A few words before we begin...

This is a completely unhistorical novel.

If you are opening these pages expecting a well researched, historically accurate account of life in Viking times, you are going to be very bitterly disappointed.

I make no apologies for this.

I set out to tell a good story, not write a history book. I will happily leave that to those who have spent their lives slugging through the trenches and weight lifting thick dusty books.

Yes I have unashamedly intertwined my limited knowledge of Viking history and lore into my story.

Yes I have used the names of people and places that have existed or still may exist.

Yes my knowledge and application of geography is completely incorrect.

I make no apology for any of it.

If you enjoy the story, and my frail artistic ego hopes you do, I am happy. All I set out to do was write an engaging tale.

If, on the other hand, you have an issue with my mangling of historical fact, please close the book and visit your local library or bookstore, where I am sure you will find many heavy, well researched tomes of Norse history to satisfy your historical hungers.

That is all.

Meaghan Louise

Spring:

The House that Lamb Built.

(Bær at Lamb gǫrr)

It was the first sunny day. Suddenly the clouds and gloom of winter had all disappeared. Perhaps the gods had become bored with their sketching and drawn a giant besom across the skies. Bossy housewives were propping open their doors for the first time in months, after keeping them tightly shut all winter, despite the smoky fires and stench of household waste.

Some of the more energetic women were enthusiastically scarping and sweeping away the stinky debris that had accumulated on their hard earth floors over the long winter.

They shouted news and gossiped to one another as basket after basket of smelly rotting vegetable peelings, meat bones and shellfish shells were tossed into the wicker lined pits behind their houses.

Lamb wasn't listening. He had finally escaped the smokey gloom and stench of his house for the somewhat fresher air in the village. He sat soaking in the sun, lazily stroking the old ginger cat. The cat didn't really belong to anyone, it just malingered around the village, coxing a pat from anyone who stayed still for more than a few moments and begging innards and gizzards from the fish and fowl traders. It had been here as long as Lamb could remember, and each year it's fur became thinner and more wiry. Lamb noticed there were now large patches of fur missing from behind his ears and near the base of his tail. One of his teeth seemed to be missing too. Lamb was sure that last time he saw the old ginger cat there had been two yellowed teeth resting over his bottom jaw. One each side. Now there seemed to be only one on the left hand side, enhancing its strange disheveled look.

Sometimes the older boys would tease it or give it sips of mead and watch it wobble intoxicated away to hide behind the old Rune Makers house and sleep away the hangover. But, despite foul treatment from older boys, the old cat seemed to like Lamb. Lamb didn't tease or torment and he always had a snack hidden in the folds of his now a little too short, rough woven wool cloak and a warm hand for a pat.

Lamb stroked the cat's patchy fur as he watched the men at the nearby wood stall. They were making a big wooden cask. It would likely be used to make and store a new batch of mead or salted meat, ready for next year's long freeze. He liked the smell of the wood and the way the little shavings curled as the iron scraper was drawn along each stave.

He watched the shavings curl and fall until there were tall leafy mounds on the ground at the barrel-makers feet. Soaking in the golden streams of sun until they warmed the skin of his face to a tangy peach. There wasn't much else to do. Everyone seemed busy with their spring clearing or was already stocktaking to refill for the next big freeze and there were no other boys in the village his age. The summer Hanna had born him there had been sickness in the village and many had died. Most of them very old or very small. Lamb had been lucky his father, Olaf, had told him. Touched by the gods. While other kind had fever and death, Hanna had prayed at her hearth with all her might to Frigga and the old gods to keep him safe and healthy, whilst Olaf had the old rune maker carve his bind runes around their doorway to ward the illness away. It had worked. Lamb, unlike many kind born his summer or just before, had survived and grown into an exceptionally healthy, long legged russet haired young man of a full nine summers. The old ginger cat's purring chest rattled under his fingers and spots of cat drool began to form little pools on the top of Lambs tanned leather shoes as it gave in contented bliss in the boys lap.

When Lamb heard Olaf call he considered quite seriously pretending not to hear and wandering away to somewhere else in the village. He was almost sure his father would only be calling him because his mother had chores for him to do.

He reluctantly left the patchy furred cat and trudged as slowly as he could past the wood stall, past the rune maker's shop and down between the houses that stood in front of his own. It was quite a grand house in village terms. It was deeply set into the earth and every grooved foundation beam was straight and true. Olaf may have been a very poor farmer, but had proved himself an excellent builder.

