FRANS G. BENGTSSON
The Long Ships
A Saga of the Viking Age

Translated by Michael Meyer

Copyright

Harper

An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

First published in Great Britain by Collins 1954

Copyright © Frans G. Bengtsson 1954

Cover layout design © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2014-02-10

Cover images © PA Archive/Press Association (main ship); David Lomax/ Robert Harding (small ships); Dan Barnes/Getty Images (waves); F. Verheist/Getty Images (background).

Frans G. Bengtsson asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

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Source ISBN: 9780007560707

Ebook Edition © 2014 ISBN: 9780007560714

Version: 2016-11-29

Praise

From the reviews of The Long Ships:

‘A novel with the potential to please every literate human being in the entire world – something for everyone. Bengtsson recreates the world of 1000 AD with telling detail and persuasive historiography, with a keen grasp of the eternal bits that pebble the record of human vanity, and with the unflagging verve of a born storyteller – but above all, and this is the most remarkable of the book’s many virtues, with an intimate detachment, a neighbourly distance, a sincere irony, that feels at once ancient and postmodern. It is this astringent tone, undeceived, versed in human folly, at once charitable and cruel, that is the source of the novel’s unique flavor, the poker-faced humor that is most beloved by those who love this book’

MICHAEL CHABON

‘[A] wonderful adventure novel’

Observer

‘This extraordinary saga of epic adventure on land and sea … is a masterpiece of historical fiction … Not least of the rewards of reading Mr Bengtsson’s gorgeous romance is the sly humor that is sprinkled through it’

New York Times

‘A boldly illuminated picture of the Northmen … confidently recommended’

The Times

‘A remarkable panorama of a vanished way of life’

TLS

‘Offers lusty Vikings lusting and looting, bedding and battling across Europe from the Ebro to the Dneiper’

Time

‘The author and his excellent translator bring that old, warrior world alive with such vigorous enjoyment and simplicity that the deeds of those men roving about the world in their dragon ships seem as marvellous as those of our atomic age’

Daily Telegraph

‘[Bengtsson] keeps his readers eager for the next chapter. He has a sharp eye for the picturesque and the comic in daily living, and though his style is sophisticated he often writes with a kind of festive abandon’

New York Herald Tribune

‘The literary equivalent of an action- and intrigue-filled adventure movie that won’t insult your intelligence … Orm is a charismatic character, and Bengtsson is an infectiously enthusiastic and surprisingly funny writer – even readers with zero interest in the Europe of a millennium ago will want to keep turning the pages. All novels should be so lucky as to age this well’

NPR

‘A banquet of adventure by sea and land, with man-size helpings of battle and murder, robbery and rape’

New Statesman

‘Still the king of books about Vikings … the Vikings liked to row and sail and fight. That’s what they do in this action-packed epic’

Bookmarks Magazine

HARP SONG OF THE DANE WOMEN

What is a woman that you forsake her,

And the hearth-fire and the home-acre,

To go with the old grey Widow-maker?

She has no house to lay a guest in—

But one chill bed for all to rest in,

That the pale suns and the stray bergs nest in.

She has no strong white arms to fold you,

But the ten-times-fingering weed to hold you—

Out on the rocks where the tide has rolled you.

Yet, when the signs of summer thicken,

And the ice breaks, and the birch-buds quicken,

Yearly you turn from our side, and sicken—

Sicken again for the shouts and the slaughters.

You steal away to the lapping waters,

And look at your ship in her winter-quarters.

You forget our mirth, and talk at the tables,

The kine in the shed and the horse in the stables—

To pitch her sides and go over her cables.

Then you drive out where the storm-clouds swallow,

And the sound of your oar-blades, falling hollow,

Is all we have left through the months to follow.

Ah, what is Woman that you forsake her,

And the hearth-fire and the home-acre,

To go with the old grey Widow-maker?

RUDYARD KIPLING

CONTENTS

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Praise

Maps

TRANSLATOR’S NOTE

PROLOGUE: How the shaven men fared in Skania in King Harald Bluetooth’s time

PART ONE: THE LONG VOYAGE

I: Concerning Thane Toste and his household

II: Concerning Krok’s expedition: and how Orm set forth on his first voyage

III: How they sailed southwards, and how they found themselves a good guide

IV: How Krok’s men came to Ramiro’s kingdom, and how they paid a rewarding visit

V: How Krok’s luck changed twice, and how Orm became left-handed

VI: Concerning the Jew Solomon and the Lady Subaida, and how Orm got his sword Blue-Tongue

VII: How Orm served Almansur, and how he sailed with St James’s bell

VIII: Concerning Orm’s sojourn among the monks of St Finnian, and how a great miracle occurred at Jellinge

IX: How King Harald Bluetooth celebrated Yule

X: How Orm lost his necklace

XI: Concerning the wrath of Brother Willibald, and how Orm tried his hand at wooing

XII: How Orm came home from his long voyage

PART TWO: IN KING ETHELRED’S KINGDOM

I: Concerning the battle that was fought at Maldon, and what came after it

II: Concerning spiritual things

III: Concerning marriage and baptism, and King Ethelred’s silver

IV: How Brother Willibald taught King Sven a maxim from the scriptures

PART THREE: IN THE BORDER COUNTRY

I: How Orm built his house and church, and how they named his red-haired daughters

II: How they planned a christening feast for King Harald’s grandson

III: Concerning the strangers that came with salt, and how King Sven lost a head

IV: How Orm preached to the salt-pedlar

V: Concerning the great christening feast, and how the first Smalanders came to be baptized

VI: Concerning four strange beggars, and how the Erin Masters came to Father Willibald’s assistance

VII: Concerning the King of Sweden’s sword-bearer, and the magister from Aachen and his sins

VIII: Concerning the sinful magister’s second sin, and the penance to which he was condemned for it

IX: How the magister searched for heifers and sat in a cherry-tree

X: Concerning the women’s doings at the Kraka Stone, and how Blue-Tongue’s edge became dented

XI: Concerning Toke Grey-Gullsson, and a misfortune that befell him; and of a foul gift Orm received from the Finnvedings

XII: Concerning the Thing at the Kraka Stone

PART FOUR: THE BULGAR GOLD

I: Concerning the end of the world, and how Orm’s children grew up

II: Concerning the man from the East

III: Concerning the story of the Bulgar gold

IV: How they planned to get the gold

V: How they sailed to the Gotland Vi

VI: How they rowed to the Dnieper

VII: Concerning what happened at the weirs

VIII: How Orm met an old friend

IX: Concerning their journey home, and how Olof Summer-Bird vowed to become a Christian

X: How they settled accounts with the crazy magister

XI: Concerning the great hounds’ chase

Footnotes

About the Author

About the Publisher

TRANSLATOR’S NOTE

The action of The Long Ships covers, approximately, the years A.D. 980–1010. At that time, the southern provinces of Sweden belonged to Denmark, so that Orm, although born and bred in Skania, regarded himself as a Dane.¹

The Vikings harried the countries of northern and western Europe more or less continuously for a period of over 200 years, from the end of the eighth century until the beginning of the eleventh. Most of the raids on western Europe were carried out by Danes and Norwegians; for the Swedes regarded the Baltic as their domain, and founded a kingdom in Russia at the end of the ninth century which endured for 350 years, until the coming of the Mongols. Ireland was, at first, the favourite western hunting-ground of the Vikings; it was not until 838, forty years after the first attack on Ireland, that they began to raid England in large numbers. For the next sixty years, however, they – especially the great Ragnar Hairy-Breeks and his terrible sons – troubled England cruelly, until Alfred withstood them and forced them to come to terms. Then, from 896 until 979, England enjoyed eighty years of almost unbroken respite from their fury. In France, the Northmen were so feared that, in 911, Charles the Simple ceded part of his kingdom to them; this came to be known as Normandy, the Northmen’s land. Vikings peopled Iceland in 860, and Greenland in 986. In the latter year a Viking ship heading for Greenland went off its course and reached America, which, because of the good grapes they found there, the men named ‘Wineland the Good.’ Several other Viking ships sailed to America during the next twenty years.

