The Long Ships

CHAPTER ONE

CONCERNING THE END OF THE WORLD, AND HOW ORM’S CHILDREN GREW UP

AT length that year arrived in which the world was due to end. By this time Orm was in his thirty-fifth and Ylva in her twenty-eighth year. All good Christians believed that in this, the thousandth year after His birth, Christ would appear in the sky surrounded by hosts of shining angels and judge every man and woman, both living and dead, to decide who should go to heaven and who to hell. Orm had heard Father Willibald talk about this so often that he had become resigned to it. Ylva could never make up her mind whether she really believed that it would happen or not; but Asa was happy in the thought that she would be able to attend this great occasion as a living person, in her best clothes, and not as a corpse in a winding-sheet.

Two things, however, troubled Orm. One was that Toke still refused to be converted. The last time he had visited him Orm had striven earnestly to persuade him that he would be wise to change his faith, enumerating to him all the advantages that Christians would shortly enjoy; but Toke had remained obstinate and had chaffed Orm for his zeal.

“The evenings will be long in heaven if Toke is not there,” said Orm to Ylva more than once. “Many of the great men I have known will be elsewhere; Krok and Almansur, Styrbjörn and Olof Summerbird, and many other good warriors besides. Of the people who have meant most to me, I shall only have yourself, our children, Asa, Father Willibald, Rapp, and the house-folk; and also Bishop Poppo and your father, King Harald, whom it will be good to meet again. But I should like to have had Toke there. It is his woman who holds him back.”

“Let them do as they think best,” said Ylva. “Things may turn out otherwise than as you anticipate. For my part, I do not think God will be in such a hurry to destroy the world, after having put Himself to so much trouble to create it. Father Willibald says we shall all sprout wings, and when I picture him thus, or you, or Rapp, I cannot but laugh. I do not want any wings, but I should like to be allowed to take my gold chain with me, and Father Willibald does not think I shall be allowed to. So I am not looking forward to this event as eagerly as he is, and will believe in it when I see it happen.”

Orm’s other concern was whether it would be wise to sow his crops. He was anxious to know at what season of the year Christ’s advent might be expected, but Father Willibald was unable to enlighten him on this point. Orm doubted whether it would be worth the labor, for he might never be able to reap the year’s harvest and would not be likely to need it even if it should ripen in time. Soon, however, he succeeded in solving this problem to his satisfaction.

From the very first day of this year every young Christian woman had sought the delights of bodily pleasure more greedily than ever before, for they were uncertain whether this pleasure would be allowed them in heaven and were therefore anxious to enjoy as much of it as they could while there was yet time, since, whatever form of love heaven might have to offer them, they doubted whether it could be as agreeable as the sort practiced on earth. Such of the servant-girls as were unmarried became wholly intractable, running after every man they saw; and even in the married women a certain difference was evident, though they clung virtuously to their husbands, thinking it imprudent to do otherwise when the Judgment Day was so close upon them. The result of all this was that by the spring most of the women at Gröning were with child. When Orm discovered that Ylva, Torgunn, and the rest were in this condition, his spirits perked up again, and he ordered that the sowing should take place as usual.

“No children can be born in heaven,” he said. “Therefore they must all be born on earth. But this cannot be until the beginning of next year. Either the god-men have calculated wrongly, or God has changed His mind. When nine months have gone by without any woman becoming pregnant, then we shall know that the end of the world is imminent, and can begin to prepare for it; but until then we can live our lives as usual.”

Nothing that Father Willibald said could persuade him that he was wrong in this surmise; and as the year wore on and nothing happened, the priest himself began to have doubts about the matter. It might be, he said, that God had altered His plans, in view of the fact that there were still so many sinful men on earth to whom the gospel had not yet penetrated.

That autumn a band of foreigners came from the east and made their way on foot along the border. They were all soldiers, and all wounded; some of their wounds were still bleeding. There were eleven of them, and they trudged from house to house craving food and night shelter; where this was granted them, they remained for one night, or sometimes two, and then proceeded on their way. They said they were Norwegians and were journeying homewards, but more than this they would not reveal. They conducted themselves peaceably, using no violence toward anyone; and where night shelter was refused them, they continued on their way without complaint, as though unconcerned whether they ate and slept or no.

