The Long Ships: A Saga of the Viking Age

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‘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.