Gone Viking

by Helen Russell

  Tricia gulps in the presence of a woman so handy and formidable that she can even extend herself to ‘free-style’ furniture building.

  ‘Wow, good whittling …’ Melissa murmurs, as Inge gets up and starts checking the vegetable box for supplies for supper.

  ‘Is she for real?’ I whisper to Tricia.

  ‘I think so …’

  ‘Well, this is going to get interesting …’

  Seven

  ‘So where do we start?’ Margot asks.

  Lousy with oestrogen and still buzzing from having made a collective decision about our continued adventure, we wait with baited breath for the response.

  ‘Start?’ Inge looks up, a potato in one hand and a dishcloth in the other. ‘Well, we start by clearing up. Even Vikings have to load the dishwasher.’ She points out where to put our mugs.

  ‘Oh. Yes, sorry …’

  Chairs screech backwards as we leap to our feet and begin clearing the table like women possessed. Inge flings a cloth at each child for them to wipe up before thrusting a dustpan and brush at a confused Margot.

  The younger woman looks at this as though it’s kryptonite.

  ‘You have seen one of those before, haven’t you?’ I ask her.

  ‘Yes. Absolutely.’ She shakes the two parts of moulded plastic, then tries to prise them apart. Through a process of trial and error, she manages to twist the brush free. Margot hesitates, then has a cursory dab at the floor before being saved from further humiliation by the lamb, emerging from his cupboard to vacuum up the rest of the crumbs.

  ‘Next, we’ll get you settled in and prepare the beds.’

  This is a boon and I am near vibrating with anticipation at the prospect of a) sleeping in a bed and b) seeing how this magical unicorn of a woman lives.

  Although it doesn’t quite feel like the ‘roughing it’ retreat experience that Melissa signed us up for, I think, studying her expression while we walk.

  ‘Is this OK with you?’ I ask her. ‘Swapping roll matts for bunk beds?’

  ‘Yeah, I think so …’ She sounds more ambiguous than I’ve ever heard my sister sound before. ‘I have a few ulterior motives,’ she adds, equally mysteriously.

  ‘Ulterior’? She’s never had anything ulterior in her life!

  I think that perhaps she’s got the wrong word so just smile and keep on walking, satisfied that I seem to have got away with this whole bed ruse, for now.

  Result!

  ‘Are you smiling?’ Melissa asks, staring at me.

  ‘What, I can’t smile?’

  ‘Well, you can … only it’s unnerving.’ She mock shudders. I make a sarcastic face back at her in response before noting, with interest, that I do feel something approaching ‘happy’.

  Weird …

  We’re led through the kitchen into a second hallway – a sort of ground floor bungalow-landing equivalent – past a room containing a still-moaning Magnus.

  ‘Should we … ?’ Tricia starts. ‘Is he … ?’

  ‘He’ll be fine,’ Inge says. ‘Bed linen’s here …’ She doesn’t stop to dwell on her sickly husband but continues the tour, showing us into a room with a washing machine, dryer and chest freezer as well as a repurposed bookcase, laden with crisp, white, folded sheets. ‘Arms out,’ she instructs and we do as we’re told. ‘There’s a sheet and duvet for each of you, then you can help yourself to pillow cases.’

  This must be what it’s like in prison, I think, lining up to receive the neatly folded linen, a really nice prison, but still …

  ‘Is that everyone? Right, let’s go,’ Inge says, and we are shooed out. ‘That’s the bathroom.’ She nods at a large, white, tiled room with a single candle flickering serenely.

  What is it with Vikings and fire?

  As we move along, I notice a bookcase in the hallway, this time with books on it as well as a basket – hidden in plain view – containing a collection of mobile phones.

  ‘Are those—’ I whisper to Tricia.

  ‘Yes,’ Inge replies, overhearing. ‘But I trust you to leave them there until the end of the week.’

  Do you? Have you met me?

  I experience an almost uncontrollable urge to reach out and grab the white iPhone that has been an extension of my right arm during all my non-dental practitioning hours for the past God knows how many years. It’s intriguing how urgent this impulse is – as though it has nothing to do with me but is just another function my body must perform. Like breathing. Sometimes, I’ll ignore my children to look at pictures of my children on my phone. Which, I realise now, probably isn’t stellar parenting. And yet …

  No, Alice. Just. No!

