Demon of Scattery

by Poul Anderson

  you would be honored in my household.” For a span he seemed almost frightened. “If you will.”

  She regarded him in turn, and awe was in her look as well. This was the man who had slain Cata—Cata, whom even holy Senan had but banished.

  There rose the same sudden wish in her as in him. For a moment she looked away, toward the rain and the green hills of Ireland. Then she shrugged and took both his hands. “My own land is banned to me,” she said, “and I’ve nowhere else to go.” She tilted her head and smiled a bit.

  “You and I, together, might do much; look at what we did, striving apart.

  And—Halldor, Halldor, I want to go with you!”

  She dropped his hands and stepped back. “One more thing,” she said.

  “A charm, before we sail—a true one, this time. By the sacred well grows a rowan tree; a branch of that, woven into the side of Sea Bear, will bring your voyage luck. And it’s the last thing I can give you from Ireland.”

  An iceberg slipped by, huge, grey-white beneath stars and northlights, breathing forth wraiths of cold. Skafloc’s breath gusted frosty as he spoke:

  “Do you know what became of them, then, Mananaan?”

  The sea god shrugged. “Their ship sailed safely home, and ever after.

  Word came of their later doings. They lived as happily as I suppose mortals may, until they died. They were not often unfriends. She was thought to be a strong spaewife, and many sought her counsel or her help.

  It’s said she had a fierce temper, but a kind heart.”

  “Ranulf, the son—did he live?”

  “He did, but he returned to Ireland and became a monk. So much for his father’s hopes, though Brigit bore other sons and daughters.”

  “What, then, of the first child she was carrying?

  “Oh, yes, I know something of him. Whoever the father of that one was—Halldor always took the boy as his own—he became a mighty man in Norway. It’s said he fathered Gunnhild, the queen of King Erik Blood-ax—”

  Skafloc gripped the tiller hard. “The witch-queen?”

  Mananaan nodded. “Yes. The same. Beware, my friend, of calling upon the unknown. The answer is apt to be endless.”

  Their boat sailed on into the dark.

  Historical Notes

  The Irish

  I savored my whiskey and looked out at the wind-whipped River Shannon. On Scattery Island the round tower was clearly visible from the window of the Galleon Inn, a pub in Cappagh, near Kilrush, County Clare.

  The room was rich with turf smoke.

  “Mr. Beezley,” I said, holding out my glass for a refill, “what you need here is a good monster. It would help tourism.”

  “It would, that,” he agreed, and poured a generous portion.

  “You could line the walls with blurry photos, and then refuse to talk about it. Keep people curious. Start rumors.”

  “But that monster was a long time ago. Saint Senan banished him, you know.” He smiled and patted the head of his huge black dog.

  “Well, maybe it’s time Cata came back.” We sat in silence and gazed 3

  1/2 miles across the river.

  Cata, the monster of Scattery Island, is “real.” Legend holds that Saint Senan, after a dreadful fight, vanguished the beast and founded a monastery. Senan died in 544 A.D. Over the centuries Scattery has been conquered many times. The vikings raided it in 816 and 835 A.D. (the latter is the occasion of our story). Then they did not return for more than a hundred years. One cannot help wondering why, when the location was so strategic. They again occupied Scattery from 972 to 975, and it was then recaptured by Brian Ború, who died in 1014 at the Battle of Clontarf.

  In later years it was plundered by the English and Normans, and the monastery itself was destroyed in Elizabethan times. Relics of these various occupations yet stand; the round tower, however, dates from the time of the viking raids. The island has long been considered important for seafarers. It was customary for new boats to sail deosol (sunwise) around it, and a pebble taken from its beach was said to guard against shipwreck.

  The River Shannon, in which Scattery is located, is the largest stream in Ireland. On its bank now stands Shannon International Airport, first stop for transatlantic jets. The Shannonside area—and indeed much of the West of Ireland—has been developed for tourism. Various castles host

  “medieval” banquets and, perhaps more authentically, folk-villages of the last century and settlements of the early Iron Age have been painstakingly restored or reconstructed.

