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𝒅𝒆𝒂𝒅 𝒃𝒂𝒍𝒍𝒐𝒐𝒏𝒔 ⎯⎯⎯ ( Freyja ). - Blog Posts
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Even given potential foreign influences, however, the fact that boars and herds of swine became memorialized in both narrative and placenames in Iceland undoubtedly reflects the sacrality of pigs as symbols of successful pioneering behaviours and reproduction. The Vanic associations of pigs extended both to nomenclature and to myths. In poetic diction, boars could be called vaningi (sons of the Vanir), while an epithet of Freyja was sýrr (sow).
Diet and Deities Contrastive Livelihoods and Animal Symbolism in Nordic Pre-Christian Religions by Thomas A. DuBois (via hyacinth-halcyon)
the forest one is my fav LIKE HOWD YA BLEND IT IN SOO ACCURATELY AAAAAA
Some doodles from the recent month
Silver Cup with depictions of the goddess Freya (1000 AD),
From the Viking hoard found in Lejre in 1850.
National Museum of Copenhagen, Denmark
Thralls of Skuld - Chapter 6: Eyes in the Sky
Read on Wattpad and AO3
After a night of scarce and fretful sleep, she sought out Geir. He had come to see her, briefly, when she was still bedridden, but she had not seen him since. Still in pain, the walk to Geir and Siv’s family house left her shaking and pale. When she sat down next to Geir on the wooden bench, there was a sheen of sweat on her brow, and her breathing was hard.
The house of the Geir was one of the largest in Eiklund. It had a well adorned boat-shaped oak exterior with carved wooden dragons on each end. Inside was a large central health and many benches and beds on either side. As the custom bid, four generations were living under Geir’s roof, all eating well thanks to Geir’s prowess as a warrior and subsequent investments in livestock.
Eira indicated with her eyes that what she was about to tell Geir was not for the ears of everyone.
Siv looked none too amused as Geir and Eira shuffled to the far end of the house to carry on their conversation in hushed tones. As they settled on a small bench, Eira began telling Geir what had happened the night before. The quiet that had taken hold of Geir since Svidland reigned for a few more moments, before he said “Strange things are happening in our time” to no one in particular.
Desperate to get back on the side of camaraderie with this sullen version of Geir, she pledged “Old friend, I need you to tell me your thoughts about all of this. I know you want to protect me, to protect everyone, and that is why you’re against it -”
Geir cut her off: “Eira, I’m not against it. At least not anymore. What Rolf said in Roskilde.. It has stuck with me,” he took a deep breath, as if admitting to a deep secret. “What if we could really have changed all those terrible things that have happened?” His eyes moved to his wife, before looking back at Eira, deep wells of dark grey water.
Eira bent her head, pulling at a loose thread in her tunic. Without looking back to the wells of Geir’s eyes, she said quietly: “The vølve also taught Unn seiðr. That’s how she saved Ulf’s boy last winter.”
Eira did not want to break the trust of her friend, but she knew this might sway Geir. She could not be alone in what she thought she might be getting herself into. Geir’s eyes glimmered more brightly now, ignited by her words, and Eira knew she had cast the right net. For Eira, she was driven by the deep injustice of some people being born to power while others were born to thralldom, both figuratively and literally. But for Geir, it was a sorrowful need for bargaining with the universe, and she had just presented him a way to do it.
“There’s a far leap between whatever happened in Svidland, and saving the lives of children. Maybe I can only wield destruction, and maybe Unn can only heal, who knows,” the words flowed quickly from Eira, now a bit frantic, thinking she had struck an ore of something in the rock that was Geir “But maybe there is more to it. We can all learn magick, that’s what the vølve said. At least that’s what I think she meant. Maybe we have all been beaten into submission for so long that we have been blind to the opportunities. Maybe Geir, just maybe, we have a chance of something that has not been bestowed upon anyone else in the memory of man, and I think we’d be as dumb as trolls if we do not see it through.”
Geir looked for a long moment at Eira’s imploring eyes. Then, the strained heaviness in the air lifted around them, as his face split into a toothy smile. “By the Gods Eira. I should think you are scared of me, the way you are pleading for your life. Calm down now. I agree with you.”
“You do?”
“I do.” He reached out to pat her knee awkwardly. “I think you should find out what the vølve is on about. Eira, you are woven from a different cloth than Unn, even than the rest of us. There’s a drive in you that the rest of us do not have, I have always seen it. I worry that you may have to pull the heaviest cart in this. You’re brave, I’ll give you that, but your impulsivity and your principles make you stupid.”
Eira scoffed, but submitted to a small smile. Where Geir had needed weeks of reflection to come to his conclusion, she had known from the moment she woke after the battle against the Geats, that she was going to pursue this. She had not dedicated much energy to consider the dangers of learning forbidden magick, in the same way Unn had when it had been bestowed upon her. Eira had simply propelled herself into it.
Geir’s silence had now been broken by the many thoughts he had undoubtedly harbored in the past many weeks. “Promise me you will do everything you can to keep this from the Jarl. It might not only catch up with you, but all of us. Ingmar is not a soft man. And do not pull anyone unwillingly into this. One bird chirps quieter than a hundred. You need to stay undetected until we know what is at stake. And who knows, maybe this is all a fluke. There is no need to lose your head before we know for certain.”
Eira nodded, although she knew that it was not a fluke. The vølve had given her a clear mission to find the magick around her, and she was brimming with ideas of how to do it. She stayed at Geir’s house for a little while longer, as they discussed in hushed tones the many opportunities that may be before them.
Naturally, she went to the vølve’s hut next. The low wooden structure was covered in turfing on the ceiling and outer walls, blending it completely into the tall grass around it. It had none of the typical adornments of most houses, yet there was a mystical air about it as she approached and realised that she had never been this close to the seeress’ hut.
