Valdmer the Viking. A romance of the eleventh century by sea and land ... With illustrations, etc

Front matter

the battle OF swold. "It was a great battle while it lasted." [p. 21. VALDMER THE VIKING a TRomancc of tbe Bleventb Centura bs Sea an& Xanfc. BY HUME NISBET, AUTHOR OF "BAIL UP," "THE JOLLY ROGER," " THE DIVERS," "EIGHT BELLS," "THE SAVAGE QUEEN," ETC, ETI WITH ILLUSTRATIONS UT THE AUTHOR AND M. NISBET. LONDON : HUTCHINSON & CO., 34, PATERNOSTER ROW. TO WITH REVERENT GREETINGS TO ONE WHO IS ABLE LOOK WITH THE CLEAR AND FEARLESS EYES OF TRUTH UPON WHAT IS HIDDEN FROM SO MANY, I BEG TO INSCRIBE Œbfs -LcgenO TO THE EEV. DE. JOHN CLIFFORD, M.A., LL.B, B.Sc. (Lond. Univ.), F.G.S., D.D. (Hon.), MINISTER OF WESTBOURNE PARK CHAPEL, LONDON. b

Preface

. spWO great points of consideration occupied my mind ■*- for a time before beginning this Viking chronicle : the first was how I was to get back myself to the days when brother Dane devoured brother Saxon ; and the second was, when once amongst them, how I was to translate their simple language into modern English for the sake of my readers, without running the risk of being called to order by the exacting critics. Of course, the correct way would be to make my chronicler discourse and describe things as he must have done, and which must read so delightfully clear and simple to the erudite as it does to me after having listened so long to his homely phraseology, as in the following specimen : — ' Stræt wæs stan-fih, stig wisode Gumum ætgædere, guo-byrne scan Heard hond-locen, hring-iren scir Song in searwum pa hie to sele furoum In hyra gry're-geatwum gangan cwomon."

This was how Saxon and Northmen spoke, wrote and sang in the dark ages, and how my romance of Valdmer the Viking should have been written from first to last page ; and yet, while fully admitting that nothing could be plainer, quainter, or more easily understood by the

PREFACE.

. ordinary intelligent reader of the nineteenth century, I firmly believe that if I had yielded to the natural temptation which I always have to be literal and exact, and written my story in the old English, I should have had to send my first and only edition to the paper manu facturer entire, with the exception of a few press copies, so peculiar and unreasonable are the general masses of readers. Well, after due consideration I resolved to sacrifice my own inclination at the altar of modern taste, and while listening and enjoying the simple and pure expressions which the great Cobbett loved so well, to translate them, and re-dress them in the patchwork that people are accustomed to now. I might allow my characters to swear by Odin and Thor, or the many saints of the Roman Calendar, as we are accustomed nowadays to call on Jove ; but that was as far as I intended to humour them, and this I did wilfully, for I abhor any half-measures, as I think that if a writer cannot be literal and realistic to the hilt, it is better to break his fetters energetically and be free.

Following this principle I now tell the adventures of Valdmer, not as he told them, but in my own way. It was an age of miracles, ghosts and bedevilment, so that the wonders will be the more easily understood by present readers than they might have been forty or fifty years ago, when " Borderland " was a closed country. Also, when I tell you that the climate of the North was much milder in that century than it is now, so that great forests and open seas spread where at the present all is ice-locked and desolate, you may no longer PREFaACE. IX wonder how it was that the early explorers were able to penetrate where our modern navigators are forced to turn back. Ages before Columbus discovered America the Vikings had Left their traces there, and this present story is the modernised version of an olden record related by a Norseman who, with his companions (early in the eleventh century, and after the Danish invasion of England, 1003), sailed away from the Isle of Thanet to North America, and from there round by Greenland, the North Pole and the Behring Straits, as they are now called, and afterwards circumnavigated the world without thinking that they had done any thing particular.

