After the fall of Rome and the Wolf Times came the age
of Viking exploration. In Spain and the
Middle East Scandinavian adventurers encountered the lost science and
literature of the Greeks and the Romans which reshaped their culture and
paved the way for the Norsk Imperial Age
– Encyclopedia of the Norsk, Oslo
I
don't know why I came back. But when we
marched from the woods to the amphitheater following the red banner, and the
people ran to the tables to change their bets because they saw me limp and
heard my heavy breath, I was blinded by tears.
I love this land. I love the
dragon-headed ships swaying in the fjord below the rocks where the performance
is held.
The
red banner pumps and wrinkles with the sail-loving, ship-killing wind. Painted upon it, in white, is the figure of
an old, one-eyed man wearing a sword and hanging from a tree: Odin nailed to the ash tree of life. Perhaps, I've come back because of that.
The banner is
posted in the middle of the stage; it is time for the invocation. I heave the old wolf cloak over my shoulders,
the boys put on their bright helmets, the old woman smears a little more kohl
across her pale cheek, Torval admires his painted scars in the reflection of a
goblet wrapped with silver snakes, and they follow me out onto the boards. They have seen my age and infirmity, now
we'll show them strength. As Sturluson
says, 'it's best to begin with a mystery.'
At the same
time, Eric and his come on from the right.
He wears a silver chaplet and his short, blond beard outlines his
handsome features more than hides them.
Helena is with him, also the great fat man. For just a moment I hate Eric for his youth,
his success, and his place in the competition which was once mine. We wait, and we don't wait, while the priests
invoke Thor. My hatred is arrogant but I
know it. That is one of the few benefits
of age.
Well,
good. I need arrogance: I play the king. No one has dared play him since Wulfgar
One-Eye died; that was before I
left. I glare at the patron, the
shipbuilder, Otha, who purchased the performance to please the gods and win
good winds. He loses his thin man's
smile. But it is the children in the
front who give me what I need: they are
truly fearful.
Of
course, the others use the time as well.
Eric demonstrates his easiness.
He grins a little and looks at the mountains. Torval scratches his groin and pretends great
confusion at the people watching us.
Helena stands perfectly still.
She doesn't move and she is beautiful.
The
priests finish and all of us leave the stage:
Eric and his to the right, I and mine to the left.
"What
could possibly keep you away for ten years, Haakon?" Torval whispers when
we are off stage at the edge of the scrim.
The people can still see us, of course.
Nothing must be hidden.
"I
don't know," I say, telling the truth.
He
isn't satisfied, he rolls his eyes and sticks out his tongue as the character
he plays would. His characters are never
far off; it is part of his technique. He
wants a better answer.
I
give him one. "I sailed for three
years, then I sang with the skalds, I plowed
fields with the Berlings who took their lands from the Franks."
"And
where did you act?"
"I
didn't," I say and smile. And for a
moment I feel that my life has come to nothing.
"And
I didn't fart once while you were gone."
I
glare; he is nonplused. There are three
blasts from the horn; the first scene is ours.
"It is time. Now I must be
the king."
"Indeed
you are," he answers in a rugged, full voice not at all like the one he is
using for the madman and puts his hand on my shoulder. "I'm glad you came back, old man. They say we'll lose. I don't know of anyone who's ever won from
this side."
"Winning
is a complex thing," I answer.
"Remember,
you're playing Lir, not his son."
I go
first, followed by the young men, my guard in this scene, and Torval who
hunches and squats and leers. Helena,
who plays my daughter, comes from the right.
Her black hair is pulled into a single plait and she stands tree-still
and stares at me with implacable green eyes.
I have the first words, they're good first words and I love to say them.
"A
single man's memory has more knots and coils than the dragon that curls around
the great tree Yggdrasil. We bind
ourselves with our own cleverness and luck, but what else does a man have? This world is dragon-minded.
