Historical Setting: 793 C.E. Jutland
“Don’t you have to be back soon? It seems we’ve already come a long way and you must have obligations.”
She takes a long swallow from the skin of wine strung across her shoulder, and answers, “no.”
This village seiðr has brought me to a land that would end here at the sea, but she tells me she can’t answer my questions about the love loss here until I understand the sorrow that has come to all these places; and for that, we need to travel on.
“The sailors will come soon and take us across to the other lands.”
I don’t see sailors or these “other lands.” Looking across the water it seems open sea all the way to the horizon. I wonder if her trust in sailors showing up is a seer’s mystical vision or if she knows something earthly.
She answers my unspoken question.
“It is the west wind that carries these ships back to their home ports. It takes oarsmen to bring them over to this shore, against this wind. So, if the ships from the lands to the east are here, it’s only because there are oarsmen who brought them over rowing against the prevailing winds and very soon, they will sail back on a more reliable wind.”
Of course. Ships sailing on westerlies is nothing mystical. And engravings on rocks are barely mythical. I think it is this magical presence of her that gives mystery to the hero stories, as well prophecies of ships which empowers everything she says with omniscience. She even has power over time, so that the now, where we are, is always wrapped in a rune that she can call forth into a story of once upon a time. That same timeless now is this waiting time for the inevitable to unfold and make her prediction of a ship true. Her magical powers then, are wrought in the waiting, the silence, the spreading of time beyond its boundaries. The magic here is simply created out of patience.
So it isn’t really magic. It is dependable and normal, like catching a west wind. In Christian, the waiting in silence is the stillness where prayers are unstrung and heard. The timelessness is God’s own answering space.
Dear God, thank you for offering the brilliance of cold sunshine on the seas and shores of this land. But why are the people of this wondrous place so deeply grieving and raging? Please guide me to see through the hurt to the love. Amen.
(Continues tomorrow)
Lazarus Ink 