Odinn's Child by Tim Severin Read Free Book Online Page A

ship for the voyage.
    By a remarkable coincidence he was on his way back from that trip even as Thorir's knorr shattered on the skerry. He was at the helm, battling a headwind and steering so hard on the wind that one of his crew, drenched by the resulting spray, complained, 'Can't we steer more broad?' Leif was peering ahead for his first glimpse of the Greenland coastline. 'There's a current from the north setting us more southerly than I like,' he replied. 'We'll keep this course for a little longer. We can ease the sheets once we are closer to land.'
    Some time later another crew member called out a warning that he could see skerries ahead. 'I know,' Leif replied, relying on that phenomenal eyesight. 'I've been watching them for a while now and there seems to be something on one of the islands.' The rest of his crew, who had been curled up on deck to keep out of the wind, scrambled to their feet and peered forward. They could see the low black humps of the islands, but no one else could make out the tiny dark patch that my father could already discern. It was the roof of our makeshift shelter. My father, as I have said, was a hard man to dissuade, and the crew knew better than to try to make him alter course. So the ship headed onwards towards the skerry, and half an hour later everyone aboard could make out the little band of castaways, standing up and waving scraps of cloth tied to sticks. To them it seemed a miracle, and if the story was not told to me hundreds of times when I was growing up in Brattahlid, I would scarcely believe the coincidence - a shipwreck in the path of a vessel commanded by a man with remarkable eyesight and sailing on a track not used for fourteen years. It was this good fortune which earned Leif his nickname 'Heppni', the 'Lucky', though it was really the sixteen castaways who were the lucky ones.
    Expertly Leif brought his vessel into the lee of the skerry, dropped anchor and launched the small rowboat from the deck. The man who jumped into the little boat to help row was to have a significant part in my later life — Tyrkir the German - and I think it was because he was my rescuer that Tyrkir kept such a close eye on me as I grew up. Tyrkir was to become my first, and in some ways most important, tutor in the Old Ways, and it was under Tyrkir's guidance that I made my first steps along the path that would eventually lead me to my devotion to Odinn the All-Father. But I will come to that later.
    'Who are you and where are you from?' Leif shouted as he and Tyrkir rowed closer to the bedraggled band of castaways standing on the edge of the rocks. They backed water with the oars, keeping a safe distance. The last thing my father wanted was to take aboard a band of desperate ruffians who, having lost their ship, might seize his own.
    'We're from Norway, out of Iceland, and were headed for Brattahlid when we ran on this reef,' Thorir called back. 'My name is Thorir and I'm the captain as well as the owner. I am a peaceful trader.' Tyrkir and Leif relaxed. Thorir's name was known and he was considered to be an honest man.
    'Then I invite you to my ship,' called Leif, 'and afterwards to my home, where you will be taken good care of.' He and Tyrkir spun the little rowing boat around and brought her stern first toward the rocks. The first person to scramble aboard was Gudrid and tucked under one arm was the two-year-old boy child she had promised Thorgunna she would deliver to his father. So it happened that Leif the Lucky unwittingly rescued his own illegitimate son.

    L EIF'S WIFE, G YDA , was not at all pleased to learn that the toddler Thorgils, saved from the sea, was the result of a brief affair between her husband and some middle-aged Orcadian woman. She refused to take me under her roof. She already had the example of her father-in-law's bastard child as a warning. My aunt Freydis, then in her late teens, was the illegitimate daughter of Erik and lived with the Erikssons. She was an