"I
have lived too long." I lumber
across the stage looking alternately at the audience and Helena. "I must give away my son's birthright. I am King of the Norsk, but I have no
choice."
Helena turns
to the audience and asks reasonably if I have agreed to give her in marriage to
the son of the King of the Danes.
I
stare out at the mountains, at the broken shape of a solitary tree breaking a
ridge line. I count to two and turn to her.
"A woman cannot rule a kingdom.
You will need a man to rule for you.
And you will be queen over both lands."
She turns to face me and in a low voice screams,
"What about my brother?"
I'm
as amazed as anyone else. She was never
capable of anguish like this before.
There's something stretched in her; she wants the scene. I give away a small smile with half closed
eyes. As I expect, the audience takes
this as even greater pain. I relinquish
a scene to no one, not even her.
"He
is the source of this," I answer, reasonably.
"He
said he would return."
"One
summer is long enough for a cattle raid; two are enough to sail from one edge
of the world to another. He has been
gone six."
"You
don't know that he's dead."
"I
don't know that he lives. I hope for the
sake of our people that he is dead."
The first
scene ends with the marriage processional.
Everyone leaves the stage except the old woman, who sits in the center
throwing runes whilst staring off at the sky.
Of course, it's nothing more than a device to create an atmosphere of portentousness. It works better if there's something out
there, like clouds, or if the wind is blowing.
Today the sky is blue and quiet.
Yet it works, even for me though I've seen it a hundred times. The gods never tell us when they're with us
and when they're not. This is not the
world at all and part of me believes in it utterly.
I nod as the
old woman comes off and she smiles in return.
The
next scene is Eric's and I stand at the edge of the boards and watch. The old man and he are in rags. They have been shipwrecked. Eric wonders what to do; he had meant to
return to his homeland in dragon ships swimming deeply with holds filled with
riches. Instead, because of a storm and
Thor’s will, he is thrown up onto the empty beach of his homeland with
nothing. He addresses the audience as if
they were the gods and asks what he should do.
They're
silent as they always are, as we expect them to be. The fat old man with him suggests that they
should come to me and that Eric should assume his birthright. Eric then goes down on a knee as if the fat
old man were I and asks for the kingdom.
The old man parodies me in a gross way, says that Eric has been naughty
for staying away for six years, and agrees.
Then he asks what reward he can give to the "great, good man that
has returned my son to me." Eric
grimaces and he and the audience laugh.
It's a bit overdone, but it plays.
For Eric, the competition is a courtship and the most important thing is
to be pretty and clever in the eyes of the beholders.
"Haakon?" someone hisses. I know it's Torval without looking.
"What,"
I hiss back and turn, and then I see.
Helena
stands at the edge of the wings.
Everyone backstage is watching her suspiciously; she is from the other side,
after all. She stands as she stood on
the stage and so I know she is nervous, too.
"Haakon,
Eric would like to talk to you about the third act."
"Helena!"
I say, opening the fur cloak and holding my arms out to her.
She
doesn't move nor does her expression change.
"It's been nine years, Haakon," she says.
I
wait for a moment, then drop my arms.
"This cloak is very heavy.
It's hard to hold it open like that." I cough.
"Why
did you come back?" she asks, her voice gentle yet icy, too. I remember that now she is capable of roaring
as well. She has become a lioness.
"I
don't know. Maybe for you. But wouldn't you rather know why I
left?"
"Not
anymore."
"Hmm,"
I muse, "You're about at the age now that I was when I left. Who was I then?" Her eyes grow wide and she sets her jaw;
obviously age is a delicate issue, so I press on. "And Eric is about the age you were
then."
"The
world has forgotten you," she answers, declaring the obvious.
Still,
it hurts. But then it was meant to. There is still something between us. It's time for a different attack. "I missed you."
She's
crying. But she wipes her eyes as if she
doesn't care who sees. This is a strange
indifference. "What should I tell
him?" she asks in the same flat voice.
"Nothing."
"What?"