The Battle of Jörundfjord, or Hjörungavag, so frequently referred to in the following pages, was one of the most famous battles fought in the north during the Viking Age. It was fought between the Norwegians and the Jomsvikings. The Jomsvikings (to quote Professor C. Turville-Petre) were ‘a closed society of Vikings, living according to their own laws and customs. None of them might be younger than eighteen years, and none older than fifty; they must not quarrel among themselves, and each must avenge the other as his brother.’ No woman was allowed within their citadel, Jomsborg, which was sited on the southern shore of the Baltic, probably in the region of where Swinemunde now stands. According to Icelandic sources, Canute’s father, King Sven Forkbeard, invited the Jomsvikings to a feast. As the ale flowed, King Sven swore an oath to invade England and kill Ethelred the Unready, or else drive him into exile. The Jomsviking chieftain, Sigvalde, swore in his turn to sail to Norway and kill the rebel Jarl Haakon, or else drive him into exile. All the other Jomsvikings, including the two Skanian chieftains, Bue Digre and Vagn Akesson, swore to follow him. They sailed to Norway with sixty ships, but Haakon got wind of their approach and, when at last they turned into Jörundfjord, they found him waiting for them with a fleet of no less than 180 ships. At first, despite being thus outnumbered, the Jomsvikings looked likely to prevail; but the weather turned against them and, after a bitter struggle, they were routed and slaughtered almost to a man.

This was in 989. In the following spring, another vital battle was fought in Sweden, on Fyris Plain before Uppsala, when the dreaded Styrbjörn, the exiled nephew of King Erik of Sweden, sought to win his uncle’s kingdom, but was killed by a chance spear in the first moments of the fight. It is to the echoes of these two battles that The Long Ships opens.

M.M.

PROLOGUE
How the shaven men fared in Skania in King Harald Bluetooth’s time

Many restless men rowed north from Skania with Blue and Vagn, and found ill fortune at Jörundfjord; others marched with Styrbjörn to Uppsala and died there with him. When the news reached their homeland that few of them could be expected to return, elegies were declaimed and memorial stones set up; whereupon, all sensible men agreed that what had happened was for the best, since they could now hope to have a more peaceful time than before, and less parcelling out of land by the axe and sword. There followed a time of plenty, with fine rye harvests and great herring catches, so that most people were well contented; but there were some who thought that the crops were tardy, and they went a-viking in Ireland and England, where fortune smiled on their wars; and many of them stayed there.

About this time the shaven men had begun to arrive in Skania both from the Saxons’ land and from England, to preach the Christian faith. They had many strange tales to relate, and at first people were curious and listened to them eagerly, and women found it pleasant to be baptized by these foreigners, and to be presented with a white shift. Before long, however, the foreigners began to run short of shifts, and people wearied of their sermons, finding them tedious and their matter doubtful; besides which, they spoke a rough-sounding dialect that they had learned in Hedeby or in the western islands, which gave their speech a foolish air.

So then there was something of a decline in conversions, and the shaven men, who talked incessantly of peace and were above all very violent in their denunciation of the gods, were one by one seized by devout persons and were hung up on sacred ash-trees and shot at with arrows, and offered to the birds of Odin. Others went northwards to the forests of the Göings, where men were less religiously inclined; there, they were welcomed warmly, and were tied up and led to the markets in Smaland, where they were bartered for oxen and for beaver skins. Some of them, upon finding themselves slaves of the Smalanders, let their hair grow and waxed discontented with their God Jehovah, and gave good service to their masters; but the majority continued to denounce the gods and to spend their time baptizing women and children instead of breaking stones and grinding corn, and made such annoyance of themselves that soon it became impossible for the Göings to obtain, as hitherto, a yoke of three-year-old oxen for a sturdy priest without giving a measure of salt or cloth into the bargain. So feeling increased against the shaven men in the border country.

One summer, the word went round the whole of the Danish kingdom that King Harald Bluetooth had embraced the new religion. In his youth, he had done so tentatively, but had soon regretted his decision and recanted; this time, however, he had adopted it seriously. For King Harald was by now an old man, and had for some years been tormented by terrible pains in his back, so that he had almost lost his pleasure in ale and women; but wise bishops, sent by the Emperor himself, had rubbed him with bear’s-grease, blessed and made potent with the names of apostles, and had wrapped him in sheepskins and given him holy herbal water to drink instead of ale, and had made the sign of the cross between his shoulders and exorcised many devils out of him, until at last his aches and pains had departed; and so the King became a Christian.

Thereupon, the holy men had assured him that still worse torments would come to plague him if he should ever again offer sacrifice, or show himself in any way unzealous in the new religion. So King Harald (as soon as he had become active again, and found himself capable of fulfilling his obligations towards a young Moroccan slave-girl, whom Olof of the Precious Stones, the King of Cork, had sent him as a goodwill present), issued a proclamation that all his subjects should get themselves christened without delay; and, although such an order sounded strangely from the lips of one who was himself descended from Odin, still many obeyed his command, for he had ruled long and prosperously, so that his word counted for much in the land. He meted out especially severe punishments to anyone who had been guilty of violence against any priest; so that the number of priests in Skania now began to multiply greatly, and churches rose upon the plain, and the old gods fell into disuse, except in times of peril at sea or of cattle-plague.

In Göinge, however, the King’s proclamation was the occasion of much merriment. The people of the border forests were blessed with a readier sense of fun than the sober dwellers of the plain, and nothing made them laugh so much as a royal proclamation. For in the border country, few men’s authority extended beyond the limit of their right arm, and from Jellinge to Göinge was a long march even for the mightiest of kings to undertake. In the old days, in the time of Harald Hildetand and Ivar of the Broad Embrace, and even before that, kings had been wont to come to Göinge to hunt the wild ox in the great forests there, but seldom on any other errand. But since those times, the wild ox had died out, and the king’s visits had ceased; so that nowadays, if any king was bold enough to murmur a complaint that the people of those parts were turbulent or that they paid insufficient taxes, and threatened to journey thither himself to remedy matters, the answer would be sent to him that there were, unfortunately, no wild oxen to be seen in the district nowadays, but that as soon as any should appear he would at once be informed, and a royal welcome would be prepared for him. Accordingly, it had for long been a saying among the border people that no king would be seen in their country until the wild oxen returned.

So in Göinge, things remained as they had always been, and Christianity made no headway there. Such priests as did venture into those parts were sold over the border as in the old days; though some of the Göings were of the opinion that it would be better to kill them on the spot, and start a good war against the skinflints of Sunnerbo and Allbo, for the Smalanders gave such poor prices for priests nowadays that it was hardly worth a man’s trouble to lead them to market.

PART ONE

CHAPTER ONE
Concerning Thane Toste and his household

Along the coast the people lived together in villages, partly to be sure of food, that they might not depend entirely on the luck of their own catch, and partly for greater security; for ships rounding the Skanian peninsula often sent marauding parties ashore, both in the spring, to replenish cheaply their stock of fresh meat for the westward voyage, and in the winter, if they were returning empty-handed from unsuccessful wars. Horns would be blown during the night when raiders were thought to have landed, so that the neighbours might come to the assistance of those attacked; and the stay-at-homes of a good village would occasionally even capture a ship or two for themselves, from strangers who had not been sufficiently prudent, and so have fine prizes to show the wanderers of the village when the long ships came home for their winter rest.

