Free Odinn's Child by Tim Severin

corpse. Then we set course for Leif’s huts to spend the winter — keeping a sharp lookout for Skraelings as soon as the weather improved.'
    My uncle Thorstein spoke up. He was looking distressed. 'Leif,' he said, 'we can't leave Thorvald's body there. There's every chance that the Skraelings will find his body, dig it up and defile it. He deserves better. It's only a three-week sail to the spot, and I would like to take a crew of volunteers, sail to Thorvald's cairn, and recover the body so that we can have a proper burial here in Greenland. Your ship, which has just returned, isn't up to the job. She needs to be pulled ashore and recaulked, but my father-in-law Thorbjorn still has the knorr which brought him and his people from Iceland, and she could be ready to sail in two days' time. I'm sure that Thorbjorn will agree to loan her to me for the mission.'
    Of course, both my father and old Thorbjorn, who was in the hall listening to the returnees, had to agree. This was a matter of family honour, and if there is one thing which the Norse are fanatical about it is the question of their honour. To a true Norseman his honour is something he places before all else. He will defend it or seek to enhance it by whatever means available, and that includes raiding for booty, exacting revenge for an insult, and lying or cheating to gain the advantage.

    D ESPITE THEIR ORIGINAL plans, it was a full month before my uncle Thorstein set sail for Vinland. It seemed a pity to go all that distance and not bring back a cargo of timber and fish, so his expedition expanded into more than just a trip to recover Thorvald's body. There was equipment to gather, men to be summoned from the pastures, where they had gone with the cattle, stores to be loaded. Then someone suggested that it might be a good idea to leave a small group to overwinter at Leif s cabins, and this scheme delayed matters still further. When old Thorbjorn's knorr did finally set sail she looked more like an emigrant vessel than an expedition ship. There were six cows and several sheep standing in the hold, bales of hay to feed them, piles of farming gear, and on board were several women, including Gudrid, who had asked to accompany her husband. I, meanwhile, would stay behind with her father.

    And by the time the preparations were all made it was too late. Thorstein Eriksson had a fine sense of family honour, but he lacked a sense of urgency and that essential gift of all good sea captains — weather luck. Intending for Vinland, he and his crew set out from Brattahlid but encountered such strong headwinds that they spent most of the summer beating uselessly about the ocean. At one stage they were in sight of Iceland and on another occasion glimpsed

    birds which they judged came from the Irish coast. At the end of the sailing season, without ever having set foot in Vinland, they limped back to Greenland. Simple-minded folk claim that a ship or boat has a mind and a spirit of its own. They believe that a vessel can 'see' its way back home like a domestic cat or dog that has been lost, or a horse to its stable, and that it can retrace the same routes that it has previously sailed. This is nonsense, the dreaming of landlubbers. Vessels which make several repeat journeys usually do so because they are in the hands of the same experienced crew members or there is some characteristic of the particular vessel — shallow draught, ability to sail to windward, or whatever — which makes it best suited to the task in hand. Seamanship and weather luck make for a successful second or third voyage along a particular track, not a boat's own acquired knowledge. Thorstein's failure to fetch back his brother's bones goes to prove this very well.

    They eventually made their Greenland landfall not at Brattahlid but at Lyusfjord some three days' sail to the north-west. Here a small group of Norse had already established a few coastal farms, and Thorstein struck up a friendship with a namesake,