In Part 2, Ulf Thorfinnsson prepares to fight a last desperate skirmish against the Indigenous inhabitants of the land he has invaded; he is perturbed by the strange stillness on the wooded isle below the great waterfall, and by the sudden disappearance of the völva Hagþyrni.
The water in the river must be lower than it’s usual level, because I can see all the rock near it on the shore, downstream of the waterfall, is very smooth, worn down by what must be countless years of being washed by the strong current. As I return to where the Grimmernorn is tied to a pair of huge pine trees, in a side channel of the main river, I still don’t see where Hagþyrni has got to.
Oddbjørn the Pale shrugs his shoulders and won’t look me in the eye when I ask.
Where are Snorri, I add, And Eyjolf?
Those two are still able to raise their sword arms, and I have instructed Oddbjørn to have anyone who can still fight to assemble near the ship and await my orders.
I know now there’s a good chance we’ll die here. I don’t blame anyone else but myself for this change in plan; but then again, it was their own decision to come on this voyage into unknown country, and they understand about luck and fate, and that sometimes you get unlucky. I’m hoping they also have the sense to share my own desire to die with at least some dignity, and as quick as can be. Because if we can’t fight our way out, then death by either starvation or through the festering of wounds may be our lot, and we’ve all seen what that’s like.
So I’m determined to not let any of this to happen to Hagþyrni. I know. It’s irrational, but when a man lies in bed with a woman, not just once, but many times, he will sometimes develop an affection for her; against his better judgement, he learns to care about her.
Hagþyrni would scorn such sentimentality. She’s known many men, and she knows what we’re like. So, I ask myself now, in order to save herself, has she crossed over to the enemy and left me and the other guys to sink or swim?
Of course, if I’d been smarter I could have traded Hagþyrni to the Skraelings as the price for my men’s lives, to preserve their fighting potential; but I am not always so logical as I should be when it comes to that woman. Besides, what would have induced the Skraelings to accept such a bargain? I’m an experienced trader, and they and I both know what my men’s lives are worth just now. Timing’s everything, and it’s not exactly a seller’s market right now.
But... If they do have Hagþyrni, could I buy her back?
Oddbjørn, I say, What do you suppose she’s worth to them?
The völva?
Ja.
What’ya mean?
What would you trade for her?
Oddbjørn the Pale does not answer, he only shakes his head and smiles.
What d’you think the Skraelings would take for her?
Maybe you could ask them, he then says.
Ask?
Ja.
If she’s with them, and in the unlikely event that we all decide to talk instead of fight, I can guess what the Skraelings will desire in trade. They’ll want my sword, my axe, my knife, and the bronze kettle we boil fish in. They’ll drive a hard bargain and strip us clean of every tool and weapon we have and leave us with nothing. It’s what I’d do in their place, being a Viking, and they being simple Skraelings. They would covet the red woollen cloth we wear, and they like the way we can make fire from flint and a piece of iron; it’s not magic, but as pragmatic men of action, the Skraelings see how useful this is.
In a time of peace, with a full crew of fit warriors, I would walk away from such haggling and wait for a more advantageous moment. But the völva? Hagþyrni is not peaceful, it’s what I like about her. She’s so disruptive. When I strike my iron to her flint, the fire burns bright in the night.
It’s possible if she has inflamed them as well, they may prefer to keep her alone alive.
To warm their poor bodies through the coming winter.
And while I am a pragmatic man, who tries to think carefully and logically before proceeding forward in any plan of action, I have to admit the thought of Hagþyrni being used by another man – or worse, by several - the way I have used her, makes me uncomfortable. I am Ulf Thorfinnsson of Greenland, master of the Grimmernorn, a successful and widely respected Viking. I’ve seen the worst the world has to offer, and personally have contributed much of what some would call unnecessary disruption - by way of doing business. None of it bothers me at all. But Hagþyrni?
Oddbjørn the Pale sees this in my face and cautions me:
Ulf Thorfinnsson, he says, You can’t slaughter them all! Consider approaching this problem with a cooler head. Let’s come up with an original and creative win-win solution instead.
Oddbjørn the Pale’s conciliatory attitude does not correspond to my own concept of the principles a real Viking should uphold, but it reminds me of something:
When I asked the hermit in the ruined windmill what had happened to his wife, he did not at first wish to say. He sighed, and the otherworldly, serene aspect of his face collapsed, replaced with the most common expression of humanity everywhere, that of introspective anxiety.