But men who were wealthy and proud, and who owned their own ships, often found it irksome to have neighbours on their doorstep, and preferred to live apart; for, even when they were at sea, they could keep their homes defended by good warriors whom they paid to stay in their houses and guard them. In the region of the Mound, there were many such great lords, and the rich thanes of that district had the reputation of being the proudest in all the Danish kingdom. When they were at home, they readily picked quarrels with one another, although their homesteads lay well spaced apart; but often they were abroad, for they had been used from their childhood to look out over the sea and to regard it as their own private pasture, where any whom they found trespassing would have to answer for it.

In these parts there lived a thane called Toste, a worthy man and a great sailor who, although he was advanced in years, still commanded his ship and set out each summer for foreign shores. He had kinsmen in Limerick in Ireland, among the Vikings who had settled there, and he sailed west each year to trade with them and to help their chieftain, a descendant of Ragnar of the Hairy Breeks, to collect tribute from the Irish and from their monasteries and churches. Of late, however, things had begun to go less well for the Vikings in Ireland, ever since Muirkjartach of the Leathern Coats, the King of Connaught, had marched round the island with his shield-arm towards the sea as a sign of defiance. For the natives now defended themselves better than before and followed their kings more willingly, so that it had become a difficult business to extort tribute from them; and even the monasteries and churches, that had previously been easy to plunder, had now built high stone towers to which the priests betook themselves, and from which they could not be driven by fire or by force of arms. In view of all this, many of Toste’s followers were now of the opinion that it might be more profitable to go a-viking in England or France, where times were good and more might be won with less effort; but Toste preferred to do as he had been used to do, thinking himself too old to start journeying to countries where he might not feel so well at home.

His wife was called Asa. She came from the border forest and had a ready tongue, besides being somewhat smart of temper, so that Toste was sometimes heard to remark that he could not see much evidence of time having smoothed out the wrinkles in her nature, as it was said to do. But she was a skilful housewife, and took good care of the farm when Toste was away. She had borne him five sons and three daughters; but their sons had not met with the best of luck. The eldest of them had come to grief at a wedding, when, merry with ale, he had attempted to prove that he could ride bareback on a bull; and the next one had been washed overboard on his first voyage. But the unluckiest of all had been their fourth son, who was called Are; for, one summer, when he was nineteen years old, he had got two of their neighbours’ wives with child while their husbands were abroad, which had been the instance of much trouble and sly jibing, and had put Toste to considerable expense when the husbands returned home. This dejected Are’s spirits and made him shy; then he killed a man who had chaffed him overlong for his dexterity, and had to flee the country. It was rumoured that he had sold himself to Swedish merchants and had sailed with them to the east, so that he might meet no more people who knew of his misfortune, but nothing had been heard of him since. Asa, however, had dreamed of a black horse with blood on its shoulders, and knew by this that he was dead.

So after that, Asa and Toste had only two sons left. The elder of these was called Odd. He was a short youth, coarsely built and bow-legged, but strong and horny-handed, and of a reflective temper; he was soon accompanying Toste on his voyages, and showed himself to be a skilful shipman, as well as a hard fighter. At home, though, he was often contrary in his behaviour, for he found the long winters tedious, and Asa and he bickered continually. He was sometimes heard to say that he would rather be eating rancid salt-meat on board ship than Yuletide joints at home; but Asa remarked that he never seemed to take less than anyone else of the food she set before them. He dozed so much every day that he would often complain that he had slept poorly during the night; it did not even seem to help, he would say, when he took one of the servant-girls into the bed-straw with him. Asa did not like his sleeping with her servants; she said it might give them too high an opinion of themselves and make them impudent towards their mistress; she observed that it would be more satisfactory if Odd acquired a wife. But Odd replied that there was no hurry about that; in any case, the women that suited his taste best were the ones in Ireland, and he could not very well bring any of them home with him for, if he did, Asa and they would soon be going for one another tooth and nail. At this, Asa became angry and asked whether this could be her own son who addressed her thus, and expressed the wish that she might shortly die; to which Odd retorted that she might live or die as she chose, and he would not presume to advise her which state to choose, but would endure with resignation whatever might befall.

Although he was slow of speech, Asa did not always succeed in having the last word, and she used to say that it was in truth a hard thing for her to have lost three good sons and to have been left with the one whom she could most easily have spared.

Odd got on better with his father, however, and, as soon as the spring came, and the smell of tar began to drift across from the boat-house to the jetty, his humour would improve, and sometimes he would even try, though he had little talent for the craft, to compose a verse or two – of how the auk’s meadow was now ripe for ploughing; or how the horses of the sea would shortly waft him to the summer land.

But he never won himself any great name as a bard, least of all among those daughters of neighbouring thanes who were of marriageable age; and he was seldom observed to turn his head as he sailed away.

His brother was the youngest of all Toste’s children, and the jewel of his mother’s eye. His name was Orm. He grew quickly, becoming long and scatter-limbed, and distressing Asa by his lack of flesh; so that whenever he failed to eat a good deal more than any of the grown men, she would become convinced that she would soon lose him, and often said that his poor appetite would assuredly be his downfall. Orm was, in fact, fond of food, and did not grudge his mother her anxiety regarding his appetite; but Toste and Odd were sometimes driven to protest that she reserved all the tit-bits for him. In his childhood, Orm had once or twice fallen sick, ever since when Asa had been convinced that his health was fragile, so that she was continually fussing over him with solicitous admonitions, making him believe that he was racked with dangerous cramps and in urgent need of sacred onions, witches’ incantations and hot clay platters, when the only real trouble was that he had overeaten himself on corn porridge and pork.

As he grew up, Asa’s worries increased. It was her hope that he would, in time, become a famous man and a chieftain; and she expressed to Toste her delight that Orm was shaping into a big, strong lad, wise in his discourse, in every respect a worthy scion of his mother’s line. She was, though, very fearful of all the perils that he might encounter on the highway of manhood, and reminded him often of the disasters that had overtaken his brothers, making him promise always to beware of bulls, to be careful on board ship, and never to lie with other men’s wives; but, apart from these dangers, there was so much else that might befall him that she hardly knew where to begin to counsel him. When he reached the age of sixteen, and was ready to sail with the others, Asa forbade him to go, on the ground that he was still too young and too fragile of health; and, when Toste asked her whether she had it in her mind to bring him up to be a chieftain of the kitchen and a hero of old women, she exploded into such a rage that Toste himself became frightened, and let her have her way, and was glad to be allowed to take his own leave, and, indeed, lost little time in doing so. That autumn, Toste and Odd returned late from their voyage, and had lost so many of their crew that they scarcely had enough left to man the oars; nevertheless, they were well contented with the results of their expedition, and had much to relate. In Limerick, they had met with small success, for the Irish kings in Munster had by now become so powerful that the Vikings who lived there had their work cut out to hold on to what they had. Then, however, some friends of Toste (who had anchored his ship off the coast) had asked whether he might feel inclined to accompany them on a secret visit to a great midsummer fair which was held each year at Merioneth, in Wales, a district to which the Vikings had not previously penetrated, but which could be reached with the assistance of two experienced guides whom Toste’s friends had discovered. Their followers being enthusiastic, Odd had persuaded Toste to fall in with this suggestion; so seven shiploads of them had landed near Merioneth and, after following a difficult route inland, had managed to arrive at the fair without giving wind of their approach. There had been fierce fighting, and a good many men had been killed, but in the end the Vikings had prevailed and had captured a great quantity of booty, as well as many prisoners. These they had sold in Cork, making a special voyage thither for the purpose, for it had long been the custom for slave-traders to gather in Cork from all the corners of the world to bid for the captives whom the Vikings brought there; and the king of those parts, Olof of the Precious Stones, who was a Christian and very old and wise, would himself purchase any that caught his fancy, so that he might give their kinsmen the opportunity to ransom them, on which transaction he could be sure of making a pretty profit. From Cork, they had set out for home, in company with a number of other Viking ships in case of pirates, for they had little appetite for further fighting, weakly manned as they now were, besides having much treasure aboard. So they had succeeded in coming unscathed round the Skaw, where the men of the Vik and of Westfold lurked in ambush to surprise richly laden ships returning homewards from the south and west.

