The Long Ships (76 page)

Away on their right hand, beyond the woods, there lay open grassland. Across it the hounds were running, driving before them a great herd of cattle, but cattle such as few of the men had seen before.

Suddenly one of Toke’s men cried: “The wild ox! They are driving the wild ox!”

The hounds seemed to have taken it into their heads that these beasts belonged to their herd and were to be driven home with the rest. They spared no efforts to see that none escaped, and from the hill the men could see how they fought with the more obstinate animals to drive them along with the others. The wild oxen resented this treatment, and their bellowing could be heard even above the baying of the hounds; but at last all but a few ceased their resistance, and the herd disappeared southwards into the wooded hills, with the hounds still gamboling behind and about them.

Realizing there was nothing they could do to stop them, the men proceeded on their way, driving the tame cattle themselves. Toke’s men, who knew the ways of wild oxen, said that sometimes, in the beginning of winter, they came down from West Guteland to pasture in Tyr’s Meadows. While they grazed on the war-god’s land, they were held by old folk to be under his protection and so were never disturbed there. In former times, as was well known, they had been far more numerous in these parts, but nowadays they were only to be seen in Tyr’s Meadows, and that but seldom.

They found traces of the wild oxen’s flight in the country east of the Kraka Stone; but in the dense forests farther south, it was clear that the hounds had found their task beyond them, for the tracks of the herd showed it to have diminished in strength mile by mile. They had, nevertheless, succeeded in keeping some of them together; and when Orm reached home, he learned that the hounds had arrived there driving two bulls, five cows, and a number of calves. The men had done their best to halt them, but had been unable to do so; and when the hounds saw the beasts proceeding into the country beyond their home, they appeared to have felt that they had done enough for honor and went to their food-troughs, very weary and sore-footed.

After this, wild oxen were seen in various parts of the forest country, and no event for many a year past had aroused so much amazement as their reappearance. Now that, with their own eyes, they had seen wild oxen in their district, anything, men said, could happen; and they all reminded one another of the old saying that no king would ever be seen among them until the wild oxen returned to the land. Wise ancients shook their heads and warned their neighbors to prepare for the worst and to keep their bows and spears ready to hand. Some baptized persons thought that Christ would come to Göinge in a great wagon drawn by wild oxen; but few men agreed with them in this surmise. Most took it to mean that King Sven would march against them; and when certain tidings came that he had died in England, black in the face with anger at the stubbornness of the people there, there was such rejoicing in Göinge that all the ale was drunk up, and men sat hoarse and thirsty at their tables with nothing save milk to fill their cups with.

But such as lived long enough saw the old saying fulfilled, when Canute Svensson the Mighty, King of Denmark and England, sailed to the estuary with the greatest fleet that any man had ever seen or heard tell of, and fought with the Kings of Sweden and Norway on the waters of the Holy River.

    And this is the end of the story of Orm Tostesson and his luck. He fared forth no more on voyages or campaigns; but his affairs prospered and he aged contentedly. The only thing he found to complain of was an ache in his back which sometimes troubled him, and which even Father Willibald was not always able to dispel.

Olof Summerbird wedded Ludmilla. They lived happily together, though it was rumored that he had not fully as great a say in the management of his house as he had been wont to have. Spof besought Torgunn many times to marry him. At first she refused, finding him short of limb and gray of beard; but when at last he threw caution aside and revealed to her what his belt contained, she found herself no longer able to resist his prayers. They sailed to Gotland, in the ship that lay in the shed by the estuary; and with them, in the same ship, sailed Blackhair, Glad Ulf, and Sone’s seven sons, upon a longer voyage. They took two of the hounds with them, to fulfil the promise they had made to Felimid, and stayed away for seven years.

When they returned, Glad Ulf wedded Oddny, who had steadfastly refused to look at any other man. But Blackhair sailed to England, and in the battle on the Holy River he fought in King Canute’s own ship.

Toke Gray-Gullsson gained much pleasure from his chest of gold, and hung so many ornaments upon his wife and daughters that their clatter and jingle gave good warning of their approach whenever they went out in their best attire. He sold his house in Värend and built himself a larger one near Gröning. There he and Orm found much satisfaction in each other’s company, as did Ylva in Mirah’s, though neither Toke nor his woman ever allowed themselves to be baptized. In good time Orm’s youngest daughter was wedded to the eldest of Toke’s sons, their fathers having decided long ago that they were well suited to each other.

Both Orm and Toke lived to a ripe age without wearying of life; and never, until the day they died, did they tire of telling of the years when they had rowed the Caliph’s ship and served my lord Almansur.

THIS IS A NEW YORK REVIEW BOOK

PUBLISHED BY THE NEW YORK REVIEW OF BOOKS

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Copyright © 1954 by Frans G. Bengsston

Introduction copyright © 2010 by Michael Chabon

All rights reserved.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Bengtsson, Frans Gunnar, 1894–1954.

[Röde Orm. English]

The long ships / by Frans Gunnar Bengtsson; [translated from the Swedish by

Michael Meyer]

p. cm. — (New York Review Books classics)

Originally published: London: Harper Collins, 1954.

ISBN 978-1-59017-346-6 (alk. paper)

1. Vikings—Fiction. 2. Tenth century—Fiction. 3. Middle Ages—Fiction. I.

Meyer, Michael Leverson. II. Title.

PT9875.B43R613 2010

839.7'372—dc22

2009050090

eISBN 978-1-59017-416-6
v1.0

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