Viking Voices (25 page)

The Saxons are pouring through the gaps like demons and the bloodlust is upon them, they are cutting down many of our men, who are visibly shrinking before their onslaught. The Saxons have become hugely confident and our men look broken and defeated.

I find myself in the very heart of the fight facing a very tall blond Saxon, who is well-armed and beautifully clothed in cloth of many colours. He is obviously a man of some standing, wealth and almost certainly of noble birth. It seems he has recognised me as a leader too, as an opponent of high status, and has thus sought me out to attack. I admit that I feel fear but I also feel pride and defiance, I am a strong, capable warrior and can believe in my fighting abilities. I have survived so many raids and battles and I know that I can fight well, and I will do so now. Only one of us will survive here, it is a battle to the death. I expect to be that survivor; I need to be the victor.

There are very few preliminaries and such conflicts are sometimes short and bloody. Occasionally they might be long and exhausting, a great test of stamina, but they are always tests of physical and mental strength. It is survival of the strongest, the fittest and the most savage. For the first time I pray to the one handed god, Tyr, to support me in this single conflict. He has never been my protector before as I never intended to become involved in a single combat, and I have never made sacrifices to him.

I strike out hard at the Saxon lord, my blade going past his shield and clashing with his blade with a loud ringing, the vibrations travelling into my hand and arm. Then we strike out at each other again and the sound this time is quite different as we hit, more a short dull “clunk”. I look down at my blade to see it has sheared off at the hilt, a straight break across the whole shaft. The blade clatters past my ear and is now lying on the floor and all I have in my hand is the handle. It is the worst horror that I can imagine in these circumstances!

I stare at it, first with shock and terror, but then with a numbing feeling of doom! Here I am in the midst of a battle to the death and am relying on this sword to save my life, but here it is useless and in pieces. The sword I made myself in my own forge and decorated, but the silver and amber on the handle I am still holding are of little value to me now. My pride and joy is broken! The glorious symbol of all my successes and achievements.

I still have the sword handle in my hand, and hope that is enough for the Valkyrie to take me to the feasting hall in Valhalla.

I am clearly in mortal danger and look up towards my opponent, just in time to see his triumphant grin and the sword in his hand, which is already swinging downwards in an arc towards my head.

I can see the bleak, dark hills from here, looking across the green valley of the Dyflinnarskiri. The colours and shapes on the slopes are picked out clearly in the bright sunshine.

Even they, so bleak and drab on a wet autumn or winter's day, are a beautiful and very familiar sight on a warm summer's day. This scene speaks to me of so many happy days from my idyllic childhood that I spent here with the sweetheart of my youth. The great and only love of my life, whom I then married and had our two lovely children with. If only we could have been together here and now, how happy and content we would be now that we have the chance to live in peace in our own land. This is that little piece of the Dyflinnarskiri that we always coveted and planned to have for ourselves.

Now our struggles are all over and our battles are won, we have enough wealth to get a small farm and live peacefully and well. Our people have reclaimed our lands, our birth right, here in this beautiful green and fertile land. Now it is the land of my fulfilment and eternal youth. A gentle summer breeze is blowing through the meadow, rippling the grass, and I can see my daughter Astrithr playing happily in the sunshine with her brother Thorfinn on this lovely warm summer evening. They are both teenagers now and have developed into really beautiful healthy blond children. It may not be long before they too find their future husband and wife, and then the next generation will be born, continuing the Scandinavian tradition we have established in this part of the world.

We are fortunate to have this lovely farm, the second one that I have developed extensively, and certainly the larger of the two. It is my final property as we are now back in our own homeland, I intend to stay for the rest of my life and eventually die of old age here. My wanderings are finally over; I am content with who I am, what I have and where I live.

We keep just enough cattle to pull the plough and our team of oxen are very valuable to us, our pride and joy. We have a male calf that was born in spring which will be fattened up on summer grass, before being killed in the late autumn to give us beef in the winter. We need to reserve the winter fodder for the sheep and the cattle that breed in the new year.

Our sheep have also prospered this year and produced many young, so we have a larger group than ever before, and we can put their milk into cheese making. Of course, most of their males will also be slaughtered to give us meat throughout those long dark winter months. As we are now in summer they are yielding good amounts of wool which we are collecting to be spun and then woven to keep us clothed.

The doves have also grown in number and they will be available for eating at the end of the winter when there is little other meat. The woods nearby afford us plenty of wood and twigs for our fires in the winter, and are a good place for the pigs to snuffle out nuts, acorns and berries. We are also fond of the berries in autumn if we can get there in time before the pigs take them all. It has always been important for us to work in line with the seasons, and take advantage of what nature offers when it offers it. In this happy place natural order has fallen into place to keep us always well fed and content.

