Odin’s Child (20 page)

Hogni was coming too fast to stop himself. He went up and came down on his back. The axe flew out of his hands. I picked it up and split his head.

Taking my sword back from Kalf—and praying that my legs would hold me up just a little longer—I walked to where Stig stood and leveled the point at his breast.

“Is this hand steady enough for you, Steersman?”

With an eye on his distant horizon, he allowed that it seemed pretty steady.

“You're a good man, Stig. I want you with me. But by the Raven, you'll take orders from me or you'll take a long walk with the Lapps come winter.”

Of course, it was all bluff. The ship and crew were his, if he wanted them. He knew that. But somehow I didn't think he would do it.

He looked me up and down, then held my sword point lightly between his thumb and forefinger and drew it away from his heart. “Odd Tangle-Hair, I don't know what all that was about back in the fog—and I don't want to. But anyone that can be house-burnt, haunted, brain-sick, and beaten as you have been and still talk so bold is a tough man or a lucky one. Maybe a little of that luck will rub off on me, for I've never had much of my own. I'll take your orders, Captain.”

“Starkad, Brodd, Stuf, and Otkel?” I looked at each in turn.

“Let old quarrels lie and we're your men,” they answered all together.

Such are my countrymen. You can be a raving lunatic, but be a fighter and they will follow you cheerfully to the gates of Hel.

†

We stayed on a few more days with the Lapps. They were shrewd traders and wheedled most of our cloth away from us. It was a poor Lapp who couldn't wear a blue coat and leggings now. But we did well out of it, too, and gathered a haul of bear and marten skins that would bring a handsome price on the quays of Nidaros.

Meanwhile, I found time to study our hosts. It astonished me to learn that there were people in the world with ways so different from our own. In fact, this was the beginning for me, I think, of that lust to see and to know that has dragged me over half the earth.

We were invited to sleep with them in their huts, which, even with the stench, seemed preferable to camping out on the stony beach. I elected to stay in Nunna's hut, which he occupied with his two aged parents, his little black-haired wife, his three sons and two daughters, and his kennel of half-starved curs. Added to this mob was an unending stream of visitors who marched in uninvited at all hours of the day just to sit and stare at me.

My host grumbled that he must soon build a bigger hut but in fact, he loved the celebrity, although he was kept in a fever preparing food for us all. I say
he
because among the Lapps it is the man who cooks—this task being thought too important to entrust to women—and they keep their provisions, along with their fetishes, in the sacred part of the hut where no woman ever goes.

While Nunna cooked and fussed, his wife and daughters made it their task to fashion a pair of leather boots for me. They make their boots large and loose and stuff them for warmth with handfuls of springy moss. Once a year a Lapp takes off his boots and replaces the moss.

Nunna's eldest daughter, a girl of fifteen or so named Risten, was tracing around my feet, which are pretty large, with a stick of charcoal. She said something in their twittering tongue that sent everyone in the room into peals of laughter. Her father explained: “She only wishes to know if what she can't see is as large of its kind as what she can—excuse her rudeness.” Then he looked thoughtful for a moment. “You may, if it pleases you,” he said, “allow her to find out.”

Handsomely offered, I thought. And at the first opportunity, I did. She had a pretty face, round and shiny as a penny, a trim little body, and no modesty. We spent that night together under the furs while everyone around us kept up a steady, loud, and unconvincing rumble of snores.

And the next morning when we gathered for breakfast, the girl was fairly bursting with jolly conversation, which the others greeted with gasps and clucks and smiles. Her papa, especially, kept giving me large and encouraging winks and speculating on the likelihood that I had gotten his daughter with child, until it began to dawn upon me that his whole design—good stock-breeder that he was—was to become the grandfather of a giant. Well, I wasn't one to complain.

“Not that you are so very tall,” he mused, “not like some of the others.”

“Ah, but my mother's people, friend Nunna, are extraordinarily bulky—like pine trees, like mountains. Of course, you understand that nothing so large as that can be conceived in a single night.”

He understood perfectly. Could I exert myself again? He would vouch for his daughter. I thought perhaps I could.