At length they arrived at Gröning, and Orm came out to speak with them, accompanied by Father Willibald. When they saw the priest, they fell on their knees and besought him earnestly to bless them. He did so willingly, and they seemed overjoyed at having come to a Christian house and especially at having found a priest. They ate and drank ravenously; then, when they had consumed their fill, they sat silent and large-eyed, paying scant heed to the questions that were addressed to them, as though they had other things uppermost in their minds. Father Willibald saw to their wounds, but his blessings were what they were most eager for, and of these it seemed that they could not have enough. When they were told that the morrow was a Sunday, they begged to be allowed to stay and attend Mass and to listen to the sermon. This request Orm granted them willingly, though he was vexed that they would tell him nothing about themselves or whence they had come.

That Sunday was a fine day, and many people came riding to church, mindful of the promise they had made to Father Willibald on the evening of their baptism. The foreigners were given places on the front benches and listened earnestly to all that the priest said. As usual during this year, he took as his theme the end of the world, assuring them that it might be expected to occur very shortly, though it was difficult to say exactly when, and that every Christian must mend his ways in order that he might not be found wanting when the day arrived. As he said this, several of the foreigners were seen to smile contemptuously; others, however, wept, so that the tears could be seen on their cheeks. After Mass they begged to be blessed again, with a great blessing; and Father Willibald did as they asked him.

After he had blessed them, they said: “You are a good man, priest. But you do not know that the event of which you warn us has already happened. The end of the world has come; Christ has taken our King from us to live with Him, and we have been forgotten.”

Nobody could understand what they meant, and they were unwilling to say more. At length, however, they explained what had happened to them. They spoke with few words, and in voices such as dead men might have, as though nothing any longer had any meaning for them.

They said that their King, Olaf Tryggvasson of Norway, the best man who had ever lived on earth, save only Christ Himself, had fallen in a great battle against the Danes and Swedes. They themselves had been captured alive by the Swedes; their ship had been boarded by great numbers and they, fatigued, had been pinned between shields or else, because of their wounds, had been unable to resist longer. Others of their comrades, more fortunate, had followed their King to Christ. Then they had been led, together with many others, aboard one of the Swedish ships to be taken to Sweden. There had been forty of them in the ship, all told. One night they lay in an estuary, and someone observed that this river was called the Holy River. This they took to be a sign from God, and as many of them as had the strength to do so broke their fetters and fought with the Swedes in the ship. They killed them all; but most of their comrades were slain also, so that only sixteen of them were left alive. These had then rowed the ship up the river as far as they could. Five, wounded more grievously than the rest, had died at their oars, smiling; and they, the eleven survivors, had taken weapons from the dead Swedes and abandoned the ship, thinking to march overland to the Halland border and so into Norway. For, realizing that they were the most unworthy of King Olaf’s men, since they alone had been left behind when all their comrades had been permitted to accompany him, they had not dared to take their own lives, for fear lest he should refuse to know them. They believed that this was the penance demanded of them, that they should return to Norway and bring to their countrymen tidings of the death of their King. Every day they had said all the prayers they knew, though these had been fewer than they could have wished, and had reminded one another of all the King’s commandments regarding the conduct of Christian warriors. It was a great joy to them, they said, that they had at last found a priest and been permitted to attend Mass and receive God’s blessing; now, however, they must continue on their journey, that they might lose no time in bringing their sad tidings to their countrymen. They believed that when they had done this, a sign would be given them, perhaps by their King himself, that they had at last been deemed worthy to join him, though they were the poorest of his men.

They thanked Orm and the priest for their kindness and went their way; and nothing more was heard of them at Gröning, nor of the end of the world.

The year ended without the smallest sign having appeared in the sky, and there ensued a period of calm in the border country. Relations with the Smalanders continued to be peaceful, and there were no local incidents worth mentioning, apart from the usual murders at feasts and weddings, and a few men burned in their houses as the result of neighborly disputes. At Gröning, life proceeded tranquilly. Father Willibald worked assiduously for Christ, though he was not infrequently heard to complain at the slowness with which his congregation increased, despite all his efforts; what particularly annoyed him was the number of people who came to him and said that they were willing to be baptized in return for a calf or heifer. But even he admitted that things might have been worse, and thought that some of the men and women he had converted were perhaps less obdurately evil than they had been before baptism. Asa did what she could to help him; and although she was by now beginning to grow old, she was as active as ever and had plenty to occupy her in looking after the children and the servants. She and Ylva were good friends and seldom exchanged words, for Asa was mindful that her daughter-in-law was of royal blood; and when they disagreed, Asa always yielded, though it could be seen that it went against her nature to do so.

