#64.11, Thursday, January 23, 2025

Historical Setting: 789 C.E. Jutland
 

With fire only embers now, the “seiðr” sops up the last of the juices with a broken crust and takes a long guzzle from the horn of beer then speaks.

         She spins a yarn, layer upon layer, starting with a boy with special powers that allow him to change his shape from one thing into another, like a caterpillar into a butterfly. But this story takes an imaginative tour through all of creation.

         I’m only beginning to learn this language, but I know from the sound of her voice and response from the gathered, that this protagonist wandered into a dark place amid shadows with strange creatures lurking. Or maybe it is his imagination making the lurking presence fearsome. I’m missing the subtleties. In fact, not understanding the language leaves me wondering.  I believe the boy changes himself into an owl that can see through the darkness and rise above the mayhem. Then, this essence of boy becomes the mouse that escapes an owl’s grasp. I wonder why he didn’t become an eagle, and simply snatch the owl from the sky.  There are so many things appearing and reappearing as the story is woven.  But somehow, knowing the language might help make sense of the motivation for all these shape changes. At least I would understand some reason for the fears that send this ever-transforming essence of character into new dangers, requiring even more new transitions. [footnote]

         Marian is sitting at the feet of the storyteller, shaped, as she is, into an avid listener to this tale. She isn’t about to step out of the storyteller’s spell just to translate it for me and answer my questions. So, I just do the best I can knowing only a few words here and there that tell me lots of the who’s and what’s but nothing of the why. Does this strange fantasy even have a reason?

         The embers are low and offer no heat now, so I glance over at the fellow who told me not to add a log, wondering if it’s time for another log. Apparently, the story has gone on long enough that everyone is cold and tired and some are leaving, and the essence of boy transfigures into a human again.  Those who stayed awake for the ending offer up a polite cheer of approval. But mostly they just wander off — everyone but Marian and me.

[footnote] shape changers stories are common in Celtic and Nordic Tales. (2019 Chronical books, L.C.C., Nordic Tales illustrated by Ulla Thynell)

(Continues Tuesday, January 28, 2025)

#64.10, Wednesday, January 22, 2025

Historical Setting: 789 C.E. Jutland
 

I have questions. When a people pull themselves into community after a devastation — a war or a famine – it happens with plague — anything that selectively removes a generation from the population — taking all of the children from families — or taking all of its young men — or leaving no old people watching and knowing. It happens that the survivors of a mass destruction of a generation aren’t grouped as families but as winners and grievers. I’ve seen this happen with plague and wars. I’ve seen it when the strong, able-bodied people in that life-stage between vulnerable child, and waning elder, sail away to trade goods, or raid villages, or win wars. They are striving to gain whatever it is that fills the emptiness in the loss of belonging in family.

         I’ve seen it before. And it happens again and again.  Even in a wolf pack, one little brother leaves a fine family of wolves to go off and become something more, and there is a loss in valuing all ages until new pups grow to meet the missing age. Then in another turn these become the elders.

         So why does this village have so few women and rarely a child, and these they do have are mostly slaves brought from other places? Why is conversation with children artificial and meaningless and conversation with elders avoided altogether? Something was lost from these people. The reason for the loss is a mystery to me, but the remnants of this loss of family show as a community ruled mostly by brutal men striving for the win. Love bonds seem frivolous, and love itself is misunderstood to be a lurid trick or obsession.

         Everyone gathers around the fire. I would add a log, but a fellow mumbles in his language, then takes the log from my hands and pitches it back onto the wood pile. I understand this is the time for embers.

         Marian told me, when the village gathers for the feast, maybe then the seiðr will come out and tell the stories. A brass plate is passed around the table collecting leftovers as though a platter is prepared to serve a royal. And here she is now, a pale northern woman with eastern eyes, straight statured, amply filling abundant robes. Her long silver locks spread on the wind like the feathered wings of seabirds giving her a near mythical halo. Her matriarchal presence answers the yearning of these people, the mother to this lost family. She is served the brass plate of food as people gather to listen.

(Continues tomorrow)

#seiðr, #storyteller, #lost family, #matriarch, #family function, #population devastation,

#64.9, Tuesday, January 21, 2025

Historical Setting: 789 C.E. Jutland

         That misunderstanding of Marian’s freedom or enslavement seems rooted in a common misconception having very little to do with freedom and slavery. In the case of a child and an old man, this perception of them as less than human is all about agism. Sometimes there seem to be only four stages of life, not counting dead: 1st Infant, 2nd, Child, then some amorphous stage which seems to be the ruling class, and 4th Old. According to the fallacies of this 3rd stage, in this nondescript life stage known as adulthood, a child is a thing and not a life stage, and old is always a lame curmudgeon, also, not really the same as a human.