  This story takes place long before any castles were built in Ireland. The nearby Craggaunowen Project, however, replicates an iron-age settlement, and settlements of that same type were in common use on the West Coast until the sixteenth century. Huts were round, with high thatched roofs.

  The walls were wicker-woven and smeared with clay; the floors were bare earth. Cooking took place in a separate structure, because of the danger of fire. The monks on Scattery probably lived in such huts; the only stone edifices at the time would have been the small chapel and the round tower. Such towers were built for reasons which remain obscure; it is thought that they served as lookouts or as places of refuge during raids.

  The one on Scattery, well-preserved, stands 120 feet high. Also at the Craggaunowen Project is a ring-fort of the same period: these raths were surrounded with a rock-and-earth wall, and topped by a palisade of sharpened wooden stakes not unlike the stockades of the American Old West. The defensive wall sheltered buildings and cattle-pens. At Craggaunowen these have been rebuilt. To this day the Irish countryside is ringed with remains of these ancient raths, though only the stones survive.

  Souterrains—underground passages beneath the walls—served as places of refuge, storerooms, and secret exits. It is probably such a fort that Halldor and his men attacked on their raid upriver, when they brought back Eamon as a slave.

  Ireland in the ninth century was chaos. Not only was there constant danger from the marauding vikings, but native chieftains waged war on each other in a bewildering pattern of shifting alliances. Even monasteries would raid neighboring Church establishments.

  We have striven to be historically accurate as far as possible. Our thanks to Jerry Pournelle for help with one technical point. As for others, in ninth century Ireland the lay clergy (priests not associated with a monastic order) were free to marry, as Father Eamon did. Monasteries were the repositories of books, and the clergy were the literate class. The medical procedure of trephining—cutting a hole in the skull to relieve pressure on the brain—was known even to the ancient Irish, so it is not unlikely that Brigit was aware of the practice: Irish physicians of the time also performed suturing and ligature of blood vessels. Convents and monasteries often served as hospitals.

  A few Irish words may trip or confuse the reader. For those who are interested, then, here are explanations: a geas (pronounced gaysh) is a supernatural injunction, a taboo if you like, which renders otherwise morally-neutral acts forbidden. Such geasa (gesha) could be applied to one person, or to a position: for instance, the King of Tara was forbidden, when at Tara, to lie abed after sunrise.

  The Sídhe (shee) are the faerie-folk and/or ancient gods of Ireland.

  Samhain (sow-ween’), the Celtic New Year, is October 31st. Bealtaine (Beltane) is May 1st. Many activities, such as sailing, are traditionally unlucky on that day. Brigit’s observances (and she was trying for ill-luck), such as drawing and discarding first water, taking fire from the house, and having Halldor sail around Scattery, are all pagan survivals rooted in Irish folklore. Much later than the ninth century the old ways remained strong in the minds of the countryfolk, and they have, to this day, left their characteristic stamp on Irish Christianity.

  A gealt (galt) is something like a Celtic berserker. In the heat of battle he is taken up with frenzy and eventually sprouts feathers and runs screaming through the treetops. Wandering for years, he finds his way to Glen na Gealt on the Dingle Peninsula and drinks from the w
ater there.

  After he rests for a time in the valley his wits will be restored. This legend, with its overtones of manic-depressive psychosis, has caused me to wonder whether the springs in Glen na Gealt have a high lithium ion content. When last I checked the water it had, alas, been raining heavily for days, so accurate chemical analysis was impossible.

  I admit one conscious point of historical inauthenticity. There exists a tenth-century description of Cata, the monster of Scattery Island, that bears no resemblance to the large serpent encountered in these pages. The beast was utterly fantastical and lacked elegance—though not halitosis. At a distance of four centuries, however, who is to say whether the medieval chronicler was correct? Besides, I am far more familiar with large snakes than with dragons: two huge healthy boas grace my living room.

  Otherwise, aside from historical or legendary “facts,” which both my collaborator and I have tried to keep accurate, everything in this story is wholly fictional.

  Mildred Downey Broxon

  The Norse

  No such people as the Vikings ever existed, and the word should no more be capitalized than should “pirate.” One may speak of the viking era in the same way as of the era of the crusades— and about as misleadingly.

