by Henry Treece
Viking’s Dawn
Contents
About this Book
Map
1. The Hall by the Tarn
2. Thorkell Fairhair
3. The Crew-Choosing
4. The Ship-Naming
5. The Blood-Launching
6. Strange Happening
7. The Gulls’ Way
8. The First Prize
9. The Visitor
10. After the Feast
11. Harald’s Dream
12. A Ship and a Sword
13. Olaf’s Steading
14. The Nameless Sails Again
15. Leire’s Dun
16. Thorkell’s Peace
17. The Meeting of the Dreams
18. Leire’s Strongroom
19. The Awakening
20. Aun Doorback
21. The Nameless
22. The End of the Voyage
23. The Village by the Fjord
About this Book
This is the story of a voyage made by a shipload of Northmen about the year AD 780, before the regular Viking invasions on Britain began. In this book the word ‘Viking’ means ‘a sea-traveller,’ though it can also be taken to imply ‘a dweller along the wicks’, or fjords. ‘To go a-viking’, therefore, is to go on a voyage.
Who were the Northmen? It is perhaps wrong of us to think of them as being definitely Norsemen or Danes or Swedes or Finns or Lapps. At this stage in their history they had not fully developed those differences in nationality which they have today. Though, of course, there was some similarity, especially in their folk tales and myths. Horic’s wind-tying, and his trick with the beetle, both belong to Lapp folklore; while Thorkell’s tale about the Vikings who discussed the afterlife while waiting to be beheaded comes from a Norse saga.
What manner of men were these Northmen? They are often described as being bloodthirsty pirates and nothing else. Yet it is worth noting that when they had settled in this country they became some of its most law-abiding inhabitants. Moreover, their wonderful sagas show that their literature was a highly cultivated one; the splendid construction of their longships demonstrates their intelligence and ingenuity. No doubt they were fierce and reckless; yet it must be remembered that they had to face equally fierce and reckless enemies. Had the Vikings not possessed such qualities, they would not have left their enduring name on the pages of history as they have done.
But why did the Northmen suddenly decide to go a-viking, after centuries of quiet living? Historians have a number of answers to this question. Some say that the Scandinavian countries were becoming overpopulated and that the Vikings sought new homes. Yet it is a strange thing that, in the early stages at least, after making their raids, they then returned to their own homes. Other scholars say that the Vikings were some of the most independent Northmen, who wished to get away from the new centralized governments that were being set up at home. Still others put forward the theory that the Northmen were carrying on a great battle against Christianity, which was at last threatening to engulf them. Such experts see the Viking invasions as being ‘the last great effort of Odin to limit the dominion of Christ’. Yet, once again, it is worth noting that when they became Christians, the Vikings were only too anxious to spread their new faith, even to the extent of chopping off the heads of those who would not forsake Odin!
It is all a great enigma. Perhaps those historians who say that the Vikings sailed simply because the herring on which they fed had moved to other places are as near as anyone else in solving the problem. But what we do know without any doubt is that they did sail and, in sailing, created a great sea tradition which we British have inherited from them; for the blood of Aun and Harald and Thorkell runs in our veins too.
This book sets out to tell the story of one of the earliest voyages, not one of the great journeys, for it happens before the sea-rovers had a very clear idea of the broader world about them. Yet it was a pioneer voyage, and so full of unforeseen dangers. It is the tale of one longship, on one voyage.
In our world, when we are used to big aircraft making their daily trips across the Atlantic, month in and month out, we perhaps forget those early pioneers who flew ten miles – and then no more. We admire those prairie schooners that passed over the wide spaces, from one side of America to the other; but do we ever give a thought to those wagons – small worlds of wood and canvas to their occupants, like our longship – whose wheels and shafts lay, bleached like bones among the cactus in the cruel sunlight, after the Indians had fired them?
Nowadays, perhaps too many of us long for immediate glory. We ignore, and even despise, those who do not quite ‘make the grade’. Yet they are often the pioneers, because of whose hard efforts later adventurers find an easier success. Someone must set the ball rolling, whoever scores with it afterwards!