After the survivors of the crew had been allotted their share of the booty, a great quantity remained for Toste; who, when he had weighed it and locked it into his treasure-chest, announced that an expedition such as this would serve as a fitting conclusion to his wanderings, and that henceforth he would remain at home, the more willingly since he was beginning to grow somewhat stiff of limb; Odd was by now capable of managing the affairs of the expeditions fully as well as he, and would, besides, have Orm to help him. Odd thought that this was a good idea; but Asa was of a very different opinion, observing that, whilst a fair amount of silver had been won, it could hardly be expected to last for long, considering how many mouths she had to feed each winter; besides which, how could they be sure that Odd would not spend all the prize-money he won in future expeditions on his Irish women, or indeed whether, left to himself, he would ever bother to come home to them at all? As regards the stiffness which Toste complained of in his back, he ought by now to know that this was not the result of his voyages but of the months that he spent idling in front of the fire throughout each winter; and to be falling over his sprawling legs for six months in every year was quite sufficient for her. She could not understand (she continued) what men were coming to nowadays; her own great-uncle, Sven Rat-Nose, a mighty man among the Göings, had fallen like a hero fighting the Smalanders three years after drinking the whole company under the table at his eldest grandson’s wedding; whereas, now, you heard talk of cramps from men in the prime of life who were apparently quite willing to die, unashamedly, on their backs in straw, like cows. However, she concluded, all this could be settled in good time, and meanwhile Toste and Odd and the others who had come home with them were to drown their worries in good ale, of a brew that would please their palates; and Toste was to put these nonsensical ideas out of his head and drink to an equally profitable expedition next year; and then they would all enjoy a comfortable winter together, so long as nobody invented any more of such stupid notions to provoke her, which she trusted they would not.

When she had left them to prepare the ale, Odd remarked that, if all her female ancestors had had tongues like her, Sven Rat-Nose had probably fixed on the Smalanders as the lesser evil. Toste demurred, saying that he agreed up to a point, but that she was in many respects a good wife, and ought, perhaps, not to be provoked unnecessarily, and that Odd should do his best to humour her.

That winter, they all noticed that Asa went about her household duties with less than her usual ardour and bustle, and that her tongue ran less freely than it was wont to do. She was more than ever solicitous towards Orm, and would sometimes stand and gaze at him, as though contemplating a vision. Orm had by now grown big, and could compete in matters of strength with all those of his age, as well as with many older youths. He was red-haired and fair-skinned, broad between the eyes, snub-nosed and wide-mouthed, with long arms and rather rounded shoulders: he was quick and agile, and surer than most with a spear or with a bow. He was fiery of tongue, and would rush blindly on any man that roused him, so that even Odd, who had previously enjoyed teasing him to a white fury, had now begun to treat him with caution; for Orm’s strength made him a dangerous opponent. But in general, except when he was angry, he was quiet and tractable, and always ready to do whatever Asa asked of him, though he occasionally had words with her when her fussing irked him.

Toste now gave him a man’s weapons – a sword and a broad axe and a good helmet – and Orm made himself a shield; but he found difficulty in obtaining a chain-shirt, for nobody in the household was of his size, and there was, at that time, a shortage of good mail-smiths in the land, most of them having migrated to England or to the Jarl at Rouen, where their work was better paid. Toste said that, for the time being, Orm would have to be content with a leather tunic, until such time as he could get himself a good shirt in Ireland; for there, dead men’s armour was always to be had cheaply in any harbour.

They were talking on this subject at table one day, when of a sudden Asa buried her face in her arms and began to weep. They all fell silent and stared at her, for it was not often that tears were seen on her cheeks; and Odd asked her if she had the toothache. Asa dried her face, and turned towards Toste. She said that all this talk of dead men’s armour seemed to her to be a bad omen, and that she was already certain that disaster would overtake Orm as soon as he accompanied them to sea, for thrice in her dreams she had seen him lying bleeding on a ship’s bench, and they all knew that her dreams could be relied upon to come true. She begged Toste, therefore, to listen to her earnest prayer and not to expose their son’s life to unnecessary peril, but to allow him to remain at home with her for this one summer; for she believed that danger threatened him in the very near future and that, if he could only survive this immediate hazard, the risk would subsequently decrease.

Orm asked her whether she could see in her dream in which part of his body he was wounded. Asa replied that, each time she dreamed this dream, the sight of him lying thus had awakened her in a cold terror; but she had seen his hair bloody and his face pale, and the vision had weighed heavily upon her, the more so each time that it returned, although she had not previously wished to speak of it.

Toste sat silent for a while, pondering over what she had said; then he remarked that he knew little about dreams, and had never himself paid much attention to them.

‘For the Ancients used to observe,’ he said, ‘that, as the Spinstress spinneth, so shall it be. If, though, you, Asa, have dreamed the same dream thrice, then it may be that this is intended to serve as a warning to us; and, in truth, we have already lost our share of sons. Therefore, I shall not oppose your will in this matter, and Orm shall remain at home this summer, if it is also his wish. For my own part, I begin to feel that I should not mind sailing once more to the west; so, perhaps, after all, your suggestion may turn out to be the best solution for us all.’

Odd concurred with Toste, for he had several times noticed that Asa’s dreams foretold the future correctly. Orm was not overjoyed at their decision, but he was accustomed to obey Asa’s will in important matters; so nothing more was said.

When spring came, and sufficient men had been hired from the hinterland to fill the gaps in their crew, Toste and Odd sailed away as usual, while Orm remained at home. He behaved somewhat sulkily towards his mother, and sometimes pretended to be sick in order to frighten her, but, as soon as she began to fuss over him and dose him with medicines, he would find himself believing that he was in fact ill, so that he gained but little pleasure from his game. Asa could not bring herself to forget her dream and, despite all the worry he caused her, it comforted her to have him safe with her at home.

Nevertheless, and in spite of his mother, he sailed forth that summer on his first voyage.

CHAPTER TWO
Concerning Krok’s expedition: and how Orm set forth on his first voyage

In the fortieth year of King Harald Bluetooth’s reign, six summers before the Jomsvikings’ expedition to Norway, three ships, fitted with new sails and boldly manned, set sail from the Listerland and headed southwards to plunder the country of the Wends. They were commanded by a chieftain called Krok. He was a dark-complexioned man, tall and loose-limbed and very strong; and he had a great name in his part of the country, for he possessed a talent for evolving audacious plans, and enjoyed deriding men whose enterprises had gone astray and telling them what he would have done if he had been in their shoes. He had never in fact achieved anything of note, for he preferred to talk of the feats he intended to perform in the near future; but at length, he had so fired the young men of the district with his talk of the booty that brave warriors might win in the course of a properly conducted expedition against the Wends, that they had got together and fitted out ships and had chosen him to be their chieftain. There was, he had told them, much treasure to be found in Wendland; above all, one could be certain of a fine haul of silver, amber and slaves.

Krok and his men reached the Wendish coast and discovered the mouth of a river, up which they rowed against a strong current until they came to a wooden fortress, with piles forming a boom across the river. Here they went ashore in a grey dawn twilight, and attacked the Wends, having first slipped through their outlying defences. But the fortress was strongly manned, and its defenders shot arrows at them cunningly, and Krok’s men were tired with their heavy rowing, so there was a bitter struggle before the Wends were finally put to flight. In the course of it, Krok lost many good men; and, when the booty was examined, it was found to consist of a few iron kettles and some sheepskin coats. They rowed back down the river, and made an attempt on another village farther to the west, but it, too, was well defended and, after another sharp struggle, in which they sustained further losses, they won a few sides of smoked pork, a torn chain-shirt and a necklace of small, worn silver coins.

