Part 1 (1/2)

THE VERY VIRILE VIKING.

By Sandra Hill.

This book is dedicated to my mother, Veronica Cl.u.s.ton, who died just as I was finis.h.i.+ng it. She was my greatest fan. I know she would have loved the idea of an overburdened Viking man with eleven children. Hopefully, she is cheering me on up in heaven. I will love you forever, Mom.

And to my paternal grandfather, who was named... guess what? Yep, Magnus. He came to the United States from Canada, but his family originated from the Orkney Islands, which were certainly Viking havens at one time. Like my Viking Magnus, my grandfather was an earthy adventurer. I could tell you stories.

My wish have I won: welcome be thou,

with kiss I clasp thee now.

The loved one's sight is sweet to her

who has lived in longing for him.

... Now has happened what I hoped for long,

that, hero, art come to my hall.

Heartsick was I; to have thee I yearned,

whilst thou did long for my love.

Of a truth I know: we two shall live

our life and lot together.

-”Svipdagsmal,” from The Poetic Edda.

Chapter One.

Autumn, the Norselands, A.D. 999.

In days of old when men were... whatever...

Magnus Ericsson was a simple man.

He loved the smell of fresh-turned dirt after springtime plowing. He loved the feel of a soft woman under him in the bed furs... when engaged in another type of plowing. He loved the heft of a good sword in his fighting arm. He loved the low ride of a laden longs.h.i.+p after a-viking in far distant lands. He loved the change of seasons on his well-ordered farmstead.

What he did not relish was the large number of whining, loud, bothersome, needful children who called him ”Fa?ir.” ”Father, this... Father, that...” they blathered night and day, always wanting something from him. Ten in all! That was the size of his brood, despite the loss of a son and a daughter to normal childhood ills and mishaps. Holy Thor! The large number was embarra.s.sing, not to mention unmanageable. He could not go to the garderobe without stepping on one or the other of them. Like rats, they were, or fleas.

And, of a certainty, he was not pleased with their mothers. Over the years there had been four wives, six concubines, numerous pa.s.sing fancies, and at least one barley-faced maid. That latter could only be attributed to a fit of mead-head madness on his part, he was quick to tell any who dared ask. Not all of them had shared his bed furs at the same time, praise be to Odin, though some lackwits claimed it to be so, just because he'd practiced the more danico during some halfbrained periods of his life. He'd learned by now that one woman at a time was more than enough for any man to manage. All of his women, one by one, had had the temerity to die on him, desert him, or, ignominiously, divorce him, as his most recent wife, Inga, had done last summer at the Althing. Claimed she was tired of playing slave to all his babes, she did. Nors.e.m.e.n from here to Birka were still laughing about that happenstance.

He suspected as well that they were taking wagers on how many more whelps would land on the doorstep of his longhouse by year's end.

None, if he had his way.

It had not been so bad when his father, Jarl Eric Tryggvason, and his mother, Lady Asgar, had still been alive and living on the adjoining royal estate. Or when his brothers had been nearby. His mother had seemed to have better luck in arranging help for him. But his mother and father had both died this year, within months of each other. The healers said it was due to lung sickness brought on by an especially fierce winter, but he believed that it was heartsickness over his missing brothers, Geirolf and Jorund, whose s.h.i.+ps had presumably sunk in distant waters beyond Iceland. He and his sister, Katla, were the only family left, and Katla, happily married to a Norse princeling these many years, lived in far-off Norsemandy, which some called Normandy.

There was much pressure on him to take over his father's jarldom, especially from his uncle, the high king of the Norselands, Olaf Tryggvason. But that would mean giving up his own lands and the farming he cherished. Further, he would knowingly be immersing himself in the political pressures that faced all the minor kingdoms in the Norselands as they squabbled for power. He was a farmer, at heart, not a man ambitious for power.