With this short explanation I leave my hero Valdmer to recount his strange adventures ; and, trusting that they may not disappoint the readers, I beg to remain His obedient servant, The Author. Hogarth Club, 56, Dover Strebt, Picadillt. 1893. CONTENTS. CHAP. PAGE I. THE LAST VOYAGE 1 II. VALDMER THE SKALD 6 III. THE BATTLE OF SWOLD . . . .17 IV. THE MUSIC-WON SOUL 26 V. ON THE BATTLEMENTS 36 VI. ERLEND'S COURTING 48 VII. THE MASSACRE OF ST. BRITHRIC . . .58 VIII. THE RAID ON ENGLAND . . . .68 IX. THE FIRST MAN SPARED . . . .77 X. VALDMER SENT TO KING ETHELRED . . 86 XI. THE SAXON COURT 95 XII. A WINTER AT THANET . . . . .106 XIII. ERLEND'S OFFENCE AND SENTENCE . .116 XIV. ESCAPE FROM ENGLAND . . . .126 XV. A-VIKING WE WILL GO . . . .135 XVI. TO THE MYSTIC WEST 144 XVII. A WEARY VOYAGE 152 XVIII.

THE STRANGE LAND CONTEXTS. CHAP. PAGE XIX. THE TULANS 173 XX. THE LAND OF TULE . . . . .185 XXI. THE CITY OF LIGHT 194 XXII. A ROYAL SUPTER 205 XXIII. IN THE GARDENS 215 XXIV. TULAN WAYS 224 XXV. THE THREE CHARMS 234 XXVI. TO THE GREAT LIGHT .... 244 XXVII. FROM THE ARMS OF DEATH .... 254 XXVIII. THE LOST SECRETS 263 XXIX. ERLEND SMELLS THE SCENT OF SLAUGHTER . 273 XXX. THE SLAUGHTER 283 XXXI. THE ESCAPE FROM CHICOMOZTOC . . . 293 XXXII. THE END VALDMEE THE VIKING. — ♦ —

Chapter I. The Last Voyage

rFHE autumn moon burst its way through a dense -*- cm-tain of shadow, as the Black Raven, Jarl Thorolf Rolloson's war vessel, took its last voyage — the voyage of fire. A furious storm had raged over these Hjaltland Islands for the past five days, keeping the ships inside the harbourage, while the ocean and sky were mixed up in grey and white, as the yeasty fury of the waves dashed against the mist-covered rocks and leapt upright sixty feet before falling again into the froth-filled, boiling depths, such a storm as even the hardy Vikings wondered at, as they listened to the thundering of the waters and the shrieking of the blast, from the inside of the thick and strong castle walls. But the vengeful tempest had exhausted its fury now, and the waves lay calm enough, as quiet almost as the dead crew of the Black Raven, down on which that silver moon looked after it had broken out of the VALDMER TnE VIKING. cloud-pall and changed the upper space into a green ocean, studded with floating islands of light, only a little less subdued than its own pure lustre.

Jarl Thorolf lay topmost of his warriors, all clad in their fighting costumes with their weapons beside them, sixteen of his bravest followers who had met death by his side ; their dauntless spirits had gone first, but they were all together again, the spirits waiting at the prow with their sight turned seaward, while their bodies lay near the lashed rudder, as the vessel left the land, where their mourning friends stood watching their passage, while the moon followed them with a silver trail. As the Black Raven reached the open sea, the soft night winds filled out the flapping sail, and bore these dead men at a faster and steady pace on their last voyage ; the water, which had been like a land-locked fjord before, became covered with quicksilver ripples, through which the sharp prow cut gallantly, leaving a dazzling furrow behind ; then from the high cargo of firewood upon which the Vikings rested, a dozen of little smoke-wreaths issued, trailing backwards in one thin vapoury cloud which each second grew denser.

