PREVIOUSLY: Áslaug met the All-Father in the forests of Vestfold and he took her voice in exchange for the gift of foresight. She relayed the vision he showed her to King Eysteinn, and was then she was sent to live with Edda, the seiðkona.
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Summer came suddenly to Vestfold, and Áslaug basked in the warmth of it. The bright sunlight gave her face a healthy glow, although nothing could hide the grey smudges under her eyes. Two years had passed since her meeting with the All-Father and still, every night, she was beset by visions and unable to sleep—until one night.
Bobbing on a raft on the ocean of her dreams, something in the distance caught her eye. It wasn’t a ship or an island. It was, impossibly, a door, suspended in space, half in and half out of the sea. She plunged into the ice-cold water and struck out for it, legs kicking and arms thrashing. The towering waves washed over her, pushing her back, dragging her under, but she ploughed on. She lost sight of the door many times as the waves reared up in front of her, but eventually she reached it.
Her numb fingers wrapped themselves around the bolt and dragged it back. The door burst open, and Áslaug was washed through the opening in a torrent of seawater. For a moment, she was no better off than before, the rushing water sweeping her along and pulling her under. Then, the door swung shut, the water drained away, and she was left sitting in a puddle on the floor of a stone passage. There were no lamps and no windows, but the place was lit by an eerie silver glow. By this light, Áslaug could see that the door she had just been washed out of was one of many. She scrambled to her feet and began to walk, shivering in her wet shift. Other passages branched off the one she was in, each lined with more doors. Tentatively, she approached a door and eased it open a crack. Inside, an endless expanse of undulating grass spread out before her. Far off near the horizon were two figures on horses under the wide, empty sky. She couldn’t make out the riders at such a distance, but the sight of them made her feel somehow content and at peace. She watched them for a while, then closed the door quietly.
Áslaug opened several more doors that night. Behind them, she saw a burning city, a vast forest, and a fair-haired man standing in the prow of a longship. She didn’t enter any of the rooms, but as she closed the door on the longship, a thought struck her. She made her way back to the first door, and opened it to find the empty grassland once more. The breeze in that place was chilly, but the sun was warm. Áslaug lay down in the long grass, cushioning her head on her arm and, finally, fell into a dreamless sleep.
Edda didn’t disturb her the next morning, and she slept until the sun was high in the sky. The seiðkona had left the longhouse, and Áslaug was woken by a pounding on the door and Ulfhild’s frenzied barks. She lurched to her feet, insensible with the heaviness of sleep, and opened the door to find her brother outside.
“You have to come to Félagi’s shipyard,” he told her. “You have to see what he has built.”
*****
Áslaug and Beinir raced to the shipyard. A strong wind from the northeast buffeted them, tugging at their clothes and hair. It was a long way to the shore, but at least it was downhill. Nonetheless, Áslaug knew her brother was going slower than he could, allowing her to keep pace with him. She didn’t care. For the whole wild, breathless run, she felt like herself again—just a girl, an ordinary child, playing with her brother.
The two of them pelted onto the quay, out of breath and laughing. Eysteinn was there with his sons, Geir and Halfdan, and a small crowd of onlookers. A crew was already on board the ship with Félagi, fifty strong at least. It was early summer and the men had not yet gone raiding. The younger ones had long since tired of hearth and home, so it hadn’t been difficult to enlist them for this small test.
Eysteinn saw Áslaug arrive and beckoned to her.
“This is what you saw?” he asked.
She nodded furiously. It was exactly like the vessel in her vision: long and narrow, with a curving prow. She sat low in the water, her mast straight up and proud towards the sky. Fixed across it was the yard, and from that hung the sail. It was gathered up and secured, so that its true size couldn’t be guessed at, but Áslaug knew it was enormous because she had seen the women making it. Before she met the All-Father, she had helped with the rooing herself—plucking the wool from the sheep and storing it according to type, then separating the long guard hairs from the undercoat and combing them when the nights set in. Her mother, Drífa, had spun the wool on a drop spindle, and she had shown Áslaug the way: clockwise for the strong guard hairs, counterclockwise for the soft undercoat.
Eysteinn had built a workshop near the shipyard for the weavers: women, all of them, and Drífa among them. There they wove the sections of the sail on vertical looms—the strong wool for the warp, the softer for the weft—and stitched the pieces together. Afterwards, they coated the sail in a mixture of horse fat, sheep’s tallow and ochre. This, Drífa explained to Áslaug, made the sail resistant to water and protected it from rot.