Have you ever seen the painting which shows an incident in the boyhood of Raleigh? In it an old sea dog is telling the boy about the adventures to be met with on the high seas. Young Raleigh sits, cross-legged and wide-eyed. The old sailorman passes on his experience to one who will make a more glorious use of it one day. But who was that old man?
Perhaps, when you have read this, you may see the importance of Thorkell and the many others who went to Valhalla. And perhaps you will understand Harald better. I hope so.
HENRY TREECE
1
The Hall by the Tarn
Two figures stood in the darkness, a man and a boy. Behind them the pine woods sighed, as though overcome by a great and unnameable sadness, the melancholy sound made by all ancient forests. As the round moon came from behind a bank of cloud, throwing its silver light over the rough and rocky land below, the two figures peered down into the valley beneath them, their heavy cloaks sweeping away from them in the night wind that blew towards them from the woods. A great white seabird circled above their heads, crying harshly and pitifully in the moonlight. They shuddered at the sound, looking up in dread. The man’s bearded lips moved silently, as though he spoke a charm against the witches of the night. The moon slowly withdrew behind the straggling cloudbank, and for a moment there was utter darkness once more.
Then suddenly, from the valley, came a surge of flame, a great red and orange spurting-up of light. A thick cloud of oily smoke rose above it, into the night air. A flock of birds flew, twittering up from the valley, to the woods. The two watchers drew in their breath as the many wings beat above them in the darkness.
Now the fire-glow spread and its angry light flared out over a black tarn nearby, so that the man and boy saw reflected in the sombre water every shape and hue of the flames.
The man licked his lips and said, ‘His hall burns well, son. When we laid the logs for him, I did not think we should see such a sending-off fire.’
The boy said, ‘Such a king as he does not deserve a funeral fire like that. A king who has no ship to take him to Odin is not worth following. Better a man should go a-viking for himself.’
The man looked angry for a space. Then he smiled and said, ‘It would go hard with us old ones if you young cocks ruled the world! Gudröd could not help being a poor man. There are too many kings in the land, lad; and not all of them can be rich men. My choice fell out badly, to pledge myself to a poor man, that is all. Yet, no doubt, Odin will receive Gudröd in Valhalla no less courteously because he sails there in a burning house than if he came in a longship!’
The boy frowned and said, ‘You served him too faithfully, Father. We should have left him before the famine came. When his corn failed, we should have gone to the coastwise Norse and lived off fish. The herring never fail.’
Now the fire had reached its height and began to slacken. The air about the two was filled with the smell of acrid smoke. Small burnt particles and ashes fell
about them. The man wiped his hand across his forehead. His gold arm-ring flashed in the glow. He said, ‘Who is to know? One day the herring might go away. Then what will the fishers do? They will have neither corn nor fish, Harald. How shall a Norseman live then, think you?’
‘He will live on his wits, as Odin meant him to, Father,’ said the boy. ‘There are other lands and other folk who have plenty. The Danes have plenty, so have the English. Or a man could voyage overland and take his bread from the Romans. There is no need to starve, Father.’
Now the blaze below them was sinking to a dull glow and the birds were flying back from the wood towards the tarn’s dark waters.
The man said, ‘Life is never sure, Harald. Whichever way a man turns, he thinks he might have done better to take the other path.’
The boy frowned and shut his eyes tight, as though squeezing the sudden tears from them. ‘If we had left Gudröd sooner, my mother and brothers might still be alive with us. They would not have died in the famine.’
The man made an impatient movement under his cloak, almost as though his hand would strike the boy, but he answered calmly, ‘Only Odin knows whether that is true, son. We might have lost them in a village-burning if we had gone to the coast. They might have been chosen as sacrifices when the fishing went badly. We do not know. At least, old Gudröd did not call for sacrifices. That much can be said for him.’
The boy’s voice was bitter. ‘No, he knew which side his bread was buttered. He had so few followers left that he could not afford to lay any of them on the stones. He might have had to do a hand’s turn himself, if he had done.’
