This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
Text copyright © 2014 by Johanne Hildebrandt
English translation copyright © 2016 by Tara F. Chace
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.
The Unbroken Line of the Moon was first published in Swedish as Sigrid: Sagan om Valhalla by Bokförlaget Forum in 2014. Translated from Swedish by Tara F. Chace. Published in English by AmazonCrossing in 2016.
Published by Amazon Crossing, Seattle
www.apub.com
ISBN-13: 9781503939080
ISBN-10: 1503939081
Cover design by Shasti O’Leary Soudant
CONTENTS
Map
Sigrid the Haughty . . .
PART ONE
Sigrid hurried through . . .
Wolf time, blade . . .
Sweyn was running . . .
She was going . . .
There wasn’t a . . .
Sigrid stood in . . .
“I hope they . . .
Te deum laudamus . . .
The night was . . .
“Take cover! Take . . .
The oaks whispered . . .
Ax-Wolf swung his . . .
Emma wrapped her . . .
Sweyn raised a . . .
“Do you know . . .
“Make room so . . .
The warriors stood . . .
The straight tree . . .
Palna was talking . . .
The din of . . .
“Rarely is a . . .
Sigrid clung tightly . . .
“Seems like half . . .
Sweyn forced himself . . .
O Freya, Mistress . . .
Beyla held Emma . . .
This was it . . .
A king’s son . . .
Emma looked up . . .
“I have a . . .
The touch of . . .
Emma was shivering . . .
Sigrid walked barefoot . . .
The courtyard was . . .
“Your victory is . . .
Dancing had already . . .
Damn the future . . .
This was crazy . . .
Emma’s head ached . . .
He had had . . .
Sigrid hurried through . . .
Sweyn was hanging . . .
PART TWO
Sweyn stared in . . .
Jorun placed the . . .
Sigrid got up . . .
It felt like . . .
There would be . . .
The old ways . . .
Torches lit the . . .
The knives of . . .
“The king was . . .
Freya, I thank . . .
Sweyn carefully led . . .
Sigrid slowed down . . .
They couldn’t just . . .
It was crowded . . .
The wind brought . . .
The formation of . . .
Icy winds swept . . .
Sweyn stopped in . . .
“It must be . . .
The grayish-black fog . . .
Sigrid regarded the . . .
Only two of . . .
A bulge was . . .
Sweyn stared into . . .
“Svea, chieftains, relatives . . .
Styrbjörn the Strong’s . . .
This battle would . . .
Sigrid’s body shook . . .
Emma snuck down . . .
Kára swept over . . .
The babies slept . . .
Victory for Valhalla . . .
Ravens and carrion . . .
“Are you ready . . .
“He’s here,” Palna . . .
Sigrid looked out . . .
APPENDIX
GLOSSARY
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
ABOUT THE TRANSLATOR
Sigrid the Haughty, one of Scandinavia’s most powerful and legendary women, lived in the tenth century. She was widely recognized for her intelligence, her strength, and her deep faith in the Norse gods.
All that is left of her brutal and dramatic life are fragments of stories and traces of facts that contradict each other. Few have heard what really happened when she saved Scandinavia from darkness. This is Sigrid’s saga, which should never have been forgotten.
PART ONE
Sigrid hurried through the dark of night toward her mother’s burial mound, her heart hopeful. The darkness had transformed the oak forest into another world, the dark tree crowns whispering their greetings. Only the outlines of slumbering cattle and slaves were visible in the fields. The woods rustled with ghosts, trolls, and beasts.
To give herself strength, she prayed to Freya: Vanadís, protect me.
It didn’t help much. Fear tingling down her spine, Sigrid broke into a run. Her grandmother and the elders would be furious if they knew she’d snuck off the estate again, and if her luck was really against her she might be captured and carted off by one of the Scylfings’ enemies. Still, she had to try, because tonight was her only chance.
Sigrid clutched her bag to her heart and scrambled up the steep slope of the burial mound. Only when she was safely on the top did she stop to catch her breath. The treetops and fields glowed in the moonlight.
The lights from the halls of the twelve gods lit up the heavens. Sigrid searched until her eyes found Folkvang, Freya’s home, guarded by the six valkyries.
“Watch over me, Ur-Mother,” she whispered to the shimmering lights as worry gnawed at her belly. “Erce, grant me some of your timeless sorcery so that I can open the gates to the afterworld.”
She bowed to the moon, Máni, who was being chased across the sky by Hati the wolf. Then she took a wavering breath. It was time to do what she had come to do. Without hesitation, she pulled up her skirt and squatted down in the moist grass that grew on the burial mound so that her blood, filled with life force, ran onto the ground.
Step one.
“Hel, hear my prayer. Let my mother rise from Niflheim, where she now dwells.”
Her hands trembled as she opened her bag and took out a fistful of flower petals that she had picked in silence by moonlight. Carefully she strewed them over the grass.
“Mother, hear your daughter. Come to me,” she pleaded.
Step two.