They buried their dead on the shore, and held counsel, and Krok had some difficulty in explaining to them why the expedition had not turned out as he had foretold. But he succeeded in calming their temper with well-chosen words, reminding them that no man could insure against bad luck or the whims of circumstance, and that no true Viking allowed himself to become dispirited by a little adversity. The Wends, he explained, were becoming redoubtable adversaries; and he had a good plan to put to them which would certainly redound to the advantage of them all. This was that they should make an attempt against Bornholm, for the richness of that island’s inhabitants was well known to them all, and it would be weakly defended, many of its warriors having recently gone to England. A shore-thrust here would meet with little opposition, and would be sure to yield a rich harvest of gold, brocades and fine weapons.

They found this well spoken, and their spirits rose again; so they set sail and headed for Bornholm, which they reached early one morning. They rowed along the eastern coast of the island in a calm sea and a rising haze, searching for a good landing-place, pulling briskly and keeping well together, for they were in high good humour; but they kept silence, for they hoped to land unobserved. Suddenly, they heard ahead of them the clank of rowlocks and the plash of oar-blades dipping evenly, and out of the haze appeared a single long ship approaching round a headland. It made towards them, without slackening its stroke, and they all stared at it, for it was large and splendid to behold, with a red dragon-head at its prow, and twenty-four pairs of oars; and they were glad that it was unaccompanied. Krok ordered all his men who were not engaged at the oars to take up their weapons and stand ready for boarding; for here there was plainly much to be won. But the lone ship headed straight towards them, as though its helmsman had not observed their presence; and a stoutly built man, standing in the prow, with a broad beard visible beneath his bossed helmet, cupped his hand to his mouth as they approached and roared in a harsh voice: ‘Get out of our way, unless you want to fight!’

Krok laughed, and his men laughed with him; and he shouted back: ‘Have you ever seen three ships give way to one?’

‘Ay, and more than three!’ roared the fat man impatiently. ‘For most men give way to Styrbjörn. But be quick about it and make your choice. Get out of our way or fight!’

When Krok heard the fat man’s words, he made no reply, but silently turned his ship aside; and his men rested their oars while the lone ship rowed past them, nor did any of them unsheath his sword. They saw a tall young man in a blue cloak, with fair down lining his jaw, rise from his resting-place beside the helmsman and stand surveying them with sleepy eyes, grasping a spear in his hand. He yawned broadly, dropped his spear and laid himself again to rest; and Krok’s men realized that this was Björn Olofsson, commonly called Styrbjörn, the banished nephew of King Erik of Uppsala, who seldom sought refuge from storm and never from battle, and whom few men willingly encountered at sea. His ship proceeded on its course, its long oars sweeping evenly, and disappeared southwards into the haze. But Krok and his men found their previous high spirits difficult to recover.

They rowed to the eastern skerries, which were uninhabited, and there they landed and cooked a meal, and held long counsel. Many of them thought that they would do best to turn for home, seeing that bad luck had followed them even to Bornholm. For, if Styrbjörn was in these waters, the island was sure to be swarming with Jomsvikings, in which case there would be nothing left for any other raiders. Some of them said that there was little use in going to sea with the sort of chieftain who gave way to a single ship.

Krok was at first less eloquent than usual; but he had ale brought ashore for them all and, after they had drunk, he delivered a speech of encouragement. In one sense, he was ready to admit, it might be considered unfortunate that they had encountered Styrbjörn in this manner; but, if you looked at it another way, it was extremely fortunate that they had encountered him when they did, for if they had come ashore and met them or other Jomsvikings there, they would have had to pay dearly for it. All Jomsvikings, and none more so than Styrbjörn’s men, were half berserk, sometimes being even proof against iron, and able to lay about them with both hands full as well as the best warriors from Lister. That he had been reluctant to order an assault on Styrbjörn’s ship might, at first sight, appear odd to idle-thinking men, nevertheless, he regarded his reluctance as fully justified, and considered it fortunate that he had made his decision so promptly. For a homeless and exiled pirate would hardly be likely to have sufficient treasure stored away in any one place to be worth a bloody battle; and he would remind them that they had not come to sea to win empty honour, but to secure hard booty. In view of all this, he had thought it more proper to consider the general good than his own reputation as a warrior, and, if they would reflect, he felt sure that they would agree that he had acted in this affair in a manner befitting a chieftain.

As he thus cunningly dispersed the fog of dejection which had settled on his men’s spirits, Krok began to feel his own courage rising anew; and he proceeded to exhort them strongly against making for home. For the people of Lister, he said, were inclined to be uncharitable, and the women in particular would ply them with painful queries regarding their exploits and the prizes they had won, and why they had returned so soon. No man proud of his good name would thus willingly lay himself open to the shafts of their mockery; therefore, he suggested, it would be better if they could postpone their return until they had won something worth bringing home. The important thing now, he concluded, was that they should remain together, face their adversities with courage and resolution, and determine on some worthy goal to which to proceed; on which matter, before he spoke any further, he would like to hear the views of his wise comrades.

One of the men then proposed that they should go to the land of the Livonians and the Kures¹ where there was a rich harvest to be reaped; but this suggestion won little support, for men of greater experience knew that large shiploads of Swedes descended annually on those regions, and it was not to be reckoned that they would proffer a warm welcome to any strangers who arrived on the same errand. Another man had heard that the greatest single hoard of silver in the world was to be found in Gotland, and he thought that they should try their hand there; but others of his companions, who knew better, said that nowadays, since the Gotlanders had become rich, they lived in large villages, which could only be successfully attacked by a powerful army.

A third man then rose to address them, a warrior called Berse, who was a wise speaker and prized by all for his sound judgment. He said that the Eastern Sea was becoming a crowded and unrewarding pasture, for far too many men were plundering its coasts and islands, so that even such peoples as the Wends were learning how to defend themselves. It would be a poor thing to turn meekly for home – on that point, he was of the same opinion as Krok – but it was, he thought, worth considering whether they might not sail out to the lands in the west. He had never himself travelled to those parts, but certain men from Skania, whom he had met at a fair during the previous summer, had been in England and Brittany with Toke Gormsson and Sigvalde Jarl, and had had much to say in praise of those countries. They wore gold rings and costly garments, and according to their report certain companies of Vikings had anchored their ships in Frankish estuaries for months on end while they plundered the hinterland, and these men had frequently had burgomasters and abbots to wait on them at table and the daughters of counts to make them merry in bed. How strictly his informants had kept to the truth he could not, of course, say, but, as a general rule, you could believe about half of what Skanians told you; and these men had made an impression on him of considerable prosperity, for they had invited him, a stranger from Blekinge, to join them in a grand drinking-bout and had not attempted to steal his belongings while he slept, so that their story could not be altogether false; besides which, it was more or less confirmed by reports he had heard from other quarters. Now, where Skanians had prospered, men of Blekinge ought to fare at least as well; therefore, he concluded, he, for his part, would suggest that they should sail to the lands of the west, if a majority among his comrades were of the same mind.

Many of them applauded his proposal and cried assent; but others doubted whether they were sufficiently provisioned to carry them through until they came to their goal.

Then Krok spoke again. He said that Berse had made exactly the suggestion that he himself thought of putting forward. Berse had spoken of the daughters of counts and of wealthy abbots, for the return of whose persons they would receive large ransoms; and he would like to add that in Ireland, there were, as was well known, no less than a hundred and sixty kings, some great, some small, but all of whom possessed much gold and many fine women, and whose soldiers fought wearing only linen garments, so that they could not be difficult to overcome. The most difficult part of their voyage would be passing through the Sound, where they might find themselves attacked by the natives of those parts; but three strongly manned ships, which Styrbjörn himself had not dared to challenge, would be likely to command respect even in the Sound; besides which, most of the Vikings of that region would, at this time of the year, already have sailed westwards; and in any case, there would be no moon during the next few nights. As regards food, any that they needed they could easily obtain as soon as they had successfully negotiated the Sound.