“For it is certain,” said Orm to Ylva, “that the old woman is even more obstinate than you, which is saying not a little. It is good that things have turned out as I hoped they might, and that she has never tried to challenge your authority in the house.”

Orm and Ylva still found no cause for complaint in their choice of each other. When they quarreled, neither of them minced words; but such incidents were rare and quickly passed, nor did either of them cherish rancor afterwards. It was a strange peculiarity of Orm’s that he never birched his wife; even when a great anger came over him, he restrained his temper, so that nothing more came of it than an overturned table or a broken door. In time he perceived a curious thing: namely, that all their quarrels always ended in the same way; he had to mend the things he had broken, and the matter about which they had quarreled was always settled the way Ylva wanted it, though she never upturned a table or broke a door, but merely threw an occasional dish-clout in his face or smashed a plate on the floor at his feet. Having discovered this, he thought it unrewarding to have any further quarrels with her, and a whole year would sometimes pass without their harmony being threatened by hard words.

They had two more children: a son, whom they called Ivar, after Ivar of the Broad Embrace, and whom Asa hoped would, in time, become a priest, and a daughter, whom they called Sigrun. Toke Gray-Gullsson was invited as the chief guest at the christening, and it was he who chose her name, though only after a long exchange of words with Asa, who wanted the child to be given a Christian name. Toke, however, asserted that no woman’s name was more beautiful than Sigrun, or more honored in old songs; and as Orm and Ylva wished to show him all honor, it was allowed to be as he wished it. If all went well, Toke said, she would, in good time, marry one of his sons; for he could not hope to have either of the twins as a daughter-in-law, none of his sons being old enough to be considered as future husbands for them. This, he said to himself sadly as he sat gazing at Oddny and Ludmilla, was, in truth, a great pity.

For the two girls were, by now, beginning to grow up, and nobody could any longer doubt whether they would be pleasing to the eye. They were both red-haired and well-shaped, and men were soon glancing at them; but it was easy to perceive one difference between them. Oddny was of a mild and submissive temper; she was skillful at womanly tasks, obeyed her parents willingly, and seldom caused Ylva or Asa any vexation. On the few occasions when she did so, her sister was chiefly to blame, for, from the first, Oddny had obeyed Ludmilla in everything, while Ludmilla, by contrast, found it irksome to obey and pleasing to command. When she was birched, she yelled more from anger than from pain, and comforted herself with the reflection that before long she would be big enough to give as good as she got. She disliked working at the butter-churns or on the weaving-stools, preferring to shoot with a bow, at which sport she soon became as skillful as her teacher, Glad Ulf. Orm was unable to control her, but her obstinacy and boldness pleased him; and when Ylva complained to him of her perversity and the way she played truant in the forest, shooting with Glad Ulf and Harald Ormsson, he merely replied: “What else can you expect? It is the royal blood in her veins. She has been blessed with a double measure, Oddny’s as well as her own. She will be a difficult filly to tame, and let us hope that the main burden of taming her will fall on other shoulders than ours.”

In the winter evenings, when everyone was seated round the fire at his or her handicraft, she would sometimes behave peaceably, and even now and then work at her spinning, provided that some good story was being told, by Orm of his adventures in foreign lands, or by Asa of the family in the old days, or by Father Willibald of great happenings in the days of Joshua or King David, or by Ylva of her father, King Harald. She was happiest when Toke visited Gröning, for he was a good story-teller and knew many tales of ancient heroes. Whenever he seemed to flag, it was always she who jumped up to fill his ale-cup and beg him to continue, and it was seldom that he found the heart to refuse her.

For it was always so with Ludmilla Ormsdotter that from her earliest youth men found it difficult to gainsay her. She was pale-complexioned, with skin tightly drawn over her cheekbones, and dark eyebrows; and although her eyes were of the same gray as those of many other girls, it nevertheless seemed to men who studied them closely and returned their gaze that there were none to compare with them anywhere else in the whole border country.

Her first experience with men occurred in the summer after her fourteenth birthday, when Gudmund of Uvaberg came riding to Gröning with two men, whom he suggested that Orm should take into his service.

Gudmund had not been seen at Gröning since Orm had insulted him at the Thing, nor had he ridden to any Thing since that day. But now he came full of smiles and friendliness and said that he wished to do Orm a kindness, so that their old quarrel might be made up.