  By no means did everybody go crusading during the latter centuries; nor was everybody a viking in the former period. Indeed, full-time vikings were rather rare.

  Then what did really happen?

  The period lasted some three hundred years. The first recorded raids on England and Ireland took place in the late eighth century. From small beginnings, the movement soon gained such size, scope, and ferocity that a new line appeared in the litanies of Western Europe: A furore Normannorum libera nos, Domine: “From the fury of the Northmen deliver us, O Lord.” The British Isles, France, Germany, and the Low Countries were ravaged over and over. In 845, both Paris and Hamburg fell to attack. At least one expedition fared down the Iberian coast and through the Mediterranean, plundering as it went. Finns, Lapps, and Baits suffered as much, though they had nobody among them at the time who could chronicle their woes.

  These raiders were from Scandinavia, the area now occupied by the peaceful nations Denmark, Norway, and Sweden; later on, their colonies in Iceland and elsewhere furnished many. At a time when Western Christendom was divided among largely ineffectual kings and recalcitrant barons, the heathen Scandinavians came forth with vigor, discipline, excellent weapons, and the finest ships in the world. Population pressure must have been a driving force, for those are not lands that nature has richly endowed. However, ambition, greed, and adventurousness were surely just as strong. So, often, was the people’s own quarrelsomeness. A man who got in trouble could gather a crew and take off overseas in hopes of mending his fortunes.

  More commonly, a neighborhood band of yeomen would take ship together after the crops were planted, to spend a season as buccaneers.

  They usually tried to return by harvest time.

  Such a raider bore the name of “viking.” The origin of the word is not quite certain, but probably it comes from ” vik,” meaning a narrow bay (cognate with Scots “wick”). A viking was, then, at first a “vik-ing,” a man of the bay. He pronounced it to rhyme more or less with English “seeking.”

  He and his bully boys lurked in an inlet. When a cargo vessel passed by, they pounced on her.

  As kings and jarls—aristocrats—gained strength, such robberies became increasingly dangerous close to home. A lord was all too apt to hunt down the pests and slay them. But meanwhile ships had improved until they could readily fare overseas. Nobody objected to raids upon foreigners, and the pickings there were much better. Soon huge fleets went forth. They might be gone for more than a single year, their crews wintering abroad in order to get an early start come spring.

  Frequently men found they liked it better where they were than they had done in their native countries. They settled down. In due course, colonization rather than plunder became the main purpose of Scandinavian warfare. The formidable armies that followed such leaders as Guthorm (“Guthrum”), Hrolf (“Rollo”), and Svein (“Sweyn”) Forkbeard cannot be called vikings, nor can the settlers who moved in after they had secured the territory.

  English writers down to the present day have generally referred to the invaders as Danes. This is only correct as regards their own country and Normandy, where most, if not all, of the newcomers do appear to have stemmed from the general area of what is now Denmark. In Scotland, Ireland, and the surrounding islands, the bulk of them were from what is now Norway. Swedish enterprise abroad seems to have been mainly directed toward Russia, and perhaps less warlike.

  Irish chroniclers drew a distinction between “light” and “dark” breeds of Scandinavians. The reference may be to Danes and Norwegians respectively. The Irish name for Norway was Lochlann, probably a Celtic-Nordic hybrid meaning “coastal district,” and the Norsemen they called Lochlannach.

  The history of these folk at home during the viking era is equally turbulent. Here it is enough to say that a strong Danish monarchy appeared sometime in the late eighth or early ninth century, quite likely in response to a Carolingian threat. At the time of our story, 835 A.D., Norway had not yet been unified, but consisted of numerous independent kingdoms and jarldoms. Thrandheim, from which the modern city Trondheim takes its name, was one of these. The environs are not rugged like many other parts of the country, but gently rolling.

  So much for the dry outward facts. Can we understand the people behind them, neither as glamorous nor as bestial, but as human?