She’s
amazed: bargaining over the last act is
part of the game, the part of the performance that’s offstage, only partly seen
and heard.
"Not
now," I say.
She
looks at me one last time, turns for the stairs, remembers something and turns
back. Her hair is red in the afternoon
sun. "Eric knows how fond you are
of dying."
Then
she is gone. Only now am I aware of
Torval standing at my side, watching where she stood. I look at him and after a minute he looks at
me. "This is why you came back, Haakon,"
he says and steps hard on the boards.
"This."
Everything
about me is suddenly more present and immediate. My mouth is dry when I go out on stage again. This is my first scene with Eric. I'm nervous, so I cough. I'm an old man playing an old man, and old
men cough. "Let me see my son,"
I say and Eric walks on. The silver
chaplet and his rags are inspired; I wonder if he thought of the costume himself. I cough again to spoil his entrance.
"Years
ago, I feared you had died. Later, we
mourned you as if you had. From that
window you can see the mound where we buried the ship with the weapons and
armor you left behind, but not your corpse-" I say the words
casually. But then I break down and turn
partly away. I give the audience the
tears they expect and turn a little towards the afternoon sun so they can see them
clearly finding their peculiar way down my weathered cheeks. "We gave you all that your honor
deserved and more. Since then I have
tried to learn to live as if I'd never had a son."
"Why?" He honestly doesn't understand. Well, the line can be played that way. But there can be more in it. He's made a mistake. I intend to take advantage of it.
I
smile; the audience reads anguish again.
"Why have you come back? How
is it you come now?"
"I
don't understand. You talk as if I were
no longer what I am. Where is my
sister?"
"Where
were you that you couldn't send us word?
The ships of our people are in every sea and Norway is a small
land. Yet we heard nothing. What was I to do?"
"Has
it been so long since you yourself sailed to make your own fortune?"
"Fortune!
What need? You were a king's
son."
"How could I rule in your place if I hadn't
proven myself? How could I lead other
men if I hadn't pulled an oar with others and carried the sword and the round
shield? We are but what we make
ourselves. Has it been so long since you
sailed with the summer ships that you have forgotten what it is to live by your
wits alone? How else can you find out
what you can and cannot do?"
"And
so what have you discovered? What have
you learned about yourself? What fortune
do you bring to increase the renown of our great house?" I say the words gutturally and sarcastically,
my voice rising with each question.
"My
ship was lost. All was lost. Should I not have come here?"
Eric
seems almost simple. He looks from me to
the audience and back. What does he want
from them? They want a clever hero; not
a foolish one. Cleverness is all he has
now and it will be the only thing he has when the written words end and the
last act begins. And if he grows
wonderfully clever then, the audience will never believe it and the judges will
give the scepter to us.
"One
ship, just one ship?" I scowl.
"One
ship. The ship we left in.
“The
first summer we hunted the coasts of the Irish.
But their gold and silver and women had been taken long ago." Eric turns away from me, glances at the ships
below us, then, smiling, speaks to the audience.
"We
were rich in wind. The stars were clear
and sailed with us. We sailed north and
west to Iceland. We were welcome there,
though we brought nothing. I remember
the fair-haired women in the torchlight in their great walled halls. The wind sang all night to us and our
love-making."
"These
are the occupations of a summer or even two.
But winters you were needed here.
The house jarls needed to see you growing into what would be
yours."
"But
I had nothing to bring back. What would
the house jarls have said to an empty ship?"
"What
will they say to no ship at all five years later?"
"Maybe
they will say I'm luckless. There is
nothing worse, is there?
“But
where is my sister?"
"Your
sister is queen of the Norsemen and the Danes," I say bitterly. "You truly are without luck. One summer earlier--she is married to the son
of the Danish King. They will rule here together
when I die."
"What
have you done?"
"What
have I done?" I could give the
question to him, but I give it to the Gods instead and for a moment it is as if
I'm all alone on stage. "Luckless!"
