The Orkney Scroll

Prologue

Before he went mad, Bjarni the Wanderer hid the cauldron in the tomb of the orcs. It’s an intriguing declaration to be sure, one that requires more than a little explication, and in some ways an irritating way to put finis to a story. For some, though, it is a beginning rather than an end, a statement of such promise that hopes and dreams are pinned on it, as if believing would make it so. To decide whether you come down on the side of the dreamers or the skeptics or rather somewhere in between, you will have to go back to the beginning, and that means more than nine hundred years.

I do not know if Bjarni’s saga is true. My grandfather used to say that it was not inconsistent with the facts. You will perhaps not see this as a ringing endorsement, but then you didn’t know my grandfather. I can tell you that the tale has been passed down through my family for longer than anyone can remember. My grandfather believed that at first the story would have been transmitted orally, the structure and cadence of the poem being an aid to the memory, so that it would always be accurately told. At some time, no one knows when, it was written down, possibly in Norn, but more likely first in Latin, stories of this sort appealing to twelfth-century clerics it seems, then passed from one generation to the next. It was my grandfather who translated it from Latin. That was how I learned my letters, by copying the story in a notebook, actually several of them, my grandfather watching to make sure that I made no error, left nothing out. And that, I suppose, is why we have the story still, copied over and over again by successive generations. I think for some of us, the preservation of Bjarni’s saga became a sacred trust.

I suppose over all that time liberties were taken with it, errors of omission and commission both, so much so that its true meaning may well be lost. Then again, perhaps not. It is possible I am the last to treasure it. My sons have no interest in it. One doesn’t understand it. The other believes it to be of no worth. Still, I have hopes for one of my granddaughters. She’s a restless spirit, but she comes by that honestly, a true descendant of Bjarni the Wanderer. She used to like me to tell her the story, and demanded that I recite it with her. I will leave the notebooks to her when I die.

So now that you’ve heard the requisite disclaimers, the attempt, however feeble to encourage you to view everything I say with some suspicion, do you still want to hear the story of Bjarni Haraldsson? Of course you do. Who could resist a tale that ends with the words, before he went mad Bjarni the Wanderer hid the cauldron in the tomb of the orcs?