Chapter 38: Njörðr’s Trial
The wind had teeth that morning. It was spring, but still felt like winter. Biting through the stone streets of Ullrsfjörðr it licked at the ramparts of the keep, curling mist around the high mound where the Hall stood.
Róisín stood beneath the shadow of the great doors, her cloak wrapped tight around her, eyes fixed on the figure descending the long stairs.
No guards. No heralds. Just him. His wolf-skin cloak, travel sack, and his sword held tightly to his body by his leather baldric. Its sister blade, hanging horizontally from his waist by its belt.
He paused only once, halfway down the stairwell.
“Keep to the hall,” he said. “Don’t wander beyond my walls, least of all into the woods. They remember you now.”
She didn’t understand what that meant. Not yet.
He said not another word. Simply walked by and patted the girl’s head. A simple gesture, but a farewell to one who recognized it. For how long? Only he knew.
Róisín wanted to scoff. To laugh. To whisper under her breath, “Good riddance, old wolf.”
Instead, she stood there.
She had gotten too comfortable with his presence, to the point where she never knew what it was like without him by her side.
And the moment the Mead Hall’s doors shut behind him. Róisín suddenly realized just how alone she really was.
The hall behind her felt too still. Too wide. The braziers hissed, but there was no weight to their warmth. The great hearth, once the center of all things, crackled to no one.
And she realized with an ache she didn’t want to admit: the silence wasn’t peace. It was absence.
This place, this hall, her everything. It was him, and him alone.
For the entirety of her upbringing Róisín had been cloistered away in the halls of Kilmacduagh priory.
She remembered the cold incense clinging to sandstone, the damp chill that settled into her bones, the hollow ring of iron bells in the wind. The only warmth and kindness she had ever felt from Sister Eithne.
But this was different. For the first time in her life, Róisín had felt safe, secure, comfortable. And when Vetrúlfr was gone. So too was the solace he brought her.
The timber walls, blackened with pitch, shimmered in the morning light. The carvings on the beams weren’t decoration.
They were warnings. Stories. Spirits. The structure itself whispered of a man who did not build palaces, but sanctuaries. Fortresses. Graves.
Under her feet, the basalt stones of the floor still held the heat from the flues beneath. Heat drawn from the earth’s heart. Not for comfort. For endurance.
She wandered to the high seat where he often sat. Not on a throne, but a carved chair of dark oak, gilt with bronze, and fettered with the skin of an arctic fox.
The wolf sigil above it was etched not in gold, but in ash and silver.
This was not a seat of kings.
It was a hall of weight. Of memory and myth.
She ran her hand across the armrest, feeling the grooves where his fingers had curled during war councils, oaths, and moments of bitter stillness.
Róisín exhaled slowly, her breath clouding before her.
“You stupid, silent bastard,” she muttered.
She meant to sound angry. She almost did.
But it trembled at the edges. In the end, she found herself standing in silence, no sound accompanying the tears that fell from her eyes as she realized what her life had been until the moment Vetrúlfr freed her.
In the end, only A silent prayer escaped her lips. Not to Christ, but to whoever was listening. “Please come back safely… Husband.”
Vetrúlfr’s journey was longer than it should have been. Under ideal conditions, he could have reached his destination in a mere three days.
But, for whatever reason, Njörðr deemed a trial necessary to pass in order for Vetrúlfr to reach his aim.
The seas were fierce, untamed, violent even. As storm clouds broke across the sky, seemingly manifesting of their own volition.
The gods did not want Vetrúlfr to succeed without a fight. But who was he? He was the son of Ullr. There was no sea that could break his will, no storm that could freeze his boiling blood.
Waves rose like Jörmungandr’s coils, slamming against the hull with a hatred only the deep can muster. Thunder cracked like Mjölnir overhead.
He was born of snow, and ice, and he would defy the Norn, even if they saw his fate at the bottom of the sea.
And hence, after finally arriving in Heimaey five days after he had set sail from his home, Vetrúlfr and his crew of one hundred Ulfheðnar laughed in the face of fate, as they clung to the volcanic shores of Vestmannaeyjar, victorious in their defiance of Hel’s clutches.
“We have survived brothers! And despite our hardships we arrived in a mere five days, rather than the eight it would have taken lesser men to navigate through such a fearsome storm!”
Gunnarr saw the Frostrtönn pulling into the harbor long before it made berth. And when he laid eyes on Vetrúlfr, soaked and freezing from the salt of the sea and frost of the wind. He could not help but scold the man.
“You know… The worst thing about your coronation is the fact that I will never be able to smack some sense into you again.”
Vetrúlfr still jovial from finally reaching the safety of the shore, posed a challenge to his long-time companion.
“What is stopping you? I am unarmed and unarmored. I would say it’s the optimal time to take a swing, would you not agree?”
For a second, it looked like Gunnarr was about to take the man up on his offer. That is until he embraced Vetrúlfr, rather than try to fight him.
“You mad bastard! Only the son of Ullr could be so blessed as to survive such a storm! Come, let us go to my hall. You and your men are in need of the hearth and ale to warm your bodies and spirits!”
However, Vetrúlfr waved off Gunnarr’s gesture, instead insisting on a different path.
“I did not come to drink with you, brother. I am here on important business. A man is waiting for me in the inn. I will go there and gain what I seek. Then I will be on my way….”
Gunnarr broke out into laughter, thinking that after such a suicidally reckless run, Vetrúlfr was joking. But when he saw the look in the man’s eyes, he could not help but groan, knowing there was no persuading him otherwise.
“Very well, let’s compromise. You tell me the name and appearance of the man you seek, and I will summon him to my hall. Where you and your companions can at least have your fill before venturing back to the death that awaits you in the sea….”
There was a long pause, a dramatic and poignant silence as Vetrúlfr thought through the offer. And in the end he relented, clasping Gunnarr’s shoulder in solidarity as he did so.
“Your words are as true as your spear. Fine, we will do it your way. Come, show me the progress you have made after I gave you these lands to rule in my name!”
And as they walked together, Vetrúlfr murmured under his breath; words Gunnarr did not hear. Words about a land long forgotten, and books he must recover.
“Old tongues must rise again… or she will never remember who she is.”