Northern Fiction - The Saga of Freydis Eiriksdattir
Chapter 2
The bear’s blood had rushed out upon Freydis. She was covered with it, red and hot, and it mixed with her scalp’s blood. The two blood’s ran down into the torn turf where the bear lay dead. Freydis leaped into her father’s arms and declared: “I am one blood with the bear papa. I am a berserker.” That day Eirik took the heart of the bear, roasted it with thongs over the hearth fire, and gave it to Freydis to eat. From that time she became ferocious and terrible in anger, and though but a female, she was ever-after a berserk in her mind. (“Berserk” means bear shirt or bare shirt, that is, bare of any byrnie or shirt of chainmail armor. The berserks went into battle intoxicated with drugs -- Their wildness in battle was followed by marked lassitude and exhaustion. During their beserker-gang the warriors, if dressed at all, went clad in bear or wolf skins. The thick pelts were almost as effective as armor against the blade of a sword and they were believed to provide invulnerability in battle.) It was her fate, and her destiny, thereafter to be ever wild, mad and frenzied in her ways: Born of a family of manslaughters and blood-kin to a manslaughtering bear. Destined to be wild, Fated to be cursed.
Her deeds. She must confront once again the shades of the past. She stirred and woke. The weight of her years bore down on her and she so old and tired. It was Compline (9 P.M., curfew) by Church reconning and time to make ready. Freydis called to a bondswoman for a beaker of ale and tossed it down in a single swallow. “Must hurry. Time to renew,” then rising, Freydis went to the doorway to her chamber and paused deeply breathing in the scent of the secret treasures hidden within. She moved softly, almost slithered serpent-like, to the great iron bound chest at the foot of her bed. Grasped the large brass key that hung suspended from her waist and fitting she turned the well oiled lock, that opened with a satisfying click, and let fall the heavy chains. Gasping and hissing for air she struggled to raise the heavy iron lid and securing it she paused at a supposedly suspicious sound. With tilted head and gleaming eyes that peered from beneath half-lowered lids she surveyed the dim recesses of her chamber. Secure that she was alone Freydis drew away a covering-cloth revealing priceless riches beyond a prince’s ransome. It was her dragon’s hoard of greedy riches. Wealth that she would neither use nor could she ever bear to part with. A treasure, in shining gold and sparkling precious gems, that scattered on the floor as she delved the depths of the trove. Deep within the bowels of the container she found a small leather bag with a drawstring and a bone bead that clasped the bag’s neck tightly shut. She carefully checked the contents of the pouch for her most prized of all possessions and then slung the bag over her shoulder and relocking the chest padded to the entry.
Whistling to Hugin and Munin she opened the door as Heaven’s Jewel slid to its rest, then the sun was gone in the darkening evening. “Come my pretties. Lead the way to the rookery in the forest glen, just as your kinsmen led Floki Vilgerdarsson, Raven-Floki, to Iceland. Now go, and call your fellow ravens to assembly. We have much to do tonight, and the moon will be up in a few hours.” The ravens rose high into the air and headed off to the east and the dark forest of oak trees that crested a hill beyond the stockade walls of the city. Freydis left Kraekleroost for the raven’s rookery. She followed slowly, at a stately pace with head held high and shoulders back. She was Freydis Eiriksdatter. She was the Landtaker. She strode along the darken way following her ravens and noted with approval the bonfires being set along the way in preparation for the Evening of the Dead. “So good to have all these Celt freemen and slaves among us, they always make a major event of this night,” she muttered under her breath. Her menacing hooded form was especially dreadful of mien on this All Hallows Eve of all nights and passers bye hurriedly moved out of her path crossing themselves in terror for their immortal souls. Passing through the gates of Norumbega fires could be seen on many of the distant hillsides and about the yards of the outlying farms.
The raven’s rookery was in a small secret hollow in the forest where windy cliffs and wolf-dens were shrouded in misty clouds that wept heaven’s black rain. Reached by slippery paths, where creatures from deep within the earth hid in their holes and knarled clumps of trees bent across gray stones and dismal swamps of bloody sulfurous waters bubbled, the townsfolk hanged convicted criminals on tall trees. The bodies were left swaying from the branches. When the flesh was pecked or rotted away the remains fell among a mass of bones beneath the wide spreading oak trees. Out from the darkening sky first one lone raven came to join Hugin and Munin. Then in twos and threes, tens and twenties, then in hundreds and their thousands the ravens came and roosted on the trees. The bare limbs soon seemed covered with raven-shaped leaves and the branches bowed down under the weight of thousands of the cawing ebon forms. These were corpse feed raptors who from afar could scent the banquet feast of war or sacrifice and flocked to drink the blood-wine from the veins of the dying. When Freydis finally arrived, the grove was thronged with thousands of the large black birds, she called greetings out and the entire rookery seemed to bestir itself as a thousand beaks cawed in reply.
. “I see you have done well my children,” she called to Hugin and Munin perched on a limb that extended just above Freydis’ head. “I see all the Kraeklings are here. The sons of the crow have come at your beckoning to assist me this night.” The sable pair croaked softly to her as she rummaged through her sack, looking in vain for a small horn container. Finally, with ill-temper, and growing frustration, she dumped the contents. Tumbling onto the forest floor came a lynx foot, a falcon’s talon, several shinning beads of crystal and jet, and a handful of dried Amanita muscaria. The fungi reeked of the forest floor, emitting the dark rich odor of moss, black earth, and rotting leaves. “Oh, that reek makes my nostril dilate. Such a dank and satisfying smell of death and renewal has the earth,” Freydis mused. A musty pile of ancient fewmets came from the sack, crumbly and gray with mold. Finally, the desperately sought horn, capped at the wide end with a bog-oak plug carved in the shape of Odin’s head, tumbled from the poke. She wagged a bent finger at the horn in a scolding manner cackling: “There you are, you naughty little rascal. I knew you were in there all along. Why do you hide from me? Better? Give us a kiss. Yes my little fellow.”