When he arrived to the front of his house, he found there were no chores. Hanna had already cleared out their house of the winter stink and was hanging heavy woven woolen blankets in the sun to air. His older sister Lisbet was in their narrow front yard playing a chasing game with baby Maeva, who was giggling with delight as she bumbled along on her chubby barn legs, the wispy golden fluff that covered her scalp glowing in the spring sun.

To his left he could see his father, waiting almost excitedly, outside their low wooden boundary fence. The stocky russet haired builder had something he was eager to show.

“Come look here, my Lamb.” Olaf beckoned him with one of his thick crooked index fingers. “What do you think we're doing here?”

The remains of the tumble down dwelling next to their house were being pulled down. Olaf had set several men to work digging the old rotten house posts out of the ground and straightening the lines of the hole that would form the base of a new building. The men wore no shirts and the skin on their backs glowed translucent pink after months without sunshine.

Lamb thought hard for a moment before bubbles of excitement began to creep from his stomach, bursting with little pops in his chest . There was to be a new house. If there was to be a new house, there would be a new family in the village. A new family meant new children. New children meant that there may finally be another boy in the village. Hopefully one the same number of summers as Lamb.

“Will it be a big house like ours?” Lamb asked.

“No my Lamb, it will be just one room and one story.” replied Olaf

Lambs heart sank just a little, it will only have one room, not three like their big house. And it would only be one story high, that meant there was only a small family moving in, not a big one. But perhaps even a small family would have one boy his number of summers.

“How long will it take til the new folk move here?” asked Lamb.

“Not long, my Lamb.” Replied Olaf. “ Before spring turns summer, the diggings are here already and it will take little to get them straight for a small baer.”

Lamb looked at the hole that was emerging in the ground under the old rotting building. Olaf was right, it would not take much to straighten them out to give a good seal against the bitter winter cold.

“We will need some good timber. How would you like to visit Gest with me?”

Lamb for a brief moment felt his heart would burst from his chest. Olaf had never taken Lamb or Lisbet with him on business. He knew his older brothers had, but Lamb was the youngest and many summers younger than Asbiorn and Trandil and could not remember. They had long left by time Lamb could toddle like Maeva. They had gone to sea many summers ago and not returned. He had heard the village gossip that they had gone to find Vinland and been lost at sea or slain in a raid . He had asked Olaf and Hanna about them, but neither had been forthcoming with any real information. Hanna had simply bundled him into one of her nose squashing face to breast hugs, mussed his hair and said tearfully “It doesn't matter where they are my Lamb, the gods watch over them. They will come home when they are ready.”

He was feeling very important as they climbed onto the old wooden wagon. Hanna handed Lamb a wad of cloth containing a chunk of heavy bread and mussed his hair, mumbling something about her boy being all grown up now. She reserved her nose squashing face to breast hugs now only for troubled occasions. Like most mothers, she instinctively knew that boys of nine summers would no longer see them as necessary, even though they may secretly wish that they were. He puffed his chest out just a little as Olaf urged their gray mare to pull the wagon forward.

It was almost dark when they reached Gest's house. The warm sun had moved down on the horizon and the bitter winter chill that Lamb had forgotten during the day was returning.

Gest was a big burly man with a shaggy red and gray beard and even shaggier hair. A long scar that ran from the centre of his forehead, across the top of his nose, barely missing his left eye, and down his cheek, passed his jaw where it disappeared under equally shaggy and matted red hair. Olaf had told Lamb the story of how Gest had gotten the scar on a raiding trip back when they were boys. As they had bumped along the track to Gest's house, Lamb had listened intently. He loved a good story and Olaf was a good storyteller, but a little prone to embellishment in the telling, so Lamb could never be sure how accurate his stories were.

Gest clapped Olaf hard on the back in greeting as they climbed down from the wagon, then shook Lamb by the shoulders, so hard he felt his jaw rattle and proclaimed him a “Fine looking boy, just like his father!”

Lamb looked at Olaf, who seemed genuinely pleased with the proclamation. The two men then started to talk about which kind of wood Olaf would need and how much it would cost. Lamb began to loose interest.

****Lamb goes off and plays with Gests kids. One tells him he overheard gest and his wife talking and that his dad was a failed farmer who almost starved Hanna and his older brothers and sister before they moved to the village. They spend the night & go home organising to have the timber for the ne house delivered. It will take several loads.***

When the first load of timber arrived, there was much excitement and an abundance of advice. To Lamb it felt like the whole village had come to see the unloading. And everyone had advice on how to move the heavy tree trunks with more ease.

