Thord Manuscript, Page I
Ingrid had been almost incoherent on the phone speaking fast and loud, saying she needed to see me, that she had found it. Whatever it was, it wasn’t clear. So now I waited in my office, at this ungodly hour waiting for her. Surprisingly, instead of her usual absentminded tardiness, she actually arrived earlier than the appointed time. She burst in without knocking, her arms tightly clutching a cloth wrapped bundle to her chest.
She kicked the door shut behind her, and suddenly stopped and turned around and flipped the deadbolt, locking the door. I was too shocked by her appearance to protest. Her usually neat appearance was replaced by a disheveled woman, her grey hair wild and uncombed, her eyes bloodshot from lack of sleep and her coat misbuttoned, all of that topped by a mad beaming smile.
“Ingrid, what is going…” I started to say as she marched up to my desk and appeared to be looking for a clear spot to set down her bundle. Seeing none, one of her arms released its grip on the bundle and swept clear a spot on my desk, sending ungraded papers, pens, photographs, and other knickknacks spilling onto the floor. Then with much more care she gently set the bundle down on the cleared space.
I was still sputtering in anger when she spoke, cutting me off. “Karl, I’ve found something incredible. I think it is the prelude to the Saga of Rebirth!” and pointed at the bundle on my desk.
It took a second for her words to cut through my rising temper over the destruction she had wreaked.
When I finally understood, I suddenly felt light headed, “What are you talking about, there has been no mention of a prelude ever in the past 800 years, if it even exists at all. You don’t just find it.”
She didn’t answer, instead she unwrapped the bundle, on top was a couple of loose pages of letter size paper with printing on them, but she pushed those aside to reveal a thin ragged, broken spined-volume in a plastic sleeve. It was slightly smaller in size than the modern paper sheets and seemed to contain only about two dozen or so pages of parchment… very old parchment, bound with a tattered cloth cover. There were four faded runes embossed on the beaten cover of the volume.
Ingrid saw me trying to puzzle out the runes from memory, “It just says ‘Thord’ in Younger Futhark runes. I already checked it.” She said in an awed tone.
My mind was racing ‘Thord’, could this really be it? Could this tell the story of the mysterious origin of one of the most important men in history, King Grip ‘the Victorious’, the main heroic figure in the Saga of Rebirth? A single entry in an obscure text had once referenced the great man as ‘Grip Thordsson’ which had set off a mad search through history by hundreds of scholars for his possible father under the name Thord, a search that had so far proven fruitless.
I looked up at Ingrid, into her tired shining eyes. “Can it really be?”
She nodded, and picked up the two loose sheets of printer paper, “I already translated the first page, it puts this Thord in the right time period,” she paused with excitement and then almost shrieked in joy, “It mentions Erik ‘the Heathen’ by name.”
I grab the sheets from her hand and quickly began to read…
My name is Thord, the last son of the Eketrä.
In 1066, the Viking way of life is dying and the belief in the Old Gods with it.
My father had been a mighty Viking raider in his youth, feared across Europe. He had been born to a poor farming family, but by the time he was 14 he had left the farm and joined a Viking raiding crew. In time, he rose to captain that ship and then lead fleets. He won and lost fortunes. He raised six sons from various wives and concubines and saw them all die in battle, destined for Valhalla. But as the Christian God and his followers united against the Viking raiders, killing them or converting them, he found himself coming back from raids empty handed and losing men. In the end, after 50 years of raiding, he took the last of his crew and raised a fort in Ångermanland and took a local headman's daughter as his last wife. By the time I was born, what hair he had left had turned white and his days of raiding long past.
My mother died in birthing me, so I was raised by a crew of retired raiders, who spent every night reliving their youth. All I knew were the Sagas and the tales of my father's exploits. These old men talked of the glory of raiding the great cities of France and the Mediterranean and dreamed of going to Valhalla, but as they began dying, hearts failing while behind a plow or when in their cups, the chances of dying in battle seemed slim. In his last years, my father went everywhere with a naked blade in his hand, fearful he would die weaponless and Odin would forget all he had done. He died in his sleep, his sword knocked to the floor sometime during the night.
So, I have become the Chief of Ångermanland, one of the last independent Norsemen left in the world. A man who had been raised to follow the Old Gods and to seek glory as a raider in a world where the Viking way of life has become history rather than fact.
To the south in Sweden, the old King's son, Erik, and many of his vassals still follow the Old Gods, but their days of going a Viking are over, Erik kneels to his father's successor, a Christian King who forbids raiding and calls Erik a heathen.
I am not ready to give up the Old Gods and kneel before the Christian one. I would take a chance on living as my father had and someday meeting my father and my unknown brothers in Valhalla. For years, others who felt the same way had drifted north from the Christian lands and come to my hall. I welcomed them and gave them land, adding to my strength. I found amongst them skilled shipwrights and had them build me longships, I knew I would soon make my mark on the world.
I read straight through twice while Ingrid sat on the edge of the seat opposite my desk, watching me like a hawk. Finally, I looked up at her, “This is different from any Saga I have ever read, it seems more like a journal or autobiography written or dictated by this Thord himself rather than a later telling of his story based on tales and legends.”
Ingrid look chagrined, “Do you think it is fake? I have sent samples of the parchment, the ink, and the cover bindings to the lab to try and date the actual materials.”
“That’s good. I don’t know if it is fake, but it unusual, there are autobiographies older than this, so it’s not unknown, but I’ve never heard of one from this area and this time period written in runic script.” I had a sudden astonishing thought, “If this is genuine, it is even more valuable than any Saga… it’s a firsthand, eyewitness account of life in medieval Sweden at the end of 11th century before the chaos at the turn of the century.”
Ingrid nodded, “That’s why I brought it to you, you have the knowledge and equipment to handle and protect this source material as we translate and authenticate it. I translated the first page because it was accessible and I needed to have some idea of what I had, but I didn’t dare go any further in fear of damaging the parchment or scraping off the ink.”
I looked at her and smiled, “Thank you, this may make both of our careers. We will do this right every step of the way, and if this is real, we will be the first to know the truth.”
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