Tim Severin - Odinn's Child

'What's happening in the farm?' someone asked the messenger, who was not at all in a hurry to get back to the longhouse.

'Grimhild's corpse started to move,' he replied. 'She sat up in bed, slid her feet to the floor and was trying to stand. I didn't see it myself, but one of the women came running out of the bed closet screaming.'

'Better stay away for a while,' said one of the farmhands. 'Let Grimhild's husband sort it out, if the story's true. I've heard about corpses coming alive, and no good ever comes of it. Come on, let's shove off the boats and go fishing. We'll find out what's happened soon enough.'

But it was difficult to concentrate on the fishing that day. Everyone in the two boats kept glancing back at the farmhouse, which could be seen in the distance. They were very subdued. I had gone along in one of the boats, helping bail out the bilges with a wooden scoop when I wasn't baiting hooks - my fingers were small and deft — but every time I caught sight of one of the men looking back at the farmhouse, I shivered with apprehension.

By mid-afternoon we were back on the beach, and had cleaned and split the few cod and saithe that we had caught, and hung

them up in the drying house. I walked very slowly back to the house, staying at the rear of the group as we tramped up the path. When we came to the front door, no one would go in. The farmhands held back, fidgeted and looked at me meaningfully. I was just a boy, but they thought of me as a member of their employer's family, and therefore I was the one who should enter the house first. I pushed open the heavy wooden door and found the long hall strangely deserted. At the far end three or four of the workers' wives were huddled together on benches, looking very troubled. One of them was sobbing quietly. I tiptoed to the door of the bed closet and peered in. Thorstein the Black was sitting on the earth floor, his knees drawn up to his chest and his head bowed. He was staring at the ground. On the bed in front of him lay the corpse of his wife. A hatchet was buried in her chest, the haft stuck up in the air. To my left, Gudrid was seated on the side of the bed where her husband lay. Thorstein Eriksson was propped up on a pillow, but looked very odd. I ran to Gudrid and threw my arms around her waist. She was deathly calm. 'What's happened?' I croaked.

'Grimhild was on her feet. Her fetch must have come back and entered her body,' Gudrid replied. 'She was stumbling slowly round the room. Knocking into the walls like a blind person. She was bumping and fumbling. That was when I sent for her husband. I feared she would do harm. When her husband came into the room, he thought that Gudrid was possessed. That she had been turned into a ghoul. He picked up the hatchet and sank it into her. To put an end to her. She has not moved since.'

Gudrid pulled me closer. 'Your uncle Thorstein is dead as well,' she said quietly. 'He stopped breathing during the afternoon and I thought he had passed away. But then he did come back to us briefly. He called me over to him and told me that he knew he was about to die, and that he did not want to be buried here, but back in Brattahlid. I promised him that would be done. Then he told me not to forget the volva's prophecy about my own future. He said he was not the man who had been promised to me. It was the last thing he said. Then he fell back and did not stir again.'

I was half-kneeling beside Gudrid with my head on her lap. 'Don't worry,' I told Gudrid, trying to console her. 'Everything will be all right now. You will not die from the plague. Nor will Thorstein the Black. Only old Amundi is going to die, and Sverting, who was with me in the boat this afternoon. That's all the people who were with Gardi last night in the yard.'

She put her hand under my chin, and gently turned my face so she could look into my eyes. 'How do you know?' she said softly.

'Because I saw them too, just as Grimhild did, all of them were there with Gardi and his whip. Last night, in the yard,' I answered.

'I see,' said Gudrid, and let her hand fall as she looked away.

I was too confused and frightened to make any sense of what was happening. I had never intended to tell anyone that I too had seen the group of fetches in the darkness of the farmyard. It was something which I did not understand. If I could see them, what did it mean about me and my responses to the spirit world? I had heard the rumours about my real mother Thorgunna and the ominous circumstances of her death. Would I see her fetch next? It was a terrifying prospect. But had I glanced up and seen Gudrid's expression when I made my confession, I would have been reassured. I would have realised that Gudrid too had seen the not-yet-dead, and that she had the gift of seidr, far more than me.

SIX

SEVEN-YEAR-OLDS are remarkably quick to adapt. Naturally enough, the farm workers at Lyusfjord refused to spend the winter cooped up in a building where such supernatural events had occurred, so our household moved back to Brattahlid, and within days I was back into the normal routines of childhood, playing with the other children. There were more of them than there had been at Lyusfjord so our games were more complicated and rowdy. I was smaller in stature than most of my contemporaries, but I made up for my lack of brawn with clever invention and quickness of thought. I also found I had a talent for mimicry and an imagination more vivid than most of my friends. So in our group I was the one who tended to invent new games or embellish the existing games with variants. When spring came and the days lengthened, we children moved out of doors to play the more boisterous games that the adults had forbidden indoors during the winter months. Most of our games involved a lot of play-acting with loud shouts, makeshift wooden shields and blunt wood swords. It was only natural that one we invented was based on my uncle Thorvald's voyage. Of course Thorvald's heroic death was a central feature of the make-believe. The oldest, strongest boy - his name was Hrafn as I remember — would play the leading role, staggering around the yard, clutching his armpit dramatically and

pretending to pull out an arrow. 'The Skraelings have shot me,' he would yell. 'I'm dying. I will never see home again, but die a warrior's death in a far land.' Then he would spin round, throw out his arms and drop in fake death on the dirt and the rest of us would pretend to pile up a cairn of stones around his body. My own contribution came when we all boarded an imaginary boat and rowed and sailed along the unknown coast. I invented a great whirlpool which nearly sucked us down and a slimy sea monster whose tentacles tried to drag us overboard. My friends pretended to scan the beaches and called out what they saw — ravening wolves, huge bears, dragon-snakes and so forth. One day I created for them a monster-man who, I said, was grimacing at us from the beach. He was a troll with just one foot and that as big as a large dish. He was bounding along the strand, taking great leaps to keep pace with us and — to demonstrate - I left my companions to one side, and hopped along, both feet together until I was out of breath and gave up the pretence.

It was a harmless bit of play-acting, which was to draw attention to me in a way that I could never have anticipated.

The following day I got a really bad scare. I was walking past the open door to the main cattle shed when a thin arm reached out of the darkness, and seized me by the shoulder. I was yanked inside, and in the gloom found myself staring close up at the sinister face of Tyrkir. I was convinced he was about to batter me for some fault, and I went numb with fear as he briskly hefted me to the back of the cow byre and twisted me round to face him. He was still gripping my shoulder and it hurt. 'Who told you about the uniped?' he demanded in his heavy accent. 'Did you speak with any of the crew about it?'