By this time they had all recovered their former high spirits. They said the plan was a good one, and that Krok was the wisest and cleverest of all chieftains; and they were all proud to discover how little trepidation they felt at the prospect of a voyage to the lands of the west, for no ship from their district had attempted such a journey within living memory. They set sail and came to Möen, and rested there for a day and a night, keeping a good look-out and waiting for a favourable wind. Then they headed up through the Sound in stormy weather, and came that evening to its neck without meeting any enemies. Later, during the night, they anchored in the lee of the Mound and decided to go ashore in search of provisions. Three companies landed secretly, each in a different place. Krok’s company was lucky, for they came at once on a sheep-fold near a large house, and managed to kill the shepherd and his dog before they could give the alarm. Then they caught the sheep and cut the throats of as many as they could take with them, but this caused the animals to bleat loudly, so that Krok bade his men make haste with the work.

They returned to the ship by the way they had come, making as much speed as they could, each man bearing a sheep over his shoulder. They heard behind them the clamour of people who had awoken in the house, and soon there arose the harsh yowling of dogs that had been unleashed on their scent. Then they heard from farther off a woman’s voice, which piercing through the noise of the dogs and men cried: ‘Wait! Stay with me!’ and screamed: ‘Orm!’ several times, and then again cried: ‘Wait!’ very shrilly and despairingly. Krok’s men had difficulty in moving quickly with their loads, for the path was stony and steep, and the night was cloudy and still almost pitch-dark. Krok himself went last in the line, carrying his sheep over his shoulder and holding an axe in his other hand. He was anxious, if possible, to avoid becoming involved in a fight for the sake of a sheep, for it was not worthwhile to risk life and limbs for so little; so he drove his men forward with harsh words of rebuke when they stumbled or slackened speed.

The ship lay hard by some flat rocks, being held away from them by the oars. They were ready to pull out as soon as Krok returned, for the other landing-parties had already returned empty-handed; some of them were waiting on the beach in case Krok should need any assistance. They were only a few paces from the ship when two great dogs came bounding down the path. One of them leaped at Krok, but he jumped aside and struck it with his axe; the other flashed past him with a huge leap at the man just in front of him, knocked him over by its impetus and buried its teeth in his throat. Two of the others hastened forward and killed the dog, and when they and Krok bent over the man who had been bitten they saw that his throat was badly torn and that he was rapidly bleeding to death.

In the same instant a spear hissed past Krok’s head, and two men came running down the slope and out on to the flat rocks; they had run so fast that they had outstripped all their companions. The foremost of them, who was bareheaded and bore no shield, but carried a short sword in his hand, tripped and fell headlong on the rocks; two spears flew over him and hit his companion, who crumpled to the ground. But the bareheaded man was at once on his feet again; baying like a wolf, he hewed at one man who had leaped forward with his sword raised when he had fallen, and felled him with a blow on the temples. Then he sprang at Krok, who stood just behind him; all this happened very quickly. He aimed savagely at Krok, but Krok was still carrying his sheep, and he slipped it round to meet the blow, in the same instant striking his adversary with the reverse edge of his axe on the forehead, so that he fell to the ground senseless. Krok bent over him, and saw that he was no more than a youth, red-haired and snub-nosed and pale-complexioned. He felt with his fingers the place where the axe-head had landed and found that the skull was unfractured.

‘I shall take the calf with me as well as the sheep,’ he said. ‘He can row in the place of the man he killed.’

So they picked him up and carried him on to the ship, and threw him beneath an oar-bench; then, when they had all come aboard, except the two men whom they had left dead behind them, they pulled out to sea just as a large crowd of pursuers appeared on the beach. The sky had now begun to lighten, and some spears were thrown at the ship; but they did no damage. The men pulled strongly at their oars, happy in the knowledge that they had fresh meat on board; and they had already gone a good way from land when the figures on the beach were joined by a woman in a long blue shift with her hair streaming behind her, who ran to the edge of the rocks and stretched out her arms towards the ship, crying something. Her cry reached them as a thin sound across the water, but she stood there long after they had ceased to hear her.

In this wise, Orm, the son of Toste, who later came to be known as Red Orm or Orm the Far-Travelled, set forth on his first voyage.

CHAPTER THREE
How they sailed southwards, and how they found themselves a good guide

Krok’s men were very hungry when they reached Weather Island, for they had had to row the whole way there. They lay to and went ashore to gather fuel and cook themselves a good dinner; they found there only a few old fishermen, who on account of their poverty were not afraid of plunderers. When they came to cut up the sheep, they praised their fatness, and the evident excellence of the spring pasturing on the Mound. They stuck the joints on their spears and held them in the fire, and their mouths watered as the fat began to crackle, for it was a long time since their nostrils had known such a cheering smell. Many of them exchanged stories of the last occasions on which they had been present at so tasty a meal, and they all agreed that their voyage to the lands of the west had begun promisingly. Then they began to eat so that the juice of the meat ran over their beards.

By this time, Orm had regained his senses, but he was still sick and dizzy, and when he came ashore with the others, it was all he could do to keep on his legs. He sat down and held his head between his hands, and made no reply to the words that were addressed to him. But after a while, when he had vomited and drunk water, he felt better, and when he smelt the odour of the frying meat, he raised his head like a man who has just woken up, and looked at the men around him. The man who was sitting nearest to him grinned in a friendly way, and cut off a bit of his meat and offered it to him.

‘Take this and eat it,’ he said. ‘You never tasted better in your life.’

‘I know its quality,’ replied Orm. ‘I provided it.’

He took the meat and held it between his fingers without eating it. He looked thoughtfully round the circle, at each man in turn, and then said: ‘Where is the man I hit? Is he dead?’

‘He is dead,’ replied his neighbour, ‘but no one here stands to avenge him, and you are to row in his stead. His oar lies in front of mine, so it will be well that you and I should be friends. My name is Toke; what is yours?’

Orm told him his name, and asked him: ‘The man I killed. Was he a good fighter?’

‘He was, as you observed, somewhat slow of movement,’ replied Toke, ‘and he was not so handy with a sword as I am myself. But that would be asking a lot of a man, for I am one of the finest swordsmen in our company. Still, he was a strong man, and steadfast and of a good name; he was called Ale, and his father sows twelve bushels of rye, and he had been called to sea twice already. If you can row as well as he did, you are no mean oarsman.’

When Orm heard this, it seemed to cheer his spirits, and he began to eat. But after a few minutes, he asked: ‘Who was it who struck me down?’

Krok was sitting a short way from him and heard his question. He laughed and raised his axe, finished his mouthful and said: ‘This is the maid who kissed you. Had she bitten you, you would not have asked her name.’

Orm gazed at Krok with rounded eyes, that looked as though they had never blinked, and then said with a sigh: ‘I had no helmet and was breathless from running; otherwise, it might have gone differently.’

‘You are a conceited puppy, Skanian,’ said Krok, ‘and fancy yourself a soldier. But you are yet young and lack a soldier’s prudence. For prudent men do not forget their helmets when they run out after sheep; nay, not even when their own wives are stolen from them. But you seem to be a man whom Fortune smiles on, and it may be that you will bring us all into her good favour. We have already seen three manifestations of her love for you. Firstly, you slipped on the rocks as two spears were flying towards you; then Ale, whom you slew, has no kinsman or close comrade among us who is bound to avenge him; and thirdly, I did not kill you, because I wished to have an oarsman to replace him. Therefore I believe you to be a man of great good luck, who can thereby be of use to us; wherefore I now give you the freedom of our company, provided only that you agree to take Ale’s oar.’

They all thought that Krok had spoken well. Orm munched his meat reflectively; then he said: ‘I accept the freedom you offer me; nor do I think I need feel ashamed to do so, although you stole my sheep. But I will not row as a slave, for I am of noble blood; and, though I am young, yet I hold myself to be a good soldier, for I slew Ale, and he was one. I therefore claim back my sword.’

