But he’d also recognized in her a kindred, wounded spirit who had suffered and overcome tremendous grief. Just as Haldor had done as a boy.
He’d been orphaned at only eight winters old when Rus raiders attacked his Norse village, killing both of his parents and his baby brother as they burned huts, stole weapons, furs, and the goods that the Norsemen had planned to trade along the Baltic coast. Haldor’s desperate mother, upon seeing the attackers storming the village, had ordered him to hide in the forest, which would protect him, urging him to remain hidden until all the raiders were gone. She told him to head north, following the winding coastline of the fjord, until he came to the village nestled between two towering cliffs. There, the Sámi people would takehim in, she’d promised, for Haldor’s father had befriended Jaskka, thenoaidispiritual leader of the Láhpi tribe.
A terrified Haldor had obeyed his mother, hiding amongst the dense foliage of the forest until the screaming had stopped, the raiders had departed in their swift ships, and silence had stretched across the smoldering ruins of what had always been his home. Limbs shaking, tears streaming down his trembling cheeks, he’d instinctively searched the ice blue sky, where he spotted a falcon, its magnificent wings unfurled, floating over the frosty fjord.
While Haldor had watched in awe, the bird had released a sharp, keening cry as it swooped down to land just above his head upon a branch of the sacred rowan tree where he’d sought shelter. The falcon’s dark eyes, framed in gold like glowing amber, had glinted in the pale morning sun.
As he’d held the raptor’s compelling gaze, a power had pulsed through him, as if the falcon’s spirit had spoken wordlessly to his own. Haldor intuitively understood that the falcon had been sent by the gods to guide him.
He’d followed the bird north along the shore, until they’d come to the seaside village on the fjord centered between the two tall, craggy cliffs. Set back away from the shoreline, at the edge of the forest, Haldor had seen the clusters of cone-shapedlávvutents covered in reindeer hide and the turf-covered birch huts, thegoahti,which belonged to the Láhpi tribe.
As his mother had promised, the Sámi villagers had welcomed him, claiming that Haldor was theChild of the Falconand that the bird was his sacred spirit animal. Jaskka, the tribal leader, and his wife Máret had adopted Haldor as their own, for they were childless and believed that his fortuitous arrival had been a blessed gift from the generous gods.
Haldor had lived among the Láhpi tribe for ten winters, learning the Sámi ways as Jaskka’s son and acolyte. But he’d also trained with the hardened warriors of the tribe, learning to wield weapons as he honed his hulking body, becoming as skilled with bow, arrow,and axe as with the Viking sword that Jaskka had obtained for him from Harald Bluetooth, King of Denmark and Norway, with whom he had a good trade relationship.
Haldor sipped from his wooden cup and gazed at his sheathed sword,Seiðrvingr, which leaned against the rock where he now sat before the crackling fire. The amber eyes of the elaborately carved silver falcon in the glistening pommel sparkled in the starlight.
Its eyes were as glowing and golden as Úlvhild’s.
Haldor smiled wistfully, swallowing another gulp of the bitter yarrow brew.
He stretched his legs out, adjusting the reindeer fur draped over his shoulders to ward off the chill. He gazed at the detailed carving in the elaborate hilt of his sword, admiring the skilled craftsmanship of Bluetooth’s royal blacksmith. The exquisitely detailed silver falcon represented not only the guardian bird who had guided him to the Sámi village as a young boy. It also symbolized the incomparable power that Freyja had gifted him. When she visited him a second time as a young man.
As the flames danced in the stone enclosed hearth, Haldor relived that memorable night.
He’d been eighteen winters old, the same age as Skjöld, who now snored softly on the nearby bedroll, when he’d scaled the icy cliff ofDrekafjall—Dragon’s Leap— in his arduous quest to become anoaidi.
On the spring equinox—time of equal balance between light and dark, when the veil between worlds is thinnest— he’d set out from the Láhpi village with few supplies and only a knife for defense, to surrender to the spirits and test his endurance.
