Viking Tunics
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I’m not sure what they did to the tunic of a dead man before putting it on me. They washed and combed it; then, I think, they put herbs in their nostrils so that their body odor would be pleasing. They also took a hair from their head and put it under my arm; perhaps this was to give me more courage or to make me feel as if they were there with me?
I do know that they cut off his beard for me, for the gods had made me shave mine when I left Norway. It seemed like I had just done such things but only now am I aware of how strange it is. A stranger had become part of me because he had died for me. But it didn’t bother me at all because I believed it was an honor.
It felt odd that the men of the Northmen had given me this tunic. In truth, most of them thought I was some foreign warrior and treated me accordingly. The Norseman who led us, Sigurd, did not treat me badly and said nothing about it being wrong, but he was not pleased either. When we set sail he gave me a gift: three silver coins and five pieces of gold.
That night, though, as we lay on our hard pallets in the boat, the other warriors laughed and joked over their cups of ale. “The English will pay handsomely,” one said. Another answered him. “Aye, you can bet your last penny on it.”
Yet another, a big man with long blond hair, spoke up: “They’ll kill us all if they get their hands on those coins!” He was drunk already and laughed uproariously while everyone else looked around uncomfortably and tried to avoid his eyes.
“If we die here today, then let us go down fighting, with our blades in hand!” I said. Then, thinking better of what I’d just said, I added: “Well, maybe I shouldn’t say dying…”
They all fell silent. For a moment I saw fear flash across their faces as they stared at me. And then they roared out laughing again!
In the morning, though, when I went outside on the deck to look ahead for rocks, Sigurd came up beside me. He was wearing the blue tunic he was going to fight in and I could see his scars and his tattoos from his days spent with Thorgrim Night Wolf’s crew. We spoke very little until finally, I asked him: “Why did you give me this tunic?”
He shrugged. “Because you’re not really a Nordman. You must be some foreign knight. Or maybe it is a woman disguised as a man who has come among us. So I figured the gods wouldn’t mind it if you wore this tunic.”
We sailed south through the North Sea for several days and we met no ships along the way, but still, my stomach tightened each time I passed by the cliffs. Finally, we reached land and made our camp near the ruins of a fortress that had been burned down years before.
There were many small streams and we could fill up water bags for drinking and cooking. After a day’s rest, we set out again and came upon the great walls of London. This city was a huge jumble of buildings built on top of each other, and it seemed the people had dug into the ground for protection rather than building above it. It reminded me of the old Roman town where I first learned Latin.
I was struck by how large and well-kept the place was. Even though it was a few hundred years later, this city appeared prosperous. As we sailed closer to shore, I noticed men walking down the streets carrying heavy packs or spears on their backs, and women pushing carts full of goods.
Some were dressed simply in woolens, others in fine clothes. The men had long beards but the women had none. They seemed like a mixed lot of people to me: tall and short, redheads and blond hair and brown skin, young ones and old ones.
Most wore simple clothing, except for the rich who showed off their wealth by wearing colorful robes. I was surprised to see women riding horses and leading chariots. And everywhere there seemed to be smoke rising from cooking fires.
There were two towers in London, one tall and narrow and one low and squat, and as we sailed past each tower we could hear shouts coming from its top windows. The Norsemen shouted back, trying to sound friendly or defiant or arrogant or whatever it is you shout at someone from high atop a tower when you are angry.
At least I could not understand the words. We were greeted with much cheering and waving of hands as we passed under the city’s wall.
Then I saw that there was a wide river running right through the center of this place. It was a wide stream with banks lined with houses that rose up steeply, like hills. On both sides stood great trees that looked like they belonged more to a forest than to an open stretch of land.
A strange feeling settled inside me and I thought perhaps the gods had sent a warning, after all. That is why we should never have left Norway; because it would turn out like this! But that was ridiculous. Why should God send a message so vague? What was it supposed to mean?
The next morning, I was standing on board a ship with Sigurd and my friends when we spotted two ships approaching us from the north. They looked much bigger than ours and I realized they must belong to the Saxons, who ruled England.
Both ships were manned by dozens of armed men and I saw they were sailing straight toward us with no sign of turning aside. When I pointed them out to Sigurd, he turned to the crew. “Let us make sail now and run out of here! We will not stop until we find land!”
Sigurd’s voice boomed across the deck and he ordered the men to haul in the ropes. We cast off and the wind rushed at us, driving us toward the Saxon ships. I could see that the men aboard these larger ships also knew that we were being pursued and that we had the upper hand.
Their eyes were hard and they were shouting at us in guttural voices, but it sounded like they were telling us we didn’t stand a chance against their ships. I could tell that Sigurd felt that too. His eyes flicked over to the big Saxon ship that was gaining on us and he gave me a quick glance.
“They’re only trying to frighten us,” he said quietly. “But let’s get out of here anyway.”
I nodded and shouted to the men on deck, telling them to cast off all lines, put up the sail, and then turn eastward. We were already far enough away that I was sure that the Saxons would not be able to chase us down before we reached land.
And even if they did catch us, I thought, what good would they do? The Saxons were not as skilled at fighting as the Danes had been, and they were not as well supplied either. If we fought, we would surely die in any case. So Sigurd ordered us to keep going and soon we were speeding down the river, heading west.
When we came ashore, we took shelter in a nearby fishing village where we found some small farms and a few houses with roofs of sod. Sigurd set about hiring laborers to work the land while the rest of us made our way into the woods and set up a camp for ourselves.
There were many people in the village who wanted to join us and Sigurd accepted them, including those who could still fight, which wasn’t very many. He gathered them together and told them to gather food for themselves so as to be ready for whatever the Saxons might throw at us.