The river and its many small brooks always offer fish, especially plenty of eels. The open sea is not far away and also full of all sorts of fish which are plentiful and good to eat. We were once used to eating large amounts of shell fish from the beach but we are too far inland now. Occasionally we will make the long walk to gather them as they are now a special treat, having once been every day fare.

I am fortunate to still have the assistance of Brodir, that young man who worked for me as a smith, then a moneyer. Today he is a great help in running all aspects of the farm and, of course, he still works in iron. He is far more skilled than Amleth. Brodir has been with me and the children so long that he is now one of the family.

We have several slaves working for us, captured from one of the raids on Môn; they have been with us for a few years and are progressing well in their knowledge of the Norse language. I think they are happy living with us as they do not get beaten or mistreated, as they know many others living nearby so often do. They too are almost like part of the family. It's an advantage for them to live in a household where a woman is in charge. One of them has developed a talent for bee keeping and we have seven hives which bring us all the honey we might need for sweetening and making preserves. There is a surplus to sell and it is very popular for making mead, which all Viking men love.

It is ten long years now since my husband died in combat with the Saxons, and we have had to learn to fend for ourselves. I had already done so as he was so often absent anyway that my mother and I always looked after the children and tended the farm. He had to make so many visits to negotiate and discuss great plans with important people, in addition to the actual raids and campaigns. He had no time left for the ordinary things of family life and running the farm.

When he was at home he spent most of time playing at his iron working although it was well known that he had little skill for that trade. The local smiths used to laugh about his efforts, saying the only things he could make were horse shoes. Everything else he ever made broke the first time or second time it was used. We could have been content if only he had used that time playing with his children and attending his wife.

How much happier we would all have been if he had stayed with us instead of pursuing his ambitions and engaging in great wars and adventures. When he was with us he was really a wonderful caring father, especially attentive to little Astrithr who was his real favourite. He never got to know Thorfinn, who was still a babe when he died. I am certain that his son would have benefitted greatly from his father's time and interest, and I find it difficult to keep back my tears as I think of the great opportunity that they both lost. Thorfinn has grown up in great awe of his father's reputation and treasures his legacy as a great man. All he has inherited from his father though is a black raven banner which is his most treasured possession. He was once given a broken sword handle too, but I had to take it away from him as it made me burst into tears every time I saw it.

Naturally I always hated Amleth's constant journeys away from us and was always convinced that he was not faithful to me. A Viking warrior can be many things and have great strengths, but fidelity to their wives is not one of them. They are never faithful. I do not even believe that he restricted himself to the slave girls that were captured. A successful warrior, even if he is already married, is very attractive to a certain type of Scandinavian women. Someone like Amleth was certainly wealthy enough to have several concubines. Such a role would have offered an improved life and even higher status for a poor girl, and such women gathered around him like moths around a light.

He was much more of a success in his role as counsellor to the king. Ragnald certainly valued his advice, and gave him many tasks that could only be given to his most trusted servant. He performed great deeds and had marvellous achievements but now he only exists in my memories, everyone else has forgotten him now, those great deeds and achievements are just lost forever in the mists of time.

At the end it seems that even the skill in planning battles failed him, as his final battle against the Saxons was a great disaster, a huge defeat for the Danir. So many Viking warriors were killed there, including the Kings Halfdan and Ivarr and Jarl Agmundr who was the leader of that army and, of course, his adviser and the representative of Ragnald, my own dear husband Amleth.

The story we heard later was that the Mercian Angles seem to have gained their victory by sending a great army of their own to intercept and trap the Vikings and also by gaining the co-operation of King Edward of Wessex, known as the Elder, who also sent a great Saxon army to join them. They seem to have had excellent knowledge of the movements of the Danish army and to have also moved their own armies without the Vikings ever being aware of those movements.

Even during the final battle the Anglo-Saxons managed to out manoeuvre the Scandinavians who charged the Mercian army only to find themselves out flanked by the Wessex army attacking them from behind. Most of the Vikings were slaughtered, either during the battle or in the Saxon's pursuit of them afterwards, and I am fortunate to have heard any of this account since so few survived to tell the story.

The setback was catastrophic for the Kings of Northumberland, who lost so many of their men, including their leaders, and it allowed Ragnald to depose the remaining king in Jorvik, called Eowulf, and he did so very easily. Amleth's legacy to Ragnald was a strategy that made him king of both Jorvik and Dyflinn, the two great seats of Viking power. Naturally he will always need to defend that kingdom against the Anglo-Saxons who are now stronger and more confident than ever.

