Historical Setting: 789 C.E. Jutland
I have questions. When a people pull themselves into community after a devastation — a war or a famine – it happens with plague — anything that selectively removes a generation from the population — taking all of the children from families — or taking all of its young men — or leaving no old people watching and knowing. It happens that the survivors of a mass destruction of a generation aren’t grouped as families but as winners and grievers. I’ve seen this happen with plague and wars. I’ve seen it when the strong, able-bodied people in that life-stage between vulnerable child, and waning elder, sail away to trade goods, or raid villages, or win wars. They are striving to gain whatever it is that fills the emptiness in the loss of belonging in family.
I’ve seen it before. And it happens again and again. Even in a wolf pack, one little brother leaves a fine family of wolves to go off and become something more, and there is a loss in valuing all ages until new pups grow to meet the missing age. Then in another turn these become the elders.
So why does this village have so few women and rarely a child, and these they do have are mostly slaves brought from other places? Why is conversation with children artificial and meaningless and conversation with elders avoided altogether? Something was lost from these people. The reason for the loss is a mystery to me, but the remnants of this loss of family show as a community ruled mostly by brutal men striving for the win. Love bonds seem frivolous, and love itself is misunderstood to be a lurid trick or obsession.
Everyone gathers around the fire. I would add a log, but a fellow mumbles in his language, then takes the log from my hands and pitches it back onto the wood pile. I understand this is the time for embers.
Marian told me, when the village gathers for the feast, maybe then the seiðr will come out and tell the stories. A brass plate is passed around the table collecting leftovers as though a platter is prepared to serve a royal. And here she is now, a pale northern woman with eastern eyes, straight statured, amply filling abundant robes. Her long silver locks spread on the wind like the feathered wings of seabirds giving her a near mythical halo. Her matriarchal presence answers the yearning of these people, the mother to this lost family. She is served the brass plate of food as people gather to listen.
(Continues tomorrow)
#seiðr, #storyteller, #lost family, #matriarch, #family function, #population devastation,
Lazarus Ink 