Freydis drew a knife from a sheath that hung from a brooch at her neck. She cut a circle in the earth: “There, we can concentrate our powers within this area.” She had been fasting for weeks in preparation for this night. Weak with hunger, the fast was necessary to create the fundamental mental and physical changes in her system that would increase the intensity of her visionary experiences. She had also engaged in self-mortification over the preceding days to heighten the possibility of visions and altered states of consciousness as her system released a flood of adrenaline and histamine into her bloodstream.
She sat on a fallen limb and tugged off her boots and slowly she shed her garments one by one until she stood beneath the dark sky naked, and suddenly very withered, bent, and old. “Just look at this, what a mess, terrible. Must hurry.” She reached down amidst the tumbled pile of her clothing and took up a flask of mead. She gulped it down and tossed the flask back on the heap of garments. Now “sky clad” in the chill evening, her fatigue and exhaustion amplified by the alcohol in the fermented honey, she reached down once more and picked up the horn. With shaking hands she drew the stopper and plunged two fingers into the horn. Slowly stirred the ointment composed of rendered human baby’s fat, aconite, nightshade, and belladonna. With her jagged fingernails she raked and ripped the soft tissues of her vulva, then rubbed her clitoris vigorously between her fingers until her entire body felt a surge of warmth. With probing and prodding movements she used the grease to lubricate deep within her vagina, slow movement in and out, gently rotating her wrist and splaying her fingers deep within her body. Removing her fingers from her vagina she dipped them into the ointment again. Then she raked her body from labia to anus. She slid two fingers deeply into her rectum. Thrusting inward to the full length of her curling fingers, she gouged with her long nails and scratched the delicate membranes, massaging the ointment deeply into the bloody wounds. Her fingers returned to the horn once more and dipped again into the herbal salve. Then she scrapped her nails up and down her legs, tearing at the swollen blue and red veins that marbled the once silken and milky white skin of her thighs in youth. Back again to the ointment. Then, she ripped at her withered drapey dugs and torn the nipples raw. She kneaded in the potion that was already penetrating her body, generating heat, and activating a medley of sensations that surged through her. She dropped the horn as she became light headed with the first effects of the drugged salve surged through her. The rush came on like the blasts of searingly hot air that blow from an iron smelter. She experienced an awakening of her body with all the subtly Thor’s lightening blasting a giant oak to flinders. Her heart began to beat in an irregular pattern. Lights and spots appeared before her eyes. She seemed to become weightless and began to rise upward in fledgling hops toward flight.
Freydis called: “Odin, Ghost-Sovereign, lord of the burial mounds, I summon the dead out of the earth.” She pointed to the swaying bodies that dangled from “Hagbert’s Noose,” the gallows rope necklace by which Hagbert was hanged. She quoted the poet Eyvind Skaldaspiller: “These are men who must ride on the wild horse ride -- the wildest horses you e’re did see: ‘Tis Sigurs steed the gallows tree.’ Here in the grove of death where corpses wave on the lowering boughs,” Freydis beseeched Odin: “accept these victims as sacrifices to your honor. These riders on Sigur’s steed.” Sleipnir was the hangman’s scaffold, the dapple-gray eight-legged horse of Lord Odin’s that carried men to their deaths. She sprinkled her blood on a stalle, or altar, where she had stood a small statue of the god.
Picking up her witchhazel walking staff, she straddled it, and began a jerking circular widdershins prancing movement. At first her movements were painful and awkward. Her limbs were old and arthritic, her movements stiff, and her body seemingly resentful of her exertions. She bent low and scooped up the fungi that had fallen from the pouch. They were tears of the pine tree, the sacred mushrooms, Amanita muscaria, “little-ones” engendered by lightning and born from the strength exuded of the towering pine. The erect little penis-shaped, scarlet heads, that emerged, from the womb of the earth at the roots of the fir trees, were a sacred gift from Odin, the phallic father god. The fiery little red capped fungi were as burning coals that ignited a brilliant light, a sacred fire, within Freydis’ body. She ground the red caps between gummy jaws: Lights exploded behind her eyes and deep within her skull and she screamed joyously: “OHH. The rush!!!!!!!!!”
She leaped into the circle marked on the earth’s breast and felt power surge into her ancient limbs, felt her strength grow. Her movements became smoother. Her limbs became supple. She bounded high into the air, and shrieked with joy, as her body felt the years, the decades, fall away and her lusty hot youth return in a rush. She danced on into the night and as she danced the dance became more frantic and the cavorting pace increased until she was bounding about the circle of power carved into the forest floor. The dance elated her, enlightened her, her spirits soared to an exhalted spiritual level and dumped the dross of existence until she was overflowing with a psychic emptiness. She attained the ablity to communicate with the spirits of the dead, to enter into the otherness of animals, and commune with the amorphous beings animated and released behind her skull by the drugs now coursing through her body. She reached inward to a deeper psychic depth, a trans-personal sphere, and released pent-up furies that surged from her inmost being to manifest themselves as spirits from her haunted past, or as Freydis said: “Shit, I feel soooooooo goood.”.
The moon was now high. Mists rose into the hard deep blackness of the night. Freydis raised her outstretched arms and shrieked to the risen moon:
their bodies shall rise.
Come, dwellers in the dust,
Awake! Awake, and sing for joy!
Night’s dew, is a dew of light,
The sacred fires brightly blaze.
Arise! And, join me in our dance.
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