The Sentimental Vikings

by R. V. Risley

And Lord Sigmund would sail away with his men every spring when the planting was over, and my young lord would sit in his place in the hall, and, when need was, give justice unto the townsfolk. Good years, O king, when the fields grew wide, and the board was filled for a hundred men who sat there every evening.

When, looking back from where I now sit—I hope near the end of my life—I see again clearly, it is the time of mid-summer in the meadows that stretch by the side of the fjord, where the woods fall back, an hour’s boat-row from the castle. There, just when the still noonday drew to its close, and the slanting sun was beginning to throw its afternoon brightness in our brown faces, my Lord Snorē and I lay stretched out in the long, sweet grass, he with a heavy cross-bow—a new weapon then—and the carcasses of two brown deer lying beside him, I idly talking and ever looking forth over the blinding waters for sight of his father’s ship that we might begin to expect now, the grain being tall.

Suddenly, from behind a point of jutting woods round which the fjord ran curving, grew and took shape a something long that the sun shining on made painful for the eyes—a long, low something that, curving in again, glided between me and the dark green point of trees. It was the ship! The young lord sat up on the grass, and putting his hand on the carcasses of the deer, rose to his feet. “It moves too slowly,” he said. It was true. Now we could see the swing of the oars, and the pause between the strokes was very long.

“Look at the dragon,” he said again, shading his eyes with his hand. I saw now that the great beak that had used to be so fierce in its red-and-gold painting was broken off, so that only its curving neck rose from the bow. And, looking again, I saw that the sides of the ship were battered, as if by rocks, and that many of the oar-blades were broken and tied to their stems with ropes. I ran to our boat that lay against the side-of-grass, and hurriedly tumbled its stone anchor on board.

“He must have sunk the other ship or he would have come home in her,” I said, shipping the steering-oar.

Lord Snorē raised himself from the bottom of the boat where he had been stooping to place the two deer, and turning his shaggy head, looked at me curiously. “I will sit in my own right now!” he answered.

Beneath the lord’s long strong strokes the sharp-prowed skiff went rapidly over the still water, and now we could see the broken dragon’s-neck and the rents in the shields hung over the sides more plainly. We were almost within the shadow of her mast when a tall man—I knew his face for that of Esbiern the oar-captain—with a great red cloth round his head, leaped on the bow, waving his long arms wildly and shouting to us over the sunny waters, wild words of some sea-fight.

Our prow cut the shadow; half-unwilling hands reached over the gunwale to grasp our boat; we clambered over the side and turning, we looked along the length of the battered ship, over the half-empty rowers’ benches, past the pale faces of five or six men with linen-swathed heads and arms—on, over the confusion and wreckage that littered the centre of the ship, to where, leaning against the edge of the fore-deck, lay the body of Sigmund the lord with the half of the crew of his returned ship arranged in a long sitting row beside him.

So, with Lord Snorē at one of the big oars to help the weary men with one more rower, and I heaving on the great steering blade and guiding the ship slowly over the shallows, we went silently up the fjord through the afternoon.

That night, when the men and the household were done eating and only the horns and wooden tankards of beer stood along the board, my Lord Snorē spoke from the great seat where he sat moodily, with his fist on the table, and the chair-cushions thrown on the floor beside him; and thus he spoke, with the men leaning silently forward to hear him: