Northern Fiction - The Saga of Freydis Eiriksdattir
Chapter 3
Throughout Europe and its distant outposts, the livestock had spent the summer fattening on the rich sheiling ground pastures far from the home farms. Starting in September when the land had been grazed to exhaustion the herds returned home. Autumn was a period of festivities: All Hallows Eve celebrated both the reunion of the living family and the departed members of the community. The Christian’s Feast of Saint Martin was celebrated on November eleventh and the festivals continued until they culminated in the twelve days of the pagan Yule. The twelve days of the Yule began on December twenty-second with Hoggn Nott, mid-winter night, with sacrifices in honor of Odin. When Christianity came to the Norse, King Hakon of Norway decreed that the festival of the Yule should begin at the same time as the Christmas of the Church. Thereafter both festivals began on December twenty-fifth.
In order to have enough fodder to keep the strong animals over the winter the livestock were sorted and the weak were killed off during the autumn months. The drained and collected blood, called laut, was spilled and sprinkled the on door-posts of gates, houses, byres, and stables with laut-staves, and marked (among the Christians in crosses) on the foreheads of each member of the household. The remaining blood was reserved to be made into puddings and sausages. Then, the slaughtered animals were dismembered and quickly pickled, salted, air dried, or smoked, to fill the larder, while hides and hair were saved for various needs over the year. Certain parts of the carcasses were apportioned to special members of the community: The head, tongue, and feet to the smith, the neck to the butcher, two small ribs to the tailor, the utter to the harper, the kidneys to the physician, the liver to the carpenter, and the sweetbreads (the thymus, a lumpy mass of lymphnoid tissue, found in the chest of young animals) went to those women great with child.
The best cuts were reserved for the owner who frequently would put on a feast for his retainers. Norembega’s population being divided between Christians and pagans it was the custom to hold a non-religious event that the two groups could share. Thorir, as one of the major landholders, hosted such an occasion on November sixth in 1072 AD.
In the book of The Words of the High One the poet declares:
Where do we take our place to sit?
Rash is the man who comes to doors unknown,
And, relies upon his luck
Pulling aside the draped curtain that hung across the entry to the main hall they could see a long glowing fire-trench stretching as a shimmering red ribbon of into the smoky interior. At several points along the trench caldrons of boiling meat were bubbling. The great kettles were tended by a gang of naked sweating boys who looked like imps from Hell. The spit-boys toiled in Satan’s service turning spitted carcasses over beds of glowing coals that crackled and snapped as rendered fat dripped into the shimmering hearth. Hrolf quickly looked to see if any horse meat was being prepared. In later years eating horse meat, a sure sign of Odin worship, was punishable with death under Christian law, but in earlier times the Church could draw few fine distinctions in such matters with so many new converts and sullen pagan holdouts. Nevertheless, seething horse flesh would place him in a difficult situation with his host and the assembled company and was greatly relieved that he could detect no indication of Odin feasting.
Flanking the fire-trench were aisles where serving men and women scurried on a myriad of missions as they brought food and drink to the trestle tables that faced each other across the fiery divide. The small company of clerics pressed their way past a young couple wrapped in a lusty embrace near the entry. They were jostled by a stout warrior, a balding man, with a red face and eye whites that were ribbed with red like rashers of bacon. The old lecher was puffing in stumbling pursuit of a buxom auburn-haired serving wench who threaded through the hall. She laughed at him over her shoulder and easily out paced the besotted old warrior. To escape the unwonted attention she finally threw herself into the welcoming lap of a fine young man dressed in a bright red cape. One of the spit-boys who handled the steikja turned from the spit-roasted meat to Aran, laughing loudly he pointed as the old warrior reached his hand up the dress of another serving girl who had bent to tend a pot by the side of the fire.
Aran winked at him and called out: “Hello. You must be Sooty-Face, Odin’s own cook.”
The sweat-slick grimy-boy grinned back broadly: “Hello, blond youth, You must be the sunshine itself: Mister Glory of Elves!”
