Gone Viking

by Helen Russell

  The forest holds no fear for me now, and that terrified girl who got lost in the woods all those years ago becomes just that: a girl unsure of her way in unfamiliar woodland who got scared. As anyone would, in the circumstances and with all she had to contend with at the time. She’s still a part of me, but I feel almost maternal towards her now. I surrender to the fear I felt then and the exhilaration I’m currently experiencing and – somehow – reconcile them both.

  Because I am Viking!

  I run and I run and I don’t stop, even when stones, slugs and God knows what else lodge themselves between my toes. Branches whip my face and brambles attack me from all angles, but I keep going.

  Come and get me thorns!

  I can hear the blood pulsing in my ears and feel a juddering heartbeat. Time loses all meaning and I am only aware that I have been doing this for what feels like An Eternity when I see two figures ahead of me in the clearing. Fire-lit torches are burning, and with my breath escaping in puffs now, I manage a ‘Hello?’

  Then I ‘shout my rage’, as instructed.

  ‘Arghhh!’

  ‘Arghhhhh!’ Melissa shouts back. Flushed, with a strand of dark hair stuck to her forehead with sweat, my sister is buzzing.

  ‘That was insane! Wasn’t that insane?’ she pulls at her T-shirt to create a flow of cool air down her top. ‘I mean, wow! I felt like Kate Bush pushing through a forest! Or Bilbo Baggins showing Mirkwood who’s BOSS! I LOVE berserking! I want to do it again! Right now! I want to go and … and … break rocks or something!’ she tells me excitedly, rain dripping from her nose.

  Margot is similarly euphoric and somehow manages to look like a film star, despite being covered in mud (How does she do it? I marvel). Then a third woman limps into view.

  ‘I think I screamed so hard I strained my groin …’ Tricia proclaims to all, rubbing at her pelvis before dissolving into a coughing fit.

  The Hills are Alive with the Sound of Wheezing, I think, affectionately. Again.

  We hear a slow hand clap, and then a barrel-chested man wearing nothing but harem pants deftly descends from a tree. He swings down branches with simian grace, then strides across the clearing as the rest of us roll our eyes, as one.

  ‘The children have built a fire in your honour,’ he tells us, as we move out of the woods. He quickens his pace to keep up with us, keen to claw back his audience. ‘It’s big!’ His voice goes up a notch in desperation: ‘And fiery!’

  Ahhh … Viking pyromania … how I’ll miss you!

  We charge towards a plume of smoke in the mid-distance until we can see a vast bonfire on the beach, now crackling and licking upwards, expelling heat and light for yards around. The children are daring each other to throw kindling on top of the flaming stack. Their woody missiles are aimed ever more haphazardly until, inevitably – like a giant game of high-stakes Jenga – one falls, whereby they all beat a hasty retreat, cackling like the miniature lunatics that they are.

  Inge is preoccupied with pulling down birch twigs and binding them together with twine, but when she sees us, she sets down her bundle and spreads her arms wide, inviting us all into her warrior-ess embrace.

  Two group hugs in as many days and I’m not even flinching! I take comfort from the warmth of my sister on one side and Inge on the other.

  ‘My Vikings! You’ve done it,’ she says. This is enough. This is all we need to hear from our real leader – the one who’s taught us more about life than any of us can yet appreciate. But there’s more. ‘Now, we celebrate.’ She collects buckets of water then gestures to a small wooden cubicle up shore that I’d merely taken for another outhouse up until now. ‘Who’s for a sauna?’

  ‘Vikings do spa treatments?’ Melissa asks in disbelief.

  ‘Of course!’ is Inge’s response. ‘Heat is good for the muscles after a run, plus Vikings invented saunas – we built them wherever we went! Hot stones? Water? Communal sweating? It’s practically our religion! More important decisions get made in saunas than in meetings!’ I’ve never seen Inge this animated. ‘In Finland, they even have a Burger King sauna! To share a sauna is to share the essence of someone! To be a true Viking,’ Inge summarises, ‘you must sweat.’

  ‘I sweat on a winter’s day in Kidderminster!’ Melissa exclaims. ‘I always knew I had a Viking heart!’