The response came as a warm wind, which took the flower petals and carried them away from the mound, out over the sea where the dísir danced in the haze that wafted over the water. Those ghosts of fate whispered a thank-you and then continued their quiet song about what the future would bring. Sigrid shivered as the darkness gathered around her.
In preparation for this, she had bartered for a spell stick, a piece of wood with a magic spell that would make Hel open the gates of Niflheim. Now she carefully took it out and rubbed the blood from her womb onto the piece of wood bearing the runic incantation and then looked around expectantly. Those she summoned were closer now. She could see the shadows moving around her. Her heart pounded in her chest as those who had gone before gathered, hungering after her youth. She could sense her mother among those pale shadows. Soon she would finally get to see her.
Her hands trembled as she dug up the dirt with her fingers and buried the spell stick. That was the third step, according to her dream. Her sacred night had come, when she bled for the first time. She was filled with sorcery and could use the spell stick to open the gates to th
e afterworld. Sigrid took a deep breath of cool night air and shouted into the night:
“I am Sigrid. Hear my blood.”
Her heart was ready to burst in her chest.
“Mother, come out. I command you!”
Her voice echoed over the burial mound, over the fields, and over the sea, where the dísir were dancing, all the way to the vast forest where the beasts dwelled. A black bird flew up with a complaint, but after that, only silence.
The shadows pulled back, and the whispering dísir quieted down.
Sigrid looked around. Her mother was supposed to come to her. Why hadn’t it worked?
“Where are you?” she pleaded, placing her hands on the ground.
Her mother was in the mound, burned in her nicest dress, wearing pearls and twisted silver.
Why didn’t she come? Stifling waves of disappointment washed over Sigrid. She had held this hope for so long.
“Why have you forsaken me?”
The sound of her voice echoed over the mound, but there was no answer.
It was over. Sigrid’s head drooped. She had bled and prayed to Vanadís just as she was supposed to. Why was she not permitted to see her mother just this one time, to learn why she had survived when her mother had not?
Why?
Sigrid curled up in the damp grass, longing cutting at her chest.
She remembered her mother’s fear when the Svea had attacked the estate, also her mother’s body on top of Sigrid to protect her, the heat of the fire, the smoke, the smell of blood, and the screams of the dying.
“Don’t be scared,” her mother had said before her body became so heavy Sigrid could barely breathe.
What happened after that was shrouded in darkness, small sections of the tapestry that unraveled as she tried to pin them down. Someone carried her from the flames. Safe arms?
Grief welling out of a half-healed wound, quaking sobs shook Sigrid.
Vanadís, I beseech you, let me know.
Sigrid looked pleadingly up at Valhalla in the sky. Folkvang glittered as if Freya herself were looking down at her from her hall, Sessrúmnir, filled with dísir and heroes.
“Help me, and I will serve you for the rest of my life,” Sigrid said.
Just as she said the words, a light left Folkvang and fell toward earth. Sigrid sat up, the hairs on her arms and the back of her neck standing on end. It gleamed as it slowly traveled across the heavens, a burning chariot driven by a dís on her path to the world of mankind. Sigrid followed the light with her eyes as it journeyed west. The light twinkled and then vanished.
Sigrid gasped for breath. What in the name of the goddess was that? Had she really just seen that? She reached for her cloak and wrapped it around her body, shivering.
What if that was an omen? Her heart skipped a beat. In the sacred Freya lay, which had been sung to her so many times, Kára the dís is sent to Gunhild to assist her in the battle against the Rus and she arrives like a light from Folkvang. Sigrid was directly descended from Freya in an unbroken line . . . Valfreya must have sent a valkyrie to protect and help her.
A trickle of blood ran down Sigrid’s thigh as she stood up, looking at the starry sky twinkling above her. That had to be it. She had promised herself to Freya and in response the Radiant One had sent her a dís. It was more than she could have ever dreamt.
Everything you wish for, you will get, the wind whispered to her tenderly, embracing her.
An irrepressible joy filled her chest. She had been selected by the most glorious of goddesses on her blood night. She had been sent the most powerful of omens.
I thank you, mistress. From this moment, I will serve you in everything. My life is yours.
She bowed her head and prayed until Sól rose from the underworld in her gleaming chariot and her brother Dag took over the world.
Sigrid welcomed the new day with her hands raised to the clear blue sky and her heart filled with a new wisdom. She knew which path she would take now. She knew that the secret power was hers.
Wolf time, blade time, grief time. Darkness pours over the world, and the end of an era approaches. Three priestesses of the old way—with gray-white hair and tattered clothes, supporting themselves on staffs—peer somberly into the fire and glimpse images, amidst the flames, of the days to come.
Midgard, Niflheim, Jotunheim, all nine worlds rip apart as the old gods are destroyed. The temple at Aros, dwelling place of the gods, is consumed by flames. Trees fall, fields are poisoned, seeresses die screaming. Hordes of people trudge over piles of bodies in the infertile fields. They kneel passively before a cross, begging for salvation and grace.
“The new god’s priests shackle the minds and hearts of men,” the eldest of them said.
Mangled bodies, new ice, dancing bears, a bride’s words in bed.