I loved her, he finally said after a very long pause, But then I ate her.
Ulf: I don’t believe you.
Hermit: No, no one thinks a holy man could do such a thing. But it happened anyway.
Ulf: A man should not do this!
Hermit: It’s easy for you to say.
Ulf: I suppose you will tell me, circumstances made it impossible for you to do anything else?
Hermit: You’ve no idea what it was like.
In this the hermit was wrong. While repugnant to memory, any Greenlander of experience can tell you a tale or two about survival – whether adrift in ice at sea; or shipwrecked on a barren shore; in early spring on the homestead when there’s nothing left to eat; or when disease and fighting have resulted in a critical shortfall of whatever is required to stay alive – when all the dogs and horses and sheep are gone, their bones picked clean, and there’s nothing left to do but consume one’s own dearest, deceased friends and relations.
Not easy, but as pragmatic men of action, we can well understand it is better than doing nothing.
Hermit: It was the second year of full-blown famine. The rain never came; we ate all our seed-wheat, so even if the rain had come, there was none left to plant. The heat became unbearable. The only well left that hadn’t gone completely dry, we kept digging deeper and deeper into the earth, and I thought we would eventually reach Hell, and so what? It couldn’t be hotter than here...
We made a pact with our neighbours. When one of us died, instead of offering the corpse a good Christian burial, we would instead perform a sacrament, then divide the meat amongst ourselves, as a way to keep going, to show God we still laboured in His vineyard, that we would continue to do His work until the climate changed back again to what we were used to before.
Ulf: Did it?
Hermit: What?
Ulf: The climate. Did it revert to normal? Are you able to sow and reap the grain as before?
The hermit did not reply. He gave me a look of disgust. He waved his thin arm at the dry, desolate landscape and then shrugged.
Ulf: It looks bad.
Hermit: We used to export some of the best grain anywhere! Right across Byzantium and the Four Emirates! Bread made from our wheat was celebrated from Ravenna to Rausa, but one kind of trouble leads to another, and now we grow little more than carrion crows and wormwood.
Ulf: Oh, but something is keeping you alive, even if it is only in shameful poverty.
Hermit: Survival sometimes depends on non-compliance.
Ulf: What?
Hermit: Saying no to people like you.
Needs major repair, says Oddbjørn the Pale, with one hand on the flank of the Grimmernorn’s hull, Or we sink for sure.
The Grimmernorn has taken us right across the most western sea we Norse have ever set eyes on, through ice and storm from Lysufjord in Greenland, past Markland and south to the land Leif Eiriksson called Vinland. Although, I must say, we saw no sign of grapes, nor tasted any wine in that stoney land, so the name must be another typical lying Viking confidence trick. We are here now at this great waterfall after weeks of travel up these rivers and their prodigious rapids, surviving several close fights with Skraelings, and I see no way of making the necessary repairs on my ship. When I get the chance, I’ll write down all the details of this episode, along with the others.
It will make a great saga. It will make me famous.
I’ll be sure to have the scribes make many copies for posterity.
Signed by me, Ulf Thorfinnsson of Seiðibæ, Lysufjord, Greenland.
I trust Oddbjørn the Pale’s judgment about the soundness of the ship’s timbers; he should know, he built the boat himself, complaining the whole time about shitty Markland trees. We need to fell more timber, but surrounded by angry Skraelings, who are annoyed with us for invading their land, there’s nothing we can do at the moment about fixing this problem.
I’m lost.
Or maybe I’m just not sure what to do.
It feels like my strength and volition are draining away with the waterfall. It makes me angry, but I feel helpless.
Ulf, you are not lost, I imagine hearing a voice say.
It’s what everyone wishes to hear when they’re at wit’s end.
I invested everything I had in the Grimmernorn, and I can’t decide which is worse, losing my life, or losing my ship.
I think I hear that voice, and assume it’s only the non-stop noise of that monster waterfall playing tricks with my mind. My mind, my mind! All that part of me which floats on the surface, which seeks the sunlight and catches any fair breeze in it’s broad sail, desperately wanting me not to be lost.
Or dead.
Or even a little bit unhappy.
To that end, my mind always tells me to ignore my soul, which I’ve always kept hidden in the shadow, in exile on the far side of the moon. Where it can’t interfere with my plans. So I wonder what will my mind make me do next? Souless. If that lost soul of mine were to reappear at this moment, like a ghost, would these two bitterly opposed aspects of my complete being, my mind and my soul, make some sort of truce?
