Norseman Chief

by Born, Jason

  From the talks of all these young men, I did learn why Kesegowaase’s words caused such a stir among the others. His speech carried the only words of substance, the only real words with real suggestions, and the potential for real outcomes – perhaps good or perhaps bad. The village had gotten used to listening to nothingness from their new young men, so that when one proposed an idea requiring thought, they lashed out. They were no different in this behavior than all of the peoples I had come across as I sailed the seas – most wanted only to hear a good story, not the truth for the truth could require thought. A new thought might require action. A new action might lead to a series of new thoughts and more actions. In the end they might find they actually created something of value – a legacy. But, as I have said, Ahanu’s people wanted none of this that night. By the end of the speeches and as the fire died down to a glowing heap, most villagers had forgotten Kesegowaase’s bold suggestion and praised the other speakers for their mediocrity.

  I can say for certain that four men and one woman did not forget about the daring proposal, however. Each of us, Ahanu, Etleloo, Kesegowaase, Hurit, and I were lost in the thought much of the night. For my part, I wondered about a permanent peace between such different peoples as the Huntsman and his band of Norsemen and Ahanu and his al gumna kyn.

  CHAPTER 6

  My time of servitude at last came to an end and I was free to come and go as I pleased. So I did go, leaving behind what had been my home for one year and the people and friendships I had won. My destination was my Norse home at Leifsbudir where Leif, Thorhall, and many others worked to put our marker on this new land. At some point a new, young adventurer or merchant like Karlsefni would likely come back to Leifsbudir to make himself a name among the Greenlanders.

  Kesegowaase, Rowtag and several other men accompanied me in their own canoes while I piloted Sjor Batr, the swift little boat I had made to reach their tribe. Hassun, who was ejected by Ahanu from Rowtag’s canoe before our journey even began, was again left in the village to learn more of Nootau’s, that is, his father’s, healing magic. The young man groused silently as he marched up the bank, but obeyed his chief, as a new shaman would be needed someday. Many men would have leapt at the opportunity to be selected for such a noble role in their village. Like all men however, Hassun had his heart set on another life, and even though it may not have been entirely suited to him, the fact’s current honor did not matter. He would outgrow his bitterness, I thought.

  Ahanu paddled with me in my canoe, making light work compared to my exhausting solo journey to their village the previous year. We chatted at length about the sea beneath us, about the far distances I had travelled in life, and even about the One God, Glooskap, and Odin. It was a peaceful trip, with nothing exceptional to report.

  My friends stayed for two weeks as I re-opened the homes on the rise of land up from the cove. Eventually we moved further inland to sleep in what had become my own longhouse situated next to Black Duck Pond. The earth was still dark from the gallons of blood Freydis shed in the yard when she killed our own people. The mass grave I dug was still an abnormally placed hillock in the otherwise flat landscape. The thought made my heart heavy for it led my mind to ponder the good friends I had lost on that wicked day. Helgi and his sullen brother Finnbogi were among the dead! They were men I would miss. I said nothing to Ahanu or his al gumna kyn. What would be the point?

  For several days, we hunted and fished together, bringing in much meat for me and for them to last the winter months when it was best to remain undercover. We smoked it all in narrow strips over a fire kept smoky with damp leaves heaped atop the flames. Despite the prolific hunting and good company, they soon began to miss their families, and so I waved goodbye to them from a spot at the mouth of the brook that emptied into the shallow cove. As had happened too many times over the years, I stood there alone. Right Ear was with me, of course, but at that particular moment he howled in the muddy shoals that were quickly forming while the tide fell away, splattering wet muck into his coat. He would sleep on the floor that night.

  I was not entirely lonely, though. The rapid tap-tap of a yellow woodpecker brought a smile to my lips as I recalled the day I first set foot on this island. A similar bird, perhaps an ancestor to this very woodpecker, shit right onto Arnkell, one of my men. The other men with us had made good sport of it, but Arnkell spent most of the day grumbling about the incident.

