From a Father to his Son
From father to son, in one life has begun
A work that's never done, father to son.
Dirty Day-U2
The valley was covered in snow and the lodges of the people of Ulfrick’s clan were quiet and all were snuggled in their bed robes, warm and safe. The hunts of the summer had been fruitful and the clan was well fed. The store houses of smoked meat and fish and the root vegetables and dried fruit and clay jars of honey and skin sacks of mead were waiting to be enjoyed. They had just celebrated Yule and welcomed the spirit of Woden into their homes and now were waiting for the coming of spring and the planting of the crops and the plans for hunting and raiding.
Barely 20, this ancient Norseman was a seasoned and respected chieftain. He was married and had one strong son and his wife was taken this night into the women’s lodge to bear his second child. He prayed to the All Father and to Freya and Frigg that she would be safe and the child would be healthy. He paced in front of the women’s house and could hear the sounds of women working with his wife and her muffled cries. She was a strong, brave woman from a clan nearby.
He was tall, blond, with a full blond beard. His hair was dark now, like rich honey his wife poured over the little cakes she baked on the hearth. He had broad shoulders and long thick legs, now covered in the heavy fur and woolen cloak his wife had made for him. He squinted his eyes against the cold wind in them, but anyone who looked into his eyes saw the stormy grey eyes there, light grey with a dark ring making them seem brighter. His thick blond lashes and brows held tiny snowflakes that melted with the heat of his body. His skin was pale now that he did not go out in the sun shirtless to work in the fields or to fish or hunt. In the summer he was golden and his hair flaxen.
He was a man used to hard work and hard fighting and the champion of many a campaign. He had won the honor of chieftain and had awakened to find his sword, the sword of legend in his scabbard when he woke the morning after he was made chief and it rested now against his hip and long thigh. The months of winter were long and dark, but in the company of his clan, he knew the warmth of kinship and now, again, the warmth of fatherhood.
Being a father was as important as being chieftain. He must teach his sons the ways and customs of the people, to hunt and fight. The world was treacherous, a dangerous place to be. Nature was as much as challenge as an opposing clan. He already had his older son wielding a wooden sword, showing him how to stand, how to measure a man’s strengths and weaknesses. He was still a little young to hunt, but he could throw the small spear he had made for him with accuracy. In a year or so, he would go off in small bands with boys his age and hunt for small animals that would be cleaned and cooked and made a part of the family meal. He would make a great deal of the small rabbit or bird that his son would present his mother and pronounce it the making of the feast. Thus it was in his boy hood. He remembered there were sometimes all the food had by a family was food the younger sons brought in during their hunting expeditions. Everything was precious. Everyone was sacred.
The clan may be one people or under one chieftain, but each lodge was a nation all its own. The man was the chieftain in his own lodge and he sat there in the company of his wife and children and slaves (if he had any) and he would decide what would happen. A father was godlike in the lives of his children, and they were small suppliants to the house god, seeking his favor. Most times they got it, for a Norse father knows that his life will end and the only thing that remains are his children, the only things that will see him and his blood into the future. A man realizes his duty to that future the first time a child is laid across his knees. And a true man embraces that duty, cherishes it, because it makes a man what he is. Even his god is a father.
So, Ulfrick paces. He looks at his lodge. He knows his oldest son is sleeping and he knows the slave women are looking after him. The lodge is in the center of the village and he can see the soft golden light of a lamp glowing around the cracks of the windows and doors covered by shutters and a hide over the hole. He turns back to the women’s lodge. The Shaman was outside the walls, walking around, intoning the magik to protect the woman and to scare the child from the dark warm sleeping world of the womb to the wilder, brighter world of the waking world. There was a loud cry from his wife and the warbling wail of his child, free of its mother’s body.
