A Viking Story From Year 890. (Norwegian: Ottar Fra Hålogaland) Poem by Tor Magnor Solvang

The hearth crackles, King Alfred, pens scratch slow,
Your scribes seek north wind in ink's dark flow.
You gaze, I've sailed far, beyond your ken,
But know my home first, Hålogaland then.

Not fields and hedges, a kingdom defined,
But isles, fjords, mountains, by dark seas entwined.
I dwell northmost, where soil's thin and bare,
But sea views stretch, beyond compare.
My Håløyger folk, our fate is not the plough,
But keel's swift cut, a seafarer's vow.

Hålogaland starts where forests cease to grip,
Namdalen's woods yield to coast from ship.
A coast so jagged, only those born there,
With helm in hand, can navigate with care.
Nordvegr we name it, the North Way we tread,
Salt water's path, that makes us rich instead.

You ask, am I a king? No single crown,
Each farmer lord, on his own patch of ground.
Chieftains on headlan⁹ds, watch every tide,
Nothing sails past them, nothing can hide.
No Arctic wealth south, passes freely by,
It goes through our hands, beneath our watchful eye.

I sought the north's end, the land's final bound,
Three days I sailed, with ocean all around.
Beyond whale-hunters, I pushed further on,

Three more days sailed, till the land turned east anon.
Northwest wind awaited, then I followed shore,

Five days south I sailed, and lands to the core.
I met the Beormer, on banks far and wide,
Tales of eastern lands, they did confide.
But wealth from Hålogaland, I learned to see,
A rich Arctic world, unknown to thee.

You eye my cloak, jewels, a land so stark,
How earns it such things? Sea, fierce and dark.
The walrus we hunt, with tusks long and bright,
Harder than ivory, pure and white.

Skin strong as armour, tough enough to tie,
Our ships to anchors, beneath the raging sky.
Sixty beasts we slew, in two days span,
That is our farming, harvesting from the clan.

Wealth flows through trade too, a different kind,
With Finnfolk in mountains, that leave us behind,
With goods from the wilderness, wild and free,
Marten skin, reindeer, tax paid to me.

Bear hides, bird down, ropes of seal's tough hide,
Clothes of fur, that help us brave the tide.
Without this trading, poorer would be our land,
We're link to south markets, across the salt sand.

Goods come from the north, they pass though our hand
before skiringssal and heddeby they stand.
And when our ships come home, with the tide
They bring corn, iron, wine and weapons to provide

My people are shaped by this sea-bound life,
Summer's sun circles, almost cutting strife.
It barely dips low, before rising once more,
We work while the light, spills to the shore.

But winter's darkness, grips with icy hand,
We gather in longhouses, throughout the land.
Timber so strong, that axes cannot bite,
Oil lamps flicker, chasing back the night.

Tales we tell, of Tore Hund so bold,
Of Chieftains who head, refuse to be told
What to do by none, just what they believe
When we sail south, a king's hall we perceive
But once we're home we do not bend the knee
Our mountains our walls, the ocean is free

I see your wise men, drawing lines so neat,
Hålogaland is perhaps, the edge you meet
But from the ship's deck, it's different view
We're in the main stream, trade passes thru

Our ships go to Iceland, the northern seas
And back to your harbors, with such great ease
We know the waters, where the waves rise like walls,
And we know how to steer right through it all.

It takes great courage, in these lands to live,
Where nature could instantly take, but our strength it will give.

I've told of my farm, my beasts, hunts north away,
To show Hålogaland, a kingdom in its way.

We lack for little, so long as our ships are true,
The sea's not abyss, but the path we go through.
When I leave your hall, towards the North I steer,
I don't sail from the world, but to its very core, so dear.

To the land where mountains, rise sheer from the wave,
Where fish, salt filled air, and freedom to save
Our unending coastline, an adventurer's crave.

T.M.Solvang