As she stepped in the door, an odd darkness engulfed her. Unlike the airy longhouses made for socialization between family members, the vølve’s small hut was divided into even smaller sections by large pieces of dark, musty cloths hung from the walls. She entered into a small receiving room, furnished only with a small open fireplace with sleepy embers in the middle of the room and a few stools. When Eira knocked, the vølve had called for her to enter, but somehow seemed completely unaware that Eira was now standing in front of her. The pale woman was dressed in simple, dark robes and sat on the stamped earth floor in front of the embers, staring blankly ahead.
It was as if a large, soft fur had been laid over all of Eira’s senses, and the silence and darkness felt suffocating in the small space. She waited for a moment, shifting from one leg to another once, twice. Then she cleared her throat. Still, the vølve said nothing.
“I have thought about what you said yesterday,” Eira muttered through the thick air. “I would like for you to teach me.”
At this, the vølve’s eyes clipped to look directly into hers. It was the first time she had looked the odd woman in the eyes. They were like fog on bleak autumn mornings.
“I cannot teach you,” she declared.
“But you said-”
“I said you must look around.”
Where the vølve’s eyes the night before had danced in and out of Midgard, they were now overwhelmingly present on her. Eira had to avert her eyes, pretending to take in the hut around her, although she could barely see a thing.
“How in the nine realms am I supposed to learn on my own? Nobody can do that, not even those born to it.” she protested. Had the vølve truly sought her out, opening a door so significant, only to leave her no better off?
“To share my knowledge untethered with you will be to invite destruction upon all of us. There are eyes in the sky.”
Something about the vølve’s reluctance to say outright what she meant provoked Eira. Perhaps it was a tool of the trade, she thought, but she did not appreciate it. “You taught Unn!” she blurted her words accusingly. “Why is it different with me?”
“You will see eventually. Now you have to trust the world around you. Be quiet, and listen. Find the magick, it is there, I swear it to you.”
“Will you not even tell me how?”
“No.” the vølve said plainly. “Now leave me to my rumination.”
The seer looked back down into the embers before her, and seemed to almost fade into the darkness as she did. The suffocating air of the hut pushed Eira out.
Eira stomped away on the path back towards Eiklund. Her mission had been utterly unsuccessful, but something the vølve had said stuck in her mind. There are eyes in the sky. Looking back over her shoulder, she saw two large black birds circling above the hut.
…
Sól and Máni chased each other over the sky for days on end, as she tried to do as the vølve had told her.
She started with what she knew. She cast runes of Kenaz and Perthro again and again in a hundred different forms. Kenaz, the rune of knowledge and revelation of hidden truths, she had painted onto her skin in numerous variations, with both pigs blood and ink. She even carved it carefully with a small knife into her arm, although blood rituals were a darker kind of magick that she had never experimented with before. Perthro, the revealer of fate and the unknown, was carved into her floors, above her bed, on the amulet she wore constantly around her neck. She sang the galdr she knew, although the verses were meant for war, and she sometimes worried that if it worked, she might set her house on fire or worse. There was no need to worry. None of her efforts had revealed anything to her.
This was all the magick of the common people, warriors and old crones. Amulets and symbols, runes and song. It was not what she was looking for, and it yielded her nothing more than a hoarse voice, and maybe a number of enchanted objects or unintended curses that might backfire on her at a later time.
Next, she had sought out Unn, asking her to share what the vølve had taught her about seiðr. Unn yielded to do so, only after Eira had once again sworn herself to secrecy, a secrecy she had already broken. Unn admitted that she had indeed gone back to the vølve again several times, going at night until the early hours of the morning to avoid being seen by nosy neighbours.
What Unn taught Eira kept her engaged for days. The healing seiðr rituals were frightening and exhilarating at the same time. The galdr was long, breathy verses calling upon Eir and Freyja, less harsh than the galdr of battle spells, but somehow more forceful, more earnest. Yet far more fascinating was the act itself of drawing upon seiðr. When Unn had first explained it, it had made no sense: There should be a thread of hurt or malaide that could somehow be touched, pulled out of the suffering subject. Unn kept telling Eira over and over again to visualise it as they practiced the ritual on Eira’s own wound, and Eira kept failing. There was no thread, no unearthly manifestation of her wound.
They could not practice on anyone else, lest they give away their wrongdoings. So the two were bound to practice, repeating the same exercise until both their patience wore thin, their words short and snappy, and their familiarity with each other became a hindrance for progress.
Late one afternoon, Unn had been seated over her cauldron brewing herbal poultices, when Eira’s impatient complaints had overflowed her cup. Unn threw her arms at Eira, gnarling “By the Gods, your skull is thicker than a troll’s!” and accidentally tipping the cauldron to spill its boiling contents over her calf. Unn yelped loudly, her delicate features twisted in pain as the skin on her legs was scorched. Eira gasped when she lifted her dress.
The ugly sight of broiled skin ignited something in Eira, and she drew close to Unn, placing a calming hand on her knee to inspect the wound as she raised her voice in the healing galdr she had been taught. Unn flinched at her touch.
The adrenaline led her voice to a booming undulation as she lilted through the verses of galdr. Looking deeply into the wound, somehow she saw it. Not physically like a vision before her eyes or a change in the world before her. Instead, somehow, inside the physical world in front of her, she saw that something else was hidden. It was not a thread, as she had been looking for all this time. Instead, a disruptive floating mass, of no particular color or shape or density. It was not in this world, not here in Midgard, but somewhere else. She had to reach into the else-ness to touch it. The sound of Unn’s wailing disappeared around her. With the delicate, precise movements Unn had taught her, her fingers rolled and danced around it, until somehow the mass dispersed.