The midwives would be bathing his wife’s genitals with warm wine and herbs to bring down the baby’s pouch and to heal her tissues. They would be massaging her belly, their warm hands gently kneading her flesh. Another midwife would be bathing his child in the same concoction mixed with water from the sword maker’s well, checking the child’s feet and hands for deformity. They would peer into its eyes at make sure it could see. They would clap their hands to ensure it could hear. The babe was still crying, a good healthy cry. Lusty. He wanted to go into the lodge, but no man went into the women’s lodge. It was the place of mystery, the place where one life becomes two, separate but dependant. They would lay the babe on her breast and she would feed it with the milk of her body. Was it a boy or a girl? A warrior or weaver? It did not matter. A girl child would be welcome in his lodge though he knew his wife wanted another son. A female would grace his home, she would be his pride, she would be strong and handsome like his wife and when she was of an age, he would find her a fine man to be mated with and strengthen the family and the clan.
The snow was falling now, and the moon was full. The Shaman was now standing at the door of the women’s house and he was handed the placenta in a bowl. That which remains would be examined and the runes cast upon it and the sign of the child’s birth, the mark of Iss, would be entered on the Shaman’s skins, and when the child was named, his name would be marked as well. The child would not be named for a month, but his wife had been thinking about the names of her child. Aerideth if it was a girl…her husband’s father’s name if it was a boy.
The Shaman was walking away from the lodge with the bowl. The tissue was steaming in the cold air and Ulfrick could smell the blood and tissue. The Shaman was already looking at it.
“Does it seem well to you Shaman?” he asked.
“It seems well, and smells of a man child,” he said to the chief and walked away to his hut to do the magikal work while the full moon was high. “All the signs are a sign of great portent my lord. I predict a long life for the child of Ulfrick.” Ulfrick gave the Shaman a piece of gold for his work and the old man, the speaker to the gods, who gave him the strength of the bear in battle, nodded his thanks.
The child of Ulfrick. Ulfrick’s child. A being brought into the world with the joining of his body and his wife’s. When had it happened? Was it on one of the nights in the early spring, when he took her into his arms and slid into her like his sword slides into the scabbard? Or was it a bright day when they had worked in the fields and walked to the spring to bathe and when they were undressed and he had her there in the grass and sun, her arms around him her mouth whispering the prayers every woman recites for successful coupling that would result in a child. That was it…he was sure of it in his heart. It was the wonderful sunlit day when he brought this child into being. Prayer and coupling is the blessing of the gods. Their act of loving was as sacred as a Shaman’s ritual to the All Father on his throne.
Lost in his memories of he and his wife on the grass, the midwife came out and in her arms was a large bundle, covered in reign deer hides and lined in the skins of minks. He could hear the snuffling cries. He followed her into his lodge, out of the cold where he had been standing and into the comfort and heat of his home. The midwife was a middle aged woman, small, red and thick with good food and knowledge of all things of life. It was said she could lay her hands on a woman and heal her with a touch, a murmuring to the gods.
“Is all well? Is my wife safe?” demanded the chieftain. So many women died of child birth, in blood and screaming. His own mother had in his delivery.
“She is well, my lord. Please sit and let me present this child upon your knees,” she said. Presenting the child to its father was the momentous time. This act made the child a member of the family, a member of the clan. It also marked the bargain between the father and the gods that he would care for the child.
“Is it whole? Is it a man or a girl child?” he demanded, circling the midwife as she moved into the room.
“Sit and you will know,” she said.
He sat down and she laid the babe in his arms. He shifted it to lay it along his large muscled thighs and unwrapped the sleeping pink creature. He figured it to be about 20 inches long, about eight pounds. It was blond, its head covered already in thick blond curls. Its eyes were squinched closed and its tiny tongue peeked between its lips. A couple of layers later, he could see the child’s sex, a man child. With his huge hard hands, Ulfrick picked the baby up under the arms and held him up. The baby’s legs drew up to his belly and he began to wail because someone had so rudely disturbed his rest. Ulfrick’s eyes drank the sight of the boy like he would drink a cup of mead. The firelight made him golden. The baby kicked out and complained louder and that was when he looked at his father.