Visitors had arrived already to share our breakfast and to gawk—and the girl was happily launched on her second recitation of the morning—when Nunna and his sons got up to go about their chores.

We walked together up into the foothills beyond the camp where, as far as the eye could see in every direction, reindeer grazed.

Reindeer are a Lapp's pride and his wealth. A rich man like Nunna might own hundreds of animals. I watched as his dogs dashed into the herd to cut out particular animals and drive them towards us. His purpose today was to castrate some of his bucks.

“It is coming time for the trek,” he remarked, coiling his lasso and measuring the distance with his eye.

“How far will you go?”

“Oh, many horizons up into the mountains. You are lucky, you know, that you found us this summer. I fear the old noaidi will not live through one more trek. Even for the young it is very hard.”

He flicked his wrist. The lasso snaked out and dropped over the rack of a young buck. The animal jumped, snapping the sealskin rope taut, and Nunna dug in his heels. Quickly, his two biggest boys wrestled it to the ground and held it down with its hind legs spread apart.

“For the old folks,” he continued, coiling up his rope again, “a time comes when they cannot keep up with the herd anymore.”

“I suppose you must leave them to their fate, then?”

He had just buried his face between the buck's legs, put its testicles in his mouth, and bit. With a squeal the animal regained its feet and shot
back to the herd. Nunna raised his head and regarded me with a look of pure horror.

“Leave them?
Leave them
! Do you take us for savages?”

I searched for words to apologize.

“Of course we do not leave them. No, no, no. It is like this: the children and grandchildren bundle the old one into a sledge at the top of a precipice. Everyone says goodbye—and they push. In a moment, spirit and body are parted. It is a fine thing to see. And in the case of a great noaidi like ours, the spirit will dwell in the Sacred Mountains with those of other sorcerers who have gone before. One day, when we beat the drum to call the Mountain Men, his spirit will be among them and, being dead, he will be even wiser than he is now.”

While we talked, the boys had caught another buck.

“
Leave
them,” Nunna muttered, still shaking his head, and knelt once again to his work.

†

My crewmen's adventures, each entertained by a different family, had been quite as interesting as my own. Stig had impregnated four daughters in a single night—or so he boasted, and Kalf was obliged to visit several huts on successive days where they hoped to breed his long, runner's legs to their stock. Still, after a week had gone by, we were growing restless.

“Let us leave this place,” grumbled Brodd, “where the mosquitoes are as big as hummingbirds, no beer is brewed, and you can't tell the women from the reindeer by smell alone.”

That evening I told Nunna we were going.

“Yes, my friend, quite right. We will soon break camp ourselves. Time to be off, time to be off.”

From this I gathered that our appetites were beginning to make a dent in the Lapps' provisions, and they were now confident that the spring would bring them a crop of grandsons as tall as trees.

The weather had been holding fair, with only a little early morning mist each day. Still, Nunna pressed me to make a sacrifice, in the Lapp fashion, for a good wind.

The next morning, he chose two white male reindeer out of his herd and we led them into the center of the camp where stood a low platform
of rough planks. There sat Nunna's gods: two squat stumps of birch with sticks for arms and nothing much for faces.

“Wind Man and Thunder Man,” he explained. “Thunder Man holds his hammer, you see,”—he pointed to a cudgel tied to one of the stick arms—“just like your Thor, yes? And Wind Man has his shovel for serving out the winds, and his club for beating them back again. Oh, they are rough fellows, these gods,” Nunna laughed. “They roar and bluster. But feed them well and they will be your friends.”

My crew, seeing what we were up to, gathered round—some with uneasy looks.

“You'll do as you like, Odd Thorvaldsson,” young Otkel said, screwing up his courage, “but I'm not going to stay where devils are. I wasn't brought up to it, like you.” And he retreated a few steps to what seemed like a safe distance.

“Boys,” I said, “you may call on the White Christ as much as you like and Nunna here won't mind a bit, will you, Nunna?” He shook his head vigorously. “But let's not be quick to slight these wooden friends of his. Take help where it's offered, say I. And for that matter, I recall a few voices calling on Thor when the storm was like to have sunk us.”

