The Long Ships

by Frans G. Bengtsson

  The ship lay hard by some flat rocks, being held away from them by the oars. They were ready to pull out as soon as Krok returned, for the other landing-parties had already returned empty-handed; some of them were waiting on the beach in case Krok should need any assistance. They were only a few paces from the ship when two great dogs came bounding down the path. One of them leaped at Krok, but he jumped aside and struck it with his ax; the other flashed past him with a huge leap at the man just in front of him, knocked him over by its impetus, and buried its teeth in his throat. Two of the others hastened forward and killed the dog, but when they and Krok bent over the man who had been bitten, they saw that his throat was badly torn and that he was rapidly bleeding to death.

  In the same instant a spear hissed past Krok’s head, and two men came running down the slope and out on the flat rocks; they had run so fast that they had outstripped all their companions. The foremost of them, who was bareheaded and bore no shield, but carried a short sword in his hand, tripped and fell headlong on the rocks; two spears flew over him and hit his companion, who crumpled to the ground. But the bareheaded man was at once on his feet again; baying like a wolf, he hewed at one man who had leaped forward with his sword raised when he had fallen, and felled him with a blow on the temples. Then he sprang at Krok, who stood just behind him; all this happened very quickly. He aimed savagely at Krok, but Krok was still carrying his sheep, and he slipped it round to meet the blow, in the same instant striking his adversary with the reverse edge of his ax on the forehead, so that he fell to the ground senseless. Krok bent over him and saw that he was no more than a youth, red-haired and snub-nosed and pale-complexioned. He felt with his fingers the place where the axhead had landed and found that the skull was unfractured.

  “I shall take the calf with me as well as the sheep,” he said. “He can row in the place of the man he killed.”

  So they picked him up and carried him on to the ship and threw him beneath an oar-bench; then, when they had all come aboard, except the two men whom they had left dead behind them, they pulled out to sea just as a large crowd of pursuers appeared on the beach. The sky had now begun to lighten, and some spears were thrown at the ship; but they did no damage. The men pulled strongly at their oars, happy in the knowledge that they had fresh meat on board; and they had already gone a good way from land when the figures on the beach were joined by a woman in a long blue shift with her hair streaming behind her, who ran to the edge of the rocks and stretched out her arms toward the ship, crying something. Her cry reached them as a thin sound across the water, but she stood there long after they had ceased to hear her.

  In this wise Orm, the son of Toste, who later came to be known as Red Orm or Orm the Far-Traveled, set forth on his first voyage.

  1. Modern Lithuania and Latvia.

  CHAPTER THREE

  HOW THEY SAILED SOUTHWARDS, AND HOW THEY FOUND THEMSELVES A GOOD GUIDE

  KROK’S men were very hungry when they reached Weather Island, for they had had to row the whole way there. They lay to and went ashore to gather fuel and cook themselves a good dinner; they found there only a few old fishermen, who on account of their poverty were not afraid of plunderers. When they came to cut up the sheep, they praised their fatness and the evident excellence of the spring pasturing on the Mound. They stuck the joints on their spears and held them in the fire, and their mouths watered as the fat began to crackle, for it was a long time since their nostrils had known such a cheering smell. Many of them exchanged stories of the last occasions on which they had been present at so tasty a meal, and they all agreed that their voyage to the lands of the west had begun promisingly. Then they began to eat so that the juice of the meat ran over their beards.

  By this time Orm had regained his senses, but he was still sick and dizzy, and when he came ashore with the others, it was all he could do to keep on his legs. He sat down and held his head between his hands and made no reply to the words that were addressed to him. But after a while, when he had vomited and drunk water, he felt better, and when he smelt the odor of the frying meat, he raised his head like a man who has just waked up, and looked at the men around him. The man who was sitting nearest to him grinned in a friendly way and cut off a bit of his meat and offered it to him.

  “Take this and eat it,” he said. “You never tasted better in your life.”

  “I know its quality,” replied Orm. “I provided it.”

  He took the meat and held it between his fingers without eating it. He looked thoughtfully round the circle, at each man in turn, and then said: “Where is the man I hit? Is he dead?”

  “He is dead,” replied his neighbor, “but no one here stands to avenge him, and you are to row in his stead. His oar lies in front of mine, so it will be well that you and I should be friends. My name is Toke; what is yours?”

  Orm told him his name and asked him: “The man I killed— was he a good fighter?”

  “He was, as you observed, somewhat slow of movement,” replied Toke, “and he was not so handy with a sword as I am myself. But that would be asking a lot of a man, for I am one of the finest swordsmen in our company. Still, he was a strong man, and steadfast and of a good name; he was called Ale, and his father sows twelve bushels of rye, and he had been to sea twice already. If you can row as well as he did, you are no mean oarsman.”

  When Orm heard this, it seemed to cheer his spirits, and he began to eat. But after a few minutes he asked: “Who was it who struck me down?”

  Krok was sitting a short way from him and heard his question. He laughed and raised his ax, finished his mouthful, and said: “This is the maid who kissed you. Had she bitten you, you would not have asked her name.”