So much has happened in those ten years; the Lochlain and Ragnald in particular, have grown greatly in power and strength through their dominance of these two great cities Jorvik and Dyflinn. The Lochlain lead the Danir now, even though they are so much more numerous than we are.

Although Amleth got a great deal of credit for Ragnald's early plans the king himself has really grown in power since his death. We hardly see him now since he became the king of Jorvik and he became a lot less interested in Dyflinn after he gained that crown. He has to be ever vigilant against the raids from Mercia which I believe are growing all the time. I am not sure he has ever been here since it was actually his cousin Sihtric who finally recovered it from the Irskr for the Vikings, albeit with warriors of Ragnald's army.

Ragnald has fulfilled his vow to free Dyflinn from the Irskrs but he did not do it immediately or alone. He benefitted greatly from the arrival of a large group of Viking warriors who came to this island from Frankia under another Jarl named Ottar, having first been beaten off in Wessex. They and Ragnald harried the Irskrs savagely in the south of this island and weakened them greatly so that when it then fell to Sihtric to lead the army that retook Dyflinn he did so unopposed. He was given the task by Ragnald, who then went away to busy himself fighting the Anglo-Saxons in Danelaw at the time, Jorvik already being his capital by then.

Sihtric did his job very effectively too after Ragnald's departure, following up the success of his initial raid and occupation of the city by defeating the full army of King of Leinster, and making the Dyflinnarskiri safe for us to occupy. We are still an important part of Ragnald's empire though, and his cousin is loyal and supports him with a strong fleet and supplies additions to his army when it is needed, as it so often is. There are still so many young men anxious to go to war and make their reputations and their fortunes.

Following the victory over the Irskrs we all were given the opportunity to come back here to the place where I grew up as a young girl, and there was a lot of land available to any who could take it. It was always an ambition for Amleth and I to have a small farm in the Dyflinnarskiri, and I have now had to fulfil it without him. My mother Grunhilde also made it back here with me but she died soon afterwards. We visit her grave very often, as it serves as a tribute to all of the men and women of our family who did not make it to see this beautiful little home. It is everything I ever wanted but would gladly sacrifice it all to have Amleth, Edda and my mother Grunhilde back with us.

At the time of Amleth's death and shortly afterwards Ragnald came to see me at our home on the Wirral, and at first I was touched by his sympathy and flattered by the attention of such a great man. The sympathy started to wear off quite soon, and it became obvious that his real purpose in talking to me was to gain information about the location of the buried silver hoard. He continuously and repetitiously asked me about anything that Amleth had said that might reveal the site where the hoard is buried.

In fact, my husband had talked about it quite often as it had become something of an obsession with him, and he was convinced that some day he would probably be tortured to reveal its whereabouts. In the end, it was I who was tortured by Ragnald's ceaseless pestering on the subject.

Naturally I told him all I knew, particularly of the alignment of the two oak trees at the side of the fording point, the highest navigable point on the river Ripam. It seems an obvious and clear statement and I think that even I, a mere woman, could find it from that description. I was unable to answer many of his other additional questions though. Once Ragnald returned with a new set of questions after several days on the site near Prestune, which he had obviously spent digging. He still smelt of damp earth and his finger nails were black with soil.

It seems that he had found quite a number of oak trees around that point not just two, and Amleth had not even told us which bank of the river the silver had been buried on. So much detail of its location was lost forever at the time of his death. I do not believe that Ragnald has ever found it but he has so much more wealth now that even a vast hoard like that is unlikely to matter to him anymore. He will be able concentrate on his new wealth; he now owns a great deal of gold, and can forget his old fortune in silver, just as he seems to concentrate on new kingdom of Jorvik, and forget his old kingdom of Dyflinn.

It was sad to see how much Ragnald has aged and his health deteriorated. The proud and handsome young man that fought Ivarr to gain the kingship was every woman's idea of the physically perfect man. Now he has declined into a fat balding old man with bad breath and black teeth, and no woman could find him physically attractive now. Yet they say his appetite for young girls is keener than ever before and since he gained all this wealth and power there are no shortage of young women eager to satisfy his lust.

To my mind, however, the physical changes are not as bad as the way his character has decayed. In those early days he was hot-headed and wilful but also determined and purposeful. He seems to be always genuinely concerned with the welfare of his people, a good and caring king to be admired.