         That would be an easy assumption if the world were peopled with time travelers such as I am, always healing back to life as a man in his thirties.  But I’m not the vanguard of an ageless reality.  I am simply a sign, a literary device, a creation of human imagination invented to reveal the history of us. It is only by human imagination that a man could live throughout time, always as thirty something. The human error, common, even among human beings who themselves are passing through these stages of life, is to think childhood is a permanent condition and old age is always someone else’s swan song. But the truth is, all living beings are moving through predictable phases of life. Trees, frogs, birds, bugs, even flowers have their season.  The same person who is old now, was once a child. But agism causes the same person who is in this random state of adulthood, to see children and elders as a different species altogether. And that, too, is a fantasy of human imagination — a fantasy, though it happens in real life.

         It is only by the good fortune of life continuing, that oldness can become half again as long as a whole lifetime.

         So how is it that a whole culture becomes agist? How do we lose sight of the value of children and the usefulness of old people? It is obvious to me, having recently lived in a wolf pack. This disrespect for life stages happens when people are not living in complete families. They’ve been organized by purpose, not family.

         So, I wonder, what happened in this north land that cost this whole culture their empathy for the seasons of life.

(Continues tomorrow)


#64.8, Thursday, January 16, 2025

Historical Setting: 789 C.E. Jutland
 

         There is a lot I don’t know about where I am.

         Apparently, after the raids on northern river towns of Gaul, all that is left of the villages I once knew are these captives. Since the thralls here speak familiar languages and these masters do not, I take my questions to the slaves. I know the shortness of daylight so I know it is the solstice, but I don’t know the names for the gods. I asked Marian and she tells me these gods are bigger and louder than the Christian God with the Jesus on the cross. And they are always whining and fussing about honor and power, demanding sacrifices of mortals and otherwise ignoring the humankinds. Marian can find no connection at all with this and a crucified God. But, she explains, that if I really want to know how to speak to these gods I will have to go to the seiðr, and she is the one who would also know if there are any scribes here doing any writing. Marian promises to take me to this seiðr after the feast is done. She tells me the seiðr will tell stories in the circle tonight. So when the drinking horns are emptied, everyone will gather around the fire to listen to her.

         “Mostly people already know the stories, so when they come to listen, they will wait for the places in the stories for the shouts and hisses. But when you hear the stories for the first time, you might not know what it is about.” 

         “Will you translate the stories for me?”

         She giggles, “Of course I can’t do that. People don’t talk during the story time, unless everyone is supposed to be making the same noise.”

         “Of course.”

         In the end the abundance overflows the boundaries of station. Late into the feast this night no one is making anymore plans to distribute so much moose meat. My arms have a long reach to get whatever I want, and if I’ve made any enemies of these people they’ve forgotten already, so I can enjoy the abundance of it all. In fact, the horn of beer for the master’s circle is handed to me often now.

Everyone is taking from the board yet the dwindling morsels are still delicious. The stews of dried apples and pears are nearly boiled away to sugar, perfect sweetness for dipping the breads. And cheeses are still plentiful. Everyone, Christian, Pagan, thralls, all are well-fed this night.

(Continues Tuesday, January 21, 2025)

#64.7, Wednesday, January 15, 2025

Historical Setting: 789 C.E. Jutland

         Apparently, Marian’s value as a slave has soared by her ability in bread baking, and a woman here, among the masters is willing to battle for her.

         “Marian,” I speak to her in our language, “If you want to be the cook in this woman’s house, tell her the smiðr will need someone in his house; a trade is better than a fight.”

         Slave trade is the business of the masters and not of slaves themselves.  But in this case this child was cast off, or “gifted” to the old man maybe in gratitude for years of work. Or maybe gifting a child slave is a way of dealing with elders who would otherwise be alone. She wasn’t marketed as a thrall. But apparently, the gifting arrangement was temporary. Little Marian, orphaned in the raid, was only loaned to the cantankerous old man. Now he is older and more needy and the child is wiser, and the masters are taking her back as a marketable commodity. A new owner is claiming her. The woman claiming her assumes Marian is a mindless puppet gesturing to the little girl as though she were not even a human person. Her treatment in a house where she is needed has led Marian to think she bakes bread and keeps the house and makes the meals, not as a slave, but by her own choice to meet a need.

         Of course, I’m also a stranger to this communal slave ownership so I simply ignore these rules of ownership, as Marian has done. And I guess I am guilty of giving her the advice to simply behave as a free person. That seems to work for me, or maybe if put to the test, I may not have the freedom I thought I had either.

         Marian tells me in our language, this woman is known as a mean master and she doesn’t want to go with her. I suggested Marian could teach other thrall her bread making if she could be allowed to stay where she is, which would appease the dagger wielding smiðr who seems willing to fight to defend his property. And it would allow Marian to participate with others, freely as she does anyway, offering her own traditions and gifts.