This provoked a long and complicated discussion. Some of them regarded Orm’s demand as altogether unreasonable, and said that he ought to think himself lucky to have been granted his life; but others remarked that self-esteem was no great fault in a young man, and that the claims of those whom Fortune smiled on should not be lightly ignored. Toke laughed and said he was amazed that so many men, three full ships’ companies, could be anxious about whether or not one boy was to be allowed to carry a sword. A man called Calf, who had spoken against granting Orm’s request, wanted to fight Toke for saying this, and Toke said that he would be glad to oblige him as soon as he had finished the good kidney that he was just then occupied with; but Krok forbade them to fight over such a matter. The end of it all was that Orm got his sword back, but that his future behaviour would determine whether he was to be treated as a slave or as a comrade. But Orm was to pay Krok for his sword, which was a fine weapon, as soon as he won anything on the voyage.

By this time a light breeze had sprung up, and Krok said that it was time for them to avail themselves of it and set sail. So they all went aboard and the ship made its way up through the Kattegat with its sails filled with the wind. Orm stared back across the sea and said that it was lucky for Krok that they had few ships left at home in these parts at this time of year; for, if he knew his mother, she would else by now have been on their tails with half the people of the Mound assisting her.

Then he washed the wound in his head and rinsed the clotted blood from his hair; and Krok said that the scar on his forehead would be a fine thing to show womenfolk. Then Toke produced an old leather helmet with iron bands. He said it was not much of a helmet for these times, but that he had found it among the Wends and that he had nothing better that he could spare. It would, he said, not be of much use against an axe, but still, it would be better than nothing. Orm tried it on and found that it would fit him when the swelling had gone down. Orm thanked Toke; and they both knew now that they would be friends.

They rounded the Skaw with a good following wind, and there, after ancient custom, they sacrificed to Agir and all his kin, offering sheep’s flesh and pork and ale, and were followed for a long while afterwards by shrieking gulls, which they took to be a good omen. They rowed down the Jutland coast, where the country was deserted and the ribs of wrecked ships were often to be seen in the sand; further south, they went ashore on two small islands, where they found water and food but little else. They proceeded down the coast, for the most part with favourable winds helping them, so that the men became good-humoured through being relieved of the tiresome labour of constant rowing. Toke said that Orm was, perhaps, weather-lucky, as well as being ordinarily fortunate; and weather-luck was one of the best kinds of luck that a man could have, so that if this were in fact so, Orm could indeed hope for a prosperous future. Orm thought that Toke might be right; but Krok was unwilling to agree with them on this point.

‘It is I who bring us this good weather,’ he said. ‘For we have had good weather and winds from the very beginning, long before Orm joined us; indeed, if I had not known my weather-luck to be reliable, I should not have ventured on this expedition. But Orm’s luck is good, if not of the same quality as my own; and the more lucky men we have aboard, the better it will be for us all.’

Berse the Wise agreed, and said that men without luck had the hardest burden of all to bear.

‘For man can triumph over man, and weapon over weapon; against the Gods, we can pit sacrifice, and against witchcraft, contrary magic; but against bad luck, no man has anything to oppose.’

Toke said that, for his part, he did not know whether he had great good luck, except that his luck in fishing had always been good. He had always done well enough against men whom he had quarrelled with; but that might be the result of his strength and skill rather than of his luck.

‘But what worries me,’ he said, ‘is whether on this expedition we shall have gold-luck and woman-luck: for I have heard great tales of all the fine things that are to be found here in the west, and it is beginning to seem a long time since I felt a gold ring or a woman. Even if we only find silver instead of gold, and no princesses, such as Berse has spoken of, but simple Frankish housewives, I shall not complain; for I am not a fussy man.’

Krok said that Toke would have to be patient for a little longer, however strong his desire for either commodity; and Toke agreed that it certainly seemed likely that he would have to wait for a while; for it did not look as though either gold or women grew on trees in these parts.

They sailed along flat coasts, where nothing was to be seen except sand and marshlands, and an occasional fishing-hut. Then they passed promontories on which tall crosses stood, and knew they had come to the Christians’ land and to the Frankish coasts. For the wise men among them knew that these crosses had first been set up by the great Emperor Charles, the father of all emperors, to keep Nordic seafarers away from his land; but the gods of the north had proved stronger than his. They put into creeks to take refuge from threatening squalls, and to rest overnight, and saw waters more salt and green than any they had seen before, rising and falling with the ebb and the flood tides. There were no ships to be seen, and no people; only here and there the traces of some old building. Many villages had flourished in these parts, before the first Northmen came, but everything had long since been plundered and laid waste, so that nowadays men had to travel far to the south before they could find any prizes worth the taking.

They came down to where the sea narrowed between England and the mainland; and there was talk among them of turning towards the English coast. For they knew that King Edgar had recently died and that he had been succeeded by sons who were not yet of age, which had made the land much sought after by the Vikings. But Krok and Berse and others among the wisest of them held that the country of the Franks was still the best, if one went far enough south; for the King of Frankland and the Emperor of Germany were at war with each other on a point of dispute concerning their frontiers, and the coastal regions of countries at war always provided good hunting-grounds for Northmen.

So they continued down the Frankish coast; but here they lay further out to sea and kept a sharp look-out on every quarter, for they had now come to that region which certain Northmen had won from the King of the Franks. Here ancient crosses were constantly to be seen on promontories and at river mouths, but even more frequent were pikes with bearded heads set on them, to signify that the rulers of that land had no desire to welcome seamen from their own northern climes upon their coasts. Krok and his men thought that this showed scant hospitality on the part of the men who were now enjoying the fruits of the land; but, they said, it was only what was to be expected of men from Skania and Själland; and they asked Orm whether he had any kinsmen in these parts. Orm replied that he had none, as far as he knew, since his kinsmen always sailed to Ireland; but that he would bear in mind, when he got home, this idea of putting heads on poles, for they would make fine scarecrows to protect his sheep. They all laughed at this, and thought that he was well able to speak up for himself.

They hid in ambush at the mouth of a river, and took some fishing boats, but they found little worth in them and could elicit no reply from the men in the boats when they asked where the rich villages were around there. When they had killed a couple of them and still could get no intelligible answer from the others, they let them go alive, since they were of miserable appearance and would be of no use as rowers, and would fetch no price as slaves. More than once they slipped ashore under the cover of night, but they won little, for the people lived in large and well-guarded villages, and several times they had to make haste back to their ships to avoid being surrounded and outnumbered. They hoped that they would soon come to the end of the region where the Northmen held sway.

One evening, they met four long ships rowing from the south; they looked to be heavily laden, and Krok let his ships move near to them so that he might see how strongly they were manned. It was a calm evening, and they rowed slowly towards each other; the strangers set a long shield upon their mast-top, with its point turned upwards, as a sign that they came as friends, and Krok’s men conversed with them at the distance of a spear’s throw, while each chieftain tried to calculate the other’s strength. The strangers said that they were from Jutland, and that they were on their way home after a long voyage. They had plundered in Brittany with seven ships during the previous summer, and had then ventured far to the south; afterwards, they had wintered on an island off the mouth of the Loire, and had ventured up the river, but then a cruel plague had broken out among them, and now they were making their way home with such ships as they had strength to man. When asked what they had won, they replied that a wise seaman never counts his wealth until he has brought it safely home; but this they could tell him (since at this meeting they reckoned themselves strong enough to hold what they had won), that they had no complaint to make about the amount of their catch. There was always the possibility of a bad season, compared with the way things had been in the old days, and that held true however far southwards one might travel; but anyone who happened on a part of Brittany that had hitherto escaped plunder would be able to find good reward for his pains.

