Viking Gold (57 page)

Parchment:
scraped
and treated animal skin (mostly sheep, goat or cow) used for writing before
paper became widespread

Pommel:
heavy
knob at the end of a sword’s handle

Prosaic:
ordinary,
dull, like prose, rather than poetry

Rictus:
unnatural
grin

Runes:
letters
of the Norse alphabet, sometimes used for fortune telling

Scriptorium:
room
where manuscripts are stored, read or copied

Seer:
one
who can see the future

Shingle:
wooden
roof tile/ stones on a beach

Skald:
Norse
poet

Skerling:
Norse
word for wretch, used by the Vikings to refer to the Native Americans in a
derogatory way.

Skiff:
row
boat

Strake:
horizontal
plank in the hull of a ship

Sunstone:
a
stone used to determine the height of the sun – used to aid navigation

Tang:
part
of a blade that reaches into the handle of a knife or sword

Tangible:
something
that has real physical existence i.e. can be touched, held etc.

Thor:
Norse
god of Thunder. Son of Odin.

Tomahawk:
type
of throwing axe used by Native Americans

Valhalla
:
the great feasting hall of the gods
in Norse mythology. Located in Asgard

Valkyrie:
female
warrior in Norse mythology who collects the battle dead

Vanguard:
the
leaders/those out front or first

Vellum:
the
best quality parchment

Verden:
location
of AD782 massacre by Charlemagne, a Christian king, of 4500 Saxons who refused
to convert to Christianity

Veracity:
truthfulness

Vespers:
evening
prayer service in Roman Catholic church, often involves singing

whet/ whetted:
to
sharpen a blade with a stone/a sharpened blade

White Christ:
a
Norse name for Jesus, ‘white’ meaning cowardly, as opposed to warrior like

Yggdrasil:
the
tree of life in Norse mythology.

1.
                   
At the end of Chapter 1, where Redknee
saves Skoggcat from falling off a cliff, he thinks of himself as having been
weak. Do you agree? What are your reasons?

2.
                   
In Chapter 7 Redknee thinks going on the
whale hunt will help him become a warrior. Do you agree? What are your reasons?

3.
                   
A thousand years ago the concept of a
book – then called a codex – was quite new. Previously information was written
on long scrolls that had to be unwound to the right place. Books were seen as a
technological leap. Today, we are in the midst of another technological leap in
the way we distribute information through computers and the internet. Do you
think physical books, as we know them, will exist in a hundred years? What
about computers? How might such changes affect our society?

4.
                   
Several times in the story, Ragnar tells
Redknee that ‘they are more alike than he knows.’ Do you agree? Can ‘baddies’
and ‘goodies’ ever share traits? If so, what differentiates baddies from
goodies, both in real life and in fiction? It could be said Sven is an
ambivalent character – one that possesses good and bad traits – in the end, did
you think he was mostly a goodie, mostly a baddie, or somewhere in between?

5.
                   
When they are talking together on the
beach, Sinead asks Redknee if it really matters who his father is. Do you agree
with her? How much does someone’s background, whether that be their parents,
their hometown, or their education, matter to their future? What do you think
about the quote from the poem
Invictus
at the start of the novel?

6.
                   
Deganawida suggests people can learn from
failure – do you agree?

7.
                   
Did Redknee do the right thing when he
agreed with Brother Luke’s assertion in the last chapter? Why do you think
Redknee did this?

8.
                   
In the novel, the Promised Land means
different things to different people. Sinead is seeking a new home where she
can be free. Redknee is seeking the truth about his father and acceptance from
his peers. Do they find these things? To what extent can such concepts as ‘home,’
‘freedom’ and ‘acceptance’ be found? And if they can’t be found, are they worth
looking for?

9.
                   
In the story of Saint Brendan, the search
for the Promised Land can be taken as a metaphor for the quest for spiritual
enlightenment. In the last chapter, Brother Luke says he’s found his own
promised land in his scriptorium. Do you believe him? Do you see parallels in
the search for such enlightenment and Sinead’s search for ‘home,’ and ‘freedom’
and Redknee’s search for ‘the truth’? The novel also draws on the connection
between knowledge and enlightenment. Do you think they are the same thing?

10.
                
What do you think might happen next?

It is
believed by historians that Leif Eriksson, a Viking explorer, was the first
European in historical times to reach
North
America
, and that he did so around
AD1000. What remains disputed is to what extent the Norse travelled within
America
,
established settlements and interacted with the native population. To date, the
stone longhouses at L’Anse aux Meadows in
Newfoundland
are the only agreed upon evidence of a permanent, or
semi-permanent Norse presence.

In Viking Gold, I chose to
push the boundaries of established history somewhat by allowing my Vikings to travel
further south on the American continent to the area believed to be then
occupied by the tribes of the Iroquois language group – somewhere around modern
day
New York
State
. I chose to do this for two main reasons:
Newfoundland
,
the site of the proven Viking settlement, was probably sparsely, if at all,
populated by native people around 1000 years ago due to its harsh climate.

Secondly, I fell in love with
the Iroquois tale of Hiawatha and the Tree of Peace, and believed this to be a
fitting end-point for my main character’s quest. I must point out that the
story of Hiawatha, Deganawida and the Tree of Peace, as told in Viking Gold,
necessarily only draws briefly on the rich tale of the founding of the real
Iroquois Confederacy – an early parliamentary system that must vie with the
Icelandic All-Thing, for the honour of being one of the earliest such electoral
systems. I must also confess to moving Hiawatha and Deganawida a little earlier
in time than it’s thought they existed, with the lunar eclipse of AD1159
currently thought of as the earliest possible date for the real founding of the
Iroquois Confederacy.

While I am making my
confessions, I might as well admit there is no evidence of people living below
ground in
Greenland
– this was pure authorial invention, in part to
reflect the dark times in the characters lives at this point in the story, and
partly to add a bit of variety in setting. I feel I must also mention that 10
^th
Century
Iceland
was a mostly egalitarian society – with no jarls or
over-lords, and
Reykjavik
, at that time, was little more than a farm or small
village, not the large trading town I describe.

However, while the Codex
Hibernia I describe in the novel is entirely made up, there really was a 6
^th
Century Irish monk called Saint Brendan who it is believed sailed to a place
far to the west he called the Promised Land, and did so in a leather curragh.
Saint Brendan’s legendary voyage is documented in a very real medieval text
called The Voyage of Saint Brendan, and certain of the passages quoted in the
novel as coming from the fictional Codex, are in fact taken from this work,
although in most cases I have made certain amendments to the quoted passages to
facilitate the plot (for example, there is no mention of the Great White Pine in
The Voyage). In this regard, I would like to offer a special thanks to Colin
Smythe of Colin Smythe Limited for allowing me to use The Voyage in this way,
and also to thank, John J. O’Meara, the late translator of this work, without
whose scholarship I would not have had access to this fascinating tale.

So, the question remains –
Did Saint Brendan reach the
Americas
four hundred years before Leif Eriksson and his band
of Vikings? Unfortunately, this is probably something to which we will never
know the answer, though some claim the early Irish ogham script has been found
on stones in
New England
. That, however, is another story …