"There
is one thing I've learned," Eric says, almost too softly to be heard.
The
audience has turned to him.
"Sometimes
a man makes his own luck."
The
words are just too much; he wins the scene anyway. It ends with him asking me, simply, what I
will do.
"You
cannot beat the words, Haakon," Torval says when I come off.
"Can't
I," I roar dramatically. The first
act has ended and the audience is so noisy now, going out to change bets,
changing seats, talking to friends, that I don't worry about being heard. "It's time to talk to Eric."
"What?"
"Certainly. Let's go."
"Haakon,
you've changed."
"Yes."
We walk
around and behind the scrim at the back of the stage. At once the wind is louder than the people on
the other side and the stage seems small and fragile, merely a stage. As we climb the stairs on the other side,
some of the talking stops. Both the
other actors and the audience are straining to hear. Eric meets us at the top of the stairs.
"What
do you want Haakon?"
"We've
come to talk," I step past him to the center of this small space and turn
so that I stand between him and the stage.
I hope the symbolism isn’t lost on him.
Helena is there, too, and is wary. I know that Eric is watching both of us, and
I wonder what he'll do.
"I
wanted to talk to you, too, Haakon," he says, suddenly cheerful. "I'm glad you came across. Truly."
"And
what did you want to talk about?"
"Like
everyone else," he says, watching Helena, "I wondered where you went,
why you left and now, why you've come back.
Of course, it’s an honor to play against someone who was once so
great. But why did you leave?"
"Honor
or not, you mean to win."
"Obviously,"
he answers, looking me in the eye with his character's easiness and
strength. "You didn't answer my
question."
"Should
I?" I look straight back. I can
look into anyone's eyes. There's nothing
to that.
He
shrugs easily. He thinks he wins something
if I don't or can't.
Let's
see how he plays against the truth. "Everything was easy. I was good, I was rich, we never lost. My deaths were always triumphs. And no one else dared die if they were
playing against me. No matter how well
someone clutched at his side and spat pig's blood and said brave words, giving
up the stage in the last act was suicide.
I was lucky."
Eric
smiles. He thinks I've grown
sentimental.
"Yet
luck isn't why I left. It was because of
this," I remember Torval stepping on the boards and saying similar words;
instead I open my hands toward Eric, gesturing the boards, the painted scrim,
the people, the air. "This isn't
real. The wars, the passions, the lives
and deaths, come from the image in a single man's mind. The ideas and laws ruling men's lives that we
discover here aren't true. They are what
someone wishes were true. Here we die
and then rise again. I didn't want to
come to the end of my life and realize I'd never lived.
"So
I became what other men are. I bought a
sword and pulled an oar. I plowed fields
and when the crops failed and it looked as though we might starve, (there was a
woman then and a child), I started singing for food because I knew songs and
there wasn't anything else and I was afraid.
I found what was real, the fear
that you can taste, the sorrow that can fill all things."
"And
now you have grown wise," Eric says and looks again at Helena. "And have returned to warn us."
"Not
at all," I answer indifferently. "You asked."
"I
did. You still haven't explained why you
came back."
"This,"
I say.
"Or
maybe you had nowhere else to go."
I
risk an easy smile of my own. "I'm
considering dying in the last act, by the way.
I thought you might be interested."
"You
might find that difficult. By the rules
we have the next entrance. What if one
of my men, a messenger say, then comes on and says that you have
recovered."
"No
one will believe it."
"People
don't have to believe for me to win."
"They
don't?" I'm honestly bewildered, like a child. Then I understand what he means: he doesn't need to win this competition; he
only needs to make sure that I don't.
It's
nothing to him if the performance fails.
But it should be.
"There
is winning and there is losing and there is nothing else," I say. "Be
certain you know the difference. Torval,
let's go." I'm furious.
"Did
you win or did you lose?" Torval
asks as we're walking back.
"It's
not over," I answer and then wonder if Torval meant something else.