  Orm gazed at Krok with rounded eyes that looked as though they had never blinked, and then said with a sigh: “I had no helmet and was breathless from running; otherwise it might have gone differently.”

  “You are a conceited puppy, Skanian,” said Krok, “and fancy yourself a soldier. But you are yet young and lack a soldier’s prudence. For prudent men do not forget their helmets when they run out after sheep; nay, not even when their own wives are stolen from them. But you seem to be a man whom Fortune smiles on, and it may be that you will bring us all into her good favor. We have already seen three manifestations of her love for you. Firstly, you slipped on the rocks as two spears were flying toward you; then Ale, whom you slew, has no kinsman or close comrade among us who is bound to avenge him; and thirdly, I did not kill you, because I wished to have an oarsman to replace him. Therefore I believe you to be a man of great good luck, who can thereby be of use to us; wherefore I now give you the freedom of our company, provided only that you agree to take Ale’s oar.”

  They all thought that Krok had spoken well. Orm munched his meat reflectively; then he said: “I accept the freedom you offer me; nor do I think I need feel ashamed to do so, though you stole my sheep. But I will not row as a slave, for I am of noble blood; and though I am young, yet I hold myself to be a good soldier, for I slew Ale, and he was one. I therefore claim back my sword.”

  This provoked a long and complicated discussion. Some of them regarded Orm’s demand as altogether unreasonable and said that he ought to think himself lucky to have been granted his life; but others remarked that self-esteem was no great fault in a young man, and that the claims of those whom Fortune smiled on should not be lightly ignored. Toke laughed and said he was amazed that so many men, three full ships' companies, could be anxious about whether or not one boy was to be allowed to carry a sword. A man called Calf, who had spoken against granting Orm’s request, wanted to fight Toke for saying this, and Toke said that he would be glad to oblige him as soon as he had finished the good kidney that he was just then occupied with; but Krok forbade them to fight over such a matter. The end of it all was that Orm got his sword back, but that his future behavior would determine whether he was to be treated as a slave or as a comrade. But Orm was to pay Krok for his sword, which was a fine weapon, as soon as he won any
thing on the voyage.

  By this time a light breeze had sprung up, and Krok said that it was time for them to avail themselves of it and set sail. So they all went aboard and the ship made its way up through the Kattegat with its sails filled with the wind. Orm stared back across the sea and said that it was lucky for Krok that they had few ships left at home in these parts at this time of year; for if he knew his mother, she would else by now have been on their tails with half the people of the Mound assisting her.

  Then he washed the wound in his head and rinsed the clotted blood from his hair; and Krok said that the scar on his forehead would be a fine thing to show womenfolk. Then Toke produced an old leather helmet with iron bands. He said it was not much of a helmet for these times, but that he had found it among the Wends and that he had nothing better that he could spare. It would, he said, not be of much use against an ax, but still it would be better than nothing. Orm tried it on and found that it would fit him when the swelling had gone down. Orm thanked Toke; and they both knew now that they would be friends.

  They rounded the Skaw with a good following wind, and there, after ancient custom, they sacrificed to Agir and all his kin, offering sheep’s flesh and pork and ale, and were followed for a long while afterwards by shrieking gulls, which they took to be a good omen. They rowed down the Jutland coast, where the country was deserted and the ribs of wrecked ships were often to be seen in the sand; farther south they went ashore on two small islands, where they found water and food but little else. They proceeded down the coast, for the most part with favorable winds helping them, so that the men became good-humored through being relieved of the tiresome labor of constant rowing. Toke said that Orm was perhaps weather-lucky, as well as being ordinarily fortunate; and weather-luck was one of the best kinds of luck that a man could have, so that, if this were in fact so, Orm could indeed hope for a prosperous future. Orm thought that Toke might be right; but Krok was unwilling to agree with them on this point.

  “It is I who bring us this good weather,” he said, “for we have had good weather and winds from the very beginning, long before Orm joined us; indeed, if I had not known my weather-luck to be reliable, I should not have ventured on this expedition. But Orm’s luck is good, if not of the same quality as my own; and the more lucky men we have aboard, the better it will be for us all.”

  Berse the Wise agreed, and said that men without luck had the hardest burden of all to bear. “For man can triumph over man, and weapon over weapon; against the gods we can pit sacrifice, and against witchcraft, contrary magic; but against bad luck no man has anything to oppose.”

  Toke said that, for his part, he did not know whether he had great good luck, except that his luck in fishing had always been good. He had always done well enough against men whom he had quarreled with; but that might be the result of his strength and skill rather than of his luck.

  “But what worries me,” he said, “is whether on this expedition we shall have gold-luck and woman-luck; for I have heard great tales of all the fine things that are to be found here in the west, and it is beginning to seem a long time since I felt a gold ring or a woman. Even if we only find silver instead of gold, and no princesses, such as Berse has spoken of, but simple Frankish house-wives, I shall not complain; for I am not a fussy man.”

  Krok said that Toke would have to be patient for a little longer, however strong his desire for either commodity; and Toke agreed that it certainly seemed likely that he would have to wait for a while; for it did not look as though either gold or women grew on trees in these parts.

