Chapter 4

Four: The Dumb Sea

A FEW WEEKS LATER, Thorhall was still complaining, as he pulled at the oar of a fine longship Ulf had grudgingly leant them.

'We all heard what Ulf said, no one's ever returned from this place,' he was saying. 'I'm not surprised, either. Did you see the size of those icebergs? And this constant mist. It hasn't gone for a week. Makes me wonder if we're not heading for Nifelheim. Or Hel. They say Hel's in the far north, don't they?'

No one answered him.

'Then there's the Maelstrom I've heard stories about. And the Midgard Serpent. And...'

Thorir turned away from the stern, where he had been surveying the great sweep of frigid ocean that was the Dumb Sea, and glared at the complaining rower.

'Shut up, Thorhall! There's only one place we're heading for, in all the worlds that are, and that's Jotunheim, the world of the giants.'

Thorhall paled, bent over his oar, and kept quiet.

Thorir glanced over at Ketilbjorn, who stood by the steerboard, ocasionally moving it as he navigated them through the surrounding belt of icebergs. Like his helmsman, Thorir wore heavy Lappland furs, and his breath steamed in the freezing air.

'How far do you reckon we are from Blesarnerg?' he asked casually.

'By my calculation from the bearing-dial, and from what Ulf told us, we should be in Blesarnerg's waters in three days.'

'We've made good time, then,' said Thorir happily, 'though we'll need to stock up on provisions soon.' He glanced around at the constantly lowering sun. Then he frowned. 'What d'you mean, days?'

One of the strangest things about these frozen lands of trolls and giants was the fact that the days seemed to last half a year, and the nights just as long. Thorir had heard about this from his father and other sailors, but taken it no more seriously than the rest of their wilder tales. And yet, here they were, passing through the fringes of the Dumb Sea, and he hadn't seen the sunset since they rowed out of Ulf's fjord. When he considered all the things he had heard from his father and disbelieved, or at least taken with a pinch of salt, he found himself feeling rather better about sailing into these almost uncharted waters on the strength of a dream.

Still, Ketilbjorn's answer was a little vague.

'Do you mean one of these giant days, or three of our own?' he went on.

'Giant-days?' Ketilbjorn scowled distractedly, as he directed the ship around the last of the icebergs.

'Yes, you know, they last half a year. Right length for giants, but a bit long for us smaller men.'

'I mean one of our days,' Ketilbjorn said patiently. 'Once we get past Svalbard...'

As he said this, they cleared the final iceberg. Before them, the Dumb Sea stretched int the mist-hung distance. Close by, no more than a mile away, lay the hazy line of a coastline. Thorir told the rowers to ship their oars.

'Where's that?' he asked Ketilbjorn, indicating the coast.

'Svalbard,' Ketilbjorn replied briefly.

'Maybe we could spend the night there,' Thorir suggested. He frowned. 'Or whatever you'd call it round here. I'll tell the men to row closer...'

'No!' said Ketilbjorn. 'Surely your father told you about Svalbard?'

'What about it?' Thorir demanded, but the a gasp from Hyrning drew his attention back to the far-off island.

'Look!' he said in amazement.

Marching along the coast, as if it was nothing more than a skerry in the middle of the sea, came a man dressed in crude furs, with long matted hair and a beard that clearly hadn't been washed in weeks. His filthy condition was enough to draw comment from the fastidious, clean-living Vikings, but - as far as they could judge from the perspective - he must have been at least forty feet high.

'Thor!' muttered Ketilbjorn.

'Thor? That's not Thor,' Thorir gaped.

'What? No, I was just swearing,' Ketilbjorn replied. 'No, that's not Thor. That's a giant.'

'Pretty big fellow, certainly,' Thorir replied. ‘Not what you’d call small.’

The crew watched in amazement as the massive figure trudged along the far-off shore. He had a bundle of wood under his arm, and every so often, he would stoop to pick up a piece of driftwood - whole Norwegian pines, some of them.

'Let's just get out of here before he mistakes us for a convenient piece of flotsam,' Thorir muttered. 'Get your backs into it, lads.'

They rowed swiftly past the islands of Svalbard. Their keel cut keenly through the icy seas;  beneath the constant sun they rowed, passing occasional floating blocks of ice, until they began to lose all sense of time. Their fuel ran out speedily, and soon theyresigned themselves to eating their food raw. Though Thorir reminded them all that this was how real Vikings lived all the time, scorning to eat such effeminate victuals as cooked meat, the rest of the crew were too busy combating stomach pains to make any kind of retort.

But finally - and whether it was three days later or not, Thorir could never be sure - they sighted land to the north; the isle of Blesanerg, which rises from the chilly Dumb Sea many miles north of Svalbard. As they rowed closer, the dark smudge on the ice-blue horizon resolved itself into a large, fertile, tree-lined coast, above which reared a high mountain. A great river rushed down the slopes through a series of deep chasms, finally plunging over a high cliff into the roaring waters of the sea. Thorir commanded his men to ship their oars again. They did this gladly, but they eyed the pleasant shoreline with suspicion.

'Are those trees on the island?' asked Ketilbjorn. Hyrning, who had the best eyes in the group, gazed intently at the place.

'Yes,' he replied quickly. 'Pine trees, forests full of trees!'

'Well, that's unsurprising,' Thorir said. 'Agnar said something about trees in the vicinity.'

Thorhall piped up. 'What are trees doing so far north?' he asked. 'You don't get any trees on the Faeroes, and precious few on Iceland. And this is much further north.'

'But it's starting to get warmer, though,' Thrand said thoughtfully.

Olaf nodded. 'Perhaps we've passed into the land of the giants. My granny said they have different seasons in the otherworld.'

'Your granny was an Irish thrall,' Bjorn muttered. He had been worst struck by the belly-ache, and was clearly spoiling for a fight. Thorir stepped between the two.

'Alright, alright, break it up!' he barked. 'Time for a bit of teamwork. We've got to get closer to the island - Blesanerg, they call it - and find somewhere to land. As close as possible to the waterfall. Come on, get rowing!'

A few hours later, they weighed anchor off a stony beach about half a mile down the coast from the great waterfall. So far, the island had betrayed no signs of habitation, but Thorir had advised his men to go cautiously. And as he led fifteen of his crewmen away from the ship, and up the beetling cliff, he kept casting glances around him.

'What are you looking for?' Ketilbjorn asked. 'The place seems to be deserted.'