  My arm jerks towards the basket, involuntarily.

  I’ve made it this far … I didn’t overcome conversational reticence, survive a near death-experience with a swinging sock, or break my carb ban to crumble now …

  As though reading my mind, Inge begins to run through a few ground rules of the new arrangement.

  ‘You’re familiar with the Viking code of conduct by now, right? The nine noble virtues of Viking life: truth, honour, discipline, courage, hospitality, self-reliance, industriousness and perseverance?’

  ‘Nine?’ Melissa frowns at her fingers. ‘I only counted eight.’ She holds up her hands to demonstrate.

  ‘Well, yes. The ninth is fidelity, but, you know – we’re pretty liberal in Scandinavia. So let’s say there are eight main ones. The point is, trust is at the heart of many of them. And honesty. OK?’

  ‘OK.’ Melissa nods, marginally less flummoxed.

  Goodbye phone. I give it one last, lingering look before being ushered on. I won’t forget you …

  ‘This is the kids’ room,’ Inge explains, gesturing to another all-white space with light wooden floors. ‘I made bunk beds so it’s easier for sleepovers and stuff.’

  Sweet Jesus, the woman handles sleepovers too? I’ve been resisting Charlotte’s requests to add to my child-count for years now. I find it challenging enough with two small people running around and demanding things. But three? Or more? I feel a migraine coming on just contemplating this.

  Perhaps I’m a terrible, mean mother.

  Perhaps I just need to learn to relax a bit more.

  Perhaps I need to be more Viking …

  At speed, Inge and her two eldest strip the beds and bundle their sheets next door, instructing us to make ourselves at home.

  ‘Shall we?’ Melissa asks, gesturing to the bed on the far side of a wall, decorated, not with childish scribblings stuck up with sticky tape as at home, but with three vast canvases. Each has been painted, dated and signed by Inge and Magnus’s offspring – then elevated to ‘art’ by their mountings. Damn it, I should be doing that! I think. Memo to self: add this to red colour-coded iPhone calendar ‘family to do’ list. Once I get my hands on a phone, anyway …

  ‘Bagsy top bunk!’ Melissa is already scrambling up the ladder and positioning herself, corpse-like, to try out the mattress. ‘Not bad,’ she says, before starting to bounce.

  ‘Err … I’m not sure that’s wise … They were built for kids …’

  I haven’t shared a bunk bed with Melissa since I was eleven, when, apparently, I insisted I needed privacy and moved into the spare room. I remember none of this until I’m reminded by an over-excited little sister testing the strength of Inge’s self-whittled wooden slats.

  ‘It’ll be just like old times!’ she declares, before appearing upside down, blood rushing to her head and hair hanging like a curtain. ‘But don’t fart in the night because hot air rises and it’ll come right up to me …’

  ‘I don’t far—’ I start, then realise that I’m playing into her hands. She wants me to regress to my eleven-year-old self! ‘I don’t … do that …’

  In fact, a largely vegetarian diet combined with more worthy pulses than you can shake a stick at, means that I probably do more of that than your average woman.

  But I’m not letting her know this … Besides, I must be
nicely clogged up with baked goods by now …

  Margot stands by the other bunk shyly, clutching her sheet bundle to her chest and not wanting to seem presumptuous, I suspect, after dustpan-gate. Fortunately, Tricia has no such reserve.

  ‘Mind if I take the bottom one? I always need to pee in the night and you risk a foot in the face otherwise,’ she tells Margot, who acquiesces immediately.

  After this, we return to the kitchen to find the lamb having a snooze in front of the wood-burning stove and children juggling chicks as Inge stirs something on the hob. She licks a wooden spoon appreciatively, sets a lid on her creation, then turns down the heat before checking where we are on the Viking curriculum.

  ‘So, Magnus says you’ve done shelter, foraging, handicrafts and half of weaponry, is that right?’

  We nod.

  ‘Have you had the talk about monkeys and gym rats bla bla bla? Yes? OK then. I’ll just finish this stew, then we can start on sword-forging …’

  Melissa’s eyes light up and a smile plays on her lips, as though she’s eight years old and has just conned her way into staying up past bedtime. Her dimples threaten to give us away, but Margot gets in there first. ‘Magnus said we weren’t allowed to make a sword!’

  Why can’t that girl keep her mouth shut?