  It is true that the vikings were cruel, rapacious, and wantonly destructive. Yet they were no worse in this respect than Christians; that would have been difficult. Only consider Charlemagne’s massacres among the Saxons or, at later dates, William the Conqueror’s depopulation of rebellious northern England and the horrors of the First Crusade. The vikings in their day were simply the most successful predators, and that largely by default.

  Furthermore, as I have observed earlier, not all or even most Scandinavian men went in viking (to translate literally their own term, gangu i viking). Treasure is good, but you cannot eat it or use it for a tool.

  The majority by far must have been reasonably peaceful farmers, fishers, hunters, artisans, and the like. As for goods from abroad, traders must have handled more than vikings ever did. Such large, prosperous mercantile communities as Hedeby, Birka, Kau-pang, and Gotland attest to this. Archeology shows that the network of trade reached through Russia as far as Constantinople and the Caspian Sea; southwesterly it linked itself to the Arab dominions.

  We have tried to show Halldor as a small-scale yeoman-entrepreneur, forced by misfortune and against his will to turn viking for a while. At the same time, of course, we have not wished to sentimentalize him. It was a brutal age.

  Though the Norse in Ireland destroyed a great deal, the Irish themselves had often done the same in their internecine wars. To that pastoral island the strangers brought innovations which included coined money, foreign commerce, and towns. If many took captives back with them, many others settled down and became a solid part of the folk. Thus it is no surprise that at the battle of Clontarf there were Celtic and Nordic warriors on both sides, and that, though Brian Ború died victorious on the field, no expulsion of foreigners followed. Ireland and the Irish have a way of winning love.

  The pagan Scandinavians had a culture of their own, alien to Christendom but rich in its way. Besides such stunningly beautiful creations as the Gokstad and Oseberg ships, it brought forth much that is fine in art and well-wrought implements. Via descendants who wrote them down, it gave us the splendid literature of Eddas and sagas. If fierce toward enemies or victims, its men were utterly loyal to kin, friends, chieftains; nothing was more loathed than a betrayer or perjurer. Its women enjoyed a status that, once it was lost in the medieval period, they would not regain until the late nineteenth century. An almost religious respect for the law pervaded it; sometimes this
became legalistic nitpicking, for these were a litigious people, but violation of the letter meant outlawry. Mostly freeholders, the population cherished their rights and liberties; for many generations they curbed their kings, and in Iceland they founded a unique sort of republic.

  They had no prescribed faith. Individual beliefs and local practices ranged from the crudest superstition or the most barbaric rites—even human sacrifice—to concepts which had a certain splendor. Ideas about what lies beyond the grave were just as variable, often inchoate. Like other pagans, the Scandinavians were tolerant of different creeds and apt to borrow from them. If a single spirit can be said to have prevailed, it was that of courage in the face of doom. A man’s death was predestined, but he could meet if in such a way as to leave an honorable name behind him.

  At the end of the world, the gods themselves must perish likewise.

  There is much more to say, but there are also plenty of books to say it, if you are interested. Let me just remark on a few details pertinent to this story. Modern artistic conventions notwithstanding, warriors wore no wings or horns on their helmets; shields were rather small wooden discs, equipped with hand-grips rather than straps; men rode horses when they could, but always dismounted to fight; several distinct types of ship existed; merchantmen generally depended on sail alone, warcraft on oars unless the wind was right; by poling out a sail, though, a vessel—at least of the former, deep-hulled sort—could point fairly close; only the latter bore figureheads, and not always they; law required that these images be demountable, to take down when approaching a friendly shore.

  As for the aftermath: In 872, at the battle of Hafrsfjord, King Harald Fairhair completed his forcible unification of Norway. The colonization of Iceland followed, by persons unhappy with his stern rule. Harald died old; his first successor was a son of his, Eirik Blood-Ax. That nickname is suggestive, yet according to the sagas, while he lived he was mainly guided by his wife, Gunnhild. Of her it is written that she was the daughter of one Ozur, a magnate in the northerly district of Hálogaland. We know nothing else about him, but he could well have moved up that way from Thrandheim. Gunnhild soon gained a sinister reputation as a troublemaker and, it was whispered, a witch. The story of her life is long and fascinating.