She was not sure how long it had taken, she had lost herself in the process. Only when Unn sighed loudly in relief and thanked her, did Eira look up to see her pale and blotchy face. Eira blinked her eyes numerous times, not quite able to focus on the actual world in front of her. She remembered the vølve’s floating eyes.
Once she had mastered this method, practicing over and over on Unn’s quickly healing leg, she began feeling restless again. She had always wanted to learn the ways of healing, but now she knew that it was not the full potential of what she was seeking.
She began sitting out at night again, trying to reach an absolute stillness of the kind she had felt in the vølve’s hut. For endless hours she sat concentrating until her head hurt and her eyes blinked slowly with sleep. Sometimes, the screech of ravens jerked her awake.
Ravens seemed to flock to Eiklund these days, often sitting perched on longhouses or roaming the skies restlessly. Eira thought she knew what it meant, but tried to shrug it off.
…
On the second fortnight of listening intently to the universe, which offered no sound, and staring resolutely into nature, which yielded no clues, she gave up. Casting aside all that was known to her about how long it took for even highborne’s to learn magick, she stomped back to the vølve’s hut to demand more.
When she slammed open the door without warning, she was met by an entirely different house than the first time she had been there. Light streamed in from the open door behind her, illuminating the walls hung with rich red tapestries. In the middle of the room, a fire roared happily. The beaten earth flooring felt warm through the soles of her shoes.
The toastiness of the empty room took the built up tension right out of her lungs. She had prepared a speech of demands and complaints to the stubborn, uncooperative seer, but there was no one to deliver it to.
She called out a hesitant “Hello?”
After several minutes, the vølve emerged from behind a woolen curtain, a bowl of porridge in her hand. Even the pale seer looked less ghastly in the warm light of the fire. Eira quickly snapped shut her gaping mouth, after realizing that, well, of course, even mystical seeresses with floating eyes probably needed to eat.
“Good morrow Eira,” the vølve greeted with her sing-songy thrill, seemingly unsurprised by the unexpected disturbance “I think you may be ready now.”
Thralls of Skuld - Chapter 5: Freyja's Gift
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In the first days of healing she had been hazy and weak from the pain. She had been confined to her small house, close by the cluster of longhouses that belonged to Unn’s family and a few other neighbours. Unn stayed in her house, changing her dressings while singing songs of healing Galdr. Eira slept through the days, and in turn spent many nights awake. They shared Eira’s bed at night, like sisters did. Unn woke early before the break of every day, just as Eira was beginning to blink her eyes more slowly, overcome by sleep, and Unn started singing over her again. Unn had looked weary on those days, the dark purple under her eyes sinking into her usually plump face.
Unn had been horrified, at first, by the gravity of Eira’s wound, shocked that she was still alive. But as the days went on, Unn’s shock turned to disbelief at Eira’s speed of recovery. Eira wondered if Unn had visited the vølve again in her absence, but she did not ask. She had many, more pressing questions gnawing at her mind.
As Eira’s strength gathered, Unn returned to her own home. Still unable to sleep, Eira took to sitting outside in the late evening hours. She walked slowly to the grave mounds at the back of her estate, shrouding herself in a woolen plait to keep the chill of the night at bay. She would lean against a tree or sit atop of the small grassy hills, the resting place of her ancestors, sighing deeply with the pain she still felt as she moved through the world. And there, she would open her heart to the nature around her, hoping that an answer might reveal itself to her.
She went over what had happened on the battlefield again and again, the many impressions having faded into distortion. It was clear that the force had come from her, Magnus had confirmed as much. But even he could not explain the nature of it. Had it come from her hands, as it did with the legendary battle mages, or from the earth around her? It could have been some divine intervention from above her. How had she felt when it happened? What had she done the moment before? She did not remember.
Then she moved onto thinking what an odd coincidence it was, that somehow high levels of magick seemed to be swirling around the sleepy villagers of Eiklund, with the vølve’s arrival and inexplicable events visiting both herself and Unn in a short span of time. It seemed like the stuff of myths.
Some nights she drew the rune of Eiwaz in the soil at her feet, thinking it would evoke some sort of revelation, although she did not know which kind she was looking for. After casting the rune, she would sit for hours looking into the darkness, searching for a physical manifestation of an answer.
She lost herself to thinking, and her mind would often land on how the children of Ulf never got to be buried in their ancestral home of Eiklund. As if struck by the thought itself, she would stand up as fast as she could, and scuttle home. She could not push away the idea that she might see them, the little blond children, in the ghostly form of gengangere - spirits that walked the earth again, driven by things left unresolved.
The thought visited her again and again. She was starting to think that perhaps it meant something, the thought stuck in her mind like a spanner in a wheel. The day the children died was the first day Eira questioned what was natural and unnatural in this world, what must be, and what, perhaps, need not be. Maybe it was the seed that had been planted, which had later bloomed into her own super natural actions in Svidland. Perhaps she had somehow…
A movement in the darkness startled her. She gasped audibly, preparing herself to stand, but knew that would be futile. She was still weak, and in any case she could not defend herself from spirits.
“Who goes there?” she called, telling herself it could not be them. It was a single, dark shape, much too big to be the young children. She sat gaping and waiting for it to near her, when she saw that it was the vølve. The waiflike woman moved much like she expected a spirit would, almost floating. She was walking straight towards Eira.
Eira was dumbfounded. She had never seen the vølve leave the surroundings of her small abode outside of Eiklund.
“Do you find what you seek?” The vølves voice was whispery and rasping, but it had a sing-songy quality to it. As if the songs required for her magick had settled permanently in her voice.
Eira was still stunned by the vølve’s unexpected presence, and thought hard to look for an appropriate answer. “I am not sure what I seek”, she said finally.
“I am sure you are finding more than you think.”
