to be followed by four more

  1952 His first historical novel for adults, The Dark Island, is published

  1954 His first book for children, Legions of the Eagle, is published. Over the next twelve years he writes many children’s books, mostly historical novels set in times when people faced great changes in society

  1955 Viking’s Dawn, the first in the Viking Saga trilogy, is published

  1957 The Road to Miklagard, the second part of the trilogy, is published

  1959 Retires from teaching

  1960 Viking’s Sunset, the final part of the Viking trilogy, is published

  1966 Dies 10 June, aged fifty-four

  1967 The Dream-Time, his last novel for children is published posthumously, with a postscript by renowned children’s historical fiction writer, Rosemary Sutcliff

  Interesting Facts

  Henry Treece was good at boxing. He was the captain of one of the teams at his university.

  One of Henry Treece’s sons, Richard, played in several rock bands, including Help Yourself.

  Henry Treece did not like violence, and thought war was dreadful. However, he respected a brave fighter. In one of his books, a character says, ‘He wished that all people, the men and women and horses and owls and dogs could agree to speak the same words. Then all things would be easy, to speak and to be understood. Perhaps no one would fight then.’

  Over his lifetime, Henry Treece wrote and published more than seventy books of poetry and historical novels.

  Where Did the Story Come From?

  Henry Treece was very interested in poems and stories, and the Vikings were fine poets and storytellers. One source for The Viking Saga is the large body of literature the Vikings left us. These were first told orally, but in the thirteenth century, after the Latin a
lphabet had arrived in Scandinavia, Icelandic monks wrote them down.

  The sagas are long tales of heroes and their deeds. Egil’s Saga and Laxdaela Saga are famous examples. The Eddas are poetry and other literary forms. The story of the death of Balder, which Harald tells his Beothuk friends, comes from the Völuspà, the first of twenty-nine Eddic poems in the Codex Regius. This collection gives us the Norse story of the world, from the beginning until the twilight of the gods.

  As well as Viking sources, other people wrote about the Vikings. Ahmed ibn Fadlan was an Arab traveller and writer, who was sent on a diplomatic mission by the Caliph of Baghdad to the ruler of the Bulgars. He described the people he met, and gave a detailed and impressive account of a Viking ship burial and the cremation of a Russian chief on the banks of the Volga River in AD 922.

  There is a wealth of archaeologists’ finds from Scandinavia, Iceland and Greenland, and the Vikings also left their mark while travelling through Russia and down to what is Istanbul today. They traded – and fought – everywhere they went. Henry Treece would have been fascinated by the news of the discovery of a Viking settlement at L’Anse aux Meadows on the island of Newfoundland, Canada. The first major dig took place from 1961. It can be no coincidence that Harald Sigurdson and the crew of Long Snake landed in north-west Newfoundland, and met the Beothuks who lived there!

  Guess Who?

  A ‘Gnorre Nithing, you have given our ship her name. She shall be the Nameless. She shall wander as you have done, Gnorre, an outlaw of the seas. Perhaps all men’s hands will be against her, as they are against you. But though she may be nothing at her launching, she may prove to be something at her beaching when she returns. Then we will give her another name, you and I.’

  B ‘I have news that my grandmother in Orkney is anxious to talk to me. You see, she sent me on an errand to a neighbour in Ireland ten years ago, to borrow a dozen eggs that she needed, to make a pudding for my uncle, who is in bed with a bad Caledonian cold. I am afraid I was a bad lad, and forgot about the pudding and now my uncle is getting restive. So I must go back and tell my grandmother, in Iceland, that her neighbour in Ireland had stopped keeping hens.’

  C ‘You are real men, I can see that; and warriors, I can see that also, from the scars you bear. I observe, moreover, that you come from the north - by your accent and by your fondness for bears’ claw necklaces!’

  D ‘The language he speaks is the “first language”, as we call it; it is the tongue the first red men brought with them when they came, a thousand men’s lives ago, over the northern ice with their packs on their backs, to settle here in woodland and forest, in desert and by seashore.’

  E ‘If one could carry this great host back to the Northland, and set spears and real iron axes in their hands, what might one not do! The warlord who led such a host might conquer England, Frankland, Miklagard, Spain, oh, everywhere! Such a lord would be the greatest the world had ever known, brothers!’

  ANSWERS:

  A) Thorkell Fairhair

  B) Grummoch the giant

  C) Kristion

  D) Wawasha

  E) Harald Sigurdson

  Words Glorious Words!

  Here are some words and meanings from the story. You can also look them up in the dictionary or online for fuller explanations!