         My prayer is in the language of silence, just between me and God. Dear God, thank you for teaching me my freedom as a human within Creation is granted as choices from first light. Help me always notice and value the choices that come with freedom.  Amen.

(Continues tomorrow)

#64.6, Tuesday, January 14, 2025

Historical Setting: 789 C.E. Jutland

         The hollowed horns of cow are passed around among those seated at the board filled with a beverage. Shaped, as they are, the horns can’t be set down on the board while filled, so they are guzzled then passed along to the next and all around the table, until they are nearly empty enough to set down without wasting any beer, but then they are filled again.

         Here, seated at the board, are the fellows with the sled and the chain I was wrapped in for nearly a night. They seem not even to recognize me now as that man.  I was pretty sure all they really cared about was the chain and I did set that free for them. Maybe not knowing how a stranger came to this table now, one of these fellows invites me to sit with them. My new host insists I share in the beverage as the horn is passed.  I find that it is a strong beer in that horn, at least at the first passing around the board.

         Still new to this language, I have no idea what the conversation is about at this table but as the evening wears on I see it might be about trading slaves.

         At the masters’ table the few of the women and, once in a while a man also, will rise and go to the place where the thralls are seated. One or two of the thralls are selected and called out from the group to be “inspected.” The masters seem to be negotiating buys and trades of these captives even within this village.

         A few more rounds, and now the keg is brimmed up with well water, so I suppose this feast is drawing to a close.

         One woman has taken a piece of Marian’s fine braid of bread over to the thrall line, and she picks out Marian, using no words, only lots of pointing and gestures, assuming Marian doesn’t know the dialect here. It is easy to see she is telling Marian the bread is delicious.  Had she spoken to Marian, who does know the language, it might not have caught the attention of the elder smiðr Marian looks after. It seems we all know what this woman is proposing here, and the smiðr of our household, tipsy on beers as he is, goes to the woman with his dagger drawn. Apparently, our smiðr and this woman are willing to bleed over the possession of a child slave.

(Continues tomorrow)


#64.5, Thursday, January 9, 2025

Historical Setting: 789 C.E. Jutland

         This place is not Christian and the feast we are preparing will be celebrating the solstice. The moose that fell into the pit provides plenty of meat. The moose is roasting over the embers of a huge central bonfire with breads rising on every hearth in the cluster of dwellings. Now the board is spread with all this abundance.  — heaps of breads, nuts and apples in bowls. The house that sends the milkmaid to the shed each night provides cheese; and where gardens were planted last spring, the root cellars are tapped for the winter stores of vegetables to make a very fine feast for celebrating longer days to come. Here is a pair of hollow bovine horns, and a large keg of beer.

         As people gather, the celebration has chanting and ritual, maybe prayers, rough and shouted. They definitely are not the tepid prayers of obedient monks to a god whose heroes are often martyrs and not always winners. These are the songs of warriors. I only know that from the sound of it. And maybe I’m hearing enough repetitions to catch some meanings.

         I’m looking for my place among these people.  The men are at the benches around the board and they seem not to reject me, only to ignore me. Already the bones of the beast are showing through the gnawed meats of moose.

         The outer circle at the feast is where the thralls find their places. And though I’m not actually a slave, I’ve decided to choose my place among them. Most here are women captured from their villages. The one I called Mara told me these people are marauders who came up from the waters and attack the Gaulish villages, murdering the men, plundering the riches, and capturing the women for the slave market. Mara was terrified of me when we were chained in that hovel. All she knew was my gender and my language and when I gave her the option for freedom, she chose to be owned by her captors instead. I can see here, that these marauders, first to eat, include the few women of their own people as the inner circle of masters. It is not a Roman feast where those at the table are only the men. Yet in Roman style, it is sons without beards and women slaves who stand aside until the inner circle has their fill.

         I have so many questions.

(Continues Tuesday, January 14, 2025)


#64.4, Wednesday, January 8, 2025

Historical Setting: 789 C.E. Jutland

Mostly I’ve been hauling and stacking logs for the feast. Day’s end, I return to the house of the smiðr with a load of thick hardwood for a hot fire and having seen the shipyard I can understand a purpose in this man’s work.

         I ask the child thrall, Marian, who shares my language, “Having seen this art all around here, I am wondering what there is of writing? Who are the readers and the scribes here?”

         “What are scribes?”

         “Scribes are like Christian monks, smiðr maybe, who copy the scriptures.”

         Marian was probably raised Christian, so she might know what I’m talking about. Finding written pages would relieve my fears, even in this language I have yet to learn. I have a dread that this future world where I find myself leaves nothing written anymore. Is it odd to fear a future without writing?

         I ask her, “where is reading and writing done here?”

         “These people aren’t Christian here.” She answers.