Olaf smiled and nodded at them all, seeming to take each piece of advice on board and give it due consideration. But Lamb, even at only nine summers, knew that Olaf was using one of his best storytelling faces. He would smile and nod and grunt in agreement, then wait until they had all gone and do things the way he wanted them done. He had watched Olaf do this all winter with Lisbet and baby Maeva. Lamb, who had always been taught that you should be honest and true, had been puzzled by Olaf's behaviour and had asked why he made fibs to them. Olaf had replied “Because we are all stuck here together for a long cold winter my Lamb and it is better to keep the women who make our food and weave our cloaks happy than to go to bed cold with hungry bellies.”

Olaf had woodworkers ready with sharp axes to hack the tree trunks into long, flat beams. They smoothed the wood with knives. It seemed like an age to Lamb before they were ready to be lowered into position along each side of the pit.

Upright posts were shaped next. They were placed on top of each beam. Wide planks were laid on edge to form the lower part of the house walls. The upright posts kept them jammed against the walls of the pit and the earth outside with a space left for the door.

Olaf and the woodworkers, with their knives and axes were busy for weeks, hacking and shaping planks for the floorboards.

Lamb helped carry the heavy timbers.

He had begun to feel mighty and important, helping Olaf with his work. Hanna had to warn him many times that just because he was now grown up enough to help the men at work, it did not mean that he was yet old enough to tell the younger village boys what to do. That was the full grown men's job.

The walls of the house were going up and up, until Lamb could no longer see over them when he stood on tiptoes in the pit. And still they went higher, until finally Olaf proclaimed them tall enough for rafters.

The rafters seemed to take no time at all. Lamb was a little disappointed as he was deemed too small and short to help lift the wooden beams in place. But soon there came wagon loads of reeds, cut from the marshes outside the village. Then the thatcher came. A wiry old man, with two equally wiry sons. They quickly climbed up their ladder with their tools and set to work. Lamb was deemed old enough to carry small bunches of reeds half-way up the wobbling ladder and hand them to the thatchers boys, who them distributed them across the roof for the thatcher to set in place over the rafters and trim to shape. Finally, there was a house where there had once been rotting timbers over a hole in the ground. Lamb felt a little pride well in his chest, which he puffed out just a little more than usual. He had helped make a house and soon there would be a new family living there. Living in the house that Lamb built.

Lamb had seen the new owner of the house several times before. The man had ridden into the village many times and spoken to Olaf. Each time they had clapped each other on the back and smiled before the man mounted his horse and rode away. But Olaf had never introduced the man to Lamb or Hanna.

Olaf called the man Bodvar. He was a small man with fair hair and a sparse beard. Lamb thought he always looked worried. He seemed most worried about how much space was between his house and the one next door and that the cess pit be dug as far from the house as possible.

The place he had picked was covered in nettles, which had to be dug away before the bare chested men, now less translucent after their weeks in the spring sunshine could dig the deep hole and erect a screen about it. This was done with much grunting and groaning from the men. The nettles stung their skin and left a nasty rash which could last for days on those with more sensitive skin. But finally the nettles were gone, the pit dug and a pathway made from the house to it.

Lamb was full of excitement as the sun mounted the sky. Today the new neighbors moved in. He waited eagerly outside the new house to help the family carry things off their wagon, and hoped this would give him the best look at the things they brought with them. Bodvar arrived first with a wagon loaded with all the same things Lamb knew from his own home. He was a little disappointed. There was nothing to tell him that there was a boy his own age arriving soon.

Bodvars wife arrived next. She was much younger than he. She was taller than him too. She had long dark hair and wore a bunch of keys dangling from her belt just as Hana did. Lamb's heart sank when he saw that the only children with her were a girl of about six summers and a fat moon-faced boy who kept crying and clinging to the woman's dress.

She seemed to find fault with everything and everybody and hit the little girl many times, shouting at her “Get out of my way stupid girl”. Lamb noticed that she didn't seem to mind the small fat fingered boy swinging from her skirts all the time. Bodvar seemed not to notice anything, he was busy unloading the little cart and chatting to Olaf, who was helping unload a heavy chest with a big iron lock. Lamb was watching Bodvar and Olaf carry the heavy box into the house when the woman thrust a basket lined with straw and full of carefully packed cooking pots at him.

“Here Boy, take these into the house and hang them on the wooden pegs near the fire.” she barked. Lamb almost jumped at her abruptness, but still he carefully carried the basket into the house and began to hang the pots on the pegs.