The result, after months of labour, was the biggest expanse of cloth ever seen. Áslaug felt a thrill of pride when she thought of how many people had worked to make this vision a reality—her vision: the dream a ten-year-old girl had sketched in charcoal on the king’s table.
Eysteinn gave the command and the ship was cast off. The crew rowed it out into the fjord, then stowed the oars. There was movement on board, men took up ropes and moved about. Then, the huge sail unfurled. It rippled down, like water from a cataract, then snapped as the wind filled it. The men pulled on the ropes, securing them, and the great longship lurched forward, propelled down the fjord towards the open sea. The gale roared in Áslaug’s ears, and the crowd roared with it. She caught Beinir’s eye, both of them grinning broadly.
They watched the ship until it sailed out of sight behind the headland. Most of the crowd dispersed after that, but Áslaug stayed, and Eysteinn with her. The king paced back and forth, and Áslaug sat on the quayside, her legs dangling down, watching the water.
A little before midday, she jumped to her feet and pointed. The longship was returning, sail furled now that she was moving against the wind. The crew pulled on the oars, but the ship was much slower returning than it had been when it shot down the fjord under the power of the wind. At length, it arrived at the quay and the men threw the ropes to Eysteinn and Félagi’s son, Torkel, who was only a little older than Beinir, but tall and broad like a full-grown man. They made the ship fast, and the crew disembarked. They seemed cheerful enough, clapping each other on the back and talking. They nodded to Eysteinn, and he acknowledged them, but he didn’t engage any of them in conversation. He was waiting for Félagi.
The shipbuilder was the last man to step onto the quay. He looked up at Eysteinn, his face troubled.
“She isn’t stable,” he said. “Not seaworthy. With the sail unfurled in a high wind, she’ll be the fastest thing on the water, but she’ll capsize as easily as anything on the open ocean.”
“But you will make it work,” returned Eysteinn. It was a statement, not a question, although Áslaug suspected his certainty came more from his greed for the treasure than from his faith in the gods.
Felagi nodded. “There’s a solution, I know there is. And I will find it, Njörðr willing.”
“Then let us ask him!” Eysteinn returned. “We shall have a blót for the god of the sea and seafaring folk. You, Áslaug Fáinnsdottir, let the seiðkona know that we will make a sacrifice to Njörðr at the next dark moon, and she will perform the ceremony.”
Áslaug nodded obediently, although she didn’t think it was Njörðr they needed to please. This was the All-Father’s plan.
*****
On the day of the blót, Áslaug was preparing to follow Edda to Eysteinn’s hall in the late afternoon. The sacrifice would take place at sunset, but the seiðkona needed time to prepare for the ceremony. The king had gathered ten pure white goats for the offering, and Edda grumbled that it was an extravagance.
“The gods demand a sacrifice, but they don’t want us to starve for it later on. Then, there’ll be no one left to worship them.”
Áslaug understood, though. She had seen the treasure, and the king’s face when he learnt of it. She knew it was worth more than ten goats to Eysteinn.
As they were leaving for Skíringssalr, a young woman came running across the half-frozen landscape towards them.
“Eysteinn’s slave girl,” Edda muttered. “I hope nothing has gone awry with our plans.”
The girl dashed up to them.
“Seiðkona, I’ve been sent to find you.” She spoke with an accent, although having never travelled, Áslaug couldn’t know where she was from. “There has been an accident. My master’s youngest son, Halfdan, is injured.”
“Injured how?”
“He swung an axe. He is a child, he was only playing, and it cut—it cut into his leg—here.” The girl indicated the back of her calf. “The wound is deep, seiðkona, and there is much blood. We must go to him. Now.”
Edda nodded brusquely.
“Áslaug, the bag,” she instructed, and Áslaug ran back inside to snatch one of the bags that Edda always kept on hand: one for wounds, one for sickness, and one for childbed.
Edda walked very quickly, but she didn’t run. The slave girl remained a few paces in front the whole time, glancing back constantly, willing Edda to hurry. Áslaug trotted to keep up, the heavy bag knocking against her leg. When they arrived at Skíringssalr, Eysteinn’s older son, Geir, met them.