  But it was not the woodpecker, Right Ear, memories, or the great moose of the wood which were going to keep me company. My books, which I had little time to read while performing my role as a captured skraeling woman, would engage me in conversation through the coming frigid months while I waited at my post for relief from my true people. But like the creativity of the past, which sprang from my hands or mind when I used isolation from other human contact as a chance to build a longboat or canoe or learn a language, I used this new time alone to experiment with making my own parchment.

  I knew of the general process from what I learned while talking with my old tutor, Crevan, and my wife, Kenna in the great hall of Kaupangen. First, I searched the area surrounding my home at Black Duck Pond until I found a hillside with limestone. It was not a long quest and soon I had a large bath filled with water and crushed limestone and rotten vegetation where I soaked a fresh deer hide for four or five days. I had also learned that some ground up mussel shells help with the bath so I added them in, but don’t know exactly what they do to the mix. When I skinned the beast, I was exceptionally careful not to tear the hide since that would only make the resulting parchment into smaller, more irregular sheets. For some reason, I wanted the proud parchment of kings, tall and broad, to tell my tale.

  Much of the hair came off during the bath, but what was left could easily be scraped away. I assembled a vertical, crude, square frame, punched holes at the edges of the hide with an awl fashioned from a bone from the very deer that had given up its hide for my project, then tightly stretched it to the structure with cords. I wished I had a rounded knife to scrape at the skin so as to reduce the chance of puncturing it as it became thinner, but I had nearly no supply of iron ore and was not much of a blacksmith, so I made due with a small eating knife, accidentally poking a hole just once near the very center. In hindsight and after learning much from my neighbors the skraelings, I should have used a curved rib worked to a sharp edge along its rim.

  The final step was to use a coarse stone to sand away at the parchment. I reached my left arm through the taut cords to support the back side while I pushed the stone in back and forth across the stretched hide. I was impatient on this first try and so did not sand long enough or create an even writing surface. As a result, the brown ink I made from bits of iron left behind by the smithy and the galls of oak leaves absorbed unevenly, creating darker and lighter text across the page. Nonetheless, that was the beginning to my journal writing. It would be many years before I compiled it all together in what you read today, but my first thoughts were jotted on that deer hide parchment while I was alone in Leifsbudir. I believe I wrote a letter to Leif about my new allies, the skraelings, though I had no way of getting it to him unless a ship and crew came to relieve me of my watch.

  I told myself I was joyous those first several weeks of isolation. My dog and I could come and go as we pleased. I could piss in any river or on any toadstool without the prying eyes and giggling smirks of Ahanu’s people. I had seen their own men’s pissing tools for they preferred less clothing to my more, but did not see why I developed a following of children whenever I rose to relieve myself. My books, one I stole, one a gift, were never far from reach and I spent most mornings and evenings refreshing my mind, speaking the Latin out loud. I had become a reclusive scholar and I thoroughly adored it. At least, I told myself it was so.

  They called me the Enkoodabooaoo, or one who lives alone. Ahanu and his al gumna kyn called me that even when I lived among them, with people only two broad steps away at all times. They were so close and the walls of t
he mamateeks so thin, I could regularly hear the grunts and moans of pleasure as husbands sank into their wives. Why was I the Enkoodabooaoo? Maybe I was more like Thorhall the Huntsman than I thought. He left our band because he felt hemmed in by the oppressive towns. Huh! These towns he spoke of generally contained less than two hundred souls. He would have died in Europe with the thousands of people traipsing all over the roads and waterways. So I decided for those short weeks that I was the Enkoodabooaoo. I preferred to be left alone to hunt, fish, to study.

  But I was not happy to be in isolation. The winter would fall around me in just a short time. It was clear that Leif was sending no one to retrieve me. The ice would soon clog every bit of Eriksfjord, preventing any longboat or knarr traffic for many months. It was clear that no other intrepid adventurers would come to make their fortune in Vinland. Why would they? By now, everyone in Eystribyggo would think that the entirety of the place was cursed by the old gods. Thorfinn had packed up and left for fear of attacks by the skraelings. Worse yet, Freydis had seen that an entire crew of men and five women were slaughtered like chickens in the coop. It was cursed. They likely thought that I was already dead. I was alone.