Thankfully, they never have before.
I’d have had to hang up my shield.
And what would I do if not fight?
Hermit: Ulf, why else did you come here?
Ulf: To steal things. Nothing else.
Hermit: That must make your life very difficult.
Ulf: No. Why?
Hermit: Well, wherever you go, people must hate you for your thieving ways.
Ulf: No. Not at all.
Hermit: They don’t hate you?
Ulf: No.
Hermit: But why not? I don’t understand.
Ulf: Everywhere I go, I sell the stuff I’ve stolen cheap, so everyone loves me.
Hermit: Seriously?
Ulf: It’s the best business hack ever. Buyers are overjoyed they’re getting a bargain, so naturally, they don’t give a fuck about who’s getting hurt in the process.
Hermit: Ulf, if not you, then who do they blame for their misfortunes?
Ulf: Anyone who can’t hit back... Women, minorities, the poor... That’s what makes Vikings laugh!
Hermit: There’s your answer.
Ulf: What?
Hermit: This ruined mill. Why would I bother to fix it up and make it work with such a criminogenic system such as you and your friends impose on all of us here?
Ulf: It’s natural. It’s how evolution made us.
Hermit: God made Earth a symbiotic planet, not an artificially induced wild beast fight like in the Roman Colosseum.
Ulf: You may be right, but what does it matter when the sword is in my hand?
You’re not lost, Ulf, I hear the voice in the waterfall again, Your mind’s in the wrong place.
I should have guessed. It’s Hagþyrni.
Come here! I shout. I’m impatient. I’m getting very angry.
I can see her shaking her head. What does it mean? What’s going on?
Except for the deafening thunder of the waterfall, it’s so quiet.
I don’t like it. There’s something wrong.
I move forward a step, away from the cover of the huge pine trees next the ship, and I know this is not a prudent tactic. For the Skraelings are not bad shots with a bow, and even if their arrows are only tipped with stone, there are plenty of gaps and cracks in my armour.
But I can see or sense no one but Hagþyrni here. She stands beside the swirling waters of the great river, and now from this perspective I can also see how the river over time has carved out a gigantic bowl from the rock, like something the frost giants would mix their mead in for their feasts, and the river’s foaming water turns violently within this bowl like the malstrøm, an immense power turning round and round like the sun and the moon and the stars, and that it makes my own sword arm feel weak like a twig, bent over and made useless by the strength of this unrelenting force.
My mind, now caught in the current of this mad, bubbling, rushing water of the whirlpool, feels like losing control, reaching desperately for Hagþyrni’s voice, trying to catch her drift.
Ulf Thorfinnsson! she calls.
I take another step closer and draw my sword from it’s scabbard. The noise of the waterfall is making me crazy, and the thought crosses my mind: maybe I should kill Hagþyrni? To save her from the Skraelings? A sacrifice to the gods I have always preferred to ignore? Is my soul now telling me to do this? I don’t know where I am, so I turn slowly around in a tight circle, point of sword out, menacing any who may come near with promise of death.
Ulf! I hear Hagþyrni again call, It’s all right! You can put your sword down!
I catch a glimpse of movement in the corner of my eye and cautiously lift the visor of my helmet to get a better view, and see them. The Skraelings! Black hair and half naked, some red and black painted faces, and Hagþyrni now is with them, holding her magic staff made of iron and hawthorn wood, her fair hair loose and blowing around in a sudden gust of the evening breeze. In the low-angled light of the setting sun it looks a little like her hair is catching fire. Nothing to do with flint and iron this time; something else is going on.
My head spins.
My sword drops and it’s point touches the ground.
Hagþyrni!
The despair I feel builds like fury. My ship the Grimmernorn can move neither forward nor back, and now this humiliation, seeing her with my enemies. As I wait for the first arrows to strike me down, I know now how I have grievously misjudged this völva. She must have brought us here for her own devious purpose. She had even told me she wanted to come on this voyage so as not to be parted from me. Now I pay the price of my misplaced trust.
Ulf! She calls out to me again, Look!
I raise my eyes to meet hers. She smiles, but with hesitation, without the malice I was expecting, or the hate. She seems to be happy in a way I don’t understand. What has happened? She holds her hand out to me.
You’re not a Viking anymore!
One of the Skraeling elders approaches, in his hand a wooden vessel, smoking with some kind of plant material set on fire. It has a sweet, pungent aroma.
