Page 42 of The Reluctant Viking

With their long, flowing manes of hair and belted tunics, the Viking artists—wood and leather workers, jewelers, gold and silversmiths, glass blowers and weavers—resembled the hippies of the 1960s. Unlike those gentle flower children, however, when winter winds blew, these swaggering males turned fierce and rode the North Seas a-Viking in their longships. Finding the difference hard to reconcile, Ruby asked Gyda about it.

“You have come to us in a rare peaceable period,” Gyda explained. “Just six years ago, when Rognvald captured and became king of Jorvik, the city fair flowed with blood. Every family lost sons, brothers, husbands and fathers.” She shook her head sadly before confiding, “Our oldest child Thorvald died in the battle.” Gyda’s voice cracked as she wept silently.

“Oh, Gyda, how inconsiderate of me! I never knew you had a son. Please forgive me.”

When Gyda calmed down, she continued, “The saddest part is the fighting does not end yet. Mark my words, blood will flow again here. The Saxons will ne’er allow us to live here in peace.”

“Don’t the Vikings have their own lands?”

“Our homelands are small and overpopulated. The Viking leaders there wield their power as viciously as our enemies here.”

“Like Thork’s father, King Harald?”

“Just like. Hordes of our brethren have broken away from the yoke of tyranny and seek to settle in new lands as farmers and traders—like here in Jorvik—but ’tis ever a struggle to survive, even when we agree to give up our own culture to blend in the new lands.”

“Gyda, you may find this hard to believe, but in my country people consider Vikings heathen barbarians who killed for the joy of it. And what is a-Viking anyway, if not raping and plundering other lands?”

“Some are driven so,” Gyda admitted. “Overcome by the bloodlust they are, like the berserkers, or by the plunder, but mostly they go to seek better lives for their families. Mayhap they conquer unwilling lands in the process, but survival drives them. Nothing more.”

That was one of the more serious conversations she and Gyda engaged in recently. Mostly, they laughed and enjoyed themselves as women gathered in Gyda’s home each afternoon to get Ruby’s expert help in making the frivolous lingerie.

Today a group of Gyda’s friends from nearby homes arrived once again for a “sewing bee.” Ruby had shown them once before how to make a pattern, but some had run into problems and wanted hands-on assistance.

She suspected they were more interested in seeing the washboard she’d designed with the blacksmith’s help for Gyda, not to mention the hand-carved clothespins a woodworker in the market area had made to her specifications. Gyda beamed with pride when she looked at her clean laundry hung on the newly strung clothesline between two trees behind the house. She displayed the washboard, when it wasn’t being used, on a special, highly visible wall peg, its rolled metal surface polished to a high sheen. And Ruby suspected that Gyda let her laundry hang out longer than necessary to impress her neighbors with her modern gadgets.

The lively, outspoken women in Gyda’s solar that afternoon chattered and gossiped as their nimble fingers plied precious needles and rainbow-colored threads.

“Did you hear that Gunvor is with child again?” one woman confided. The others rolled their eyes meaningfully. Tsk-tsk’s clicked through the women’s teeth as they sympathized with the “poor girl.”

“Ten babes and her not yet seeing twenty-five winters!” Gyda exclaimed. “’Tis dead she will be by her thirtieth year. She near bled to death in the last birthing, I was told.”

“Then what will Siegfried do for the care of all those children?” Gyda’s next-door-neighbor Freydis, a rotund, jolly woman, clucked.

“Probably wed some young, unknowing bonder’s daughter whose father wants one less mouth to feed,” another lady snorted with disgust.

Was that sort of like a thirty-eight-year-old man looking for a sweet young bimbo after dumping his wife of twenty years? Oh, hell! Ruby thought. I do not need this!

“’Tis ever a woman’s lot and ever will be. Men lust. Women suffer,” Gyda sighed, with a woman’s eternal resignation to fate.

“Well,” Ruby volunteered, “why don’t you women do something about it? It’s just as much your responsibility.”

All the women turned on Ruby, wide-eyed, open-mouthed and very, very interested. Even Gyda.

Oops! Had she blundered again? Perhaps this was a subject she shouldn’t have broached. But, heck, women needed to stick together, to share information, to bond for their own self-interest.

The women still gaped at her, expecting her to elaborate.

“Haven’t you ever heard of birth control, of taking precautions so you won’t have any more children, if that is what you choose to do?”

Freydis pooh-poohed her suggestion with a wave of the hand. “You speak of those useless powders that promise to prevent conception but never do. Just a waste of coins!” The others nodded in agreement.

“Actually, there are powders in my country that do work,” Ruby said, knowing they wouldn’t understand birth control pills. “Haven’t you heard of condoms or sponges or douches?” Of course they hadn’t. How silly of her to ask!

“Condoms? What are they?” Gyda asked. “Do you truly say women have methods to prevent having babes?”

“Yes, they do.”

Ruby had the rapt attention of every woman in the room.