Page 2 of The Very Virile Viking

Magnus Ericsson was a lustsome man.

And therein lay the Viking's problem.

Winter, the Norselands, A.D. 999

Trouble comes in small packages…

"You have another child," Magnus's eldest son, Ragnor, said with disgust, trying to hand a girl barely out of swaddling clothes into his arms.

Magnus promptly folded his arms over his chest in refusal.

"Her name is Lida," Ragnor persisted, and tried once again to hand over the child, who couldn't be more than a year old.

Magnus took one step backward and shook his head vehemently.

"Goo!" Lida said, favoring him with a gummy grin.

She shook her little head from side to side as well, no doubt thinking he was playing a game with her.

He was not moved. Nor was he in the mood for games. "Take her away." He stepped to the side and used a poker to stir the yule log in the center hearth of his great hall; the burning of the log was a Christian tradition his family had always followed. Though he was Norse by birth, he also practiced the Christian faith of his mother. God bless her soul. He hoped she was at rest with the saints she'd revered. Just as he hoped his father was revelling in Valhalla. Sometimes he wondered if heaven and Valhalla might be the same place, but it was a far-fetched opinion he kept to himself. Regardless, 'twas best to appease all the gods. Unfortunately he seemed to be personally blessed—or was it plagued?—by Freyja, the goddess of fertility.

Meanwhile, the Viking comrades who sat about his great hall drinking ale and playing the board game hnefatafl snickered amongst themselves while they viewed his son trying to hand him another babe.

Once again he and his potency would be the subject of jests. Well, he would not stand for it this time.

"There is no proof," he contended. "She is not mine."

"I beg to differ. She looks just like you."

"Goo!" Lida repeated. Blond spikes of hair stood up in disarray about her tiny head. Freckles speckled her rosy cheeks. She smelled like a privy.

"Sarcasm ill suits you, boy," Magnus snapped. His son knew full well that his father was considered an attractive man. Magnus prided himself on a well-honed body and his inherited good looks. Aside from his big ears, which he covered vainly with long hair, he was nigh perfect. Many a maid had told him so.

And this whelp was anything but attractive or perfect. But then he noticed something. Oh, for the love of Frey! Are those excessively big ears on the mite ?

Ragnor snickered, noticing the direction of his father's stare.

"You are not so big at sixteen years that I cannot put you over my knee," Magnus declared, sinking down to a bench. Of course, his sitting down gave three-year-old Kolbein the excuse to climb up onto his lap. Kolbein should be acting the little man at his age, like five-year-old Hamr did. Begged him constantly for his very own bow and arrows, the bothersome boy did. "You'll shoot your eye out," was Magnus's response. Kolbein, on the other hand, had always been a needsome child, having lost his mother at birth. Even six-year-old Jogeir with his club foot asked for no special indulgence. Some said Magnus should have exposed Jogeir to the elements in the frozen north when he was born, as some Vikings fathers were wont to do. Life in the Norselands was harsh for whole persons. Those weak or handicapped from birth would face nigh insurmountable obstacles to survival. But he had not been able to do it, and Jogeir worked hard each day to prove he had made the right decision. Poor boy !

"Ha!" Ragnor said, jarring him back to the present. Apparently Ragnor was still reacting to his father's comment about being able to spank him. Ragnor's one word said it all, though, for Ragnor might not yet have reached his father's massive height, but he was fast approaching it. And both of them had muscles aplenty.

"I could hold Ragnor down for you whilst you give him a well-deserved whomping." It was his other sixteen-year-old son, Torolf, speaking now. Torolf loved to tease his older brother more than anything, though Ragnor was older by only one sennight. They were born to different mothers in different lands within days of each other. Magnus must have been particularly lustful that week nine months beforehand,

but, in truth, he could barely recall the details of the women or the couplings. All he knew was that Ragnor had the black hair and pale blue eyes of his Frankish mother, while Torolf favored Magnus's first wife, Sigrun, with pale blond hair and honey-colored eyes. That was when Magnus's troubles had first begun. Sigrun had threatened to cut off his man part when she heard about Ragnor's birth. Two years later she was gone— ran off with an Irish priest, she did—leaving Torolf behind. It had been the beginning of a trend in Magnus's life.

"I would like to see you try," Ragnor told Torolf with his usual arrogance. He gave Torolf a punch in the shoulder with his free hand. Meanwhile a giggling Lida dangled from the crook of his other arm.

"Anytime, brother. Anytime." Torolf punched his brother back and grinned, just to annoy him. The two were like overgrown puppies. Soon they would be down in the rushes wrestling each other.

"Goo," Lida contributed.

Magnus had a sudden inspiration. "I cannot take the child. She needs a wet nurse, and as you know, we cannot even keep maids here at the farmstead to care for the older children, let alone a wet nurse."

"Lida is weaned, smart little one that she is." Ragnor fairly smirked at him.

"Take her back whence she came," Magnus demanded.

"I cannot," Ragnor said. "She came on that trading knorr from Hedeby. Sent by a craftswoman there by the name of Gyda the Goldsmith. She claims her daughter, Helga, gave birth to Lida a year ago. Helga died recently of the brothel disease."