  I was alone and free to spend each day with the snows falling, heaping outside the longhouse. I was alone to spend each day wondering aloud to Right Ear about what I would do with my day. Would I empty the night bucket before or after breakfast? I wonder. Would I gather water from the snow around the house or would I take the extra ten steps to the pond and break the thin ice? I wonder. Would I befriend the extra field mice that found their way to warmth of my house? Or, would I step on them? I wonder. I would have much time to wonder these weighty issues as I waited for only the One God knows who.

  It is likely that you have already guessed at what I did then. With haste, I gathered my supplies, everything I cared about or thought I would need. The entire list was actually quite small and all the items fit easily into Sjor Batr along with Right Ear. Instead of carefully closing the longhouse doors behind me, ensuring that they were locked with the keys securely fastened to my belt, I left them swinging on their hinges. The iron keys, I hung from a peg on the outside wall. I scribbled a note on a fragment of parchment in my native language of Norse, which most, if not all, of any adventurer’s party would not be able to read. I rolled the note up and stuck it into one of the links of the thick chain that hung from the roof timbers to hold cooking pots.

  The message read simply,

  Resolute Norsemen, I am Halldorr Olefsson, brother and friend of the jarl of Greenland, Leif the Lucky. I live. My dwelling is currently with the skraeling people near the point of land Thorvald Eriksson called Kjalarnes, a south and west journey by sail. They are a good people and can be relied upon for trade.

  Your servant, Halldorr Olefsson, the Enkoodabooaoo

  I did my best to spell the last word in our language, knowing that even if someone ever came to the house having learned his letters, he would never be able to comprehend what all those characters strung together on the page meant. But, like a deranged hermit, I laughed at my private joke that day.

  Right Ear and I paddled Sjor Batr, once again into a stiff wind which was intent on bringing the coming winter. As we snaked our way down the west coast of Vinland, we pulled the boat up into the woods and struck a fire for warmth using my jasper stones. I was quite disheartened when, just like my first solo trip to Ahanu, the skies opened and a driving sideways rain came. This time I showed that I was capable of exhibiting basic sense and waited for another day before embarking on the longest leg of the journey. I saw the sun again after huddling under the canoe and a moose hide with Right Ear in order to keep dry. A warmer wind blew from the south and we made rapid time to the little remote island which marked the half-way point between Vinland and Kjalarnes.

  No wildlife other than countless seabirds lived here. We spent three days eating their eggs and practicing our archery on them as they swooped at us. Their flesh was as good as any other sea fowl I had eaten and it helped me sleep soundly by extending my belly. I saved some of the best feathers for writing quills. How strange it was to think that before King Olaf instructed Crevan teach me my letters, I would only think of feathers for their ability to make an arrow fly true by turning them into fletching. I was a different man and old, I thought – the long hair that hung from my head was quickly proving this. Many of those hairs at my temples were now quite grey. My beard had gone from having only one white hair among many blonde hairs, to having clumps of the white.

  Thinking of my hair that day, I took a large feather, and inspired by Ahanu’s people, I tied it near the crown of my head so that it dangled and swung as I walked. I marched around in the bird droppings which littered the ground, trying to catch a glimpse of the decoration as it bobbed. Right Ear growled at me, staring at my head as if some creature sat there, ready to become his prey. But I soon felt ridiculous since I was not one of Ahanu’s people, so I quickly removed the feather and tied it near the head of my short battle axe instead. A good compromise, I thought.

  Three days later I paddled into the mouth of the stream which led to Ahanu’s village. Some boys, who had been playing warrior atop the large rocks where my brother Thorvald had been killed years earlier, saw my approach. They continued right on with their game pretending to chop scalps from one another, not bothering to alert anyone of my presence. The wind carried their laughter to me and I thought of my son, Snorri, who was being raised far away. He was probably killing make believe skraelings or English at this very moment as these boys were killing make believe Mi’kmaq or Abenaki.

