Northern Fiction - The Saga of Freydis Eiriksdattir
Chapter 1
Stripped naked, Vaner the slave-girl funeral-bride was led from one of Agdi’s followers to the next and raped, this sacred-funeral bridal-rite witnessed by the assembled crowd. Each warrior saying to Vaner: “Tell your master I did this only for my love of him.” She was then led to a symbolic door-frame, representing the gateway between life and death, that had been set up beside the boat. Seated in the warriors’ hands Vaner was lifted three times high enough to see through and beyond the doorway into eternity. Each time they raised her, she dutifully obeyed and called out, phrase by phrase, the role assigned to her in the ritual by the “Angel of Death.” The first time she called out, “Look. Look. I see my dead father and mother awaiting me for the wedding feast!” The second time she called out: “Look. I can see my dead kinsmen sitting there too!” The third time she called out loudly: “Look. I see Agdi, my master, sitting in the great hall at Valhalla. Paradise is so fair and green. There are fine warriors, and fair young lads, with him and he is calling me. He calls:‘Vaner!’ He beckons: ‘Come join me as my bride in paradise.’ Let me go to my master.” Thorir handed Vaner a hen to sacrifice to the gods for Agdi. She wrung its head off and tossed its bleeding body through the frame.
Thorir then took Vaner from the henchmen. He handed her over to the “Angel of Death” who led the sobbing maiden onto the ship. Agdi’s crewmen followed. Vaner was handed a golden beaker of strong drugged spirits and she drank it in a single gulp. The empty beaker was tossed onto the heap of offerings littering the ship’s deck. She was handed another beaker of nabidh and drained the contents. The drug’s effect was almost immediate. Drunk and confused, Vanaer was led stumbling and dazed under the tent by the Angel of Death, when suddenly, the imminence of death penetrated her alcoholic stupor. Vaner began to scream and shriek in mortal terror. The warriors immediately began to beat upon their shields with spears so the witnessing crowd could not hear her plaintive cries. Six powerful crew members threw her to the ship’s bench. Four held her spread her arms and legs while a fifth held her head and the sixth man raped her again. Each man took another turn raping the girl and telling her to send his love to her master in Valhalla.
Then Vaner was lain next to the blackened remains and four of the men held her, weeping so that her entire body was shaking. Tossing her head about fitfully, black hair spread about her and her tormentors all draped in the widows blue-black veil. The Angel of Death, her blood-red mouth cooing tender endearments tied a bridal veil about the girl’s neck. Gently murmuring false calming words the pale woman handed the knotted ends of the veil to two men who stood on either side of the victim. Suddenly, the men yanked the ends of the garrote pulling the strong silk veil so tight that the girl’s head was almost ripped from her body. As the garrote-veil tightened the priestess’ arm rose and fell over and over again stabbing a broad bladed dagger between the girl’s ribs. Gouts of crimson blood spurted and flew about the sacrificial scene in bright ropey streams. Death silenced Vaner’s screams. The warriors abruptly stopped beating upon their shields and the only sounds were the murmur of the distant surf and the heavy breathing of the assembled crowd. The night was suddenly very still. The only sound was that of the Angel of Death’s sad weeping, and as she wept raised her voice and sang the dead’s last praise.
The priestess and the warriors descended from the Sea Mew. The witch-woman, hair tight-wound upon her head released in mourning, groaned a song of fear and sorrow to come, a scene of infinite sadness declared: “Who knows what what suffering comes after one man dies? Often an entire country pays on one person’s account.”
The flames must rise up as black smoke,
gourged on the hero and our sacrifices,
The heavens swallow the billowing smoke.
kinsmen of Agdi, naked and silent, walked forward and tossed their torches onto the piles of wood that surrounded the ship’s hull. Smoke curled upward, the fire caught. Tongues of flame flared into the night sky; wind-whipped the flaming logs roared. Then the villagers ran forward tossing their torches onto the funeral ship. Dead warrior’s open wounds split and burst, blood bubbled up black and oozed down for the greedy fire-monster to drink the melting flesh. The white bones charred black. The holocaust engulfed the heaped offerings, bloody sacrifices, and murdered girl until nothing remained.
By the light of the burning vessel the assembled witnesses turned to the funeral feast, the barrels of ale and mead, and the drunken orgy that marked the consumation of the Viking funeral rites.
As roiling flames consumed the Sea Mew. the heaped offerings, and Agdi’s remains, Thorir Rennirsson called out,“Odin, send Sleipnir, your eight-legged stallion, and take Agdi to Valhalla.” Then, the billowing-smoke conveyed the glorious dead warrior to the golden roofed feasting hall of the immortal gods in Asgard. Thorir then raised his voice in the words of Njal’s Saga:
the cloudy web
the broad loom of slaughter.
web of man,
as armor
cross it
a crimson weft.
warp is made
human entrails.
heads
used as weights;
heddle-rods
blood-wet spears;
shafts are iron-bound,
arrows are the shuttles.
swords we will weave
web of battle.
is terrible now
Look around,
a blood-red cloud
Darkens the sky.
heavens are stained
the blood of men,
the Valkyries
their song.