  ‘Are you sure you’re allowed saunas—’ I start, looking at my sister protectively.

  ‘Listen, dentist: I’m fine,’ she tells me with a grin. ‘I asked about spa treatments after you kept harping on about fluffy towels, so yes: I’m sure. Let’s do this!’

  Magnus shepherds the children back to the house and, as soon as he’s out of earshot, Inge instructs. ‘Clothes off!’

  This time, it’s for real and Tricia isn’t a woman who needs to be asked twice. She strips off layers of muddied Lycra and, as advertised, the mahogany tan extends to every nook and cranny that the ultraviolet rays of her personal Solar 5000™ Stand Up Sunbed can penetrate. Her enhanced chest is so taut, it looks like it’s on loan from a younger woman, and she’s also completely hair free … down there …

  She catches me looking and explains. ‘My last gentleman caller liked a clean work surface.’

  ‘Right. Yes …’

  Margot, as expected, looks like a live action cover of Women’s Health magazine and Inge is just as toned and magnificent as I might have imagined – battle scars and all. And then there’s me.

  I’m typically hyper-aware of my body – of the way my thighs must look, the way my arms go rigid, refusing to swing, and of my hands, just … hanging there. But for the first time post puberty, when faced with the prospect of getting naked, I don’t demur. This is OK, I think, these women are my friends. We’ve dodged death together. We’ve thrown axes. We’ve shared more than I’ve ever shared with another human being. Ever. So this? This feels … fine. Something I was so scared of at the start of the week now seems inconsequential. Not prurient or salacious: simply sans clothes. So I disrobe.

  I’m just peeling off a sodden sleeve when I notice a bump on my right arm that moves and grows as I flex at the elbow. At first I presume it’s another bruise from the hours spent colliding with forestry and falling over, or an injury sustained when I ever-so-slightly fainted post-run.fn2 But then I notice the same thing on my left arm.

  Could it be … ? Have I got … BICEPS now?!fn3

  Amazed and elated, I tense then relax these strange new additions.

  I’ve got guns! Muscles! All of my very own! Michelle Obama, here I come …

  I strip off swiftly after this, keen to check if there are any more muscles lurking (there aren’t. But still, it’s ridiculously exciting …).

  Here I am, world! Nude! Enjoying the air around my arse! The wind on my nipples! The breeze on my BICEPS! I am Viking! Hear me roar!

  I tune back in to my surroundings to hear Tricia telling everyone about the time she presented a series of naturist videos. ‘Great gig on the Costa del Sol,’ she reminisces. ‘You can still find a few of them on YouTube. Though once you’ve seen that many naked bodies, you realise no one’s very interested in yours. More’s the pity …’

  I hadn’t thought about it like this, but as we near the shed-sauna, I find I am completely relaxed. Inge’s right, I think. It is freeing, somehow. Surrounded by four other exposed bodies, each moving and undulating in its own way, it’s easier to get a sense of perspective. Look how far we’ve all come! I cast my eyes around our group, affectionately.

  The sauna is dimly lit, with no fluffy towels in sight and definitely no whale music. But I find I don’t mind – in fact, I’m enjoying myself.

  ‘Hot …’ mumbles Melissa as we blink our way in and take a seat on wooden benches.

  ‘Relax into it,’ Inge instructs. ‘The heat forces you to slow down.’ She throws a scoop of water on the stove, releasing a wave of steam until I feel as though I am being broiled alive. ‘Just make sure you drink a lot,’ she adds.

  I eye up the cool box in
the corner of the hut. ‘Is there water in there?’

  Inge lifts the lid to reveal a row of neatly packed bottles, glistening with condensation. ‘Better than water,’ she tells us. ‘Beer!’

  I’m so thirsty by now that I’ll pretty much drink anything, so I accept, gratefully. Within minutes, my muscles – and my mind – begin to pleasantly loosen.

  And … breathe …

  I do this, on repeat, until a lovely lax sensation takes over. I feel tenderised to the world anew. Memories and emotions that have been firmly locked up for decades seem to swirl around me, returning ‘home’ once more.