  Aeolian harp a musical instrument with strings that sound when the wind blows through them. Aeolus was the Greek god of the winds

  amphora a Greek container for liquid, with two handles

  bog oak wood that has been preserved in a peat bog. It is black, and very hard

  bruited spread about, in the sense of passing on news, gossip or rumour

  caulking filling up the seams in a boat or ship with waterproof material

  corselet armour that protects the body

  dhow a ship used by Arab sailors. It has a lateen rig – a triangular sale held at an angle of 45˚ to the mast

  dun a fortress or fortified place, a royal residence

  eke-name a nickname. ‘Eke’ means ‘also’

  flensing cutting up a whale or a seal

  gorget a piece of armour designed to protect the throat

  gunwale upper edge of a ship’s side

  gyve a shackle or fetter, particularly for the legs

  jarl a powerful chieftain, who owned land. Only the king had a higher rank

  Jomsvikings a group of Viking mercenaries, who would fight for anyone who could afford them

  Norns The giant goddesses who looked after the fates of men and gods. There were three Norns: Fate, Obligation and Being

  palsy a medical condition in which someone is paralysed and has fits of uncontrollable shaking

  pannikin a small cup

  ropewalk a long piece of ground where rope is made

  samite a silk fabric, sometimes with gold threads woven into it

  skirling making a noise like a bagpipe

  skerry a reef or a small rocky island

  Thing a public meeting of freemen in a particular area, sometimes a whole kingdom. Those attending discussed matters of importance. The Thing was also a court, when a jury would decide whether the accused should be fined or outlawed

  thrall a slave

  Ultima Thule the end of the world. ‘Ultima’ is Latin for ‘the last’, ‘furthest’

  Valhalla the hall of the slain. In Norse mythology, the souls of warriors who died in battle were taken to this hall, which belonged to the god Odin

  White Sea an inlet of the Barents Sea, on the north coast of Russia

  wolf’s head an outlaw, someone who should be hunted down like a wolf

  Quiz

  1 What was the name of the magician from Lapland who could raise the wind with a piece of string?

  a) Gnorre Nithing

  b) Bjorn

  c) Horic

  d) Sigurd

  2 Who was the farmer’s wife who helped Harald recover at her Orkney farmhouse?

  a) Astrid

  b) Asa

  c) Solvig

  d) Ada

  3 Where was the Nameless shipwrecked?

  a) Ronaldsay

  b) Leire’s Dun

  c) Dun Laoghaire

  d) Leth Cuinn

  4 In what kind of boat did Harald and his companions escape?

  a) a coracle

  b) a curragh

  c) a knörr

  d) a rowing boat

  5 Who was the prince with whom Harald sailed to Ireland?

  a) Arkill

  b) Thorkell

  c) Arnott

  d) Tarquin

  6 Who was the king whose treasure they wanted to raid?

  a) MacMiorog

  b) MacGillicuddy

  c) Macbeth

  d) MacIntosh

  7 What was the name of his town?

  a) Dundrum

  b) Dunedin

  c) Dun-an-oir

  d) Dun na mBarc

  8 What was the name of the town where Harald and his companions served as slaves?

  a) Jebel Tarik

  b) Jedburgh

  c) Jericho

  d) Djibouti

  9 What was the name of the Captain of the Guard in Miklagard?

  a) Kieran

  b) Kristopher

  c) Kyril

  d) Kristion

  10 Which empress did they serve?

  a) Irene

  b) Zoe

  c) Theodora

  d) Iris

  11 The men of which people captured Harald and Grummoch on their way home from Miklagard?

  a) Cossacks

  b) Wends

  c) Bulgars

  d) Kathars

  12 What was the name of the man Harald left on the skerry?

  a) Haakon Redeye

  b) Haakon Baconfat

  c) Knud Ulfson

  d) Havlock Ingolfsson

  13 Who were the people Harald met when he left Greenland and travelled west?

  a) the Algonkin

  b) the Abnaki

&nb
sp; c) the Beothuk

  d) the Oneida

  14 Who was killed with an arrow made from mistletoe?

  a) Loki

  b) Hoder

  c) Odin

  d) Balder

  15 What were Harald and his friends going to dig out of the ground by the great lake?

  a) iron

  b) red stone

  c) gold

  d) clay

  ANSWERS:

  1) c

  2) b

  3) b

  4) b

  5) a

  6) a

  7) c

  8) a

  9) d

  10) a

  11) d

  12) d

  13) c

  14) d

  15) b

  Walt Disney’s Cinderella and Alice in Wonderland are released in 1950 and 1951 respectively, and become huge hits.

  The Korean War begins in 1950 and continues until 1953. It starts as a civil war between North and South Korea, then develops into an international conflict between the democratic and communist powers of the US and the USSR. It becomes one of the most brutal wars ever fought.

  Climber Edmund Hillary and Sherpa mountaineer Tenzing Norgay scale Mount Everest and become the first to reach its summit on 29 May 1953.

  The coronation of Queen Elizabeth II takes place in 1953. In celebration, people are given extra food rations – four ounces of margarine and one extra pound of sugar.

  The polio vaccine is launched in 1955 and the world has been using it ever since.

  The first McDonald’s opens in Illinois, USA, in 1955.

  The Sound of Music opens on Broadway, New York, USA, in 1959.

  In 1960 the British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan gives the ‘Wind of Change’ speech in Cape Town, in which he announces his government’s intention to grant independence to the territories in South Africa currently under British rule.

  Make and Do

  The Short-twig – a Secret Code!

  When Vikings wrote things down, they used runes. These were designed to be scratched or cut or carved on wood or stone or metal. The alphabet was called the Futhark, after the first letters. There were several versions of this runic alphabet. The runes in use in Norway at the time of The Viking Saga were called ‘Short-twig’.