Historical Setting: 793 C.E. Skåne
“So, how do Christians determine winners in games and wars when the object isn’t simply to be the last man standing?”
I think the seiðr is asking a serious question of Christians. In her world, simply the fallacy of scarcity can completely upend the nature of family and turn men into marauders, ravaging villages for no good cause but blatant greed. They’ve let greed-think rule their world. In these Norsemen ways winning is everything.
In Jesus’ way, love is everything. But as long as only war heroes are welcomed to Valhalla and as long as the practices of life for people are only about attaining wealth and singular achievement, as long as art and music only honor the artist and not the choirs singing and the awe of children, these pagan ways will never understand what Jesus was teaching. So, what will Christians do when they come to this land to make it over for their own religion? I’m only left with more questions.
The seiðr asks me if I can better understand this tragedy of the Norsemen now. Shear greed and sanctity of selfishness may explain why marauders murder the men, but it doesn’t answer why the women left living here were mostly those captured to be enslaved. And here children are rare. I seem to have missed the meaning of the house without a door.
“So, what is the meaning of this ruin of a house?” I ask.
“It could have been my house. My real mother believed it was a place for putting out a girl child. And, when I was an infant to be set out for “exposure” instead of stuffing a cloth in my mouth, as was usually done, the pretend breast in my mouth to stifle cries was my mother’s own jade pendant. When the north winds came into the door place it was supposed to take my life-breath. It was how it was done. [Footnote]
“Likely, my father was a Norsemen raider and my mother was thrall stolen from a wealthy home in the eastern lands.
“But when I was put out, the cold winds didn’t come – they didn’t blow from the west or the north so the oarsmen came here, stopping, waiting for the change in the winds and here they found me with the precious carved stone in my mouth and believed that meant I was destined to be a magical seiðr. So, I was saved by them.
[Footnote] https://www.medievalists.net/2011/08/selective-female-infanticide-as-partial-explanation-for-the-dearth-of-women-in-Norsemen-age-scandinavia/ retrieved 7-5-2024,
Violence and Society in the Early Medieval West, edited by Guy Halsall (Boydell, 1998)
(Continues Tuesday, March 18)
Lazarus Ink 