The old Jarl, with his long grey beard and heavy tresses, looked majestic as he slept in his glittering armour ; some of his companions were older men than himself, and one or two quite youthful, but they were all great, strong men, who had distinguished themselves in the hour of battle, or else they could not have shared this last honour with their chief. Forward the Black Raven surged on her straight THE LAST VOYAGE. course, with the sail now bulging and the banner at the mast-head streaming backwards ; now the smoke is falling: from them in a dense black mass, and coverings their stately figures from that white-faced, inquisitive moon, as the lurid tongues of flame begin to lick round the pyre. They are getting into the "roost" of the whirlpool as the flames burst out from all sides and begin their work of demolition ; so that, although the sail has caught fire, and soon becomes first a blazing sheet and then a few fluttering rags and ribbons of crimson which float away on the billowy eddies of smoke, it is no longer needed for that doomed ship.

As the last strands of burnt sail drop from the yard, the mast gives way and falls overboard ; but still the galley keeps on her course at a faster rate than ever. for she is well within the fierce tideway, and now needs neither sail nor helm to keep her straight ; she is dashing on with her deck still bearing that blazing bonfire, which resembles a furnace in its lurid glowing and hungry roaring, as it devours wood logs and armoured humanity, reducing their solidity to elemental fumes. On, with a gliding rapidity, the burning galley sweeps, with the yellow flames leaping from its scarlet cavity, and that freighted smoke rolling along the moon lit sky in heavy masses towards the watchers who wait on the strand. The deck has collapsed now, and only tlie sturdy frame of the Black Raven remains, with its carved figure-head and prow ; the old Jarl and his followers VALDMER THE VIKING. have become blent with the red-hot ashes of the logs, while their casques and armour glow vividly amongst the duller heat of the cinders, like vermilion upon red ochre ; the flames also, having finished the pyre, are clutching at every joint and seam of the framework, like a thousand greedy talons tearing at a helpless carcase.

On speeds that glowing galley to its end. The whirlpool is in action at this state of the tide, and already has the victim within its deadly clutches, while the flames break out from every point above water mark, and lick over its blackness with a pas sionate eagerness, as if they were aware that their time was short as well as that of their victim. The giddy dance has commenced : slowly at first as the doomed galley enters the outer ring and begins to make that rhythmical circle, the black bird at the prow head looking as if soaring with extended wings above a cage of fire, while all the eddies are glittering with the vivid reflection. A green sky filled with bright moon-lustre above, and an ocean of flames swirling around that dancing beacon, at the front of which that black raven flies easily, with outstretching neck, as if watching for the end.

The bird is flying now, as it has flown through many a tempest, and watching as it has watched through many a bloody battle, an omen of death and disaster which not even the flames can subdue. Faster the blazing hull spins round, as it slides from circle to circle, each round becoming less as the speed THE LAST VOYAGE. 5 is increased ; the prow still stands forth boldly with that watchful raven at its crest, but the ribs of the hull are showing out blackly against the sheets of flame which envelop them, and the smoke forms a shadow crown about the wreck as it follows its rapid course round and round, hanging closely over it and rotating like a whirlwind. The centre is reached at last, and while the prow still rises intact, with the speed of a shot arrow it takes the last sweep, and then it makes a brief pause, while the bird still triumphantly stretches forward from the flames ancl peers boldly into that black shaft into which it is about to dive.

That circular dome of smoke still hangs densely between the white moon and the crimson hull, so that, as the raven pauses, its beak and wings seem as if drenched with gore ; then like lightning it takes the dive as if it had seen its prey at the bottom of the ocean : a sudden sputter and gust of steam bursts out of the cavity as the bird disappears, and this steam cloud, striking the sable dome of smoke in the centre, disperses it on all sides. Then the moonbeams once more glitter lightly upon the edges of the silent vortex that has swallowed up and avenged the Black Raven.

