of Iceland and covering forty-five hundred kilometres. In the end, he chose a very good place for his settlement, since the Norse lasted in Greenland until about the fifteenth century. It was from southwestern Greenland that Leif, one of Erik’s sons, born in Iceland, set sail on his voyage to North America around the year 1000.
The years of the new millennium were a particularly meaningful time for the Norse peoples. For one thing, Christianity was just reaching them and changing their ancient pagan culture forever. Since the beginning of the ninth century Viking raiders, who came from Norway, Sweden, and Denmark, had voyaged and plundered, gradually extending their range east and west, until they reached the heart of Russia, Constantinople, Iceland, Greenland, and the shores of America. Not merely despoilers, the Norse were also great explorers and traders, and superb creators of arts, crafts, and literature. In 930, in Iceland, they established the world’s oldest surviving parliament. One historian has referred to them as a great catalyst for European society.
At the time in which the Rigg novels are set, the Viking world had reached its peak and was about to collapse inward. Unlike the later conquests of Napoleon and Hitler, the Viking expansion had proceeded with no master plan, merely under the pressure of social change and economic need. The Vikings had established separate kingdoms (and sometimes merely footholds) all over the map, but there was no coherent Viking empire. One by one, their bridgeheads were overcome; they were driven out or assimilated by the local populations. In Normandy, for example, they mingled with the original inhabitants to establish the Norman realm of William the Conqueror, who invaded Britain in 1066, with enormous historical consequences. In Iceland, a strong and separate Viking-based culture developed. In North America, the Norse could not hold their own against the native tribes, who had the advantage of numbers, experience of the wilderness, and even weaponry.
Leif Eriksson himself apparently did not return to Vinland, although he visited the Norway ruled by Olaf Tryggvason and may have been persuaded by the king to bring Christianity back to Greenland. The foundations of the Christian church built (reluctantly) by the pagan Erik the Red for Thiodhild, Leif’s mother, can be seen to this day. Sometime after Leif’s voyage, Erik made an attempt to reach Vinland but was driven back by bad weather and near shipwreck. A few expeditions followed, both from Greenland and Iceland, but they ended in internecine strife and murder, and by about 1025 the Vinland voyages seem to have stopped. During their incursions into North America (and the only settlement or outpost so far documented is at L’Anse aux Meadows in Newfoundland), the Norse encountered various native peoples, including the Dorset (Inuit folk who had settled in both Greenland and Eastern Canada, called Tornit in this story) and the Beothuk. The newcomers traded with the natives, but there was also violent contact, which sadly prefigures the attitude of the white settlers who would later permanently occupy the new land. The last Beothuk died in the early nineteenth century after several hundred years of genocide practised by the nominally “Christian” settlers.
NB: In the Rigg stories I often refer to the Swedes using the medieval term “Svear.” When I allude to the Norse language I am referring to the so-called dönsk tunga (Danish tongue) — in modern terms, Common Scandinavian. For convenience, I sometimes use the name Brattalid, really Erik’s farm, to refer to the whole eastern colony. I also use the term “Viking” rather broadly; strictly speaking, a Viking is a Norse raider. Norse traders, farmers, craftsmen, and so on, are not, per se, Vikings. Readers are invited to consult the Afterword to this volume for further information on this series.
CHAPTER ONE THE WOLF HUNTERS
That night the wolf came again, and the two young hunters left the settlement at dawn in pursuit of the marauder.
A few hours later, just beyond the last homestead, where the low rolling hills gave way to steeper, wilder land, Rigg found the second sheep.
It lay beside a great boulder, in the heart of the immense, barren, treeless country he called home. Its throat had been torn apart and its limbs chewed so that the bones shone through the skin. Not much remained of its bloody carcass, which had been mauled and dirtied by the beast that stalked and killed it.
Rigg breathed deeply and touched the slender shaft of the fine elm bow that he had slung on his shoulder when they left home. Though the dead and half-eaten animal at his feet revolted him, he knew that its killer was a skilled hunter, one of the great white wolves from the mountains, that had satisfied its ravenous spring hunger at the expense of the Norse farmers.
Well, if the wolf’s nature was to kill for food, Rigg’s duty was to prevent such killing! He had gladly taken on the task of hunting the predator, even if it meant tracking the beast to the edge of the White Lands, to the high mountains and glaciers that rimmed the tiny Viking settlement on Greenland.
Up there, far to the north, well beyond the farms of his grandfather, Erik the Red, well beyond the lands of his father, Leif, and those of the poorer Norse settlers, lay a region of unimaginable cold. No one could go far into that land and survive. And there, if anywhere, one might find Jotunheim, the icy kingdom of the Frost Giants.
Even now, as he gazed north, Rigg shivered a little. Dark peaks rose, streaked with snow, against the blue sky, and suddenly he longed for his home fire, for the warm presence of Fianna, his mother, and for the wisdom of Tyrkir, the old rune master who was his teacher. He longed too for the deep woods he remembered from Vinland, woods he had explored with Tyrkir more than a year before.
He often dreamed about those lost Vinland woods and of the strange but impressive race he had discovered there. Rigg found that he missed the new country and, since he was indeed a dreamer, at that moment he forgot about the dead sheep lying at his feet and the marauding wolf and his duty to trap or kill it. He slipped into a daydream in which some of the marvellous sights he remembered from Vinland appeared almost palpably before him. In his mind’s eye he saw a native camp by a river, then another place, one of ghosts and ancient ruins, and finally, the face of a native boy with whom he had wrestled for mastery during a strange midnight vigil...
“Rigg! You’ve found another! Why didn’t you call me?”
The voice startled him; he jumped and whirled round, and this brought a roar of laughter from the young man who had just spoken.
“Good old Rigg! Lost in never-never land as usual. It’s you who should be trained for bard and poet, not me. But oh!” — and here the young man caught sight of the bloodied sheep — “I see our friend the wolf has dragged another lamb dinner halfway to the wilds. The blood looks fairly fresh too. We might catch up with him this morning after all.”
The second young man, Ari Bardasson — a strong, sturdy, dark-haired youth — bent over the sheep and, to Rigg’s mild disgust, touched the torn neck of the slaughtered animal.
“Ari, I can see you’d be skilled at offering sacrifice. You don’t mind wetting your hands with blood and gore. But as for the sheep-killer, from what Tyrkir told me it could well be a she-wolf. It seems they’re often the boldest hunters. And if we’re going to catch her, we’d better be off at once.”
The young men walked on, still wearing their heavy winter tunics and cloaks. Their leather boots made tracks in the softening earth, and from time to time, as if for reassurance, they touched the amulets at their necks, the daggers at their belts, and the good elmwood of the longbows that were slung loosely over their shoulders.
Slowly, they climbed a steep barren ridge, one that rose high above the last of the settlement lands. Around them, the grassy meadows and thin green turf of the home farms had given way to bare stone and a brown furze carpet the colour of a deer hide.
Gulls wheeled above them, and a hawk patrolled a nearby hill. A trio of hares danced playfully beyond a stony cairn, and then, in a flash
