“I could do with it,” O’Connor said. “We’ve worked well together in the past.”
“You’re welcome to stay with us, Maria,” Jack said. “More than welcome. I should have made that clearer.”
“Jeremy can take over as expedition expert,” Maria replied. “If there’s anything more to do with Vikings and the New World, he’s your man.”
“Okay,” Jack said, a flicker of anxiety crossing his face. “Just make sure you look after yourself.”
O’Connor had one last thing to show them. He ushered Jack and Maria through the cloister and out into the grassy precinct in front of the abbey, leaving Costas and Jeremy behind to reformat a new scan of the Hereford map that had just arrived. Through the early-evening mist that now shrouded the island, Jack glimpsed the rocky outcrops that rose beyond the precinct, an image unchanged since the days of the Vikings. O’Connor led them along the cobbled track of Sraid nam Marbh, the Street of the Dead, past Reilig Odhrain, the hallowed burial ground of kings. On the way Jack paused beside the great stone cross of St. Martin, its weathered form still standing where it had been erected more than a thousand years before. He put his hand on the stone and felt the writhing serpents that had been carved into the granite almost two centuries before the Battle of Stamford Bridge, when the sea raiders of the north were still no more than a distant rumour to the monks on the island. He felt a frisson of immediacy, the same excitement he had felt on seeing the longship in the ice. Harald Hardrada had passed this way, had seen this cross. Jack suddenly had an image of the stricken king being carried on a bier towards the abbey, his wounded followers straggling up from the longships beached in the channel below. He felt he had been shadowing Hardrada all along, in the Golden Horn, in the icefjord, but he had never seemed so close, so certain that the trail ahead was drawing them on to follow the great king into the unknown.
The three colleagues walked in silence, lost in their own thoughts, digesting what had gone before. Half an hour later they reached the western side of the island, a wide bay fringed with golden beaches. O’Connor led them over a dune and found a place to sit, with Jack and Maria on either side. The mist had lifted to reveal a long vista off to the west, the deep orange rays of the setting sun searing their way towards the horizon. O’Connor lit a pipe, drawing on it a few times, then began to talk quietly.
“This is Camus Cul an t-Saimh, the Bay at the Back of the Ocean,” he said. “After days on the brink of death they brought Harald to this spot, fearful that word of his survival would leak out to the Normans. They brought his longships, the Eagle and the Wolf, and pulled them up on the beach. They filled them with provisions and placed Harald on his litter in the centre of the Wolf. Halfdan the Fearless, his oldest companion, lay grievously wounded at his feet, ready to die if his king began to wane.”
“Wergild,” Maria murmured. “A man could forfeit his life to Odin to save the life of his master.”
“The monks helped them haul the ships into the shallows. Those of Harald’s band who were still fit and able manned the thwarts, drawing the long oars through the tholes. The masts were set and the sails unfurled. From here Harald and his thole-companions sailed into history, watched by the monks of Iona and the small band of the faithful he had left behind to keep the fire burning.”
“Where did the ships go?” Maria asked.
O’Connor paused, took out his pipe and jabbed it towards the western horizon, then recited quietly from memory.
But now farewell. I am going a long way
With these thou seest-if indeed I go-
(For all my mind is clouded with a doubt)
To the island-valley of Avilion;
Where falls not hail, or rain, or any snow,
Nor ever wind blows loudly; but it lies
Deep-meadowed, happy, fair with orchard-lawns
And bowery hollows crowned with summer sea
Where I will heal me of my grievous wound.
So said he, and the barge with oar and sail
Moved from the brink, like some full-breasted swan
That, fluting a wild carol ere her death,
Ruffles her pure cold plume, and takes the flood
With swarthy webs. Long stood Sir Bedivere
Revolving many memories, till the hull
Looked one black dot against the verge of dawn,
And on the mere the wailing died away.
“Tennyson, Morte d’Arthur,” Jack exclaimed, shaking his head in wonder. “A pretty Victorian view of it, but if what you say is true, the romantic version of the Arthur legend goes right back to this spot.”
“Substitute Vinland for Avalon and you’ve got the promised land, the earthly paradise,” O’Connor said. “The story of Leif Eiriksson’s discovery of the New World would have trickled back to Harald’s court well before his decision to invade England, and it would have intrigued such a well-travelled man. He’d been pretty sedentary for years, apart from the occasional war parties to Denmark and Sweden, and he must have had wanderlust. Maybe he’d been planning an expedition across the western ocean even before Stamford Bridge. He wanted one last adventure, one last great voyage of discovery, something to take him back to the glory days of his youth with the Varangian Guard. With his defeat at Stamford Bridge the voyage became an imperative. The reports would have suggested a land of great abundance, of lush meadows for pasturage and endless forests for shipbuilding, the two things the Vikings coveted above all else. And there was nothing to go back to Norway for. His prestige would have been shattered if he’d returned alive, whereas death assured his place amongst the heroes. The Heimskringla even records that his remaining army in Norway swore eternal allegiance to him after news of the defeat had reached them, even after they thought he was dead.”
“And he had his treasure,” Jack said.
“Chests of it,” O’Connor said. “They certainly weren’t going to the New World in search of gold. They already had so much they didn’t need any extra ballast. Silver coins, tens of thousands of them, Arab dirhams, English pennies of Cnut and Aethelred, coins from Harald’s empire and beyond. Gold and silver neck-torques, arm-rings, precious heirlooms of his ancestors. And all of Harald’s booty from his days with the Varangians in the Mediterranean, some of it melted down, some still intact. Priceless religious reliquaries and ancient jewellery. And to cap it all, the greatest treasure of Harald’s reign, the treasure which had been ennobled by his exploit in escaping Constantinople, which had come to mean far more than its weight in gold.”
“The menorah,” Jack murmured.
“If Vinland is the site of L’Anse aux Meadows in Newfoundland, then it’s pretty well due west from here, over more than two thousand miles of open ocean,” Maria said. “So what’s our longship doing way up in Baffin Bay at Ilulissat?”
“It’s in the sagas,” Jack replied. “Leif Eiriksson found Vinland by sailing first up the west coast of Greenland, then across to Helluland and Markland. These places correspond to Baffin Island and Labrador, and the staging point in Greenland must have been Disko Bay, at the narrowest point of the Davis Strait. Harald was following the best available navigational advice.”
“That’s what Kunzl must have worked out in the 1930s,” O’Connor said.
“So they overwintered at Ilulissat?” Maria asked.
“They were probably forced to stay by the pack-ice clogging up the sea,” Jack replied. “It would have been autumn when they arrived. The light gets poor, and ships get iced up by spray. Macleod said the slush ice begins to form in October, and when it hardens it can cut timbers like a saw. Overwintering would have been tough, but these were tough men used to hardship. They probably had some of the local Greenlander Vikings with them from the southern settlements, as guides and hunters. I wouldn’t be surprised if they camped in the same bay beside the icefjord where we saw Kangia, among the ancient tent circles.”