  The light prow of Sjor Batr skidded into the pebbles laying at the shingle, grating loud enough so that a gaggle of five women who were cleaning dishes upstream looked my way. One of them, the old hag, my nemesis who had heaped the coals on me, marking me for life, was among them. She paused her toil long enough to wave at me, “Welcome back Enkoodabooaoo.”

  I looked at her a moment, searching for sarcasm, but there was none. By the time I called, “It is good to be back among such fine peoples as you.” The other women, younger than the hag, giggled and rejoined their labors with hers.

  “Biiwede!” shouted an approaching familiar voice.

  “Kesegowaase! You are a head taller than when we last saw one another.”

  “That is unlikely. We left you just over one moon ago.” The young man smiled at my words, though.

  “Yet something is different about you. You look even more confident than when we parted company last.”

  He considered this for a moment as we clasped forearms. Right Ear jumped up and down, slapping his front paws into Kesegowaase’s chest until the man recognized him with a rough scratch of his ears. “It is probably because I have begun the process of making a son.”

  “What? With who? How?”

  “I would have thought that at your age you would have at least heard of the “how” part.” He laughed at his own joke. “With my wife. We have been married since my return. She has strong legs and will no doubt give me strapping sons.”

  “Is this mystery woman already with child, then?”

  In the universal sign of uncertainty, he shrugged his shoulders, adding, “I don’t really know if I will soon have a son or a daughter or any little creature. I just know that I like trying to create one.”

  I slapped his shoulder and laughed at him. This young man, who was just a boy some months ago, now had his own woman and was intent on making babies with her. He reminded me of me so long ago. I was genuinely happy for him and told him as much.

  As we unloaded my gear from the canoe, setting it on the well worn earth leading to the village, I asked, “Where are your leaders? I don’t see Etleloo, Rowtag, Ahanu, anyone.”

  A tilt of his head pointed to the chief’s large mamateek up the path. “In council.”

  My eyebrows rose, “War?”

  I watched with concern as he tossed my prized books onto the ground. Kesegowaase answered, “No, no. Jus
t discussing our relationship with the Huntsman.”

  “Nothing’s wrong is it?” In the end, some days after Kesegowaase’s impassioned speech at the manhood ceremony, Ahanu held a meeting with the elders. They argued back and forth for what seemed like days, before Ahanu emerged saying that they would make it their business to befriend the new neighbors. Since then they had traded simple items that neither party had a need for, but such actions built the trust. At the time I left for Leifsbudir, the partnership was running smoothly.

  “Not at all. The Huntsman is here visiting. He joins our men in council.”

  “What do they discuss?”

  “I am here. Not there. Why don’t we discuss matters of our own and not worry about the matters they discuss?”

  “You are more like your grandfather everyday – wise.” We hefted my belongings onto our backs and strolled through the village. I nodded to the many familiar faces and was pleased to see smiles in return. What a difference this greeting was to last year’s!

  We approached the structure that had been my mamateek and I tossed back the flap to duck inside, but Kesegowaase stopped me, saying, “Halldorr, my friend. That is now my home. I will gladly share its warmth with you this winter, but I will not ask you to live with me and my woman.” Right Ear was already inside rutting through the familiar smells and scents. Kesegowaase called him, “Come Right Ear, let’s drop this gear elsewhere.”

  The council was breaking up as we passed Ahanu’s bark house with men pouring out. They wore smiles and it seems that whatever they discussed came to a positive resolution. My sullen countryman, the Huntsman, squinted at me with his typical feigned scorn. I gave him a quiet nod. Nootau came out next, followed by Etleloo and Ahanu. All three men greeted me in their own way. Nootau came and embraced me, wishing well in my visit. Etleloo, my one-time enemy huffed and shook his head, a thin smile etched in his face. He said, “The giant stranger is back. We had best hide the women again.”