When is a Viking not a Viking?
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This is women’s work, says Mother, twirling her spindle in complicated patterns. Go play with the other boys.
They beat each other with sticks and laugh when there is blood, Sven says, helping wind wool into big scratchy piles. I like this better.
That is what boys do, she says. Besides, you are your father’s firstborn. You must follow in his footsteps one day.
He is four years old and although she tells him he has a father, he has no memory of this man, and so he doesn’t believe it.
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Six years old and he watches the longship grind ashore. A wild black-bearded giant leaps into the knee-high surf and shouts at Mother. Is that him? He’s grown so big. Sven retreats into Mother’s skirts but she pushes him forward, and the next moment he finds himself aloft, his head snapping back, the sun a tarnished silver disc spinning past his feet. Father’s laughter sounds like goats at the slaughter as he catches Sven painfully under the arms and throws him again, and Sven vomits in midair.
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Ten and sitting in front of the smoky fire, watching the men divide their spoils. Goblets, plates, a couple of crying girls, a blood-stained silver cross. Two men fight over one of the crying girls; the winner knifes the loser in the neck and drags off the prize by her hair. She screams all the way down the settlement road. The next morning she is gone, leaving behind the ragged bindings which she took half the night to gnaw through, like a rat. They search but she only washes up two days later, eyes gone milk-opaque and her fingers and toes nibbled away by the children of the sea.
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Thirteen, and all winter Sven caulks the ship and sharpens the swords and listens to Father brag about the island monastery with its hoard of silver and gold, the defenceless god-men within. You’ll come this time, Father says.
I don’t want to.
The men grow quiet as Father turns, his voice as blank as his face. What did you just say.
I don’t want to raid. Can’t I stay here. You see I’ve kept the goats plump even over the winter. I know the best grazing…
You’re my son, says Father as though that settles the matter.
He wets his lips. I’m a goatherd.
The men mark out the fighting ring with hazel switches and hemp rope. Father stands like a weatherbeaten oak, biceps bulging against his silver arm-rings. Beat me and you can stay home.
You know I can’t beat you, Sven says, almost crying. I can’t fight.
Father laughs the barking laugh of a seal. That’s your problem.
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He hits the ground nose-first. The pain is stifling, like water going up the wrong way.
Get up, Father says, kicking mud in his face. How will you defy me if you can’t even get up to fight?
He pushes himself up on trembling arms and trips over his feet. The crowd of men and boys shout their displeasure. Coward, they say. Sissy-boy. In the distance the women giggle at his disgrace. Mother turns her face away.
Father swoops in like a gull snatching fish from the waves, and his fist kisses Sven’s temple. The ground becomes the sky, both equally grey and shapeless in the winter twilight. The barren land, when it rises to meet him, is powder-soft.
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A mist of salt spray. His head is a hearth-pit of pain. He sits up slowly. Around him men chant the reaver song as they pull the oars. Hoo-ha. The high prow of the longship bisects the grey waves. There is the smell of something rotten on the air.
Father comes to stand over him. We dragged you onboard like the sack of rocks you are. It’s already a half day since we left shore. You’ll go viking yet.
Tears sting his swollen eye. You can’t make me.
What did I do to offend the Gods? How did I sire such a worthless son? Spittle flies from Father’s mouth. I’ll leave you for dead on the island, then see if you won’t fight.
I won’t. I can’t.
Father makes to kick him but stops. Go on then, he shouts. Go jump in the sea and swim home to your goats and your needlework. If you don’t drown, that is.
Around him the rowing men laugh. Hoo-ha.
Sven looks behind them, the grey-stippled blue, the roiling sky, no sign of land. Half a day’s rowing. The furthest he’d swum before was a hundred yards in the shallows.
Lindisfarne! Father shouts with one foot propped on the bow. To the spoils and the Berserker rage!
Hoo-ha!
Sven thinks about the brown blood staining the silver cross, the girl dragged out of the frothing surf. His stomach clenches. Get up, he says to himself, and to his surprise finds both of his feet planted on the undulating deck.
He stands for a moment, watching Father silhouetted against a squall on the horizon, livid purple clouds shot through with silver threads of lightning. Then he turns and runs down the length of the narrow boat, the men’s surprised faces flashing past, his feet drumming across the boards.
He leaps and the cold takes him completely. Beneath the waves the sun is murky green and the longship is a crawling centipede, its thirty oar-arms opening in unison. And then he is kicking himself up, up, his frozen breath tearing at his chest.
He does not know how long it will take him to swim home, or whether he will make it at all. He does not know how long before his arms and legs and lungs give out. Even if he makes it, what then? The chieftain’s firstborn running from the raid to be a goatherd. He will live with ridicule for the rest of his days.
His head breaks the surface and he begins to swim, not looking back at the ship, not listening to Father’s irate screams.
When is a Viking not a Viking?
When he chooses not to be.
Photo by Tucker Monticelli on Unsplash