He’d crossed snowdrifts, icy terrain, and frozen rocks, arriving at the base of the mountain where theÍsstjarnawaterfall cascaded like icy stars from the jagged clifftop above. Haldor had snared and sacrificed a white hare, pouring its blood into the pure snow as an offering to the spirits for permission to climb to the top of the cliff. He’d anointed his forehead with the blood of the hare and had ascended the treacherous, rocky path marked with ancient runes. At the summit of the jagged ledge, under thespectacular array of northern lights, he’d discovered a hidden, secluded cave.
Inside, he'd started a fire with kindling from his pack, warming himself over the welcome flames, chanting agaldrinvocation ofseiðrmagic to summon the falcon who had guided him.
With a whoosh of wings and a keening cry, the raptor had flown into the cave.
And, in a glimmer of gold and violet light, the falcon had transformed into Freyja.
His spirit had recognized her instantly. She’d been the falcon who had come to him in the forest and guided him to the Láhpi tribe. And there, in the clifftopDrekafjallcave, she’d assumed human form.
And taken Haldor as her lover.
As they’d shared otherworldly passion in the cave before the fire, the Norse goddess had endowed him with divine magic, marking his body with the shimmering falcon feathers which emblazoned his entire torso, across his chest and broad back. Her gift—Freyja’s Mark—enabled him to transform at will into a falcon. And imbued him with the ability to summon and command all winged creatures, a power which had led him to victory in countless battles ever since.
When he’d returned to the Láhpi tribe, Haldor’s final test to become anoaidihad been to venture into the spirit world as a falcon. Before the astonished eyes of the entire tribe, Haldor had shifted for the first time.
Into a peregrine falcon, like the goddess who had imbued her magic into him.
After becoming anoaidi, Haldor had spent two winters studyingseiðrmagic with Rúnbjörn, a hermit who lived in a hut on a tiny islet near the Láhpi village, nestled among the pine and birch trees along the craggy coast of the sacred fjord. Since Jaskka knew Rúnbjörn from trading herbs and talismans in the nearby Norse village of Vågan—the village where Haldor and Skjöld wouldsoon meet hisBlóðsmiðrcrew for the voyage to Normandy—the reclusive rune master had accepted Haldor as his acolyte, completing Haldor’s training as a Vikingvitki.
And when Haldor was twenty winters old, he’d been summoned by King Harald Bluetooth to come to his royal hall in Tønsberg. As a fierce Viking warrior, Sáminoaidi, and shapeshiftingvitki,Haldor would lead King Harald’s fleet ofdrakkarwarships on a raid to conquer the Faroe Islands across theVestrhaf, the treacherous Western Sea.
It was in King Harald’s sumptuous royal hall where Haldor met Úlvhild for the first time.
They became lovers, their passion transcending the human realm, their spirits and souls mingling as they shared bodies and magic in an otherworldly joining. All winter, while King Harald prepared for the upcoming raid in the spring, Haldor and Úlvhild reveled in months of exquisite passion and pleasure.
When Haldor had set sail with a fleet of twenty royal warships in the spring, he’d invoked his avian magic for the first time. Summoning ravens, hawks, and falcons to swoop down from the skies, he and his Viking warriors had stormed the rocky shores. They’d easily conquered the scarcely populated islands, and Haldor had established a stronghold in Tórshavn, on the island of Streymoy, where he’d built his royal hall,Fálkhöll, on a rocky outcrop overlooking the fjord of the Western Sea.
With a thousand men, he’d built stone halls for the chieftains and turf huts for the warriors, establishing villages throughout the largest islands. At the end of the summer, he’d left the majority of his men behind to guard their newly established strongholds while he returned triumphant toBlátonnshöll,Harald’s royal hall in Norway. There, amidst the months of feasting and blots, he’d immersed himself completely in Úlvhild.