Both laughed at the silly exchange.
A man dressed in a bearskin lurched toward the church-boys peering menacingly through the empty eye holes in the pelt. His frightening manner was not soften by the rough way he led a small black bear cub on a chain. The baby bear waddled awkwardly on its hind legs begging coins and caging treats from the company. Jugglers passed up and down before the diners their nimble fingers keeping knives and axes flying in the air. Two young girls and a slender lad did flips, hand stands, leaps, and tumbles from aisle to aisle across the fire-trench.
Above and behind the seated diner’s heads was a row of shields along the walls with iron bosses that mirrored the fire below and shone dully in the murky atmosphere. High overhead, amidst the rafters over the fire, water-soaked leather fire-guards steamed in the rising heat emitting a strong gamy odor that even penetrated the smell of roasting meat, the odor of sweating bodies, and the sour stench of drunken revelers vomit. At the diner’s backs tapestries, that curtained off the partitioned alcoves where Thorir’s henchmen lived and slept, swayed gently with the passage of guests and breezes.
Midway down the hall two huge tables faced each other across the fire-trench. One table accommodated Thorir as the host, and his household. The facing table was occupied by the principal quests of honor. The company sat at the high table after the custom of kings when they were at home, sitting and drinking together, a man and a woman with each other in pairs.
Thorir’s wife Hallgerdal sat with him on the dais: Proud, imperious, and armed with a vicious tongue so fierce Thorir’s brave warriors, averted their eyes, and turned away when she walked past. Angered, she’d been known to shape her hands into a noose to fit their necks; then, She would lie, to Thorir sayiny that they had insulted him by dishonoring her. Yet she loved feasts with clinking cups and pleasant words and had cultivated a following among those lovers of bright and loud-tongued company. This night Hallgerdal could be seen hurring back and forth urging on the cup-bearing boys. She moved among the company giving out fine gold rings and massy red-gold armbands, and fine cups of gold and silver cups with open hands. Hallgerdal even went toasted her husband-mate saying:
Accept them now and,
Bare witness that, gifts
Come freeing from his hand.
Down the table the rest of the company sat all together with fewer couples and more individual men seated shoulder to shoulder because Hop was a frontier settlement and reflected the typical outpost’s shortage of available women. The arrangement did not greatly disturb Hrolf whose vows of celibacy and other interests kept him from such temptations, but it was a let down to the church-boys who chafed at any restrictions depriving them the pleasures of their secular peers. Even though he was a council member and the parish priest, at Thorir’s hall Hrolf's place was well down toward the end of the hall on the host’s side. The church-boys had to crowd in around Hrolf, and Tore, and Jon, if they were to sit anywhere during the feast. They were no sooner seated than a horn of ale was passed to Hrolf. He drained and passed the horn to the person seated next to him, a gangling teenager with buck teeth and a scar that shone as a white line through his pale yellow downy beard. He held the horn to be refilled and then drained it, the amber liquid running down his chin and on to his still youth-smooth chest. He passed the horn to Aran. Each time the horn was filled it was drained and then it was handed along the table for the next diner to drink in turn.