“This way,” he said.
“Boil water and bring it to me,” Edda told the slave girl, and she scurried away.
Geir led them through a curtain at the back of the hall. There were rooms beyond, and in one of these, lying on a pallet, was Halfdan. He was only about Áslaug’s age, small and slight as she was. His skin was grey and his cheeks streaked with tears. A bloody cloth was tied tightly around his calf. Edda rolled the boy onto his side and removed the cloth to inspect the wound. It was deep, halfway through his leg it seemed, and still leaking blood. Áslaug watched it trickle down and stain the blankets.
Edda retied the cloth, propped Halfdan up and gave him a draft of mead from her bag. Áslaug knew it was very strong. Halfdan pulled a face, but the seiðkona forced him to drink it all, and quickly. Then he lay back on the pallet.
Edda opened her medicine bag and arranged the contents on top of the blankets: clean cloths, dried yarrow and plantain leaves, honey, the pestle and mortar, her bone needle and thread.
The slave girl returned with a bowl of steaming water and placed it on the ground next to Edda. Her eyes flicked to the wound and bloody blankets. The colour drained from her face.
“Get her out of here,” Edda muttered. “We don’t want her keeling over on us.”
Áslaug obeyed, leading the slave girl outside. It was then she noticed Eysteinn’s wife, Hild, standing unmoving against the wall. She was pale too, but not because she couldn’t stand the sight of the blood. She was afraid for her son. One hand clutched the pendant around her neck—an amulet to confer protection from a god or goddess—and her lips moved soundlessly in prayer.
Edda dropped the yarrow and plantain into the mortar. She poured honey on top and gave it to Áslaug when she knelt back down next to her.
“Mix,” she instructed, and she began to clean the wound with the hot water. Halfdan whimpered and cried, his face crumpled in on itself, but his mother didn’t come to him. She only watched, willing him to be strong.
When the wound was clean, Edda threaded her needle. She rolled Halfdan onto his front.
“Come,” she said to Hild. “Hold him.”
Hild knelt on the other side of the pallet. She leaned forward, placing one hand above Halfdan’s ankle and the other below his knee. Then, she put her own knee across his uninjured calf. She pressed down and Edda bent to her work.
Halfdan screamed when the needle pierced his flesh. Áslaug gripped his hand. What else could she do?
The gash was long. Again and again, Edda pushed her needle through Halfdan’s pale skin, muttering the spell-words in a constant stream: seven, eight, nine stitches. Áslaug wondered how Halfdan could bear so much pain. She didn’t think she could. He had stopped screaming at every stitch. Instead, he ground his teeth and groaned, crushing her hand. His skin glistened with sweat, but he wasn’t crying now. He seemed to have found something inside himself, something that wasn’t exactly strength or courage, but determination.
You’re so brave, Áslaug wanted to tell him, but she had no words. She only held his hand, hot and damp, until it was over.
Edda spread the herb and honey paste Áslaug had made onto the closed wound, and wrapped it all in a clean cloth.
“Tomorrow, remove this,” she told Hild. “Clean the wound again, apply more honey, and wrap it up. Do this for five days. Then, I will come again.”
Thank you for reading!
BEHIND THE SCREEN: THE WOMEN WHO WOVE THE DREAM
Viking shield-maidens have captured the imagination of many authors and screenwriters. However, there is no concrete evidence of Scandinavian women fighting in shield walls. If you read a lot about the ‘Vikings’, you will come across this idea time and again. Every burial with female DNA and any sort of weapon poses the question: was this a warrior? I listened to a very interesting podcast with historian Jóhanna Katrín Friðriksdóttir—interesting because of her take on this question. Why, she asked, are we so desperate to find a woman doing a ‘man’s’ job? It feels like we’re trying to validate those ‘Viking’ woman, and that somehow devalues the contribution they made to their culture and society. Not just keeping the home fires burning, finding food, farming, looking after livestock, making clothes, healing, birthing and raising children (and that, I think we can agree, is already an impressive list). Women also wove the sails that made the ‘sea-wolves’ the most formidable force on the seas, and enabled them to explore beyond the horizons of their known world. And this wasn’t sewing by numbers, this was an intricate process that took years. Simply put, these women didn’t need swords to make them badass: their skill and hard work powered an expansion which changed history within Europe and beyond.