I lift the point of my sword to his throat and he stops. He’s not armed, and though I find it difficult to read the expression in his face, I do suspect he’s not at all scared of me for some reason.
What are they doing? It’s unnatural.
We must fight!
Fight!
Hagþyrni? I call out.
Ulf! You don’t have to kill anyone anymore.
I raise my sword as if to strike the Skraeling.
It’s your choice, Ulf, but if you hurt that man, there is no redemption for you.You lose me too.
Hagþyrni? I say again, finding all this hard to believe.
I do love you, Ulf, but you can be such a fool!
Me? A fool? Why would she say that? She knows I’m a man of action, a conqueror!
Hagþyrni laughs like she knows something I don’t.
I lower my sword. They both laugh, Hagþyrni and the Skraeling. It’s not an offensive laugh, they’re not laughing at me. Something else is going on, so I look around very quickly, in shock. It’s insane what I’m seeing.
I see Oddbjørn the Pale and Eyjolf Lame-Eye have taken their helmets off and are mingling with the other Skraelings. They sit with them in circle on the ground, and a smoking object is being passed around from which they take something, I don’t know what. I can’t believe this, what is going on here. I don’t believe it!
What should have been a ferocious bloodbath is turning into a friendly gathering.
What have I done wrong?
I remember the hermit, how he made peace with himself. After all that had happened.
Peace.
Peace feels to me like a great sorrow in my mind, now floating free above the malstrøm like the beautiful colours I begin to see refracted within the waterfall’s cloud of vapour, and I hear another thought now, resisting what Hagþyrni’s words are urging me. Instead, this other voice is telling me: Ulf Thorfinnsson, isn’t it time you showed Hagþyrni and these Skraelings how a real Viking can fight?
I raise my sword again.
They all recognize the challenge and stop what they’re doing. Hagþyrni understands my intent to fight to the death and walks slowly across to stand before me. She bares her throat, then her breast, her eyes on mine, and she touches my face with her own open hand.
Snowflakes melt, I remember her saying, but water always lives.
Her tears. I never thought to see Hagþyrni cry. I was sure she was fearless.
I will lose you for what? she demands.
Hagþyrni, I say, You think I would let you down?
I don’t need your loot and your fame, Ulf Thorfinnsson.
I’ll kill all of them, Hagþyrni! For you!
No, Ulf Thorfinnsson, we can start again.
No! I say. I’m angry. Ready to cry myself.
My world is dissolving in her madness, her thoughts I do not understand. I close my eyes and listen to the roar of the waterfall. It never stops. The water goes round and round and round.
The Grimmernorn! I say, my mind spinning in it’s own malstrøm, We must repair the ship!
Snow does not live past spring, Hagþyrni now says, and as she touches my hand, I can breath the scent of her, It has it’s season, she says, and I recall too well how much I have loved Hagþyrni’s magic when she has been close to me like this.
I tell my mind to send that memory back with my soul to the far side of the moon, where it cannot bother me or interfere with my plans.
I’m a Viking! I shout.
I don’t need your death now, she replies, There’s something else.
Then tell me!
When snow melts, flowers bloom, she answers, and I listen to the waterfall.
It never stops.
I’m lost, I say to her.
You’re not, Hagþyrni answers, her voice trembling, You’re not lost at all, you idiot.
And I can’t tell whether this is some sort of joke or not, because everyone here, Vikings and Skraelings – they’re all smiling and laughing and seem to be having a good time.
I can’t stand it.
It makes me feel like I’m falling out of my own world into another.
I don’t know what to do.
I’m lost.
Postscript: Akikodjiwan, or Chute des Chaudière, the waterfall located on the Ottawa River, is a sacred site and a meeting place along several lines of travel, including a route downstream east along the Kitchi Zibi, to the Fleuve Saint-Laurent, to the Atlantic Ocean. Nineteenth and twentieth century industrial exploitation of the waterfall’s power, to turn the machinery of the timber mills, altered most aspects of Akikodjiwan, so the waterfall is not free and wild as before. However, the reef of Paleozoic limestone intersecting the ancient graben which forms the valley of the Ottawa, is still visible, and it’s over this which the peat-stained water has flowed for millenia to create the boiler.
No historical or archaeological evidence suggests the Norse ever arrived at this place, in what is presently the city of Ottawa, in Canada. The intent of this story, The Waterfall, isn’t to recreate an implausible exploit, but to tell another story, the meaning of which cannot be found in literal interpretation, but by listening to the words in the water, to what is unexpected.