The man turned away from him, impatiently. ‘Come, Harald,’ he said. ‘We will make the best of a bad job and find another lord to follow.’
They made their way towards the dark woods, and only once did they turn back to glance at the dying embers of Gudröd’s great hall. As the pine trees enfolded them the man said, ‘This way lies the fjord, if the beasts of the forest will let us pass.’
The boy said, ‘Better to become the bear’s supper than to remain the cow’s slave.’
The man smiled grimly, ‘Who shall say that but one who has found himself on the bear’s dish?’
They spoke no more as they pushed past the overhanging boughs and went into the deep darkness of the forest.
2
Thorkell Fairhair
The fjord was full of the noise of busy men. The very air seemed to vibrate as in a great open-air smithy. The clanging of anvil-blows, the hammering of planks, the buzzing of long two-handed saws echoed and re-echoed across the enclosed blue water. And all these sounds seemed to glance like flat stones over the surface of the sea-valley, to lose themselves up the farther rocky slopes and then in the great dim forests that crowned the rim of the inlet and stretched far away into the mountains, into the unknown frightening spaces of trolls and witches.
The little thatch and wooden settlement that straggled along the shore of the fjord throbbed with activity. Black-faced men in leather aprons worked the great ox-skin bellows to fan the flames of many outdoor furnaces; others beat out long iron nails on anvils that were gripped between their padded knees; yet others walked backwards down long rope-walks, twisting the harsh fibres in their raw hands. The women worked busily stitching, with thick waxed thread, or at the shuttles of their looms, which were set up outside the hovel doors so as to make the most of the new and welcome spring light. Children scurried back and forth, fetching and carrying for their sweating elders, sometimes a hammer, or a pail of ice-cold water to temper the iron, sometimes a roughly-cut hunk of barley bread or a pannikin of corn-wine.
All worked in that place, even the very old and the crippled. The ship they were building was not the toy of one man; it was the property of them all. And it was almost finished. Another day at the most would see it ready for the painters. Even the oldest ones, plaiting thongs, horny-handed in the shadow, saw new dreams of gold taking shape before their dim eyes. ‘Share and share alike,’ thought they. ‘To each his portion, and may she speed well and return laden before I make my greetings to Odin.’ This longship had been built by the whole village. Those who were skilled in shipbuilding had worked day by day, with an adze on the planks or walking backwards along the rope-walks. Those who had no such skill, or were too old to wield an axe or to ply a needle, had contributed in other ways, either by supplying food and drink to their more active neighbours, or by paying good money to shipwrights to come from afar … And all this, so that the ship should bring back profit to the village. These men did not think of glory, or even of adventure. They were practical men – as most northerners are – who wanted a good return for their labour or money. And the ship which they were creating would bring back those good returns, they hoped. This village had heard of the rich court of the Franks. They had seen the fine silks and the painted pictures that had come from Miklagard. And such English noblemen as had crossed the northern seas to them had worn gold about their necks and arms … The rest of the world must be very rich, they thought.
And so they built this longship, to relieve the rest of the world of some of its surplus riches. The village on the fjord could do with a little gold, and some silks. It would not even object to a few pictures – provided, of course, that the artist had used real gold leaf in painting them!
Among all these fjord folk, the longship lay on her runway like a royal thing, a proud princess whose slaves attended to her every want. A longship that would brave the harsh buffeting of the open seas, or out-trick the subtlest of rivers. A handsome shell in which a warrior king would feel proud to drift out on an ebb tide, the death-flames licking round him as he lay among his furs and his weapons and his hounds, on that last long journey to Odin’s feast hall.
Of clean and fresh-smelling oak, the longship was almost eighty feet long, from stem to stern, and sixteen feet broad at her middle. Standing over seven feet high from keel-bottom to gunwales, she dwarfed the many busy men who toiled about her on the stocks, even though as yet her forty-foot mast had not been stepped into its socket in the keel. They smiled at each other, satisfied with their work. If the good weather held, they would step the mast tomorrow, so that it would fall backwards quickly and easily when the forestay was eased off. And tomorrow, by the help of all the gods in the groves, they would fit the other ropes, the stays to prow and stern, those that braced the long yardarm, those that ran on pulleys to raise and lower the sail …
The foreman of the shipwrights wiped a rough and work-soiled hand over his red face. He turned to the apprentice lad who caulked the smart clinker-built planking of the sides.