  I remember the time I cried so much that I threw up.

  And … breathe …

  I remember the night I drunk myself sober.

  And … breathe …

  I remember the summer I had my heart broken by a French exchange student.

  Breathe …

  I remember the morning Charlotte was born. And Thomas. Even the day Mum and Dad bought Melissa home from hospital.

  Home isn’t anything to be scared of, I see now – and it isn’t a building, either. It’s on the inside of us. And it’s been there all along. I feel as though, finally, I’m coming home to my body. To me.

  I find I’m crying: big, fat, happy tears mixing with the sweat that’s rolling down my face now. Without saying anything, Melissa shuffles closer and a hand slips into mine. I look up at her as she mouths the words. ‘It’s OK.’

  Inge ladles more water on the sizzling stove and then – once I’m pretty sure my eyelids are in danger of burning off – we’re led out into the chilly evening air, down to the pier, and told to jump.

  A week ago, this would have terrified me. But after last night’s epic adventure and our graduation through the seven stages of Viking training, a quick dip in the icy North Sea seems easy.

  Inge is the first to take the plunge, followed by Tricia, then Margot – who quite sensibly elects to lower herself in and hold on to the side of the pier to avoid the risk of drowning for the third time in twenty-four hours. Melissa and I opt for a running jump in tandem, and as toes touch water, I let out an involuntary yelp. There is a burst of hysterical laughter as we flounder, delirious, before wading out and rubbing at skin now burgundy with cold.

  The process is repeated after another stint in the sauna and by the third watery-dunk, the sea no longer feels chilly, even. Between us, we support Margot and in a strange and totally inelegant synchronised swimming move, we coax her away from her wooden safety ledge and out into the open water. And then … We all simply float, like leaves in the wind or animals that have finally found their true home.

  We emerge together, glistening in the moonlight, butterflies from a chrysalis: reborn.

  Then the birch twigs come out.

  ‘Oh my!’ I can’t help exclaiming and even Melissa expresses some surprise.

  ‘Whipping makes the skin soft,’ Inge explains, brandishing her homemade switch.

  ‘I use exfoliating shower gloves,’ Margot sounds apprehensive. ‘Won’t they do?’

  ‘No.’ Inge is insistent.

  Tricia gamely volunteers to go first, before suggesting that we all ‘have a go on the cat-o’nine-tails’ – both administering and being administered to. So we do. The smack of birch on flesh takes some getting used to, but after several Fifty Shades of Grey references and some exclamations that would have done Frankie Howard proud, I warm to the discipline (pun intended).

  Reader: I whipped a girl and I liked it.

  Afterwards, Tricia and Melissa compare skin smoothness while Inge retrieves several large foil parcels from the cool box and throws them on the hot coals. A few minutes later, dinner is served. For women who haven’t eaten all day, there is no finer sentence in the English language. A few minutes later, we unwrap charred aluminium bundles to reveal thick, sizzling and delicious-smelling … sausages.

  ‘I’m still a vegetaria—’ I start and then think, Sod it. I forget about any previous dietary peccadillos and fall upon the juicy provender (#justetff).

  ‘So, is this, like, a thing?’ Melissa asks through a mouthful of semi-chewed pork.

  ‘Sorry?’ Inge asks.

  ‘Sauna sausages?’

  ‘Oh, yes,’ she says. ‘Cooked the traditional way on the coals and eaten in situ.’

  ‘Naked?’ I ask surprised.

  ‘Course.’ Inge nods, taking another bite.

  Once we are sufficiently sausaged-up, we are released back into the night air and a bear-like figure in a grey beanie materialises from the gloam: Otto.

  ‘Oh, Otto fancy seeing you here …’ Melissa grins before taking his hand and towing him off to the woods to have her wicked way with him one last time. Otto is a willing supplicant, and the two break into a near-sprint to get to where they’re going faster.

  Inge and Margot are just plundering the depths of the cool box when Tricia reappears with a ghetto blaster, of the kind that was probably last sold some time in the 1980s.

  ‘Found it in the woodshed!’ she shouts with delight. ‘Shall we?’