There is nothing like the moment a child looks into the eyes of his maker. Ulfrick’s heart swelled and felt as though it would burst with pride. A Father’s pride is a pride a man feels his whole life. If a man does not feel that pride and does not do all he can to care for his children is not a man. He is cursed by the gods and by his children so long as they walk upon the earth.
“He has old eyes my lord,” said the midwife. “He has the wisdom of the ages in him already. Perhaps he will be a Shaman?”
“He shall be a warrior, and he will be beloved by the gods,” he said. His first son sat up.
“What is it papa?” he called.
“Come and see your brother, my son,” he said to the young boy. He pulled the sleeping robes down and slid from his bed. The child was around six or seven and already tough and strong. He stood by his father and put his hand on his shoulder. “You will have to help me teach him my son, so he will be as strong and as clever as you.”
“I will father,” he said solemnly. “He is so small.”
“Right now, but he will grow and be a great warrior,” he said, cuddling the child in his arms. “You must help me, so that when you become a father, you will know how to raise a son.”
“What about mother?” he asked. “Will she not raise him as well?”
“She will, but she will raise him to be a human being, the first thing all of us learn to be, but we must teach him to be a man. It will be the greatest task any man undertakes,” he said. The boy was nodding and he rubbed the baby’s head. “Go back to bed now son. We will be seeing this little man for some time to come.” The boy went back to his bed and covered up and went back to sleep. The midwife was waiting to take the child back to the women’s lodge where he would live for seven days with his mother to feed and sleep and his mother to heal and grow strong.
He laid the baby back on the robes and wrapped his son carefully. The baby grunted in his sleep and Ulfrick laughed under his breath. He reluctantly handed the child back to the midwife.
“What name will you give him when the time comes,” asked the midwife.
“We shall call him Eric,” said the chieftain.
From father to son, in one life has begun
A work that's never done, father to son.
Dirty Day-U2
The valley was covered in snow and the lodges of the people of Ulfrick’s clan were quiet and all were snuggled in their bed robes, warm and safe. The hunts of the summer had been fruitful and the clan was well fed. The store houses of smoked meat and fish and the root vegetables and dried fruit and clay jars of honey and skin sacks of mead were waiting to be enjoyed. They had just celebrated Yule and welcomed the spirit of Woden into their homes and now were waiting for the coming of spring and the planting of the crops and the plans for hunting and raiding.
Barely 20, this ancient Norseman was a seasoned and respected chieftain. He was married and had one strong son and his wife was taken this night into the women’s lodge to bear his second child. He prayed to the All Father and to Freya and Frigg that she would be safe and the child would be healthy. He paced in front of the women’s house and could hear the sounds of women working with his wife and her muffled cries. She was a strong, brave woman from a clan nearby.
He was tall, blond, with a full blond beard. His hair was dark now, like rich honey his wife poured over the little cakes she baked on the hearth. He had broad shoulders and long thick legs, now covered in the heavy fur and woolen cloak his wife had made for him. He squinted his eyes against the cold wind in them, but anyone who looked into his eyes saw the stormy grey eyes there, light grey with a dark ring making them seem brighter. His thick blond lashes and brows held tiny snowflakes that melted with the heat of his body. His skin was pale now that he did not go out in the sun shirtless to work in the fields or to fish or hunt. In the summer he was golden and his hair flaxen.
He was a man used to hard work and hard fighting and the champion of many a campaign. He had won the honor of chieftain and had awakened to find his sword, the sword of legend in his scabbard when he woke the morning after he was made chief and it rested now against his hip and long thigh. The months of winter were long and dark, but in the company of his clan, he knew the warmth of kinship and now, again, the warmth of fatherhood.