It's time for
the last written act. There are two
scenes, one with Eric and one with me and Torval. Helena is in both. She is brushing her hair and watching the sea
when Eric walks up behind her. He is in
arms; a red dragon curls around the edge of the shield he carries with a spear
in one hand. Helena stops brushing her
hair, turns slowly and begins to wail.
"I
knew it was going to rain," I observe with sarcasm to Torval as we watch. "How long have they been over-playing
everything like this?"
He
looks at me, then answers. "They're
not overplaying it."
But
they are. I've seen grief. There was a hovel in Ireland near the
sea. An old man came at us with a scythe
and one of my shipmates, who was always grinning, sensibly drew his sword and
split the man from the shoulder to the waist.
Then his woman came running out of the hovel. She wasn't crying, or screaming. But I could hear her rasping breath. Her face was blank with anger and simple
confusion. She was grief.
She
was also old and had lost all her teeth so we killed her, too.
Helena
recites her next line, "You will go to war though he is your father? He had no way of knowing you still lived. My husband will be with him," Helena
says.
"If
I didn't fight, I would not be who I am," Eric answers.
Torval
helps me into a habergeon and I trade the crown for a helmet. There is a large slanting hole in the back of
the chainmail; someone probably died wearing it and the family gave the armor
to us because it was unlucky. "I
have to remember not to turn my left side to them."
"The
wolf cloak will cover it," Torval answers.
"No,
I'd rather you carried it."
"Let's
go then. Eric is gone."
I
gulp a big breath, there isn't room for huffing or coughing in this scene. Torval and I walk out onto the boards.
"Lady,
where is your husband? The night is
dying, we should be planning how to join our several powers for tomorrow's
battle."
"Have
you considered that your son is on the other side of the river?"
"Yes,
and the Swedes are with him. Where is
your husband?"
"I
have to stop this," she says plaintively.
"There
isn't time for this; someone else knows where he is." I start to turn, remember the hole in the
back of the chain mail and don't turn quite as far as I would otherwise.
"What?"
"Aren't
you attending to what I'm saying?"
"My
husband. He is putting on his
armor. He'll be here."
I
fold my arms and look out at the audience.
Their eyes are shining with the reflection of the afternoon sun. I wonder how long the play will last, perhaps
into the dark. Then torches will be
brought.
"Haven't
you talked to Eric?" Helena asks.
"I
have."
"You
should be with him, fighting together for what is his."
"Then
you, your husband and the Swedes would be on the other side of the
river," I answer.
"I
don't understand," Helena says simply as Helena herself would speak, were
we alone. "This isn't how I thought
things would turn out. This isn't what I
wanted my life to be."
She
looks straight into me with simple confusion and I have no words, no lines.
Everything
is gone. Maybe it's her. Maybe those aren’t her lines. Are those her lines? It doesn’t matter: she is saying those words to me, Haakon; the
words are real. And I don't know how to
answer for me or my life.
It's Torval
that saves me. He moves over a little
and throws the wolf cloak across my shoulders and that is enough. I remember.
Her words are right. How is it I
never heard them before? They're small,
simple, true words. I want to cry.
"We
chose this because we are who we are. He
wouldn't be my son if he didn't fight and I wouldn't be his father if I did
not. The rest is luck."
The
scene is over, thank the gods.
"What
happened?" Torval hisses when we're in the wings. He is amazed.
"I
forgot Helena's lines, then I forgot my own."
"You
forget lines?"
"Yes. You know, I never heard those words, but they
were there all the time." I look
out to the west. The fjord is the color
of blood and the sun is settling into the jagged cliffs.
"What
words?"
"What?"
"It
doesn't matter. The poet's words are
finished.”
Torval
turns and walks over to talk to someone else.
Suddenly, I'm impatient. I stomp
once hard on the boards. This isn't the
world I expected. This is the last
act. But now I understand what it is I
have to do. There will only be our words
now, rough, improvised. And true.
-Thomas Jensen
