Tim Severin - Odinn's Child

The knorr which was to carry us westward belonged to Thorfinn. She was a well-found ship and had served him for several years in trade. Now he purchased a second smaller boat to serve as a scouting vessel. With characteristic competence Karlsefni also set about compiling a list of what was needed to establish the pioneer farm. After talking with Leif and the other men who had already been to Vinland, he loaded a good stock of farm implements -hoes, axes, saws and spades and the like — blacksmith's tools, a supply of rope and several bags of ship's nails in case we had to make repairs, as well as three dozen rolls of wadmal. This wadmal was an essential. It is cloth made from wool hand-plucked from our sheep and steeped in tubs of urine to remove the worst of the sticky wool grease. The women spin this fibre into yarn, then weave long bolts of the cloth on a simple loom suspended from the ceiling of the main room. The better-quality wadmal is set aside to make the sails of our ships while the coarser grade is turned into garments, blankets, sacks, anything that requires a fabric. Most wadmal is the same dingy brown as when the sheep had worn the wool, but sometimes the cloth is dyed with plant juice or coloured earth to produce more cheerful reds, greens and yellows. A special wadmal soaked in a mixture of sheep's grease and seal oil is nearly waterproof. This was the cloth we used to make our sea-going cloaks for the voyage — the same garment that my father gave my mother as his going-away present.

Downwind, anyone would have thought we were a mobile farm when we set sail. A small bull and three milch cows took up most of the central hold, and the smell of the cattle and wisps of dried hay from their stack of feed drifted out across the water in our lee. For the first few hours there were farmyard sounds as well because the cows kept up a low, distressed mooing before they settled to their strange new routine.

With youthful zeal I had expected instant adventure and excitement the moment we cleared the land, but like the cattle I soon found that life aboard followed the same routine as at home. I had chores to do — give the animals fresh water to drink, keep their hay topped up, clear the cattle dung. Our knorr proceeded at a stately pace, towing the scouting boat behind on a thick cable. The sea was calm, and there was nothing to see except for the escort of seabirds hovering over us and an occasional flock of black and white waterfowl with massive thick beaks, which swam along the surface of the sea beside us, occasionally ducking down and speeding ahead underwater. When I asked Thorvall why these birds did not take to the air and fly, he laughed. 'They do not know how to fly,' he said. 'The Gods gave them wings more like fish flippers. They swim when they want to travel, even from one country to another, from Iceland to Greenland, from Greenland to Vinland. That's how our sailors first guessed that there must be land to the west. When they saw the swimming birds heading out in that direction.'

This was the third of the many, many voyages of my lifetime, and I believe that Odinn had a hand in sending me upon the journey as he deliberately provoked in me the wanderlust which would bind me to him as the Far-Farer. I had been a babe in arms when my mother sailed with me from Birsay to Iceland, and still too young to remember much when I went with Gudrid from

Iceland to Greenland and suffered shipwreck. But now the crossing from Brattahlid to Vinland made a deep and lasting impression on me. There was a sense of travelling towards the new and unknown, and it was a drug. Once tasted, I could never forget it, and I wanted more. It would make me a wanderer all my life, and that is what the All-Father intended.

My first sensation on the westward journey was the slow, rhythmic motion of the fully laden knorr. She swayed up and down over the long, low swells in a seemingly endless repetition of the same movement, rising and falling, and giving a slight lurch as each swell passed beneath her keel. Looking up at the mast top, I saw the pattern repeated constantly in the steady elliptical circles that the weathervane made against the sky. And just behind each movement came the same sequence of sounds — the regular creak of the mast stays taking up the strain each time the vessel rose, the slight thump as the mast moved in its socket, the wash of the bow wave as the prow of the knorr dug into the sea and, when the vessel checked, the soft thud of a loose item rolling across the bilge and striking the hull. I found something hypnotic and comforting about the way that life on board took on its own rhythm, set by the timing and order of our meals. The sequence began at dawn with rismal when the night watch ate a cold breakfast of dried bread and gruel; in mid-morning came dagmal when the entire crew, except for the helmsman and lookout, gathered round the little charcoal fire lit on a stone slab balanced on the keelson and out of the wind and consumed the only hot meal of the day, usually a broth, though sometimes there was fresh fish or boiled seagull if we had been able to catch anything. Finally, as the sun went down, we ate the nattmal, again a cold meal of skyr, sour milk, and gruel.

On the very first night, as soon as it was dusk, Thorvall brought me to a quiet corner of the deck and made me gaze upwards past the dark outline of our sail. It was still early in the season so the night was dark enough for the stars to be visible. 'The vault of the sky,' he said, 'is the inside of Ymir's skull, the ancient frost giant. Four dwarves, Austri, Vestri, Nordri and Sudri, sit in the four corners and they took molten particles and sparks and placed them as stars, both wandering and fixed, to illuminate the earth. That way the Gods made it possible for us to guide our way at night.' He pointed out to me the leidarstjarna, the Pole Star, and how it was always at the same height in the sky on our right hand as we moved through the night. Thorvall was in his element when he was on the sea, and every day at noon he would produce a little wooden disc with small notches on the rim and lines scratched on its surface. He held it up in the sunlight so the shadow from a small pin in the centre of the disc fell across the engraved face, then he grunted directions to the helmsman.

'Trust the Gods,' he told me. 'As long as the wolves chase Sol, she will move across the sky and we can follow beneath her.'

'What if it is too cloudy and we cannot see the sun?' I ventured.

'Be patient,' he growled.

It was not cloud but a dense fog which shrouded the sun two days later. The fog was so thick that we seemed to be gliding through a bowl of thin milk. Drops of water condensed on the walrus-hide ropes of the rigging, the deck planks were dark with moisture, and we could not see farther than fifty paces. We could have been sailing in circles for all we knew, and the helmsman was edgy and nervous until Thorvall produced a flat stone from a pocket in his sea cloak. The stone was thin and opaque. Thorvall held it up to the light and peered through it, turning the stone this way and that, his arm held out straight. Finally he pointed ahead, slightly to the steering-board side of the ship. 'That course,' he ordered and without question the helmsman obeyed him.

Apart from two days spent groping our way through the fog and relying on what Thorvall called his sunstone, we had remarkably good weather and a smooth passage. Thorvall had absolute faith in Thor's power over the weather and the sea conditions, and whenever he caught a fish on the hook and line he always trailed behind the boat, he made a point of throwing a small part of the catch back into the sea as a sacrifice. No one dared to scoff at him openly for doing this, though I did notice some of the crew members, the baptised ones, exchange amused glances and snigger.