It was now well past Lauds, around 3 a.m., nearly Prime, 6-9 a.m., sunrise and the early morning hours, as the church calculated the divisions of the day. All the celebrants turned toward the stockade of Norumbega which was a Viking Longphort, a ship fortress or defended port in a hostile land. They followed the workshop lined pathway known as the Coppergata, the Street of the Woodworkers, that led from the waterfront by the nausts, past the open market grounds, to the main gate of the town and home. Exhausted by the long, and intense experience, many of the townsfolk suddenly felt deeply troubled and guilt burdened because they had participation in the ancient pagan rites.
A figure could be discerned at the town gates struggling with, and finally pushing past, the posted guards. It was the parish priest of Norumbega, Father Hrolf Haakonsson. The priest was the son of Haakon Tree-Foot a man known to be the boldest and most agile one-legged man in Iceland. Haakon had earned his name when he lost a leg in battle. His henchmen shoved a log under the bloody stump and, standing firm, he fought on as the battle raged about him. Later, he had a peg fitted to the leg-stump and was as active as ever in the years that followed. Haakon’s son was but lately come to Hop, a young man. with bright eyes and flashing teeth, set in a warm radiantly-smiling face of youth. A pale visage beneath shining translucent hair that glowed on head and shoulders, as comely as Baldar the Beautiful, the son of Odin. He swam like a seal, evinced by a lean hard body, and he had been raised to handle blade or ax with a berserk’s skill. A priest by his mother’s choosing, because even among the land holding families prospects were small for third sons, Hrolf was by inclination a true Viking. As a five-year-old, he had once been excluded from games by his brothers because he had not yet shed blood. That night he tossed and turned unable to sleep for the shame. Finally he rose and taking his father’s spear stalked to the stable where he drove the weapon through the flank of his brother’s pony. When the pony fell down dead, Hrolf woke and told his brother: “Taunt me? Know that now I have shed blood.” Then Hrolf went off to sleep contentedly. The act drew praise from his father, and the entire clan, because it showed a manly spirit and a noble pride.. A lusty cleric he, with wide ranging tastes. By turns a man willful in deeds, contradictory and often hasty in speech, yet, usually he was under control. Hrolf’s nature was gentle, caring, and careful in manner, he had been true to his assigned vocation and conscientious in his duties
Now, the young priest ran toward them wildly waving his arms, yelling frantically at the pale woman with the staff: “Unholy, merciful heavens, Heavenly Father forgive us. This was blasphemy most unclean. Pagan rites! Satanic evil!” Holding a cross aloft, Father Hrolf Haakonsson screamed: “Freydis, you have committed cardinal sins. Unspeakable acts. Murder. Bloody pagan rituals. Look to your soul woman! You have lapsed into heresy. Committed murder. Sacrilege most foul! All in one monstrous act.”
The woman raised her long slender arm, reached back, then brought her knurled talon of a hand across the priest’s face with a force that sent blood spuming from his nose. He stumbled backward, shaking and pale. He dared not resist her wrath. “Freydis? How dare you! . . . Freydis! . . . Freydis! You dare such familiarity. I should have your tongue ripped out. How dare you attack and berate me before my own people. That calls for death you fool. Surely you underestimate the daughter of Eirik the Red. Satan? Hardly! These rites have nothing to do with your ‘Satan’ at all. ‘Pagan?’ Your word, priest. They are our way of honoring the heroic dead. Surely I need not explain this to you. Have you have lost both your wits and your senses? I am Lady Freydis Eiriksdatter. I am the ‘Landtaker’ here. Here, I am first among all. Do not wave your sticks in my face. I will not be exorcised by your cross!”
Then she rapped him mightily on his poll with her staff. In a stiff legged gait she circled the young priest in a widdershins direction raising her arms high above her body uncoiling like a large venomous serpent. Stretched tall, and swaying menacingly, she appeared prepared to strike like an enraged viper. She emitted a high pitch shriek, then lunging forward menacingly hissed: “This I say to you Hrolf Haakonsson”:
Demons shall run wild,
shall go mad;
I shall send
Venomous snakes
gnaw at you breast;
ears shall go deaf,
Unless you respect Eiriksdatter.
Trolls and elves
sorceresses,
Goblins and giants
overturn your altars;
Frost-giants shall follow you
Storms shall drive you mad,
very church bells
toll you to damnation,
Unless you respect Freydis Eiriksdatter.
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