“I have with me here,” he said, “the two best workers that ever were; and I now offer them to you. They are not serfs, but free men, and each of them does the work of two, and sometimes more. This is therefore a fine service I am doing you by offering them to you, though it is equally true that you will be doing me a good one by accepting them. For they are both tremendous eaters, and though I have kept them for four months, I find myself unable to do so any longer. I am not so rich as you are, and they are eating me out of house and home. I dare not ration them, for they have told me that if this is done, they become dangerous; unless they eat themselves full each noon and evening, a madness comes upon them. But they work willingly for anyone who will feed them full, and no man has ever seen workers to match them.”

Orm regarded this offer with suspicion and questioned both Gudmund and the two men carefully before accepting them. The men did not attempt to conceal their shortcomings, but said honestly how things were with them and how they wished them to be; and as Orm had good need of strong workers, he at length accepted them into his service, and Gudmund rode contentedly away.

The men were called Ullbjörn and Greip. They were young, long-faced, and flaxen-haired, and a man had only to look at them to tell that they were strong; but as regards intelligence, they were less fortunately equipped. From their speech it could be heard that they came from a distant part of the country; they said they had been born in a land far beyond West Guteland, called Iron-Bearing Land, where the men were as strong as the bears, with whom they would often wrestle for amusement. But a great famine had afflicted their land, and so they had left it and journeyed southwards in the hope of reaching a country where they would be able to find enough to eat. They had worked on many farms and estates in West Guteland and Smaland. When food began to become scanty, they explained, they killed their employer and went on.

Orm thought that they must have worked for a tame lot of masters if they had allowed themselves to be killed as easily as that, but the men stared earnestly at him and bade him take good note of what they had said.

“For, if we become hungry, we go berserk, and no man can withstand us. But if we get enough food, we conduct ourselves peaceably and do whatever our master bids us. For we are made that way.”

“Food you shall have,” said Orm, “as much as you want; if you are such good workers as you claim to be, you will be worth all the food you can eat. But be sure of this, that if you enjoy going berserk, you have come to the wrong place here, for I have no patience with berserks.”

They gazed at him with thoughtful eyes and asked how long it was until the midday meal.

“We are already beginning to feel hungry,” they said.

As fortune had it, the midday meal was just due to be served. The two newcomers set to with a will and ate so greedily that everyone watched them in amazement.

“You have both eaten enough for three men,” said Orm. “And now I want to see each of you do two men’s work, at the very least.”

“That you shall,” they replied, “for this was a meal that suited us well.”

Orm began by setting them to dig a well and soon had to admit that they had not exaggerated their worth, for they quickly dug a good well, broad and deep and lined from top to bottom with stone. The children stood and watched them work; the men said nothing, but it was noticeable that their eyes often turned toward Ludmilla. She showed no fear of them and asked them how it was with men when they went berserk, but received no reply to this question.

When they had completed this task, Orm told them to build a good boathouse down by the river; and this, too, they did quickly and well. Ylva forbade her daughters to go near them while they were working there, for, she said, one could never be sure what such half-trolls as they might not suddenly do.

When the boathouse was ready, Orm set them to clean the cowshed. All the cows were at pasture, and only the bull was left in the shed, he being too evil-tempered to be allowed loose. A whole winter’s droppings lay in the pens, so that UllbjÖrn and Greip had several days’ stiff work ahead of them.

The children and all the house-folk felt somewhat afraid of the two men, because of their strength and strangeness. Ullbjörn and Greip never had much to say to anyone; only sometimes, when they were spoken to, they told briefly of feats of strength they had performed, and how they had strangled men who had not given them enough to eat, or had broken their backs with their bare hands.

“Nobody can withstand us when we are angry,” they said. “But here we get enough to eat and are content. So long as things continue thus, nobody has anything to fear from us.”

Ludmilla was the only one not afraid of them, and several times went to watch them work in the cowshed, sometimes accompanied by her brothers and sisters and sometimes alone. When she was there, the men kept their eyes fixed on her; and although she was young, she understood well what they were thinking.

One day when she was there alone with them, Greip said: “You are the sort of girl I could fancy.”

“I, too,” said Ullbjörn.

“I should like to play with you in the hay,” said Greip, “if you are not afraid to do so with me.”

“I can play better than Greip,” said Ullbjörn.

Ludmilla laughed. “Do you both like me?” she said. “That is a pity. For I am a virgin, and of royal blood, and not to be bedded by any chance vagabond. But I think I prefer one of you to the other.”

“Is it me?” said Greip, throwing aside his shovel.

“Is it me?” asked Ullbjörn, dropping his broom.

“I like best,” said Ludmilla, “whichever of you is the stronger. It would be interesting to know which that is.”