There were guilty smiles all around at this.

“Otkel was one,” brayed Stuf treacherously. “I heard him. Don't you deny it now, it's true.”

“T'ain't,” muttered his cousin, kicking at a stone. But having gone too far to back down, he turned and marched down to the seashore.

The others stayed. Stuf and Starkad, who were Christmen, crossed themselves hurriedly. Bald Brodd, who was heathen and didn't care who knew it, glared at them. Stig, to whom all religions were equally uninteresting, gazed at us with faint amusement.

“Brother of mine,” I called to Kalf. He stood not far away, his eyes fixed on the ground. “You'll lend a hand, won't you? Brother? Ho, Kalf, d'you hear me?”

“Aye, brother” he answered in a loud voice that sounded unnatural in him. “Give me the knife quickly. Where do I cut?”

Kalf, my loyal friend, my sworn brother. Kalf, who always swore by the old gods just to please me—why were his movements awkward and his features strained? I felt the beginning of anger stir, but the next moment he seemed himself again, and I dismissed it from my mind.

Following Nunna's instructions, we stabbed the two beasts to the heart, making sure that plenty of blood splashed over the idols. Then we worked over them for half an hour. From each one we took the muzzle, an eye, an ear, the brains, a lung, the prick, and a bit of meat from every part of its body. These were for the gods. The rest of the meat would be cooked and eaten. When we had finished, Nunna placed the bones in a bark coffin, poured blood over them and buried them. He gave me a satisfied smile.

And I? What did I feel? The truth is, I felt self-conscious, like an actor in one of those plays the Greeks love so much—wearing another's face, speaking another's words. My father had sacrificed to Thor long ago. He would have pierced some animal's heart, felt its blood run over his hands, uttered a prayer. For him it was simple. He knew, he
knew
Thor heard him and was glad of it. But I, for all that I called myself a ‘heathen', had never sacrificed. How could I, when every temple, every image of the gods had been erased from our land before I was born? I
wanted
to believe. Nunna's Thunder Man was surely Thor by a different name. But where was he? Could I feel his presence truly? Or Odin's, or any of them? Or was it only a hope, a wish?

†

That day we sat all together on the beach and feasted on venison and blood gruel. Kalf struck up a tune on his whistle, and then the Lapps, seated in a circle, chanted their songs, just as they had done in the noaidi's hut.

From time to time I looked around for the Ancient. I had not seen him since that first day.

“He sleeps,” said Nunna. “He sends his spirit here and there, he dreams for us. Let him be.”

“I won't forget him.”

“No indeed, my friend, you will not.”

Nunna's daughter stepped forward and shyly handed me my new-finished boots. She patted her belly and smiled.

“The old women say it will be a boy,” said her father. “What shall we call him?”

I thought a bit. “Call him Suttung, for he was a famous giant.”

“Ah.”

“Feed him on meat and milk, beat him if he's lazy, make him tough and shrewd as you are. Here. Here is the axe I killed Hogni with. Give it to him when he's big enough to swing it, and tell him he's an Icelander's son.”

Well, I was young and this was my first bastard. With the next one … and the next, you stop giving away weapons. I only hope little Suttung didn't turn out the runt of the litter.

When the tide ebbed, we said goodbye and sailed away.

Wind Man and Thunder Man, as Nunna promised, played us fair. I never thought to ask him who their war god was. I would soon wish that I had sacrificed to him, too.

“Strange,” said Stig, scratching his bristly chin. “Damned peculiar.” He had just come aft to where I stood at the tiller.

“Eh, Steersman?” I barely heard him, I was so excited.

We had been fifteen days at sea since leaving the country of the Lapps, following the coast southwards to Trondheimfjord. I had taken the helm all the way, even to working us through the tricky entrance to the fjord, with Stig calling directions from the bow. I was beginning to be the master of that little tiller-stick. Stig said he'd soon have nothing more to teach me.

The sun was high in a cloudless sky as we glided, silent and solitary, up the great fjord which reaches like a crooked finger deep into the Norwegian land. The wooded hills that rose sheer on either side of us tinted the glassy surface of the water with their reflected color.