  Pressing play on the clunky cassette player, we are rewarded with forty-five minutes of the best retro Scandinavian pop one could ever have the fortune to stumble across.

  Stark naked, Tricia demonstrates some of her finest moves, including ‘air push ups’, and – what has long been a personal favourite – ‘the two-fingered pointy dance’. It’s all done with such joy and a lack of inhibition that I can’t help but smile – and neither can the others. So when Inge and Margot join in with some equally inexpert shuffling, shoulder shimmies, and elbow dancing, I do too. And I’ve never felt so free.

  Melissa returns with some serious knullruffs and sex stamped all over her face. She’s wearing her fleece again, but not much else. She plucks at imaginary lapels to indicate that the ‘hit rate’ of her polyester pulling-jumper remains undiminished. I give her an approving nod and a grin. After expressing delight that the party appears to be ‘going off like a frog in a sock’, she joins in the frenzied dancing, spinning and zooming around like a drunk bee. There is singing, too, an activity that Inge declares is prime Viking. Feeling safe, soothed, yet also invigorated and stronger than I think I’ve ever been, I open my mouth and get my song on – for the first time since my Whitney Houston shower sessions as a child. My voice is … loud, I realise. And pretty bad, I can now concede. The pop world hasn’t been unduly deprived of my services after all … There may well be a good dose of what Melissa termed warbling on the top notes. But it feels great, and this, I’m learning, is the point. We sing and dance and spin until we collapse in the sand, semi-hysterical, cheeks aching from laughter.

  ‘Have you been having a nice time?’ I ask Melissa. ‘You look as though you have!’

  ‘I’ve had a very nice time, thank you.’ She nods and I smile. I’m pleased for her. I’m also aware that I haven’t had that glow for a very long time now. Something to work on, I think to myself.

  ‘Are you going to miss Otto?’ I ask.

  My sister shrugs. ‘Yeah. But I’ll be OK.’

  And I believe her. I give her a hug that swiftly morphs into a wrestle (her idea, not mine) before at least one of us has a mouthful of sand (me).

  While Inge arbitrates over a cartwheeling competition that Margot appears to have initiated (old competitive habits die hard), I slip an arm through Melissa’s. I take the opportunity to draw her away for a long overdue sister-to-sister (the new ‘deep and meaningful’).

  The fire has mellowed from ‘raging inferno-Jenga’ status to ‘warming glow’ and so we settle down to toast ourselves, feeling dizzy and decidedly dehydrated (read ‘drunk’), but cleansed of body and mind.

  By the darty light of the licking flames, Melissa looks different somehow. As though perhaps I’ve never really seen her, properly, before. Her pupils are threatening to overtake her irises and her hair is now essentially a thatch, but I also see now that she isn’t the same little sister I took for granted all these yea
rs. I study the blocks of shadow under her cheekbones, just above deeply etched dimples, and the sculpted contours of her face. And I see, now, that she’s a grown woman. And she’s beautiful.

  Melissa catches me looking and tells me with sisterly love to ‘stop being an insane weirdo’. I tell her I’m beginning to realise that sanity is overrated.

  ‘Fair point.’ She shrugs, and we contemplate this. ‘If I die,’ Melissa says, staring into the fire now, ‘I want you to give me a proper Viking funeral. I mean flames, boats, hot men with beards – the works.’

  I feel a stab in the heart just hearing her talk like this, so I take her hands and address her head on. ‘Listen to me when I say that everything’s going to be OK. And if it’s not, I will make it OK,’ I promise. Wisely or otherwise.

  Melissa starts to well up at this and sniffs, loudly. She attempts to wipe her nose on her arm, but because I’m still holding her hands, she takes me with her, depositing a residue of salty snot up my wrist.

  ‘Oh, sorry!’ she says.

  ‘It doesn’t matter,’ I say, eyes pricking with tears and my own nose running now.

  ‘You look like a snotty mermaid,’ Melissa half laughs, half sobs, ‘with your too-long hair …’

  ‘Thanks,’ I laugh-snuffle back.

  ‘I mean, maybe one that’s had quite a hard life and lost its sea-shell comb, but a mermaid nonetheless.’