Both the men were now hot with desire. They glared silently at each other.

“I may perchance,” added Ludmilla softly, “allow the stronger man to sit with me for a short while down by the river.”

At this they straightway began to growl fearfully like werewolves and seized hold of each other. They appeared to be of equal strength, and neither could gain an ascendance. The beams and walls shook as they stumbled against them. Ludmilla went to the door to be out of their way.

As she was standing there, Orm came up.

“What is that noise?” he asked her. “What are they doing in there?”

Ludmilla turned to him and smiled. “Fighting,” she said.

“Fighting?” said Orm, taking a step toward her. “What about?”

“Me,” replied Ludmilla happily. “Perhaps this is what they call going berserk.”

Then she scampered fearfully away, for she saw a look on Orm’s face that was new to her, and understood that a great anger had come over him.

An old broom was leaning against the wall. Orm wrenched the shaft out of its socket, and this was the only weapon he had as he strode in, slamming the door behind him. Then his voice was audible above the snarling of the men, and for a moment all was silence in the shed. But almost at once the snarling broke out afresh and with redoubled violence. The servant-girls came out into the yard and stood there listening, but nobody felt inclined to open the cowshed door to see what was happening inside. Someone shouted for Rapp and his ax, but he was nowhere to be found. Then one of the doors flew open and the bull rushed forth in terror, with its halter hanging loose about its neck, and fled into the forest. Everyone shrieked aloud at this sight; and now Ludmilla began to be afraid and to cry, for she feared she had started something bigger than she had intended.

At length the uproar ceased and there was silence. Orm walked out, panting for breath, and wiped his arm across his brow. He was limping, his clothes were torn, and part of one of his cheek-beards had been wrenched away. The servant-girls ran up to him with anxious cries and questions. He looked at them and said that they need not lay a place for Ullbjörn or Greip at supper that evening.

“Nor tomorrow, neither,” he added. “But how it is with this leg of mine I do not know.”

He limped into the house to have his injury examined by Ylva and the priest.

Inside the cowshed all was disorder, and the two berserks were lying across each other in one corner. Greip had the sharp end of the broomstick through his throat, and Ullbjörn’s tongue was hanging out of his mouth. They were both dead.

Ludmilla was afraid that she would now be birched, and Ylva thought she had deserved it for having gone in alone to the two berserks. But Orm pleaded for her to be treated leniently, so that she escaped more lightly than she had thought possible; and she described what had happened before the fight in such a manner that they agreed that no blame could be attached to her. Orm was not displeased with the incident, once Father Willibald had examined his leg and declared the injury to be slight; for though he was now certain that Gudmund of Uvaberg had offered him the two men in the hope of gaining his revenge, he was well pleased with his feat of having overpowered two berserks singlehanded and without the help of any proper weapon.

“You did wisely, Ludmilla,” he said, “to turn them against each other when they would have molested you, for I am not sure that even I could have defeated them if they had not already tired each other somewhat. My advice, therefore, Ylva, is that she shall not be birched, though it was rash of her to go in to them alone. For she is too young to understand the thoughts that are liable to enter men’s heads when they look at her.”

Ylva shook her head doubtfully at this, but allowed Orm to have his way.

“This affair has turned out well,” he said. “Nobody can deny that these two ruffians have done good work since they arrived here. I now have a well, a boathouse, and more honor to my name, and Gudmund has been well snubbed for his pains. So everything is as it should be. But I will take care to let him know that if he provokes me again, I shall pay him a visit that he will not forget.”

“I will come with you,” said Blackhair earnestly; he had been sitting listening to their conversation.

“You are too small to wear a sword,” said Orm.

“I have the ax Rapp forged for me,” he replied. “He says there are not many axes with a sharper edge than mine.”

Orm and Ylva laughed, but Father Willibald shook his head frowningly and said it was a bad thing to hear such talk from a Christian child.

“I must tell you again, Blackhair,” he said, “what you have already heard me say five, if not ten times, that you should think less about weapons and more about learning the prayer called Pater Noster, which I have so often explained to you and begged you to learn. Your brother Harald could recite that prayer by the time he was seven, and you are now twelve and still do not know it.”

“Harald can say it for us both,” retorted Blackhair boldly. “I am in no hurry to learn priest-talk.”

So time passed at Gröning, and little of note occurred; and Orm felt well content to sit there peacefully until his days should end. But a year after he killed the berserks, he received tidings that sent him forth upon the third of his long voyages.