When Bente and her father returned home, her little brother Erik and her mother were watching Bergen Football on television. It was nothing unusual to see her brother watching football. He loved playing it every chance he could. He even dribbled the football along the sidewalk with his feet as he went to and from school. It didn’t matter whether the snow had been shoveled away or not.
Seeing her mother watch football, however, was something else. Bente figured her mother would be upstairs, hand painting fancy designs on cake pans and cookie tins to sell at church. However, Mrs. Larsen sat right beside Erik, cheering on Bergen.
“Bergen!” exclaimed Mr. Larsen “I forgot there was a match today!”
He immediately sat down on the couch between Erik and mother. Bente, however, headed upstairs.
“Come sit with us and watch football.”
Bente shook her head.
“Bente doesn’t like football,” said Erik, “she’d rather play the violin or read paperbacks in her bedroom.”
“Before you go to your room,” interrupted mother, “I want you to wash the dishes and put them away.”
“But I went out with father today.”
“As long as you’re living under this roof, you’ll do your duty and do your chores, no matter where you went.”
Bente sighed, but minded her mother. She headed upstairs immediately after she was finished. However, she did not practice violin or read, as her brother expected.
Instead, she lay atop her bed, turned to one side, and stared out the window. She daydreamed about ancient Norsemen, sailing across the North Sea.
Even late at night, the merchant ships and cruise ships ventured into and out of the fjord. The fjords, those slender fingers of land and sea that intertwined, stretched all along Norway’s massive coastline.
Bente had always known that view outside her window, but she’d never really thought of it like tonight. Sure, she’d daydreamed about riding out to sea, but she never really considered how important shipping was to Bergen, or for that matter, all of Norway.
She headed downstairs. She still had no intention of watching the Bergen Football Club. Instead, she had questions that needed answered. She grabbed a tiny bottle off the mantle and carefully wiped it clean. A tiny model of a Viking ship was trapped inside.
“You say these tiny boats were the same boats Vikings used?”
Mr. Larsen nodded.
“They’re called longboats, right?”
Mr. Larsen nodded again. “At their largest, they were only about twenty meters long and three or four meters wide. These were the longboats you’ve seen in museums.”
“Twenty meters? That’s not very long for a long ship. That’s only ten people lined up, head to toe.”
“The biggest longboats only carried about twenty crew and one chieftain.”
“That doesn’t sound like a longboat at all.”
“They were called longboats because by the time they were used in Viking raids, they were long and narrow. They looked nothing like any of the other seafaring boats. The narrow longboats allowed the Vikings to travel quickly over long distances.”
“Your model boat is flat and wide.”
“That’s because the ship in the bottle you’re holding is a farmer’s longboat.”
“What do you mean?”
“Vikings had different boats for different purposes. The first Vikings weren’t savage brutes. They were farmers, living on the fjords all along the coast. They were merchants and traders just like today. They traded crops like potatoes, barley, or wheat.”
“They didn’t have corn or peas?”
“The rocky soil has always been thin and sandy in this part of Europe, which makes it difficult to farm. There were only a few crops farmers could grow. Landowners would divide their land into strips. Each strip of land was given to a farmer, known as a cotter or a serf. The cotter acted as a servant to the landowner. The cotter tended crops for the landowners. In exchange, the cotters lived in a cottage on their strip of land.”
“How did the landowners become so powerful if they didn’t do any farming?”
“Landowners used boats to trade their harvested crops with landowners from other places. The further they traveled, the more goods they found. The flat-bottom longboats were perfect for holding lots of cargo. Eventually, they reached all parts of Scandinavia, from Norway to Sweden to Denmark to Finland. The brought the things they traded back home and sold these goods to the other villagers.”
“One landowner did all that?”
Mr. Larsen shook his head. “Sometimes, the cotters would help by rowing the boat and working the rigging for the landowners. The landowners were the captains of their longboats.”
“Was Grandpapa a Viking?”
“He was not.”
“He’s Norwegian, though, right?”
“Yes and no?”
“Yes and no? Which one is it?”
“Both. His grandparents were mountain people called Sami. They lived in a region of Norway called Finnmark, just north of the Arctic Circle.”
“Were they farmers, too?”
“They were nomads. The mountains were too rocky to use for farming so the Sami had to hunt reindeer. These nomads traveled over vast stretches of land hunting reindeer. Wherever the reindeer went, the Sami people followed. It was a grueling lifestyle. Eventually, they resorted to herding reindeer and mountain goats. This brought some of the Sami to the rivers where they traded with the farmer-Vikings. Eventually, some Sami, like my great-grandparents, moved into the lowlands and fjords.”
“My father and his family lived along the coast,” said Mrs. Larsen, “They used longboats to navigate rivers like personal highways. Since my family lived near the coast, many of my relatives were fishermen, too. ”
“I thought the Vikings traveled great distances on their longboats.”
“Eventually, they became great explorers, but at first, Vikings only explored the many fjords, looking for items to trade. The word ‘Viking’ means ‘to travel on the river’. They weren’t much different from the traders at Bryggen.”
“I thought that Vikings drank large pitchers of ale, carried battle axes, and wore horned helmets and wolf pelts.”
“That’s a very romantic idea, but it’s not very practical.”
“What do you mean?”
“The first Vikings wanted what everyone else wanted – good food and a good home. There were some exceptions, of course, but it wasn’t practical to travel around being a pirate.”
“But we talk about Viking raiders at school.”
“Before there were Viking raiders, there were Viking traders. Think about it. The biggest longboats only carry nineteen men. If they lost several of their crew, how would the few remaining Vikings be able to travel? It’s much more likely that there were more Vikings that traded than there were that invaded.”
Bente carefully replaced the bottled ship on the mantle above the fireplace. She poured herself a glass of cold milk and chugged it rather quickly. As she sat it on the table, she imagined a group of farmer Vikings coming home from a long trip to Sea. She lifted the glass up in the air, making an imaginary toast. Then, she took the glass to the kitchen sink and rinsed it out before returning to her bedroom.
A row of dim orange-yellow lights lit the opposite side of the bay as Bente peered out her window. The cabin lights of merchant ships skimmed above the surface of the cold, black water of the inlet, with deckhands walking the length of the ships as they slowly cruised along.
Bente imagined the fishermen and farmers traveling through the fjords. Then, she imagined Vikings with horned helmets pulling on oars as they fought the treacherous sea. Either way, it left Bente with a little smile as she closed her eyes and dreamed of the cold North Sea.
.
No comments:
Post a Comment