The Viking's Skull

by John R. Carling

"Do you see this, Godfrey?" he said, pointing out the orifice. "This could have been caused only by a sharp-pointed instrument. The thing rattling within must be a fragment of some weapon."

He gave the skull another shake, when, from the vertebral orifice there dropped a piece of rusty steel about two inches in length, slender, rounded, and tapering to a point.

"No one could live with a thing like this in his head," said Idris. "So it is clear that we have here a fragment of the identical weapon that gave old Orm his coup-de-grâce."

A tiny piece of steel publicly exposed, say in a shop-window, will attract little, if any notice: but let it be known that the said steel is the instrument with which a murder has been wrought, and a whole city will come trooping forth to view: and fancy prices will be offered for it by connoisseurs of the gruesome.

Deep, therefore, was the interest with which the two friends viewed their latest discovery.

"Then this cannot be the skull of Orm the Viking," remarked Godfrey, after a thoughtful pause, "if the tapestry we brought away from the tomb is to be received as an authority, since that represents him as slain by an arrow piercing his breast."

This contradiction between the evidence presented by the skull and that presented by the tapestry, perplexed Idris in no small degree. Having conceived the somewhat pleasing notion that he was the possessor of the skull of Orm the Golden, he was loth to relinquish his belief, and prepared to argue the point.

"Artists, whether in needlework or in oils, are not always to be accepted as historic authorities. I have no doubt suppressio veri was practised as much in the Viking age as in our own. If Orm died with a wound in the occiput, what does that seem to show? That he must have turned his back on his foes in defiance of the canons of Norse bravery. Do you think that the weavers of the tapestry would let posterity know that Orm had turned coward? No! therefore they make him die with an arrow in his breast, facing the foe, bold to the last. The tumulus in Ravensdale is certainly Orm's tomb: the name Ormfell and the tapestry prove it, and hence the bones it contains must be those of Orm."

"Hum! I'm not convinced," replied Godfrey. "You believe this steel to be the fragment of a battle-weapon: of what kind of weapon? It is too slender to have formed part of a sword or a dagger: too finely-pointed to have been the barb of a lance or an arrow."

"It may be a spike from that sort of mace which the Vikings in their playful way were wont to call their 'Morning Star.' This is perhaps a stellar ray."