Chapter II. Valdmer The Skald

llisY father, the Jarl Thorolf, got his death-wound at ■"Jthe fatal sea-battle of Swold, where I, Valdmer Bairfot (the cripple), attended with him and my elder brother Erlend on the side of our own lord, King Olaf Tryggvason the Christian. That was in the year 1001, fifty years ago at the time I write all this down for the benefit of whoever may care to know how this world fared then. I was nineteen years old when this great battle was fought, which lost me a father and a king, the like of whom perhaps no one ever saw before, for beauty, bravery, and devotion to the religion which he had embraced, and which I now try humbly to act up to as far as my weak nature will permit me. I was a heathen in those days ; like my brave father, and handsome strong brother Erlend, we worshipped Odin and Thor, as did indeed most of our countrymen.

Yet so overbearing on this point was the great King Olaf, that we were all forced to be baptised in the new faith, whatever we believed in our hearts. Now I am convinced, after many years, that King Olaf was right in what he tried to force down our unwilling throats, I wish he had not been in such haste in making converts, for one only may be baptised once in a lifetime, and I did not appreciate the gift I was getting, so that when I came to know it the sweetness of it seemed to have become lost through my own lack of appreciation. Yet it is hard for a man to give up old friends at the order of the king ; and to turn one's back on the Aesir seemed a terrible risk to us poor pagans to run into for the sake of strange gods. Odin, the mighty father and ruler of all, with his terrible son Thor, the Thunderer, who with his hammer could smash up the world if he liked, to say nothing of the giant Loki, had also to be propitiated.

It was all very well for the missionaries to tell us that Jesus was Balder the Beautiful, ten thousand times more perfect, and that Frigg was his pure mother, the Virgin Mary, that Odin stood for Jehovah, and Loki for Satan, while all the others were only myths and symbols of natural effects. But to us who had grown up to look upon them as real personages, it made our hearts quake to have to repudiate them because our own lord considered it right; each family who had their own special god or goddess felt mean when we had to sneak into some cave or deep gorge and call upon our " As " to overlook our perjury and give us still their aid as of yore. My mother, Thorgunna, was a wise woman, gifted with the powers of witchcraft and prophecy, and she was the most violent about the sudden change, and reproached my father constantly and bitterly for his Y-ALDMER THE VIKING. yielding.

She would have had him rise in revolt as so many of the other Jarls were doing, predicting all the disasters which afterwards came to pass upon us, as our punishment for breaking our faith with the sacred Aesir. But this my father would not listen to, for he had followed the heroic Olaf from the young king's childhood, and therefore would not give him up, although for the sake of love and peace at home, he built a secret altar beneath the castle where, under the shades of night, they worshipped the old gods and took their vows, while for policy he conformed to the established faith of the day; and with this concession my mother was forced to rest content, and my father was also well satisfied, for, as he said, " our Norse gods were a good-natured and reasonable set, and didn't expect more from a man than he was able to give."

We Norsemen all love and respect our women folks next to the sacred twenty-four deities who are chief in the halls of Odin ; but I think throughout all Hjaltland, or Norway for that matter either, there lived no woman, wife, widow or maid, more worthy of respect than my mother Thorguuna, or one more beautiful than my sister Freya. Our mother had reached middle age at the time she was bereft of our noble father ; but time hardly appeared to have touched her, for although she never spoke of it, we bebeved that she had been fed from the apples of Iduna, which the gods keep for them selves and those they specially . love to restore their lost vigour. She was tall, robust and majestic as the mother of Vikings should be ; but there was a look in her summer blue eyes which was more than human, and before the blaze of which the strongest man became like an infant and saw strange sights both on land and sea ever afterwards, for whoever was once thralled by her sorcery could never again get their liberty.

She was lovely in her complexion, with a skin like milk and roses, with a broad brow and a straight nose, having nostrils that quivered like those of a fine bred horse when she was excited, having proudly-curved lips and strong white teeth, from which came a voice that could be soft as the cooing dove, or strong as the harp of Bragi, while the golden hair which rolled over her comely back was long and thick as that of a maid of twenty, and without a thread of silver. I was vastly proud of the perfections of our mother, although perhaps I was the least loved of her children, because of the lameness that afflicted me. I admired the beautiful curves of her shapely strong arms that appeared so womanly, ancl yet were so man-like in their power. I admired the splendours of her figure, and the mobile depth of those magical eyes, so greatly, that I think it would have been easy to have laid down my life for a kind word from her.