         “And yet the art and the designs on all sorts of things appear to me like the illuminations on manuscripts.”

         “All that writing would make it Christian and I just said they aren’t Christian here.”

         Maybe my questioning is confusing because Marian seems to think that the difference between pagan and Christian is simply that Christian has the written word and pagan only uses the illuminations.

         I ask again, “For me, this is a new time and a lost place. I was hoping there would be someone very old who might remember written language?”

         Apparently, Marian has no idea of the distinctions between old Christian and new pagan, but she does recognize my confusion and believes it can be met with a visit to a seiðr. She says, “but that will have to wait until after the feast.”

         “Of course.”

         The last bundle of logs I hauled for the day I delivered to this house because the old man is feeling especially cold today. Even though I’ve just filled the log bin he calls for me, “Heitzman! More heat!” It doesn’t even need translating, when he uses that title in my old language.

         He just sits in that chair by the window grasping each second of daylight. No wonder he’s constantly cold. If I stir the fire into a huge blaze, it will make Marian’s baking uneven and scald the soup and he will still be cold.

(Continues tomorrow)

#64.3, Tuesday, January 7, 2025

Historical Setting: 789 C.E. Jutland
 

Straying from collecting of firewood, I’ve wandered into a shipyard just north of the houses. No one is here. I suppose there are more of these artists working inside these houses.  And now I find plenty of wood stacked on the scrap piles maybe set aside for the burn, so why do I work so hard bringing fallen logs to the fire pit? 

         On closer look I wonder, maybe these aren’t scrap piles at all. Maybe these cut and planned pieces of hardwoods are here for the artists to use for the detailed carving projects yet to be started. I guess it would be thoughtful of me not to throw these onto the burn pile. What seems scrap to one man, might already be a great work in an artist’s imagination.

         And here is the purpose for the work of the smiðr. Each ship being built has lap strake of oak with the same curve as the wood piece the smiðr carves to make an elegant top edge. And each ship requires the art.

         This village is much larger than I first thought. I wonder how many more artists are working with a monks’ intensity to use what there is of winter’s light to chip away the art?

Every useful tool, even the sled that I followed here displays designs with details of knots and repetitious borders mingled with monsters and mazes. In these years that are lost to me the world apparently has become obsessed with finely made edges and trimmings.

         At first, I thought this was simply one smiðr’s obsession.  My imagination spun up stories of the smiðr coming from the Island of Columbanus, maybe as a slave, or a captured monk, an artisan with the inks but having no vellum here for his letters, he used the blade to make the details of the borders that would have been done to a manuscript. So, I invented a story in my imagination to account for the similarity of the carving to the manuscripts known among the monks.

         It could have been. But maybe it went the other way. Maybe these pagans, worshippers of different gods went to the Irish islands to live among the monks, thus the artwork with pagan images oozed its way onto the liturgical documents giving dark beauty to everything it touched. Who would know the order of the history of this?

(Continues tomorrow)

#64.2, Thursday, January 2, 2025

Historical Setting: 789 C.E. Jutland

Dear God, All day I did the rote collecting of wood, walking, mindless work, releasing the bonds of earth in repetitious devotion. Thank you.

         I’ve been stacking logs at the hearth in this little house of the wood carver intensely devoted to his work.

Now my task is to bring many more fallen trees from the forest for a village bon fire to celebrate Solstice.

         Marian, a child, and the smiðr’s slave from Gaul, prepares the bread as this house’s contribution to the feast. It’s braided as was the tradition in my own home many centuries past.  I was thinking that the only things that could be saved throughout the generations were made of iron and stone, but this child knows a tradition for braiding a loaf of bread that comes from a well of history, maybe never written, but always known. She, herself, probably doesn’t know the long root. But she still makes the bread. Like tangible heirlooms, traditions pass through generations uncounted by time.

         I continue laying firewood at the fire pit on the shore near another cluster of houses to the north.  These logs are burdened with the dampness of the winter. It will be a smokey fire but long burning.

          After every heap of logs I drop, I take a stretch to remind my shoulders and back there is more joy in being human than simple work.  It feels good to stretch these new muscles and to stretch my imagination to encompass the whole view of this sea coast from this point of land – all so beautiful in its winter glaze and brilliant azure sky.

         Resting a moment, I take a stroll further to the north and here I see a whole shipyard. One ship, complete with mast and oars, is moored in this bay and others are in various stages of construction. These look very much like ships the Wends were using to ferry our horses over the river those years ago when I traveled with my son and his partner. The boats had a solid keel that could support a mast but were made to navigate rivers then portage over land.  This ship is longer with a slightly deeper keel, maybe suited for sea travel. It has more elegant lines as so much attention is given the detail of the art.  Could art be tradition?

(Continues Tuesday, January 7, 2025)