  ‘Snitches get stitches …’ Melissa mutters and Inge arches an eyebrow.

  ‘He said you “weren’t allowed”, did he?’ she asks. Margot nods. ‘Well, Magnus is busy puking in a pot. So we’re making a sword.’

  ‘Yesss!’ Melissa treats herself to a small air punch.

  ‘In one afternoon?’ Tricia marvels, echoing my thought process. ‘Can we?’

  ‘Of course.’ Inge shrugs, turning off the hob and making for the door. ‘Aim high. Declare victory before you see it.’

  ‘Is that a meme … ?’ Tricia asks, struggling to keep up with Inge’s long strides. ‘Like one of those Keep Calm ones?’

  ‘It’s about having such unwavering belief in what you do that there is no other outcome but to win,’ says Inge. ‘It’s a Viking saying.’

  Blimey, I think. You don’t get that at Not On The High Street …

  ‘Everyone ready?’

  After exchanging a final look of solidarity, we nod: we’re ready. We set off, the youngest child strapped into a huge Silver Cross perambulator and left outside to sleep (‘fresh air’s good for the lungs, plus no one steals babies in Scandinavia,’ Inge assures us) and the other two instructed to ‘get dirty and have an adventure’.

  I feel I’ve lived a thousand lifetimes since we were here last in the smoky outhouse, but for the second time today, we aren’t its only occupants.

  ‘Hi!’ Inge shouts as soon as we step inside. A large man emerges from the far end, sporting a beard, a plaid shirt and what look a lot like dungarees, the kind I regularly dressed Thomas in before he, aged three, told me that they were ‘for babies’.

  Well, more fool you, kiddo, because it turns out strapping Vikings wear ’em, too …

  As the man comes closer, I notice that he also has big brown cow-eyes, fringed with lashes.

  ‘Who’s this long cool drink of water?’ Tricia asks in a voice like hot chocolate.

  ‘This is Otto,’ says Inge. ‘My cousin. Otto? Come say hello – we have visitors!’

  ‘I could pop him open like a pistachio …’ Tricia sighs.

  The bear-like man ambles over and extends a large, sooty hand to whichever of us is willing to take it first. Tricia immediately volunteers, then has to be encouraged to release him so that the rest of us can have a turn.

  ‘Did we see you earlier?’ Melissa asks.

  ‘Yes, that was me.’

  ‘You left without saying hello!’

  ‘Yes,’ is all he responds, leaving Inge to explain.

  ‘Otto tends to work when he knows Magnus isn’t around.’

  ‘Why?’ Melissa asks, directly. ‘Don’t you two don’t get on?’

  How does she do that? I wonder how my sister became so adept at cutting to the chase.

  ‘Oh, he’s never done anything to me, personally,’ Otto says. ‘It’s just … how would you say it in English …’ He opens his palms and thinks for a while, before landing on the perfect translation. ‘I think he’s kind of an arsehole.’

  Hear, hear …

  ‘Now then …’ Inge makes a half-hearted attempt to chastise him while also suppressing a smile. ‘Otto’s a fellow Icelander,’ she adds, ‘so we’re the original Vikings, right?’

  ‘Right.’ He smiles.

  ‘And sometimes Magnus can be a bit …’ She stops to search for the word. ‘Well … Magnus.’

  ‘Mmm.’ I find myself agreeing, then feel compelled to say ‘sorry’ immediately and repeatedly – as a flush creeps up my neck.

  ‘Never apologise,’ Inge tells me, firmly.

  ‘No. OK. Sorry. Not sorry …’ Shit, I should shut up again now, I decide.

  ‘Anyway,’ she goes on, ‘this afternoon’s not about him. It’s about you, becoming Vikings. The sword we make together won’t be perfect. It won’t be beautiful, but it will be yours and you will have made it with your own hands.’

  I glance at Margot’s flawless plastic-model hands – Ha! Good luck doing metalwork with those – but when I look up I notice that Inge is also studying Margot, sizing her up.

  ‘What first?’ the girl herself bounces, eager to get started. A wry smile plays on Inge’s lips that she soon shakes off and gets down to business.

  ‘First you take the iron, hammer it into a bar, then hit it. Hard. We make a blade with steel, using lots of layers. Then you flatten it out, fold it over and do the same again.’

  ‘Like filo pastry,’ Otto interjects, helpfully.

