The Shadow Over Vinland sample: “The Shadow Over Vinland

It was Young Snorri who first sighted something on the shoreline. “A post!” he cried, pointing over the starboard gunwale. “I think I see a post at the tideline! And above, on the cliffs—a longhouse!”

Gunnar’s eyes has once been as sharp as Young Snorri’s. Now, even though the day was overcast, it was too bright for him to confirm what Snorri reported. But he trusted the youth’s eyes, as did every man aboard the longboat. In the past two days of sailing southeast parallel to the empty shores of Vinland at a maddeningly slow pace, the lad of seventeen summers had outdone the six other men aboard in sighting seals and counting gulls. Gunnar pulled on the pole connected to the steerboard to bring the longboat closer to the shore.

“As sharp eyes as his father’s ever were,” said the Saxon proudly. “Christ be praised!”

Just beyond where Young Snorri said the post was, the cliff curved back into a shallow bay, still protected by walls of gray stone a dozen yards high.

“A post, but no ships?” said Thorgunn, hands ever coax­ing the rigging on the great square sail to keep the long­boat’s passage as steady as possible. “It could be just a stump of driftwood.”

It was true, there was no sign of the three sturdy knorrs in which Bjorn’s party had set out for Vinland.

“We’ll soon find out,” Gunnar said, in a tone that his companions had learned to be final. “An eye out for rocks, now.”

The cliff was not tall compared to the fjords of Iceland, or of Greenland which the men had last seen shrinking behind them eight days ago, but this was no gentle slope to the ocean, a mountain which became a valley under the water. No, this cliff was sheer and crumbling, and sharp gray boulders marked its base as it met coarse sand and lapping waves.

“I think I see that longhouse, too,” said the Saxon, shield­ing his eyes with his hand. “I can’t be sure, especially if it has a turf roof.”

“Keep your eyes to the water, like Gunnar said,” growled Big Snorri. “If we have to repair the ship out here in the wilds of Vinland, I’ll volunteer your own tanned hides with your fingerbones for pegs, as Odin’s my witness!”

“Clear water ahead,” said Young Snorri. “And the post is shaped, I’m sure of—”

The longboat lurched and shook, and Gunnar grabbed the steerboard’s pole with a second hand to keep it from flying out of his grasp. “Hit something!” he shouted.

“Here!” said Stegna, pulling a sea chest away from the keel. Seawater seethed in through two cracked wooden strakes. Stegna grabbed the copper kettle and began bailing.

“All but Stegna to the oars!” Gunnar roared. “Let’s make shore before she sinks!”

Confusion then, as the oars laid lengthwise at the bottom of the longboat were pulled out and fitted into the oarholes lining the gunwale. Thorgunn looked to Gunnar to be sure that he was included in the general order; at Gunnar’s nod, he wrapped the rigging lines around a mooring peg and took an oar.

Each man heaved hard against the water’s weight, churn­ing the air with chilled spray as they raced to bring the long­boat to shore. Gunnar tried to watch past their rolling shoul­ders for any more rocks ahead, although if what Young Snorri had seen was indeed a post set by his brother Bjorn, the seapath should be clear up to the sand.

Despite Stegna’s efforts with the kettle, the water in the boat had topped their feet when Big Snorri jumped over the gunwale into knee-deep water and grabbed hold of the prow. Ivar and the Saxon joined him, and shortly the long­boat was resting on pebbled sand.

Big Snorri shoot his sweaty hair out off his eyes and wheeled on Young Snorri. “You half-witted pup!” he roared. “I’ll lighten the load for our return trip, by Thor!”

The Saxon began to step between the two men, but Young Snorri was faster, stepping into Big Snorri’s swinging dis­tance fearlessly, even though the youth was a head shorter and a barrel lighter than the older man.

“There was no rock!” Young Snorri bellowed back. “When the tide goes out, you’ll see no rock where I said there was none, by the blood of the Christ!”

Gunnar could see a gleam of pride in the Saxon’s eye, both at Young Snorri’s spirit and at the oath he’d sworn. The Sax­on’s neck still showed the scars of the collar that he’d worn growing up a slave in the house of Young Snorri’s father Brega, until he had been adopted into the family when they converted to Christianity. Gunnar didn’t know if the Saxon—no one remembered his given name, not even he—was more loyal to the house of Christ or the house of Brega.

Gunnar shoved both arms between the two men and thrust them apart. “Keep your feuds for when you’re no longer my crew!” he roared. “Let’s look at that post.”

It was, as Young Snorri had said, a mooring post, a thick log planted deep in the beach just above the tideline, carved with an adze in the crude form of Thor.

“Indeed, my brother’s handiwork,” Gunnar concluded. “We’ve found the right place at last! Such be our welcome to Vinland!”

Stegna and Thorgunn snorted in laughter.

The shallow bay had formed around a stream of clear water which had carved a ravine upward. “That’s the path to Bjorn’s stead,” Gunnar said. “We’ve made enough clam­or to alert my deaf grandmother of our landing, but let’s not go up bearing stores just yet. Thorgunn and Big Snorri, look to the damage to the boat. It may not be a great matter, if Bjorn’s household is well provided. The rest of you, come with me.”

With that, Gunnar buckled on his sword and led the way up the path at the base of the ravine.

What life had Bjorn made for himself and for Gunhilde, here in Vinland? It had been three summers since Bjorn had set sail from Greenland toward the rumored Vinland in three knorrs loaded with twenty men, seven women and three goats. Bjorn’s oath to all his family—including his lit­tle brother Gunnar—had been to send word back to Green­land of their livelihood two years after setting off. With him now a year overdue, Gunnar had decided to stop waiting and see Bjorn’s new home for himself, with a crew of men who owed him or his father debts of honor or who simply had enough curiosity to see the fabled distant land with their own eyes. Gunnar knew he was not alone in wanting also to set eyes on Gunhilde, the golden-haired, who had captured the hearts of a generation before deciding on Bjorn as a husband.

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