Historical Setting: 793 C.E. Mooring at The North Sea
We are gathering ships and men for a journey at sea. It seems to require lots of preparation and lots of waiting. I ask Gunnar what he knows of this.
“We’ve all seen it and felt it. The gods are restless and the time is right. A year of drought, hardly a winter, and now, even the spring softens dry. Our food stores have dwindled. Some have seen the Christian hoards on the islands across the sea and a raid would be rich.”
This morning heaps of gray weather clouds are stuffed into the mouth of the west wind, suffocating this birthing of springtime. So, the winds come hard over the waters but void of rain. Straight winds rile the waters to roaring rolling waves, tossing these ships at their moorings. Every man is needed to pull the ships onto logs and drag them up the shore into the spiky grasses that came through the winter in place. We work in the grit and the grain and the misty salt sea wind to rescue these ships, even the one that was just newly added. Do we expect these frail craft we are trying to save now, to rescue us in the next great wind on this sea? This harbor is sheltered from the worst of the gale. But “shelter” is relative.
You might expect such a storm as this to be rich in rain, but they say the kind of rain that breaks the drought must have fallen on the other side of the sky. We can all speculate as to the exact location of the “other side of the sky.” Some wonder aloud if that is the great hall of Valhalla, where the heroes and ancient gods dine on the lush hunts and harvests that this “side of the sky” fails to yield in these times of drought. Each living man sharpens his blade making a plan for either riches here, or admittance there.
I would suppose somewhere in another place, maybe that rich island across the sea they speak of, Christians are thinking of a heaven as a place just beyond the clouds. Maybe there are layers of places. No one living, not even me with my oddity of life and life again has seen this heaven as a place in the beyond for the dead to celebrate their goodness in life. If you ask a Christian to describe this, they might not have a banquet hall for war heroes, but they will tell you of clouds and warring angels.
(Continues Tuesday, May 20)
Lazarus Ink 