Krok asked whether they had any wine or good ale that they would be willing to exchange for pork or dried fish; meanwhile, he tried to come nearer their ships, for he was sorely tempted to hazard an attack on them and by this means get a fine return for his whole voyage at one swoop. But the Jutish captain at once brought his ship round to bar their path, with his prow facing them, and replied that he preferred to keep his swine and ale for his own use.

‘But by all means come nearer,’ he said to Krok, ‘if there is anything else you care to sample.’

Krok weighed a spear in his hand and seemed uncertain which course to take; but at that moment a commotion broke out on one of the Jutish ships. Two men could be seen struggling with each other by the gunwale; then they fell into the water, still locked in each other’s arms. Both of them sank, and one was seen no more; but the other rose to the surface at a distance from the ship, only to dive again when a spear was thrown at him by one of the men he had left. There was much shouting on the Jutish ship, but when Krok’s men asked them what was the matter, they received no reply. Dusk was now beginning to descend and, after a brief exchange of words, the strangers began to row forward again before Krok could decide whether or not to join battle. Then Toke, who sat at his larboard oar just behind Orm on Krok’s own ship, cried to Krok:

‘Come and look at this! My fishing-luck gets better all the time!’

One hand was gripping Toke’s oar, and one Orm’s, and a face lay in the water between the hands, staring up at the ship. It was big-eyed and very pale, black-haired and black-bearded.

‘This is a bold fellow and a good swimmer,’ said one of the men. ‘He has dived under our ship to get away from the Jutes.’

‘And a wise man, too,’ said another, ‘for he sees that we are better men than they.’

A third said: ‘He is black like a troll, and yellow like a corpse and does not look the sort of man who brings good luck with him. It is dangerous to take such a man aboard.’

They discussed the advantages and disadvantages of doing so, and some of them shouted questions at the man in the water; but he lay there without moving, clinging tightly to the oars and blinking his eyes and swaying with the sea. At last Krok ordered him to be brought aboard; he could always be killed later, he explained to those who opposed the idea, if the course of things showed that it would be best to do so.

So Toke and Orm drew in their oars and hauled the man aboard; he was yellow-skinned and strongly built, and naked to his waist, with only a few rags to cover him. He tottered on his feet and could hardly stand, but he clenched his fist and shook it at the Jutish ships as they merged into the distance, spitting after them and grinding his teeth. Then he cried something and fell headlong as the ship rolled, but was quickly on his feet again, and beat his breast and stretched his arms towards the sky and cried in a different voice, but in words which none of them could understand. When Orm was old, and told of all the things that had befallen him, he used to say that he never heard so terrible a grinding of teeth, or so pitiful and ringing a voice, as when this stranger cried out to the sky.

They all wondered at him, and questioned him profusely as to who he was and what had happened to him. He understood some of what they said, and was able to reply brokenly in the Nordic tongue, and they thought he said he was a Jute and that he disliked rowing on Saturdays and that it was for this reason that he hated the men he had now escaped from; but this made no sense to them, and some of them were of the opinion that he was crazy. They gave him food and drink, and he ate greedily of beans and fish; but when they offered him salt pork, he rejected it with disgust. Krok said that he would do to man an oar, and that when the voyage was over they could sell him for a good sum; meanwhile, Berse could, out of his wisdom, try to make something of what the stranger said and discover whether he had any useful information to give them about the lands from which he had come.

So during the next few days Berse sat and talked a good deal with the stranger, and they conversed as well as they could. Berse was a calm and patient man, a great eater and a skilful bard, who had gone to sea to get away from a shrewish wife; he was wise and full of cunning, and bit by bit he succeeded in piecing together most of what the stranger had to say. This he told to Krok and the others.

‘He is not crazy,’ said Berse, ‘though he seems so; nor is he a Jute, though we thought him to be one. He says that he is a Jew. They are a people from the East who killed the man whom the Christians regard as their god. This killing took place long ago, but the Christians still cherish a great hatred against the Jews because of it, and like to kill them, and will not accept any ransom for them or show them any clemency. For this reason, most of the Jews live in the lands ruled by the Caliph of Cordova, since in his kingdom the man they killed is not regarded as a god.’

Berse added that he had heard some talk of this before, and many others said that they, too, had heard rumours relating to it. Orm said that he had heard that the dead man had been nailed to a tree, as the sons of Ragnar Hairy-Breeks had done in the old days with the chief priest of England. But how they could continue to regard him as a god after the Jews had killed him, none of them could understand; for obviously no true god could be killed by men. Then Berse went on to tell them more of what he had managed to grasp of the Jew’s story:

‘He has been a slave of the Jutes for a year, and there he underwent much suffering, because he would not row on Saturdays; for the God of the Jews gets very angry with a Jew who does anything on that day. But the Jutes could not understand this, though he often tried to explain it to them, and they beat him and starved him when he refused to row. It was while he was in their hands that he learned the little he knows of our tongue; but when he speaks of them, he curses them in his own language, because he does not know sufficient words to do so in ours. He says that he wept much when he was among them and cried to his god for help; then, when he saw our ship approaching, he knew that his cry had been heard. When he jumped overboard, he dragged with him a man who had often beaten him. He asked his God to be a shield to him, and not to let the other man escape; that, he says, is why no spear hit him, and how he found the strength to dive under our ship; and so powerful is the name of his god that he will not name him to me, however much I try to persuade him to do so. That is what he says of the Jutes and his escape from them; and he has more to tell us about something else, which he thinks we shall find useful. But much of what he says about this I cannot clearly understand.’

They were all curious to know what else the Jew had to say, which might be useful to them; and at last Berse managed to discover the gist of it.

‘He says,’ Berse told them, ‘that he is a wealthy man in his own country, which lies within the Caliph of Cordova’s kingdom. His name is Solomon, and he is a silversmith, besides apparently being a great poet. He was captured by a Christian chieftain who came from the north and plundered the region where he lives. This chieftain made him send for a large sum of money to ransom himself, and then sold him to a slave-trader, for the Christians do not like to keep their word to Jews, because they killed their god. The slave-trader sold him at sea to merchants, from whom he was captured by the Jutes; and it was his bad fortune to be set at once to pull an oar on a Saturday. Now he hates these Jutes with a bitter hatred; but even that is mild compared with the hatred he feels towards the Christian chieftain who betrayed him. This chieftain is very rich and lives only a day’s march from the sea; and he says that he will gladly show us how to get there, so that we may plunder the chieftain of all he possesses and burn down his house and take out his eyes and loose him naked among the stones and trees. He says that there is wealth for us all there.’

They all agreed that this was the best news they had heard for many a day; and Solomon, who had been sitting beside Berse while he was recounting all this and had been following him as well as he could, leaped to his feet with a great cry and a joyful countenance, and cast himself full length on the deck before Krok and put a tuft of his beard into his mouth and chewed it; then he seized one of Krok’s feet and placed it upon his neck, all the while babbling like a drunken man in words that no one could understand. When he had calmed himself a little, he began to search among the words of their language that he knew; he said that he wished to serve Krok and his men faithfully until they had won these riches and he had gained his revenge; but he asked for a definite promise that he himself should be allowed to pluck out the eyes of the Christian chieftain. Both Krok and Berse agreed that this was a reasonable request.

On each of the three ships, the men now began hotly to discuss all this, and it put them in the best of spirits. They said that the stranger might not bring much luck to himself, to judge by what happened to him, but that he might bring all the more to them; and Toke thought that he had never hooked a better fish. They treated the Jew as a friend, and collected a few clothes for him to wear, and gave him ale to drink, though they had not much left. The country to which he wished to guide them was called Leon, and they knew roughly where it lay; on their right hand between the land of the Franks and that of the Cordovan Caliph; perhaps five days good sailing southwards from the Breton cape, which they could now see. They sacrificed again to the sea-people, were rewarded with a good wind, and sailed on into the open sea.

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