“Why have you come here?” Eira observed the vølve’s light, delicate features. Her skin and hair were both almost the colour of fresh fallen snow, but her face looked youthful. Eira did not know why she had expected a vølve to look deeply furrowed and lined, like the famed Elli who was old age in human form. Her eyes were pale too, and they did not look directly at Eira. Instead, they floated as if between worlds. If it had not just been the two of them, it would be unclear if she was addressing Eira at all.
“I have been waiting for something to be set in motion. It seems that it has now happened.”
The vølve was standing beneath Eira, who was seated halfway up on side of a grassy burial mound. The vølve was incredibly tall, thin like a draugr, but almost meeting Eira’s eye sight.
Eira’s brows furrowed, the confusion of the nonsensical statement gripping her, making her wonder if she had fallen asleep without noticing. She decided to ask the vølve a question that had been on her mind for weeks. “You taught Unn seiðr?”
“Yes.” the vølve replied matter-of-factly.
“Why?” asked Eira.
“For the same reason that I am here for you now.” the vølve replied, as if that would explain everything. Eira felt a pull of impatience, unprepared to be disturbed by nonsensical riddles on this night of introspection. But she knew that it must be something significant that had moved the vølve to seek her out. Eira for the second time asked her why.
“I came to tell you a story.” The vølve stood unmoving at the foot of the small hill, looking up at Eira, or perhaps at something behind her or inside her, as she continued her whispering song:
“The first war of time was between the Æsir and Vanir. It was a war that has since been unmatched in force and violence, waging on endlessly, neither side gaining grounds, until both the Æsir of Asgard and Vanir of Vanaheim agreed to strike a truce. Do you know what happened next?”
The impatience gripped Eira again. The vølve had come to her home, in the middle of the night, to tell her fables of skaldic poetry, children’s stories? Of course Eira knew, every child had heard of the legendary creation and divine history of the universe a hundred times over.
“They exchanged hostages,” Eira replied, willing her voice to be neutral, patient. “Some of the best Æsir were sent to Vanaheim, and likewise Vanir were sent to Asgard.”
The vølve shook her head slightly, murmuring dismissively “Yes yes, of course, but not that.” as if Eira’s answer was too glaringly obvious. “I mean what happened with Freyja. The seiðr.” Eira now listened more attentively, as the vølve sang on: “The hostages who came to Asgard were three: Njordr and his children, Freyr and Freyja. Njordr, who guards the sea and Freyr who guards the fields and prosperity of nature, were both named overseers of sacrifices from the mortals of Midgard. Their vanir magic still casts the rains of spring and the waves of the ocean to this day.”
As she continued, Eira noticed how the vølve swayed slightly as she spoke, like a seedling tree in the late summer breeze. Eira still questioned whether she was fully awake.
“Freyja also came to Asgard, beautiful Freyja who wields the most important forces of mortal life and doom. Love and war, and above all, seiðr. Freyja’s knowledge, power and skill is almost without equal. Except, of course, for Odinn, who is the Æsir allfather and in his own right a God of exceptional power and knowledge.
As unison of the Vanir and Æsir settled in Asgard, it was Freyja who shared her seiðr with the Æsir. She bestowed this gift of unification to Odinn, teaching him to alter destiny and weave prophecy. Freyja did so generously, without corruption or fear of being overcome by her former foe.”
The vølve’s melodic flow of whispers stilled. After a moment of silence, she asked Eira “Do you understand?”
Eira did in fact not understand anything. She strained to fit the pieces together. “Seiðr can be taught.” Eira started slowly. This was not new wisdom that had been bestowed upon her, and she thought she might be missing the mark as she followed up with: “Like how men of the Jarl’s court are taught magick?”
The highborne wielded much more powerful magick than the simple galdr and runes that the common people relied on. It was not quite the legendary manipulation of the natural world and bending of fate that the Vanir and Odinn wielded, but highborne magick-wielders could heal complex wounds and cause incredible magickal damage. Some could even spur simple but effective illusions. There were also stories of mortals changing their day of death, pushing it in front of them through the Gods’ mercy. Many suspected that was why the King Gorm, known as Gorm the Old, was still fierce at his old age. His wife was said to be blessed with strong traces of seiðr.
But all of that was not readily relevant to Eira. Those people were born with Odinn’s blood - and she was not.
“Magick is bound by blood lines.” Eira was shaping her answer slowly. “Odinn was not just the king of the Gods in Asgard. It is fabled how he once walked often in Midgard, siring many noble bloodlines. When he left to rule over Asgard, he placed his mortal sons as rulers, bestowing upon them some of his magick. Thus, magick can only be passed down through bloodlines, or obtained through deals with the Gods.”
That was the reason, aside from puritan elitism of course, why marriages between high-magick wielding individuals and the common people were forbidden. Some said the only reason the commoners had their rudimentary magick in the first place, was due to frivolous copulation through the ages. Eira thought maybe the vølve was alluding to this - the nature of how magick was learned and taught, trickling from the goddess Freyja through Odinn to mortals in Midgard.
Lost in her thoughts for a moment, the vølve’s soft tutting brought Eira back to the present. “The magick wielded by men is not the magick I speak of. Seiðr, real seiðr can weave threads into the Web of Wyrd, commanding spirits and bending time. With real seiðr, the unseen can be made seen, and the seen made unseen. Real seiðr can alter destiny.”.
Eira wondered if the vølve somehow knew, as the pale lady recited her deepest desires back to her. If the vølve knew the depths of her despair as she thought of all those senseless sorrows that need not happen in Midgard while the Kings and Gods feasted in their halls.
“This seiðr, it is meant to be shared, Eira. In the spirit of Freyja. I have waited for you to be ready.“
“You have been waiting for me?” Eira sputtered. She knew that what had happened in Svidland had been an exceptional force of something entirely inexplicable. She knew that it was unheard of for a commoner to wield battle magick of the kind that had flown from her. It had not been in her control, and to this day she was still not sure it had truly come from her. She told the vølve as much.