  They sailed along flat coasts, where nothing was to be seen except sand and marshlands and an occasional fishing-hut. Then they passed promontories on which tall crosses stood, and knew that they had come to the Christians' land, and to the Frankish coasts. For the wise men among them knew that these crosses had first been set up by the great Emperor Charles, the father of all emperors, to keep Nordic seafarers away from his land; but the gods of the north had proved stronger than his. They put into creeks to take refuge from threatening squalls and to rest overnight, and saw waters more salt and green than any they had seen before, rising and falling with the ebb and the flood tides. There were no ships to be seen, and no people; only here and there the traces of some old building. Many villages had flourished in these parts before the first Northmen came, but everything had long since been plundered and laid waste, so that nowadays men had to travel far to the south before they could find any prizes worth the taking.

  They came down to where the sea narrowed between England and the mainland; and there was talk among them of turning toward the English coast. For they knew that King Edgar had recently died and that he had been succeeded by sons who were not yet of age, which had made the land much sought after by the Vikings. But Krok and Berse and others among the wisest of them held that the country of the Franks was still the best, if one went far enough south; for the King of Frankland and the Emperor of Germany were at war with each other on a point of dispute concerning their frontiers, and the coastal regions of countries at war always provided good hunting-grounds for Northmen.

  So they continued down the Frankish coast; but here they lay farther out to sea and kept a sharp lookout on every quarter, for they had now come to that region which certain Northmen had won from the King of the Franks. Here ancient crosses were constantly to be seen on promontories and at river mouths, but even more frequent were pikes with bearded heads set on them, to signify that the rulers of that land had no desire to welcome seamen from their own northern climes upon their coasts. Krok and his men thought that this showed scant hospitality on the part of the men who were now enjoying the fruits of the land; but, they said, it was only what was to be expected of men from Skania and Sjælland; and they asked Orm whether he had any kinsmen in these parts. Orm replied that he had none, as far as he knew, since his kinsmen always sailed to Ireland; but that he would bear in mind, when he got home, this idea of putting heads on poles, for they would make fine scarecrows to protect his sheep. They all laughed at this and thought that he was well able to speak up for himself.

  They hid in ambush at the mouth of a river and took some fishing-boats, but they found little of worth in them and could elicit no reply from the men in the boats when they asked where the rich villages were around there. When they had killed a couple of them and still could get no intelligible answer from the others, they let them go alive, since they were of miserable appearance and would be of no use as rowers and would fetch no price as slaves. More than once they slipped ashore under the cover of night, but they won little, for the people lived in large and well-guarded villages, and several times they had to make haste back to their ships to avoid being surrounded and outnumbered. They hoped that they would soon come to the end of the region where the Northmen held sway.

  One evening they met four long ships rowing from the south; they looked to be heavily laden, and Krok let his ships move near to them so that he might see how strongly they were manned. It was a calm evening, and they rowed slowly toward each other; the strangers set a long shield upon their mast-top, with its point turned upwards, as a sign that they came as friends, and Krok’s men conversed with them at the distance of a spear’s throw, while each chieftain tried to calculate the other’s strength. The strangers said that they were from Jutland and that they were on their way home after a long voyage. They had plundered in Brittany with seven ships during the previous summer, and had then ventured far to the south; afterwards they had wintered on an island off the mouth of the Loire and had ventured up the river, but then a cruel plague had broken out among them, and now they were making their way home with such ships as they had strength to man. When asked what they had won, they replied that a wise seaman never counts his wealth until he has brought it safely home; but this they could tell him (since at this meeting they reckoned themselves strong enough to hold what they had won), that they had no complaint to make about the amount of their catch. There was always the possib
ility of a bad season, compared with the way things had been in the old days, and that held true however far southwards one might travel; but anyone who happened on a part of Brittany that had hitherto escaped plunder would be able to find good reward for his pains.

  Krok asked whether they had any wine or good ale that they would be willing to exchange for pork or dried fish; meanwhile he tried to come nearer their ships, for he was sorely tempted to hazard an attack on them and by this means get a fine return for his whole voyage at one swoop. But the Jutish captain at once brought his ship round to bar their path, with his prow facing them, and replied that he preferred to keep his wine and ale for his own use.

  “But by all means come nearer,” he said to Krok, “if there is anything else you care to sample.”

  Krok weighed a spear in his hand and seemed uncertain which course to take; but at that moment a commotion broke out on one of the Jutish ships. Two men could be seen struggling with each other by the gunwale; then they fell into the water, still locked in each other’s arms. Both of them sank, and one was seen no more; but the other rose to the surface at a distance from the ship, only to dive again when a spear was thrown at him by one of the men he had left. There was much shouting on the Jutish ship, but when Krok’s men asked them what was the matter, they received no reply. Dusk was now beginning to descend, and after a brief exchange of words the strangers began to row forward again before Krok could decide whether or not to join battle. Then Toke, who sat at his larboard oar just behind Orm on Krok’s own ship, cried to Krok:

  “Come and look at this! My fishing-luck gets better all the time!”

  One hand was gripping Toke’s oar, and one Orm’s, and a face lay in the water between the hands, staring up at the ship. It was big-eyed and very pale, black-haired and black-bearded.