‘Never was maiden more comely,’ he said. ‘Trust a horse before a hound, a hound before a lass – and a longship before them all!’ The boy grinned back at him. ‘Maybe you are right, Master Björn,’ he said. ‘But women can be useful at times! My aunt and my sisters have woven the sail for her, and a fine thing it is – all red and blue and green, in great stripes the thickness of a pine-trunk.’
‘Ay, and your mother has embroidered the pennant, hasn’t she, lad?’ said Björn, smiling.
The boy looked down, as though he knew not what to say. ‘Well, Master,’ he ventured at last, ‘she has edged it and put on its long golden fringe, but no one has told her what emblem to work on the white silk. It rests as unmarked as the snows on the Bear Mountain. We know not what name she shall carry.’
He glanced at Björn craftily, as though expecting his master to give him the answer. But Björn only whistled and bent to examine a row of rivets and their great square washers that held the long oak planks fast together.
‘Ay, ay,’ he said, in a whisper, ‘who knows what she will be named!’
The boy was suddenly conscious of a hush about him. He stopped working and bent towards Björn. ‘Here is the one, Master, who will know, if anyone does.’
Björn turned and then pulled his forelock, and, like all the other workmen, stood silent and waiting. And among the huts by the blue wa
ter a name was whispered that fetched the young maids to the doorways, and put a smile on the faces of the older women.
‘Thorkell Fairhair! Thorkell Fairhair!’
In the shadow of one hut an old man sat, patiently mending a fishnet. His hands were gnarled and twisted with rheumatism, but he forced them on and on, to tie the knots in the tarry twine. A long sword-cut had once ploughed the length of his cheek and had taken away the teeth on one side of his jaw. He heard the name, this old warrior, and a shiver seemed to pass over his face like a little cloud before the sun. His battle-scarred face wrinkled along its war-cuts in a strange, ironic smile.
‘Ay, Thorkell Fairhair, the maids call him, knowing but his beauty! Thorkell Skullsplitter is his name in other parts.’
He shrugged and went on mending the net, his head shaking a little with a palsy brought on by the bitter wind that blew along the fjord for the greater part of the year.
The young man, Thorkell, stood among the silent folk. He was but of medium height, and slimly made. As yet he wore no moustaches or beard, and his blue eyes looked out of his smooth face as mildly as a girl’s. Only there was something in the thin twist of his lips that took away from the gentleness. Something in the lean twitching of his jaws that spoke of tireless nervous energy. Something in the quick catlike tread that told its own tale of sudden action. Those who noted only the long corn-golden hair that hung, unplaited down his back, down the gilded mail shirt, would have been deceived, thought Björn.
Those who noted only the many glittering rings that circled his long slim fingers, the thick armbands that clasped his arms, the gold gorget at his throat, would have been deceived, thought the apprentice lad, with a secret grin. This was no maid; this was Thorkell, call him by whatever name you cared or dared, but Thorkell.
And when Thorkell came to the village, men were silent until he gave the word to speak. Even the old warriors, men who had killed bears in the high summer on the mountain tops. Some said he was the son of an outlawed king; some said he was a king himself, of another land beyond Ultima Thule; some, the oldest ones who had lost their grip on the life of ordinary men, whispered that Odin had sent him down among the Northmen to see what they were up to and to report back when he had seen. But when one too-daring young warrior in his cups had called him ‘Thorkell Odinson’ to his face, he had kicked the fool’s feet from under him and had come near to throttling him with those same slim, ring-laden fingers … So no one really knew what to think. And now Thorkell Whoever-he-was stood looking at the longship, looking and smiling faintly, out of those cold blue eyes, that seemed to see beyond the hull, beyond the ice blue fjord, beyond the farther hills and forests, and on and on, beyond the very rim of the world herself …