“I am not talking about what happened in Svidland. You are practicing seiðr right now.” the vølve continued, a wistful smile floating in her eyes with her last few words: “Well, at least you are trying to.”
Now, Eira had really lost the plot of what was happening. She groaned loudly, struck by a sudden sharp headache as her blood pressure rose and the wound on her neck pulsed. The vølve was unphased by her exclamation.
“Seiðr requires a deep connection to the threads of the world. Sitting out, like you have done for days, is the simplest, yet purest form of seiðr there is. If you just listen..” the vølve’s words trailed off softly. She lifted her chin slightly to the dark, cloudy night sky stretching endlessly above them, half closing her eyelids as if listening intently to something in the air. Eira only now realised that she had been holding her own breath for a long time, as the vølve took in a long, slow lungful of air and a smile tugged at the corners of her lips.
“It is late,” the vølve broke the silence. “You will find seiðr is not just at your fingertips, Eira, but all around you. I encourage you to look for it.” and with that, the vølve whirled around and walked into the night.
Thralls of Skuld - Chapter 3: Blood and Yarrows
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The Danir had advanced through Scania quickly, aiming to invade Götaland, the land of the Geats, from the southeast and catch the army unawares. King Gorm’s troup was large but moved swiftly. Svidland was still scattered across jarldoms and smaller kingdoms, and the Geats were the first frontier towards the larger, northern powers of Svidland. King Gorm had brought thousands of warriors from the land of the Danir. They had been unleashed with fury onto the Geats, who indeed were taken aback. But the Geats quickly gained their composure, and retorted forcefully. After months of Danir raids, the Geats had known a storm was coming, and they met them bravely in the early morning hours, finally given a chance to avenge themselves.
The gilded halls of the afterlife would see a rare feast tonight. There was no doubt the valkyries soared high in the sky that day, divine warrior-maidens who picked the strongest of fallen warriors and brought them to Freyja and Odinn. The heath was littered with prospects on this day.
The smell of blood was foul and sweet and intoxicating. The air was thick with clanking of axes, the loud thudding of shields blocking deadly blows. Grunts, shouting, someone screaming loudly, and the wet gargle of someone drowning in their own blood at Eira’s feet. A javelin was singing through the air. The woman to Eira’s left did not duck fast enough as it pierced her layered woolen tunics and threw her on the ground. The dead woman had afforded herself only a helmet, but it had not helped her. Eira thanked the Gods for the spoils of previous battles, as she moved fast through the crowd, protected but unhindered by her leather vest.
Where Gorm had found all those berserkers, she did not know. They were wild warriors wearing bearskins and driven by Odinn’s bloodrush to perform carnage unlike anything Eira had seen before. It was clear that the Danir King’s first and foremost goal was to strike fear in the entire land of the Sviar. The concise, well thought out formations and shield wall advancements Eira knew from Geir’s leadership style in smaller battles were nowhere to be found on the heath that day. The berserkers were awful beasts. They screamed as they advanced, their voices deep and growling, their minds not in this world any more. Like vølur performing rituals, their eyes were blankly floating in another realm, but their flailing arms and fast feet had a presence, a divine knowing of where to strike, that couldn’t be learned. Eira understood now why people said that berserkers were said to be blessed with Odinn’s seiðr, because they were not of this world.
The Danir were gaining ground, moving forward through the hordes, one foe at a time. They moved more collectively, shoulder by shoulder, suffocating the scattered opposition. In a fleeting moment of air in their advance, Eira took in the scene around her. Geir’s enormous person cleaved the way ahead, wielding an axe that most people would not even be able to carry. On his flank was Magnus, as always, never leaving the great Thorian warrior’s back open. To her right stood a Danir warrior with an exceptional sword, a great feat of iron which was rarely found in the ranks of the common men, who mostly wielded axes and spears. The warrior was uncommonly unscathed for someone who had fought alongside them for hours. Wiping blood off her own brow, Eira did not know whether to respect him or disdain him. He must be either an exceptional fighter, or an exceptionally cowardly one, to look untouched on the seventh hour of fighting.
Her eyes shifted back to the Geat in front of her, knowing a wandering eye on the battlefield could mean death in seconds. Her enemy had made that exact mistake, and Eira charged at him, shield first, smashing his helmet to his brow, her axe whispering through the air before it reached the soft tissue of his chest. When she looked up again, the unscathed warrior had disappeared from the brigade. Maybe his fate had finally caught up with him.
It was chaos, but it was somehow effective - each side fought with awestruck inspiration in a way that made blood rush to Eira’s ear and left a slight smile on her face as she placed her axe between a young man’s eyes. This was the way to live, and this was the way to die. There was a unison in knowing that. It transversed Danir or Sviar, enemy or foe. Drunken on the bloodshed, every warrior on the heath that day felt that they were fighting for a spot in Freyja’s hall Folkvangr, or Odinn’s hall Valhalla, and each enemy was but an aide on the way to that glorious afterlife.
That, of course, was not the whole truth. They were not there to enter Valhalla in a fury of blood and glory, but because King Gorm had a self-serving vision, in which he ruled over all the men of the northern lands. He was more than willing to sacrifice the lot of them to make it happen. Eira had not seen the famed Gorm, did not know the face of the man she was fighting for. Ingmar, Thorstein and the other jarls, who had travelled north with them on their grandiose longships, were also nowhere to be seen. But all of this was easy to forget in the overwhelming confusion and roar of adrenaline.