The company were now deeply in their cups with everyone intent upon seriously drinking into drunkenness. Faces reddened and eyes glazed, a little quarreling, elbowing, and tramping from one table to the next developed as men and women squabbled, boasted, and grasped each other in sudden outbursts of sodden affection. In a cleared section of the floor many of the guests were stumbling about, or as they termed it, ‘dancing’ with drunken abandon. As the tempo of the music and the spirit of the dance took hold of the company sodden stupor revived into a frenetic energy that excited the company to action. Singly and in pairs the guests were soon galumphing up and down the hall and they danced so enthusiastically that everything was soon moving to the beat of the tune. They danced the single bransel: A chain dance of men and women, or a mixed group, who linked elbows and trod two steps to the left, and one to the right: Stomp, stomp, and stomp! Stomp, stomp, and stomp! The company moved in a spirited manner over-running the dance area and spilling out around the hall. Stomp, stomp, and stomp! The seated guests banged their fists on the table to the tune as knives, plates, and drinking vessels rattled about the tables. At the high table proud Hallgerdal was laughing heartily and even stern Thorir started to merrily bang with his spoon in time to the music: Tap, tap, and tap. Tap, tap, and tap. Soon Thorir was bouncing up and down on his seat grinning and laughing like a little boy in a highchair. His grin wide, his eyes bright, his expression idiotic and besottedly joyous. Then, the players with tambourine, horn, pipes, and drums struck up a farandole: A simple walking dance that lent itself to boisterous and breathless measures. The dancers followed figures: The Snail, where a leader spirals in towards the center of the floor and spirals out again. Steppitty, steppitty, step. Steppitty, steppitty, step. Threading the Needle, where the leader and the second dancer form an arch, the third passes under and forms an arch with the fourth dancer, the rest of the company following suit. Tappitty, tappitty, tap. Tappitty, tappitty, tap. The Arches, where the leader doubles back on the following dancers and they raise their hands as couples forming an archway and the leader pulls the followers back through the tunnel of raised arms. Galumph, galumph, galumph. And, the Hey, where the chain of dancers drop hands. The leader turns and takes the hand of the second dancer and they pass each other left right to right. Then the dancers reverse one by one and form a chain giving hands and passing to the left and to the right. Stompitty, stompitty, stompitty.
Thorir and Hallgerdal were now bouncing wildly on their seatsas more and more feasters jumped up to join the riot on the floor. Stompitty, stompitty, stompitty. The church-boys ran up and joined the joyous throng, merrily joining hands with other dancers, who were snaking their way about the hall. Stompitty, stompitty, stomp! The guests shuffled and stamped about to the popular tunes of the Ogress, the Dreamer, and the Warrior. When the musicians struck up the Coif-Thrower the ladies’ headdresses were tossed over the rafters, and it seemed that not a single thing in the hall remained in its place. When they played the tune called Powerful even Thorir jumped to his feet. Grasping Hallerdal’s hand, while she merrily feigned resistance, he dragged her along to join in the dance. The tune lent itself to extravagant cavorting about the floor and the entire building began to shake: Thumpitty, thumpitty, thump. Thumpitty, thumpitty, thump! Thumpitty, thumpitty, thump! Nobody danced more vigorously than the battle scarred warrior and the plates, and bowls, and drinking cups clattered about the tables and seemed to eagerly leap onto the floor to join the dancers. Men and women, youths and maidens, young and old breathlessly stumbled about the floor. Up and down along the aisle between the tables and the fire-trench the revelers danced. The smoke, the throbbing drum beats, the blowzy faced dancers drenched in sweat, and the whirling sights and raucous sounds of revelry created an exciting atmosphere joyously at variance to the all too solemn and dull routine of life at Norembega. The company continued the dance as exhausted revelers fell out and fresh participants took their place until the entire company was worn out of breath, falling down, and laughing on the floor in a tangle of weary limbs.
When the company had struggled back to their seats attention turned to the guest of honor. Thorvald Agdisson, twenty something, tall and well built, with long blond locks was the son of Agdi the recently-buried. Thorvald arrived a day late for his father’s funeral and now the heir sat opposite Thorir on a footstool in front of the high table. He was seated before the place where his father had so often sat as Thorir’s honored guest. At an heirship-feast he could not take his proper place on the dais until the passing of the Brage-beaker, which once drained in honor of Brage, the god of poetry, the beaker would symbolize Thorvald’s elevation to his full estate. It was the custom for the host to drink first to the gods. In Norway a toast was drunk to the king but here local allegiance prevailed and the heir drank first to his host. Then the host offered a toast to the new heir and to the poet’s god. Thorvald took the bowl and made his toast to Brage in the form of a vow to avenge his father’s death at the hands of the Skraelings. Thorvald then ascended to the high seat opposite Thorir and in accordance with tradition he had fulfilled the necessary acts and finally came into his full inheritance, that third part of Agdi’s wealth that remained after his funeral rites.
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