Being a father was as important as being chieftain. He must teach his sons the ways and customs of the people, to hunt and fight. The world was treacherous, a dangerous place to be. Nature was as much as challenge as an opposing clan. He already had his older son wielding a wooden sword, showing him how to stand, how to measure a man’s strengths and weaknesses. He was still a little young to hunt, but he could throw the small spear he had made for him with accuracy. In a year or so, he would go off in small bands with boys his age and hunt for small animals that would be cleaned and cooked and made a part of the family meal. He would make a great deal of the small rabbit or bird that his son would present his mother and pronounce it the making of the feast. Thus it was in his boy hood. He remembered there were sometimes all the food had by a family was food the younger sons brought in during their hunting expeditions. Everything was precious. Everyone was sacred.
The clan may be one people or under one chieftain, but each lodge was a nation all its own. The man was the chieftain in his own lodge and he sat there in the company of his wife and children and slaves (if he had any) and he would decide what would happen. A father was godlike in the lives of his children, and they were small suppliants to the house god, seeking his favor. Most times they got it, for a Norse father knows that his life will end and the only thing that remains are his children, the only things that will see him and his blood into the future. A man realizes his duty to that future the first time a child is laid across his knees. And a true man embraces that duty, cherishes it, because it makes a man what he is. Even his god is a father.
So, Ulfrick paces. He looks at his lodge. He knows his oldest son is sleeping and he knows the slave women are looking after him. The lodge is in the center of the village and he can see the soft golden light of a lamp glowing around the cracks of the windows and doors covered by shutters and a hide over the hole. He turns back to the women’s lodge. The Shaman was outside the walls, walking around, intoning the magik to protect the woman and to scare the child from the dark warm sleeping world of the womb to the wilder, brighter world of the waking world. There was a loud cry from his wife and the warbling wail of his child, free of its mother’s body.
The midwives would be bathing his wife’s genitals with warm wine and herbs to bring down the baby’s pouch and to heal her tissues. They would be massaging her belly, their warm hands gently kneading her flesh. Another midwife would be bathing his child in the same concoction mixed with water from the sword maker’s well, checking the child’s feet and hands for deformity. They would peer into its eyes at make sure it could see. They would clap their hands to ensure it could hear. The babe was still crying, a good healthy cry. Lusty. He wanted to go into the lodge, but no man went into the women’s lodge. It was the place of mystery, the place where one life becomes two, separate but dependant. They would lay the babe on her breast and she would feed it with the milk of her body. Was it a boy or a girl? A warrior or weaver? It did not matter. A girl child would be welcome in his lodge though he knew his wife wanted another son. A female would grace his home, she would be his pride, she would be strong and handsome like his wife and when she was of an age, he would find her a fine man to be mated with and strengthen the family and the clan.
The snow was falling now, and the moon was full. The Shaman was now standing at the door of the women’s house and he was handed the placenta in a bowl. That which remains would be examined and the runes cast upon it and the sign of the child’s birth, the mark of Iss, would be entered on the Shaman’s skins, and when the child was named, his name would be marked as well. The child would not be named for a month, but his wife had been thinking about the names of her child. Aerideth if it was a girl…her husband’s father’s name if it was a boy.
The Shaman was walking away from the lodge with the bowl. The tissue was steaming in the cold air and Ulfrick could smell the blood and tissue. The Shaman was already looking at it.
“Does it seem well to you Shaman?” he asked.
“It seems well, and smells of a man child,” he said to the chief and walked away to his hut to do the magikal work while the full moon was high. “All the signs are a sign of great portent my lord. I predict a long life for the child of Ulfrick.” Ulfrick gave the Shaman a piece of gold for his work and the old man, the speaker to the gods, who gave him the strength of the bear in battle, nodded his thanks.