Maybe the stark absence of their own noble rulers was the reason something across the battlefield stood out so boldly, distracting her momentarily from the life and death scene unfolding in front of her. Far across, in another battalion of warriors, stood a man in the midst of the common men, who looked anything but common. Strong, swift and frightening, the man towered over his surroundings. Wielding a highly adorned iron sword, and clad in a hauberk the like of which Eira had rarely seen on the battlefield of commoners. His presence stopped her in her tracks. This man was not supposed to be on this heath. Had the Geats made the unlikely move of unleashing a high ranking magick wielder on the commoners?
Something caught in her throat, harsh and violent. Maybe her body knew before her brain that she had made a fatal mistake. She did not see the Geat before he was above her, planting his axe deeply into Eira’s clavicle with a squelch and a crunch. Hard and precise. A perfect blow, her leather armor helpless against it. Eira fell to her knees, her eyes wild as she tried to orient herself. The sky was gray, harsh above her. The ground was cold. The air sang with clangs of iron on wood. Thunder, or maybe the waves of a stormy ocean, welled up in her ears.
In seconds she was soaked by thick, warm liquid, each pulse drawing out her lifeforce. She began to whisper, desperately, the only prayer of galdr she could think of for strength to face what was coming. Give heed! For I did not creep behind a shield. For I lived sworn as a blade of the Æsir. By Tyr! Ask first Eir for mercy… Her voice failed her, and the forcefulness required of galdr was just a croak that eventually waned. She had never tried dying before, but knew this must be what it felt like. The hands of Skuld grabbed her, cold palms twisting her heart. She was thrashing, looking for a way to wield off the enemies closing in on her to deal the final blow. If she could only muster a swing of her arm, a signal for help. Something. Anything.
In a crack of fire, the air around her seemed to explode. It was like the spark of a blacksmith’s hammer on the forge, but booming loud and forceful. The Geat towering above her flew through the air, as if grabbed by an invisible valkyrie. An exclaim of pure shock and fear escaped from someone close to her as they were propelled through the air. From the corner of her eyes, she saw other people land with hard thumps on the earth around her. Unmoving. She wanted to look for the source, to understand the change in the air, but she could not turn her head. She thought she might have lost the last of her life’s blood. The pain dulled, but it did not vanish. Skuld’s hands loosened as the gaping feeling in her chest dissipated. Two ravens circled above her in the sky and she knew surely, with Odinn watching, that this was it.
…
When she woke, she felt like she had not existed in months. There was a pressure on her chest. She knew Geir was somewhere by her shoulder, and she told him the last thing she had thought of before she had closed her eyes, eons ago: That this was it. She felt like he ought to know that she was leaving him. But instead of Geir’s face, she saw another person lean over her. Light blue eyes, dark hair. Someone she recognised faintly, a resemblance of someone she had only seen briefly the battlefield. An unscathed warrior with a great sword. But she couldn’t stop herself from leaning backwards into the shadows, a swooping feeling in her stomach of falling into a void, as everything disappeared around her.
…
A stabbing pain from her throat and chest jolted through her, telling her it had not been a dream. Was she home? She couldn’t be. Her bed was moving. The sharp herbal scent of yarrow and comfrey poultice rose from just below her nose, stinging her and overwhelming her senses. It smelled like Unn’s hands. The wet dressing on her clavicle was a cooling contrast to her burning skin.
She listened to the sounds around her for a while before they began to make sense to her. She heard the waves first. The chatter and clanks, thumps and scuffling of people around her. Then, seagulls. They must be close to shore. Slowly, as if the muscles around her eyes had weakened completely, she blinked her eyes open. The sky above her was a light wash of grey with streaks of blue peeking through, a smatter of fluffy clouds dappled across. It must be the early hours of the morning, Sól not having ridden onto the sky in her chariot yet. Eira’s bed swayed gently up and down. If it was not for the pain, she might think she was flying. She blinked a long, slow blink, trying to lift a cloud from her mind. When she opened her eyes again, Geir’s grey eyes were staring down at her, a frown on his face, his ginger hair falling wild and uncombed towards her.
He did not say anything for a long time. She was not sure if her sense of time was off, or if he was really just standing there, inspecting her. Eventually, he reached for something at her side, pulling out and opening a small leather pouch. “‘Reckon you’ll want this” he mumbled gruffly, stuffing small pieces of willow bark into her mouth. She did not fight it.
Her jaw felt slack, but she chewed meekly anyway. At least the stiffness of tetanus had not set in her jaw. The bitterness of the bark made her wince. The line between Geir’s brow deepened. He still had not spoken, and it was unnerving. He was a thinker, yes, when it came to strategy and the ways of the world, but words always came easy to him and he was never quiet for long.
“What…” she began, her voice hoarse like grainy sand. He turned his head stiffly, holding out a large palm to cut her off. He knew what she wanted to ask, and he did not want to answer.
Thralls of Skuld - Chapter 1: As The Seasons Turned The Tides
Read on Wattpad and AO3
In the land of the Danir, the late summer was filled with a bustle unlike any other time of the year. The harvesting of barley and wheats and haymaking kept the hands of the farmers busy, filling the air with the husky scent of grains.
Boys arrived from the summer pastures with cattle and sheep. The livestock returned fattened enough to keep through the winter, and the boys were filled with the experiences of leaving home on their own for the first time. Those who had returned short of sheep, which had veered off on dangerous roads or fallen prey to the wolves, looked downtrodden, worried about their fathers’ disapproving gazes. The ones who returned successful stood a foot taller than when they had left, emboldened by the spirit of Thor, who was not only a God of strength and thunder, but also the kind of maturation that often happened in the transition from boyhood to manhood. The boys had no doubt felt it in those months alone in the land. Alongside the return of the herders, tradesmen left for the tradecenter in Lejre to trade off their surplus wares and acquire winter supplies.