  I knew my years of watching Bake Off while doing laundry and getting my carb hit vicariously would pay off, I think, pleased.

  We try – and I’m impressed to find I have seemingly acquired some Viking-style strength since this morning. Tricia has no such luck. Again. And when Inge ducks out to check on a fretting Freja, Tricia enlists Otto to give the sword a few bashes on her behalf and use up her ‘turn’. Inge comes back in to catch Otto hard at it – and she isn’t impressed.

  ‘Vikings help themselves,’ she chastises Tricia. (‘You’re not some maiden who needs to be saved from a dragon; you are the dragon’). Tricia promises to woman-up, and I seriously consider getting Inge’s aphorisms made into motivational mugs for the surgery.

  Inge proves to be an excellent teacher, manipulating red-hot steel, then grinding it to make a sharp edge. She finishes off the sword effortlessly, producing a prototype blade as we watch, slack-jawed. The final weapon is an awe-inspiring creation.

  Its weight makes me sink into my heels, grounding me, but I manage to raise it above my head, sending several doves flapping from the rafters, and feel my shoulder blades pull back and down, triceps tautening. I really am a Viking! I think, Not bad for a dentist from Streatham …

  ‘Right, who’s up for an axe next?’ Inge asks.

  Well, when she puts it like that … Even I’m excited.

  We ‘whip one up’, as Melissa puts it, by grinding an ‘axe-y sort of shape’ (again: her words) then sprinkling molten steel on top to make the blade sharp.

  I know! Smell me! Just casually ‘sprinkling molten steel’ as if it were cocoa on top of a full-fat cow-juice cappuccino! (which I definitely do not indulge in. Except when I do …)

  Once we’ve smoothed it down and dunked it into the murky depths of a tank of cold water next to the furnace to cool, we learn how to lob it (technical term).

  We take turns to carry the axe until we’re well clear of the outhouse, then Inge explains the basics of axe-throwing.

  ‘We’ll use … that tree as the target.’ Inge points to a fir in the middle distance. ‘Then you just stand with one foot forward, swing it up like you’re throwing a ball overarm, release, and let your arm follow through.’

  She demonstrates and the axe twirls
balletically through the air before hitting the right-hand side of the tree trunk target with a crack!

  Inge retrieves the axe and sets it down, explaining. ‘The aim is to rotate the axe three-sixty degrees so that the sharpened head hits the target. This can be hard for a beginner, but see how you get on—’

  She is cut off by an almighty THWACK, as our axe is lodged in a perfect ‘bull’s-eye’.

  Inge turns to find a red-faced Margot, looking shifty now.

  ‘I … I got carried away …’ the younger woman apologises.

  ‘You were supposed to wait until I said “go” …’ Inge stares at Margot.

  ‘Yes. But did I do it right?’ she asks, innocently.

  ‘Yes.’ Inge narrows her eyes, then nods. ‘Yes, you did.’

  Melissa takes up arms next and fares pretty well – her hand-eye coordination having always been better than mine at long range.

  This is because I deal in the details, I console myself, whereas she deals in livestock. And … fields and things …

  I hit precisely nothing, but it’s a satisfying ‘lob’ nonetheless. Bringing up the rear is Tricia, who, as suspected, has trouble. This time it’s with her overarm technique.

  ‘I think my boobs get in the way.’ She tries to readjust each in turn and experiments with different angles to allow her throwing arm free reign.

  Melissa sympathises. ‘No wonder it’s tricky. Those are some serious sweater puppies …’ – at which I blush. On everyone’s behalf.

  We are not related, we are not related, we are not related …

  Tricia nods. ‘I should have packed a sports bra. Anything to keep them out of trouble …’

  Margot pipes up. ‘I quite often don’t wear a bra.’

  We all look at her.

  Oh shit off, Margot! I think-shout, resenting her youthfully perky-yet-pleasantly-full-B-cups that DON’T NEED SCAFFOLDING!

  Eventually, Tricia manages to hit a tree. It’s not the right tree, and, rather than lodge itself in there, the axe merely bounces off again and nearly kills a bemused squirrel. But Inge agrees that it’s an ‘A’ for effort.

  ‘And we made the thing ourselves! As well as a sword! And saving Magnus’s life!’ Tricia brags now. ‘What a day! Early bath for all of us!’