The child of Ulfrick. Ulfrick’s child. A being brought into the world with the joining of his body and his wife’s. When had it happened? Was it on one of the nights in the early spring, when he took her into his arms and slid into her like his sword slides into the scabbard? Or was it a bright day when they had worked in the fields and walked to the spring to bathe and when they were undressed and he had her there in the grass and sun, her arms around him her mouth whispering the prayers every woman recites for successful coupling that would result in a child. That was it…he was sure of it in his heart. It was the wonderful sunlit day when he brought this child into being. Prayer and coupling is the blessing of the gods. Their act of loving was as sacred as a Shaman’s ritual to the All Father on his throne.
Lost in his memories of he and his wife on the grass, the midwife came out and in her arms was a large bundle, covered in reign deer hides and lined in the skins of minks. He could hear the snuffling cries. He followed her into his lodge, out of the cold where he had been standing and into the comfort and heat of his home. The midwife was a middle aged woman, small, red and thick with good food and knowledge of all things of life. It was said she could lay her hands on a woman and heal her with a touch, a murmuring to the gods.
“Is all well? Is my wife safe?” demanded the chieftain. So many women died of child birth, in blood and screaming. His own mother had in his delivery.
“She is well, my lord. Please sit and let me present this child upon your knees,” she said. Presenting the child to its father was the momentous time. This act made the child a member of the family, a member of the clan. It also marked the bargain between the father and the gods that he would care for the child.
“Is it whole? Is it a man or a girl child?” he demanded, circling the midwife as she moved into the room.
“Sit and you will know,” she said.
He sat down and she laid the babe in his arms. He shifted it to lay it along his large muscled thighs and unwrapped the sleeping pink creature. He figured it to be about 20 inches long, about eight pounds. It was blond, its head covered already in thick blond curls. Its eyes were squinched closed and its tiny tongue peeked between its lips. A couple of layers later, he could see the child’s sex, a man child. With his huge hard hands, Ulfrick picked the baby up under the arms and held him up. The baby’s legs drew up to his belly and he began to wail because someone had so rudely disturbed his rest. Ulfrick’s eyes drank the sight of the boy like he would drink a cup of mead. The firelight made him golden. The baby kicked out and complained louder and that was when he looked at his father.
There is nothing like the moment a child looks into the eyes of his maker. Ulfrick’s heart swelled and felt as though it would burst with pride. A Father’s pride is a pride a man feels his whole life. If a man does not feel that pride and does not do all he can to care for his children is not a man. He is cursed by the gods and by his children so long as they walk upon the earth.
“He has old eyes my lord,” said the midwife. “He has the wisdom of the ages in him already. Perhaps he will be a Shaman?”
“He shall be a warrior, and he will be beloved by the gods,” he said. His first son sat up.
“What is it papa?” he called.
“Come and see your brother, my son,” he said to the young boy. He pulled the sleeping robes down and slid from his bed. The child was around six or seven and already tough and strong. He stood by his father and put his hand on his shoulder. “You will have to help me teach him my son, so he will be as strong and as clever as you.”
“I will father,” he said solemnly. “He is so small.”
“Right now, but he will grow and be a great warrior,” he said, cuddling the child in his arms. “You must help me, so that when you become a father, you will know how to raise a son.”
“What about mother?” he asked. “Will she not raise him as well?”
“She will, but she will raise him to be a human being, the first thing all of us learn to be, but we must teach him to be a man. It will be the greatest task any man undertakes,” he said. The boy was nodding and he rubbed the baby’s head. “Go back to bed now son. We will be seeing this little man for some time to come.” The boy went back to his bed and covered up and went back to sleep. The midwife was waiting to take the child back to the women’s lodge where he would live for seven days with his mother to feed and sleep and his mother to heal and grow strong.
He laid the baby back on the robes and wrapped his son carefully. The baby grunted in his sleep and Ulfrick laughed under his breath. He reluctantly handed the child back to the midwife.
“What name will you give him when the time comes,” asked the midwife.
“We shall call him Eric,” said the chieftain.
No comments:
Post a Comment