But she did not love me, because she could not love anything that was imperfect, even although she had marred me herself. She was a worshipper of Thor, the god of strength and physical perfection, and that I was her son made her the more ashamed to look upon me, and the more pitiless towards my misfortunes ; for although I had the strength of the blind god Hod, one leg was shorter than the other through the accident at my birth, so that I had to be content to limp along the earth while my brother Erlend leapt and ran. My face also was plain and mean-looking, and although Bragi had given me the skald-gift, and Hod the brute strength, Loki had cursed me with ugliness and short ness and crookedness of stature. My arms were so long that I could grasp my knees with my knotted hands even when standing upright — that is, as upright as I could stand, for although my shoulders were massive as those of a wild bull, my back was raised above them like the rounded back of a seal.

I have said that my face was plain and mean-looking, but these are the flattering expressions which vanity has coined to describe a form which young maidens shrank back from with loathing and affright, and which only the devotion of faithful henchmen could look upon without shuddering. Tangled locks, red as heated cinders, covered my wrinkled brows and fell over my freckled, short neck ; my skin was discoloured and covered with coarse and stiff hairs like the bristles of the hog, and like the wild boar two yellow tusks parted the sides of my wide mouth with the grin of a monster ; my eyes were small and watery blue like those of a starving crow in winter time, and my nose flattened and spread out at the nostrils ; added to all these imperfections was a limping figure, broad-set, squat, and as twisted as a stunted oak tree ; and you have the likeness of Valdmer, the younger son of the great Viking Jarl.

I could not wonder at the abhorrence of my beautiful mother, or the averted looks of the Norse maidens, when I caught a glimpse of myself in the still pools. I had grown up to be avoided by the young and the fair, and if my heart had also been in unison with my body I might have been contented to be ignored by womankind and satisfied with the love of my hunting hounds and war-horse and the fidelity of my followers; but, alas for that fatal gift of Bragi ! the excitements of the hunt, the glory of battle, and the smell of the salt winds only satisfied one side of my nature. I craved after the affection of my kind as well ; I dreamt of the beauty of women, and poured out my songs to Freyia, the goddess of love, and Balder the Beautiful, as well as composing sterner songs to Thor and Ty. I could love although I could not be loved in return, and this, added to my sensitive fear of mockery, made me doubly miserable and forced me to seek out lonely glens and dark caves where unseen and unheard I could pour out the passions which rooted within me in sweet or plaintive words without fear of being laughed at.

My father had always been tender with me, and taught me the arts of warfare until with my growing strength and reckless courage few of the Vikings could stand before me ; they said that my hug was like that of the bear, while with my long sword I could split a man downwards with one blow, and shear a head off as if it had been a thistle on a tender stalk ; the women at home called me Valdmer the Misshapen, but on the battle-field I was called Valdmer Strongarm, and praised amongst the Vikings for my deeds. It is the privilege of old age to boast about what it was in youth. I am an old man now, and the tangled locks which were once so fiery red are bleached to the whiteness of snow, while my beard hangs over my breast and covers up the mouth which was once so repulsive, so that young maids no longer dread to look upon me as they tell me of their hopes and fears ; therefore I can boast about the few qualities I had when I am frank enough to relate my defects.

I listen often to the songs which I composed and sang in my youth ; handsome young men wringing the hearts of their lovers with the tender words which I had to utter to the spirits of the mists, heroes chanting the fiery words with which I filled the ears of their fathers ; but either age has blunted my hearing or else my voice must have been an exception, for I think I sang better than those voices I hear now. Yes, I had a voice like gold in the olden days, and despite my ugliness could make women weep and men grow mad with passion when I chose to move them with my harp ; and they shut their eyes to what the Skald was Hke, for my soul was in my voice, and that was not deformed. At the first sound of my harp strings the listeners grew silent, while I no longer sat amongst them, but floated straight into the gardens of Odin, where I saw myself shapely and crowned as the Aesir were, with the immortals smiling upon me, and what I saw I sang about, while those who heard me treasured up the words and repeated them to me, on my return to earth, to my wonderment.