Offerings were made across the land to Freyr, the beautiful Vanir God of bountiful harvests and fertility. Those who knew how, burned runes of Nauthiz and Wunjo for endurance and good fortune for the coming months, knowing that Jera, the rune of fertility, would no longer do them any good. Others whispered simple rites of galdr, a throaty and rhythmic song to enchant their scythes for the final harvest of the year, hoping to turn the Gods in their favor and keep their harvested grain from catching rot in their storage chambers.
The village of Eiklund, too, was abuzz with the vital preparations before a long and harsh frost grabbed the lands. It was a larger settlement, with more than a dozen longhouses scattered across the grassy and lushly forested environs. The weather was milder here, away from the harsh and windy coast of Selund, the large island where Eiklund lay.
Eira found herself dragged into the woods every day by Unn, who wanted to forage the forest floor for the gifts of the last days of summer. Berries, mushrooms and medicinal herbs were abundant in the dense forests, which was just a few hours hike from Eiklund. Unn was enthusiastic in her plans for the big bundles of angelica and yarrow they found, remembering the strengthening tinctures her grandmother used to make from the dried herbs in wintertime. Eira was more excited for the bilberries and lingonberries, which she would use for marmalade, and the hazelnuts which would taste sweet like honey once they reached the dead of winter.
The days were still mild. Rays of sun broke through the canopies throughout the day, making the task light work. The two women did not mind spending many days in only each other’s company. They were more like sisters than friends, in both good and bad ways. Still, it was clear that they were not related. Unn was blonde, tall and plump with a soft and friendly face. Eira was shorter, her body strong and her hair long and auburn. She had a chiseled face with a strong jaw and dark brows that often fell naturally into a slight frown.
One day, they had returned painfully late in the evening to Eiklund because Unn had insisted on continuing their gathering “for just one more hour”, for almost three hours. The next day, Eira showed up with supplies for camping overnight. If they were going to spend all day out there, they might as well do so without the hassle of scurrying home late in the treacherous half-dark of dusk.
They had spent that evening in a makeshift campsite, sharing stories of the inhabitants of Eiklund and draughts of freshly brewed late-summer beer. As the hours stretched into the night, their conversation had slowed to slurred confessions about life. Unn missed her grandmother terribly, who had been her last living family member. Unn’s mother and father had died after a cough took hold of them when they were still supposed to have many years left in Midgard. Unn’s brother had died in battle. The grandfather, more mercifully, died of old age, reuniting him with his children in death in Niflheim.
Unn’s grandmother had been the village herbalist and healer, and spent the last years of her life passing on her skills to Unn. When dysentery had taken the grandmother, her final gift to Unn was teaching her how to care for the dying, and after, how to prepare them for burial. Unn had not wanted to learn it, not like that. But now, over the bonfire, she admitted to Eira that she was glad their last days together were spent learning instead of fretting and grieving.
The grief never came, not truly. After her grandmother’s death, Unn had taken over her duties as a healer for the community, although she still had things to learn. But Unn was studious and hardworking, and Eira helped her as often as she could.
Unn often thanked Eira wholeheartedly for her help, believing that Eira did it simply from the goodness of her heart and the sisterly bond they shared. In truth, Eira had a keen interest in the skills and magick of healing and herbalism. Being a warrior herself, she saw the difference those skills made on the battlefield.
Evoking Eira’s namesake, the Goddess of healing and mercy, Eir, was something no commoner knew how to do. Healing magick was reserved for the noble Jarl’s, their family, advisors and favoured fighters. A highborne warrior who knew how to incite healing galdr on the battlefield often saved wounded warriors from bleeding out before they could be attended to. For warriors of Eira’s station, all they could hope was to be able to carry the surviving injured back to the closest healer after the battle ended, before the cold fever of rot took hold. Then, the healers would work the kind of simpler herbalism that Unn was now foraging to prepare for.
The timely preparation of the healing ingredients was vital this late summer. Unn had been nervous since Jarl Ingmar’s men had brought news to Eiklund of an impending war. The Jarl, whose jarldom reached from the northern coast of Selund and into the countryside where Eiklund laid, had recently sent his men around the jarldom to raise their banners and swear their fealty, announcing that Jarl Ingmar had finally bent his knee to King Gorm.
In just a few years, the ambitious Gorm had consolidated the independent jarldoms across the land of the Danir into one united country. Jarl Ingmar was one of the last jarls to be convinced of the King’s vision of a united kingdom. Deeply entrenched in his own decade-old bloodfeud with the neighbouring Jarl Thorstein, Ingmar had seen the unison of the jarldoms as an admission of defeat. Yet, with a wrath and force that could only be explained as godly intervention, Gorm had managed to break every single jarl into either loyalty or submission.
After waging internal battles to solidify his rule over the Danir Jarls, Gorm has turned his eye towards the land of the Sviar. He was now calling upon the forces of his jarls to raise their banners under him and campaign into Svidland. Effectively, King Gorm had freed the people of Eiklund from one blood stained doom, only to bind them into another.
Unn had fretted, knowing she would be without her grandmother to care for the casualties.
Eira, on the other hand, had been excited. She had remarked herself as an exceptional shieldmaiden under Jarl Ingmar’s constitution. In the last few years of territorial warring between Ingmar and his neighbour Jarl Thorstein, Ingmar’s land had become famed for breeding a strong and stubborn kind of people, suitable for warfare. That was why their villages were first to be visited when it came to calling for axes.
Eira, coming from modest roots and destined for nothing great, had seen her natural skills as a fighter as an equal curse and blessing. She told Unn as much that night in the forest, where they had shared admissions over beer and bonfire. “Fighting feels like grabbing fate by its balls, escaping the grip of the Norns for just a moment. As if I can control the outcome of my life, instead of being left to the whims and mercies of Jarls or the Gods, as we are in every other aspect of life.”
“Do you really feel that you have no control over your own destiny?”