He was just reaching into the basket for another pot to hang when he spied the little girl shyly watching him from behind the chest Bodvar and his father had carried inside. He smiled at her.

“Hello, I'm Lamb. What's you're name?” he asked.

“Asta” she replied shyly.

Just then the woman bustled inside, depositing another basket of pots at Lamb's feet.

“Aren't you finished with those yet?” she barked. “ Here's some more for when you are. And you, stupid girl, what are you doing. If you're not helping get out of the way”

“She can help me” piped Lamb. The woman gave him a sharp stare, then turned and left the house with a humphf. Lamb decided he did not like this woman moving into the house that he built.

Lamb had just resolved to leave and was about to wander, disheartened back to his home next door when another small cart arrived. To his surprise, the rickety wooden contraption was driven by a freckle faced boy with sandy coloured hair. He seemed to be almost as many summers as Lamb. When he saw Lamb, the boy broke into a wide grin. The woman came out of the house and began to scream at him.

“What took you so long, stupid boy, you should have been her hours ago.”

His grin disappeared as he got down from the cart wearily. The woman was still shouting at him, telling him to hurry up. The boy seemed somehow used to it and turned his back to her, making like he was busily adjusting the cart. She continued to berate him for a few moments more, before throwing her hands into the air in an exaggerated gesture and stomping back into the building that was now to be her home.

The boy went to the rear of the little rickety wooden cart and began to try and get almost the fattest pig Lamb had ever seen to jump down from it.

“Stubborn porker” said the boy, slapping the animal hard on the rump.

The animal grunted, but still the pig didn't budge from the cart.

“Want some help?'” Lamb offered.

“Sure” said the boy “Here, you hold this while I give her a whack.” He handed Lamb one end of a thick hand twisted rope and tied the other end around the pigs body behind it's front legs and up over its shoulders.

Lamb tried to help, holding the rope and pulling while the boy hit at the animals rump with a stick. The pig wasn't budging, or so it seemed. Lamb pulled until he felt his arms would wrench from his shoulders and the boy smacked the pigs back end harder with the stick until it let out a shrill squeal and kicked at him. But still the animal was making no effort to move forward and down off the cart. They were about to give in and leave the pig in the cart, when suddenly it seemed to fly like a bird over the side of the wooden cart and took off down the street.

Taken by surprise, Lamb slipped, and still holding the pigs rope was dragged behind the fleeing animal.

Not thinking to let go of the rope, Lamb was sure his arms were about to be pulled from their sockets. Olaf had once told him the story of how his Uncle had lost his left arm on a raid, and how the blood had squirted clear across the battlefield hitting the King in the right eye making it blind.

Sliding along the ground with the pig's bottom bouncing along in front of him, he had visions of his crimson blood spurting in long ribbons across the village and clear to the sea. Then almost as suddenly as the pig had taken flight, it stopped.

Lamb stood dazed for a moment, rubbing each shoulder making sure his arms were still firmly attached. The boy ran up behind him and grabbed the pig's rope before it could flee again.

“Are you all right?” he asked Lamb.

“I think so” Lamb replied.

“Who stopped the pig?” asked the boy.

“I don't know” said Lamb.

The pig had stopped as abruptly as it had taken flight, and in his surprised state, Lamb had neglected to see who had stopped the pig in full flight. Both boys looked around them. There was no one in sight, save the ragged ginger cat, who sat in the sunshine absently licking one patchy paw and dragging it lazily across his ears. He stopped for a moment and regarded the two boys and the now quiet pig with only a slight interest, gave a wide crooked toothed yawn, changed paws and resumed his half hearted grooming.

“I didn't see anyone” said Lamb “Maybe she just decided she'd had enough”

The boy studied him skeptically, then gave a shrug. “Maybe she had. By the way, my name's Mord”

“I'm Lamb.” Lamb replied.

“Looks like you went through someones chicken pen.” Mord giggled. “You're covered in chicken shit”

“Yuk” said Lamb trying to brush himself down. “ Oh well, at least it's not pig shit”

Both boys laughed and began walking, or rather pulling, the pig back to Mord's house.

They locked the pig into her new sty at the rear of the house and she flopped down with a contented grunt. The two boys said their goodbyes and made plans to meet the next morning, Lamb promising to show Mord around the village. This time without a pig as chaperone.

As Lamb ambled next door for his evening meal, he felt almost as contented as that pig in her new sty. He had found a new friend, and he was living in the house that Lamb built.