I watched him as he walked through the camp, giving orders. I could not help thinking how different he seemed from every other leader I’d ever known. Even the great Gorm was nothing compared to Sigurd, whom I thought had a special gift from Odin.
After we returned home and began building a house, I spent the rest of that year learning to sail the ships I had helped build. It was a slow process and there was a lot of cursing and arguing between Sigurd and his crew.
But Sigurd kept reminding them that they were lucky to have such a master and he always reminded them to keep working. After a time, they grew tired of hearing it and started working better, although some would still complain that they were being forced to do things just to spite Sigurd.
That winter, as the snow fell thick and heavy on the ground, we decided to take on board a new crew member and Sigurd chose Gunnar, a young man from Iceland. This made me feel a little jealous; I wanted Gunnar to be Sigurd’s slave but I was willing to accept another man in his place of him.
Gunnar was a good lad and it was nice having him around because he spoke fluent German. Most of my fellow crew members spoke a mixture of Danish, Swedish, Norwegian, and English. But Gunnar had grown up in Hamburg, which was part of Denmark, and it made sense for him to speak the language of its ruler, King Alfred.
That summer, when we went back to sea to trade, I learned more than I could have imagined.
The Saxons are not the same as the Vikings who ruled Norway and Sweden, but they look just like the Norsemen. Some of them speak the old Norse tongue but most of them speak something called Saxon, which is a mixture of Old English and other languages.
They live in large communities, mostly along the coast, and they have long houses with wooden walls and doors. In the center of each community, they have a church where they worship God and their god is called Woden, though I believe that the Saxons call him Thor. I’m told that he rules Asgard, which seems to be some kind of Valhalla or heaven.
Some Saxons have been raiding along the North Sea coast this past winter, burning and destroying everything that has value, and killing all the men they find. These raiders are led by a king named Uhtred the White, whose father was killed during a battle with the Danes.
Now Uhtred is trying to unite the Saxons so that they can fight us. He has no real power yet, and even if he did, I doubt he would be able to defeat us. His only chance is to kill us one ship at a time while we are at sea, and it seems that the only way to stop him is to kill him first.
***
Sigurd knew what he had to do. It was obvious enough. He needed a plan, and he needed men he could trust completely. But there were so many of us – over sixty men in the settlement now – and he had to find someone among them who could act without fear and make decisions when Sigurd was off fighting.
I was too close to the danger for that, I thought, but I also knew I would not be left alone. The others were probably thinking the same thing as me. No matter who he picked, they’d all think the same and I’d lose a friend.
I tried to hide my feelings as best I could until Sigurd came to see me. “You’re a fine seaman, Asgot,” he said, “but you don’t need to know every last detail about every ship that goes down under my command.”
“Of course I don’t,” I replied. “I’ll leave that to those who care more about it than you do, like Olaf and the others. Why would I want to know how a boat is constructed?”
“Well, maybe I’ve been doing you a disservice then. Because you do have a knack for knowing a little more than your fair share of shipbuilding secrets. I was wondering if you might like to help me with something.”
It sounded ominous. I wasn’t sure I wanted to get involved with anything that would make me seem like less of a man, or put my head above water when the waves got rough. Still, it was Sigurd, and he had never done me wrong before.
I shrugged my shoulders, which always made people think I agree with them. It’s an instinctive response. And Sigurd smiled in return. There was no need to say anymore. We walked outside into the fresh air and Sigurd told me what he planned.
We had set ourselves up in the ruins of the old priory that once belonged to St. Andrew’s, which stood on top of the high ground just north of the river Avon, near Bristol. Our settlement was surrounded by a palisade wall and we used loopholes, or windows cut into the walls, for shooting arrows out of.
But there were gaps, and Sigurd wanted me to fix them. He showed me two different types of arrowheads and explained that I should try to find a way to use both at once. I was supposed to find a way to shoot two arrows through the same hole at the same time.
I asked why he wanted such a thing and Sigurd seemed surprised at my question. “To save time,” he said. We didn’t have much of that because we had been busy for months making the ships, which took three days each. The men were still building them, though now the planks from the ship were being turned into oars and other parts that would make our new ships faster.
“But we have more bows than we have shafts,” I said.
“True enough, but not everyone will be good enough to shoot a bow well. So, when you come across someone with an untrained arm you want to train them to do more than just hold the bow and pull the string back. You want to teach them to hit what they aim at, right? This is the same.”
That sounded sensible to me, so I agreed. It wasn’t as if I had nothing better to do anyway. I’d been helping Olaf with his new farm and keeping the place tidy. We had cleared the land of trees, which we burned to keep the place free of insects and rats, and planted crops, and built barns for hay and grain. Olaf said I had done very well and that the work would repay me handsomely.
“And now you’re thinking about other things,” he told me. “You’re always thinking about your family and friends, and this is another way to look after them.” He smiled and shook his head. “No matter how much you do, some of them never seem satisfied.”
Olaf’s farm was in the north of England and it lay on the River Tees between the Pennine Hills and the North Sea, on the coast where we had taken our boats from. The area around it was lush and fertile, so Olaf had plenty to eat.
That made him happy, but it also made me think of my father’s death even more because the only food I had left to remember him by was the last few pieces of smoked mutton that he sent home with us when we buried him. My mother hadn’t eaten it yet and she couldn’t bring herself to do so without telling me about him.
I had never seen her cry before, but then I suppose she had never experienced such a tragedy before.
Now my mother did not feel like eating anything, but she knew it would make me sad if she didn’t. So I ate it all while we sat at the kitchen table. Even though I had been hungry, that meat was tough and chewy; and there was a strange taste to it that I could not quite put my finger on like something had spoiled it somehow.
It upset me to think that he must have suffered the same fate as I had, having his throat cut open with no hope of fighting back and that I might soon join him in that dark place.
The End