“Do you not?” Eira was both curious and provoking. “The Jarls decide when we fight, the Gods decide when we die. All we get to decide is what to put in our mouths, given the Gods have blessed us with a bountiful harvest enough to fill our bellies.”
Unn shrugged, and began thoughtfully: “When my parents died, I felt like that. Like my life had been decided by something out of my control, knowing only the Norns hold the power to do that.” She weighed her words for a moment before continuing “But most of the time I believe that I can influence the outcome. That’s why I wanted to be a healer like my grandmother.”
That makes two of us, thought Eira, but she did not speak it. She yearned to be in charge of both life and death, believing that if she wielded the same authority to make decisions as the Jarls and Kings, many innocent lives might have been spared. It was probably naïve, thinking that might and lordship would not corrupt her, the same way it did to those who were born into it.
“Beer makes you think too much of fate and power,” Unn poked at her. It was true. “Let us rest, tomorrow you can take control of someone’s life by collecting enough yarrow to save your brethren’s lives in the months to come.”
As Eira laid to rest on the ground, still warm from the abundance of sun they had been blessed with that day, she thought of the many injustices borne to her community from the will of the Gods. When she thought of that injustice, which she did often, she thought especially of her shield-brother Geir.
Geir was one of the most famed living fighters of his station in the land of the Danir. While Geir was not of a bloodline important enough to sit at the high table of wartime decision-making, he was often chosen as warband leader to lead scores of warriors on the battlefield. He was almost impossibly strong, resembling Thor himself, exceptionally large and fiery-haired with thundering eyes. More importantly he was smarter than any other person on the battlefield. Where other warband leaders fought with a fierceful belief in sheer strength, Geir saw holes in their defence and patterns in their attacks, guiding the shield walls this way and that. He was quick to make decisions, almost always anticipating correctly, each and every time overpowering the enemy through wit as well as skill.
Geir’s wife, Siv, had bore him four sons, but only one had survived. A quiet boy of five summers, born in the shadow of the death of his kin before him and after him, Geir revered that boy like a gift from the Goddess Freyja herself. Once, a neighbour had jested that Geir, the best warrior on all of Selund, had taken all the strength for himself and left nothing for his kin to survive on this earth. Eira had found the jest cruel, and with a biting look silenced anyone who might think to laugh. She knew that perhaps the cruellest part was the hint of truth, knowing that the Gods indeed enacted these cruel ironies in Midgard, seemingly intent to not let anyone receiving their favor live a life too easy.
The last time Siv had been pregnant was two winters ago. In the cold dead of night, she had woken bloodied and birthed a still child. The wails of that night had woken the neighbours, and Eira knew that they were not only from Siv. The bereavement had settled on Geir’s face like curdled milk for more than a year.
Siv, a quietly resolute woman, had gone to Unn the next day, requesting a tincture to keep her bleeding at bay, and prayed to Freyja to still her womb. Unn, a helpless gossip with access to too much information from her occupation, had told Eira, but also rushed that she must not tell anyone, especially not Geir. Eira knew that Siv could not take another heartbreak, and forgave her for never telling her husband. At the same time, Eira knew that the only reason the scorned mask had lifted from Geir’s face, returning a booming laughter to his lips and life to his eyes, was the belief that he would yet father another child.
Such were the many fates of the people Eira called her neighbours, friends, shield brethren and sisters. Some took staunch devotion to the Gods, believing they might turn the tide of their fates with reverence. Others, under no illusion that they might have control or influence over the Gods, settled to just live their life on earth, accepting all of the occasional cruelty and glory it entailed. Eira thought those latter people were the true thralls of whichever fate Skuld, the Norn weaver of the future, had decided for them.
Jarl Ingmar’s bloodfeud with Jarl Thorstein had spun the destiny of many. The politics of bloodlines and the ruling class ranged far beyond their mundane concerns - it was not born from the will of the commoner. But as it spilled from the halls of nobility into animosity in the settlements of the commoners over the last decades, so had the bloodshed. Some had emerged victorious, like Geir and even Eira. The fierce battlefield between the two jarls had been a place for warriors to prove themselves and gain the favor of the Gods, the Jarl and the people. Others had died, screaming and writhing in agony, entire settlements engulfed by magickal fires set by humans birthed from evil spirits.
Eira had often marvelled at how the Jarl’s most favored men would not dirty their hands on the battlefield like true warriors. Born to nobility, they learned from a young age the ways of complex magick, wisdom that was forbidden to the commoners. Yet, instead of fighting on the battlefield, the highborns wielded their magick in cruel and unforgivable ways, stealing from both themselves and their victims the chance to live forever in Valhalla or Folkvangr. That glorious afterlife was only given to those who died on the battlefield. The highborne left the commoners to fight out their petty wars on the battlefield with rudimentary magick. The commoners hoped, often futilely, that a simple weapon incantation or rune casting might turn the battle in their favor, knowing full well that either Jarl and their mages could end the feud in a duel of magick, if they only dared face each other.Musings over the impunity of Gods and men alike often consumed her when she closed her eyes at night. This evening, the beer had laid a soft blanket over her mind, lulling her to sleep before the anger took hold of her and catapulted her into sleeplessness. She embraced Nótt’s cloak as the night enveloped her.
listen
I have a so far 20 chapter original content book in my google drive
It’s about magick in the Viking age. It’s low/mid fantasy, involving many references to actual myth, legends and stories from the sagas and eddas of the Viking age. The gods (not marvel but OG Norse gods) occasionally join the story in Midgard.
It also has a Manacled-style enemies to lovers (or maybe lovers to enemies), slow burn and with a hopefully unforeseeable, gut wrenching twist. Definitely dark at times. Not smut and no non-con tho.
I’m plucking a flower. Do I post it, do I not, do I post it, do I not. I think I’m gonna post it.