Odinn's Child Read Online Free

work. With no forests on the island, their ships are mostly imported ready built from Norway. Little wonder that the Icelanders tend to join viking expeditions and loot the luxuries they do not have at home. Their viking raids also provide a channel for their chronic pugnacity, which otherwise turns inward and leads to those deadly quarrels and bloody feuds which I was to find it impossible to avoid.
    Here I feel that I should try to clear up a misunderstanding among outsiders over what is meant by 'viking'. I have heard it said, for example, that the description is applied to men who come from the viks, the creeks and inlets of the north country, particularly of Norway. But this is incorrect. When the Norse people call someone a vikingr because he goes viking they mean a person who goes to sea to fight or harry, perhaps as a warrior on an expedition, perhaps as an outright brigand. Victims of such raids would readily translate the word as 'pirate', and indeed some Norse do see their vikingr in this light. Most Norsemen, however, regard those who go viking in a more positive light. In their eyes a vikingr is a bold fellow who sets out to make his fortune, takes his chance as a sea raider, and hopes to come home with great wealth and the honour which he has won by his personal bravery and audacity.
    The arrival of a trading ship at Snaefellsness — moored in the little anchorage at Rif — was just the sort of news which spread rapidly among these rural farmers. Many of them made plans to row out to the anchored ship, hoping to be the first to look over the cargo in her hold and make an offer to buy or barter for the choicest items. They quickly brought back word that a mysterious and apparently rich woman from Orkney was aboard the ship, though nothing was said about her babe in arms. Naturally, among the farmers' wives along the coast this was a subject of great curiosity. What was her destination? Did she dress in a new fashion? Was she related to anyone in Iceland? What were her intentions? The person who took it upon herself to answer these riddles was almost as formidable as my mother - Thurid Barkadottir, wife of a well-to-do farmer, Thorodd Skattkaupandi, and half-sister to one of the most influential and devious men in Iceland, Snorri Godi, a man so supple that he was managing to be a follower of Thor and the White Christ at the same time and who, more than once, was to shape the course of my life. Indeed it was Snorri who many years later told me of the relationship between Thurid Barkadottir and my mother, how it began with a confrontation, developed into a wary truce and ended in events that became part of local folk memory and scandal.
    Thurid's extravagant taste was known to everyone in the area of Frodriver, close by Rif, where she and Thorodd ran their large farm. She was an extremely vain woman who liked to dress as showily as possible. She had a large wardrobe and an eye-catching collection of jewellery, which she did not hesitate to display to her neighbours. Under the pretence of being a good housekeeper, she was the sort of woman who likes to acquire costly furnishings for her house — the best available wall hangings, the handsomest tableware and so forth — and invite as many guests as possible to show them off. In short, she was a self-centred, ostentatious woman who considered herself a cut above her neighbours. Being half-sister to Snorri Godi was another encouragement for her to preen herself. Snorri was one of the leading men of the region, indeed in the whole of Iceland. His family were among the earliest settlers and he exercised the powers of a godi, a local chieftain-by-election, though in Snorri's case the title was hereditary in all but name. His farmlands were large and well favoured, which made him a rich man, and they contained also the site of an important temple to the God Thor. Thurid felt that, with such illustrious and powerful kin, she was not bound by normal conventions. She was