Sometimes I lived back ages ancl looked upon my past, when I had been loved and worthy of love as other men were ; my love was with me when I sang, a bride white as the dawn, with eyes filled with the morning light, and tresses like the sunbeams. She was mine, I know, for she had been mine before, ancl while I sang to the assembled gods and goddesses. She, the fairest of them all, kissed me on the lips with dewy lips, while my liquid notes held us together with a chain of flowers. So my spirit was consoled for what my body had to forego, and as I slunk abashed from the companv after my song was done, and my vision had departed, before the charm which I had cast upon them was broken, I was often spared the humiliation of their pitying praises. My brother Erlend had the supernal beauty of our mother with the stature and strength of our father combined ; he was seven years older than I was, and looked a born leader of men, a young man of robust health who seemed never to have had a care, for his spirits were so high and boisterous and his laughter so contagious that they called him Erlend the Laugher.

In battle also he was terrific at times, with always the same joyous gleam in his bright blue eyes and the same laugh on his red lips, but he was a man of uncertain moods, and fought with more of the madness and fury of the Berserker than that calm courage which controlled the passion of the Viking heroes. I had seen him pause also before the laughing fury seized upon him, and tremble like a girl as our ships VALDMEU THE VIKING. 14 were rushing into danger, looking for all the world like a coward who was about to fly as he tried to screen himself behind the others while the arrows were hailing amongst us. These strange and unworthy fits did not, however, last long, for at the first signs of them if I was near enough him, and we mostly fought side by side, I used to shout in his ear one of my war songs, which at once brought back his courage ; yet I feared them always, for I dearly loved this kingly-looking brother of mine, and the after effects were more to be dreaded than even the momentary hang-back, for then he was seized with that ferocious and blind gaiety of rage, and lost all power, seemingly, of discerning friends from foes, as well as the caution which a true warrior must have about defending himself; he became like a wild beast, with such a thirst upon him for slaughter that he was like a mad dog, a»d as likely to hack at his own men, if they stood in front of him, as he would slay an enemy.

That terrible laugh of his, which sounded so pleasant at the feast, curdled the blood of those who heard it on the decks when the boats tackled, with the mocking demons that sat within his sparkling yet sightless eyes ; it was like letting loose a destroying angel who could not be curbed once set free, so that unless the battle was ours he had generally to be overpowered by several of his most devoted friends and his weapons taken from him before he would listen to reason ; then he would stand dazed as if woke from sleep, and look round him wonderingly at the havoc he had wrought. My sister Freya, older by one year than I was, I shall tell you about afterwards. Meanwhile let us come to the battle of Swi'Vld, and the death of our King Olaf ancl my father. King Olaf had reigned over us for five years, and made his subjects Christians, willy-nilly, visiting all his Jarls by turn, ancl enthralling them with his splendid appearance and clashing courage, as well as by his generous and pleasant behaviour, when no one contradicted him.

He was a faithful and brave defender of the new faith, but he was by no means strict either in his own observances or in his demands upon his subjects : so long as they went through the ceremony of baptism he did not enquire too closely how they acted afterwards ; he was a warrior who liked his own way, and not a bigot. In the fifth year of his reign, he sent out messengers and ordered us all to join him with our ships, in a great expedition up the Baltic Sea. King Olaf was tlie sort of man who made men either into devoted and blind followers, or else into vengeful haters, for no one could regard him with indifference. He was sometimes very bitter and cruel in his rage, but his passions were short-lived, while his skill, courage and energy were so widespread, and his company so fascinating, that warriors wishing for distinction flocked to his banner, and were proud to draw their blades under such a handsome and far-famed leader.