Historical Setting: 793 C.E. Jutland
Apparently, in this strange new world where I find myself, the only known virtue is power and that can only be kept in check by something that can be chipped into monuments – honor.
For me, I’m always learning new ways and now that I’m in a new world and new time I’m groping for any connection with the past as a link to this new reality. I always try to connect the new with the known. But this kind of perception requires stretching my imagination around old things and that doesn’t please the seiðr who is only interested in showing me the differences between what I once knew and what I have yet to learn. And she just keeps noticing the “Christian” in my thinking not even because of the Jesus things – the love laws — but in my erroneous conclusions about a god she wants to show me. “Christian” is my notion that goodness is a feature of a creator god. Now I fear there is no imagination at all for a loving God in this new, warring world. I was apparently wrong in grasping for a metaphorical Rome, where, in another time, I had already witnessed the Jesus love message getting crucified then skewed into war chants by Rome.
We walk back toward the sea now and follow a road that seems well-traveled. A gentle climb onto a ridge over-looks the sea. Here in this prominent place is a brightly painted runestone. The artist or the scribe laid the runes between two lines that look like the tracks of a sled meandering a twisty path to suit the contours of the stone itself. In my imagination the runes are the footprints of the beast towing the sled.
The fingers of the seiðr touch each carved line as tenderly as a mother’s hand touches the lips of a child, speaking secrets.
She reads it to me. “First, we know who honored him and had this stone made. Here, they were two of his fellow warriors. He fought to the death to save these companions who honored the king, so he died a hero, and his companions assume he is now honored in the great hall of Valhǫll, (Valhalla). That is the great reward and comfort for all hero warriors.”
“You won’t find me making Christian connections to that.”
She must know something of Christianity, as practiced in a Roman world, to think that was a sarcastic remark, but I really didn’t mean it so.
(Continues tomorrow)
Lazarus Ink 