“Ragnarök,” whispered another. “The victory of the cross worshippers, the fall of Valhalla. Then the goddesses have left us.”
“No, not yet,” the eldest said, raising a rune-carved staff crested by a hawk.
The fire blazed up. Now it showed new images. Chieftains and kings from near and far, some Christian, some believers in the old religion, knelt before a young man in a king’s cloak with the wreath of victory on his head. The young king raised his sword to the skies and the mark of Thor glowed on his wrist.
The priestess grunted contentedly and took a step closer to the fire.
“There is still hope. Who is this king of kings? Erce, Erce, show me.”
A young woman appeared dimly in the dancing flames. She knelt and stretched her arms to the night sky as a black shadow loomed over her. The images came faster now. The woman lay dead on the ground as the darkness drank her life force. She died in bed with a swollen, pregnant belly. In a hall she was killed by a sword, the baby in her arms. Time after time the curse that lay over her succeeded in taking her life.
Then the images vanished, and the fire once again burned calmly in the night. The three priestesses stood silently pondering what they had seen until one of them began to speak: “Fragile are the threads that weave the life-cloth of that unborn king. The future we saw is far too uncertain.”
The eldest of them nodded and said, “Powerful forces will extinguish the life of the child’s mother even before he is born.”
“We must make a sacrifice to protect the mother,” said the third. “Only her child can save us from this darkness. She must have the strength to live.”
The three turned around, supporting themselves on their staffs, and returned into the night as the fire faded and died.
Sweyn was running so fast his feet hardly felt the ground. Branches whipped his face and his shield thumped against his back. Still, he picked up the pace when he caught a glimpse of the Saxon’s gray clothes between the trees.
His enemy’s steps grew heavier now. The man had tossed aside his shield, helmet, and sack of loot during the pursuit. Exhausted, he tried to climb up a steep slope but slipped and fell.
Sweyn was there in a flash, his sword drawn. He was ready to fight. Sweat poured down his body, and his legs ached, even as his pounding heart grew calmer.
The warrior stood ready with his short sword. He was old and thin, and his body looked frail. His face was bright red and glossy with sweat, and his eyes were fearful. He wore neither chainmail nor cuirass, and his gray clothes were stained with blood and soot from the butchery in the village. Sweyn took a firmer grip on his sword hilt and smiled at the man who was about to die.
“You could have saved us both this forced march through the woods,” Sweyn said, and spat on the ground.
They had sailed for days from Jómsborg to protect the village of Mikklavík. But by the time the Jómsvíkings finally reached the village, it was too late. Only days before they arrived, Mikklavík was burned and abandoned, which was a heavy shame to bear. When Sweyn had spotted a couple of stragglers who had lingered to plunder one of the outlying farms, Sweyn and his fellow soldiers had taken up the chase right away.
/> Sweyn’s foster brother Åke had felled one with an arrow, and now Sweyn had caught the last one. The other Jómsvíkings came running up from behind, huffing and puffing, their footsteps heavy, like a herd of wild boars.
“You run faster than Alsviðr, boy,” Ax-Wolf panted, doubling over and wheezing as he tried to catch his breath. The redheaded Ax-Wolf was the size of a giant, and he did not enjoy running through the woods and fields in full battle armor. Åke and Ax-Wolf’s brother, Sigvard, panting and bright red in the face, positioned themselves behind the Saxon with his weapon drawn.
The Saxon surveyed the situation and then lowered his short sword. Sweyn spat on the ground again, his thirst tearing at his throat.
“Whom do you serve?” Sweyn demanded.
The Saxon stared at him with a defeated look. He knew he was going to die soon yet still remained silent.
“Who sent you to burn Mikklavík?” Sweyn continued.
Just then the Saxon lunged.
Quick as a snake, he slashed his sword at Sweyn, but Sweyn was skilled from years of training and acted without thinking. One quick blow and the Saxon’s severed sword hand dropped to the ground. The warrior’s scream could have come from a woman. He sank to his knees, staring in horror at the bleeding stump where his hand had been.
Sweyn lowered his sword, his heart pounding. He had almost been caught off guard.
“Tell me whom you serve. Otherwise you’ll lose the other hand.”
The Saxon’s face had already gone gray and his body was shuddering as the blood gushed from his wound. Soon the death tremor would take the man, and then they wouldn’t get anything sensible out of him.
Ax-Wolf probably had the same thought because he trudged over to the warrior and punched him hard in the mouth.
“Who sent you to burn the village?”
“The king,” the Saxon whispered, his mouth bleeding. “We cleansed the village of the evil that has cursed the fields with failed crops. God will reward us.”
The Saxon stared blankly at his stump. The blood ran slower from his wound, and his body trembled much more.
“We’re not going to get any more out of this one,” Ax-Wolf said. “If he still had his hand, he could have prayed to his lone god.”
Sigvard and Åke took a couple of steps back as Sweyn raised his sword, carefully measuring the angle with his eyes. Ax-Wolf was watching him. The blow had to be clean, otherwise Sweyn would be derided for a long time.
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