Historical Setting: 793 C.E. Skåne
I am a man with no wealth no trunk or coin, or even a shirt to keep in the trunk that I don’t have. I make myself a rower’s seat — something like a milking stool — a driftwood plank propped with a single vertical cut of a log.
“Emil,” he says his name is. We are opposite oars. He has the bench-trunk on the port side and I’m starboard. He acknowledges my presence here with his gaze – silent — intense, from the top of my head to my feet. His eyes welcome no stranger.
“Laz.” I answer. He makes the silence gaping between us, maybe expecting me to fill it. “It’s short for a name from a gospel.”
“A what?”
“Christian scriptures.”
“You’re Christian?”
I have so little knowledge of this time and place where I am, that I can’t even guess what that means to him. Does Christian make me holy, or hostile? It seems I am the one who doesn’t know what a Christian is. I try to give us space by distancing the “Christian” part of my name.
“I was given my name from an ancient tradition.”
The coxswain is right behind me at the tiller. His voice can still the roar of the sea. In a calm harbor his order “oars-up” reverberates through all Creation. The tiller is set turning the prow against the current as we cast off. He signals and we start the row in unison. [Footnote]
We follow a channel passing by the little house with no door, and that now seems far away and uninhabited on a rocky outcropping as this ship passes it by.
Out of the rivers, onto the sea, then we turn northward following the coast. Along this shore line the hills rise ever higher from the sea edge, and each river we pass cuts a deeper wall into the rounded slopes.
The wind is against us on the open waters. Forever and in this future time where we are, sailors set their sheets to caress the winds and nudge the helpful part of the push. But with rowers, our coxswain doesn’t even choose to set the sail. This ship slides through the waters swiftly and silently using only oars. Faster than the drag of oar, it is the lift of the oar that requires a deft rower. In fact, this ship is not like a currach or knarr or any other variety of boat to be dragged through the water by mere human strength.
[Footnote] Study of these ships by modern archeologists is well documented and available for one’s imagination to spin into stories. Basic information on ships is at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viking_ship retrieved 12-22-2024. One site provided a documented journey of a restored ship but was not up and running at the time of this preparation. Hopefully it will be available another day.
(Continues tomorrow)
Lazarus Ink 