Vinland is Found (Rania Lark & Frelance)

Jorgen sat in his cabin with a lamp giving illuminating the manuscript he was studying. He had read the manuscript at least a dozen times and had been working on a map of Vinland. His hopes had been high that they would find the lost colony said to have been established in Vinland but when they had investigated Greenland and found nothing but the frozen bodies of the dead in the homesteads he started to wonder if they would find anything past Greenland. It had been a few days since they had left greenland. The Captain had set out directly west but was soon forced to head south as the number of icebergs in the water increased.

Looking up at the ceiling of his cabin as he heard running footsteps he started to wonder what was happened on the deck of the ship. It was when he heard the hatch leading to the deck open and one of the deck hands yelled down that Jorgen put out the lamp and grabbed his notebook. "Land! We found land!" He quickly made his way up the steep steps to the deck of the ship and pulled his coat tighter around him. The wind was still bitingly cold and the shore line kept disappearing behind vales of mist. But it was enough for him to forget about the cold as he made his way to the bow of the ship and opened his note book. He grabbed the ships railing pinning the book under the palm of his right hand as he pulled out a piece of charcoal and started to sketch out the land as far as he could see and with as much detail as possible. It was only after he had added as much detail as he could to the picture smudging a few spots to imitate the mist obscuring it that he turned to a fresh page and started the painstaking task of attempting to make a rough map of the shoreline that he could turn into a proper map for the navigator and the captain to use later.

It was almost an hour later that the Captain stepped up beside him and offered him a steaming cup of tea. "Well is this the Vinland that your texts spoke of?" The man was not much taller than him but where his hair was almost jet black Jorgen's was a dirty blonde the same with the messy beard he had grown during the voyage. He had attempted to shave only once but after he cut himself almost right away he stopped and just washed his face off. Jorgen looked at out over the water as he drank the tea only then realizing how cold he was starting to feel. "I believe so, but we will need to find the settlement if we are to prove or disprove that those who fled from Europe settled here. Greenland didn't seem to have a large population so either the sagas are wrong and not many fled Europe or they went past Greenland and came here. They also could have died at sea but I do not believe that would be the case. Not when most of the journey was a known route. Norway to Island then west to Greenland and then one to Vinland." Finishing the tea he handed the cup back to the Captain then added a few more details before closing the book in its leather covers and tying it close before he left the bow and walked back along the ship with the captain to the large cabin at the back of the ship. He spent the next few hours conversing with the ships navigator as they started to create a large map from the drawings he had made. They had just finished a light lunch when a sailor came in and informed them that they had seen smoke on the shore on. The Captain and Jorgen quickly when back to the bow and using a spy glass first the captain then Jorgen took a look through it. "Tell me does that look like it could be a settlement to you?" The smoke was coming from the tops of a cluster of small hills and looked more like a it would be the camp of native peoples which had been referred to as Skraelings. "I am not sure Captain. I need to get a closer look. It could be a Skraelings village but I all I can see if the humps of land." He scanned across the small straight and saw what looked to be a stone building that was in disrepair. "Actually. Those small humps of land could be sod roofs. If I am right around this spit of land there will be a bay with a small jetty or two and we should be able to see some of the wood and stone that make up those buildings." He didn't leave the bow for the next few hours as the ships got close and close to shore. He was gratified to see that his guess was right. There was a small bay with four jetties built out into the water and tied to one of them was a long ship. He spent quite some time looking at it and then drawing it in his note book making sure to get the details on the dragons head on the prove as correct as possible.

Everything still felt unreal even when the bow of the rowboats they had taken from the ship came along side the docks and were tied up Jorgen was still expecting to wake up back on the boat. As he stepped onto the dock he turned and looked out the mouth of the bay to where the four ships in their fleet stood at anchor. He had persuaded the captain to only bring two boats with them and to bring mostly the trade goods they had brought with them. He took a long thin box that was handed to him then turned and walked down the jetty slowly as he watched the few people milling around. "Greetings, we have come to trade. May we speak with the Jarl?" He looked for any signs that these people understood him. Jorgen could not be sure they would understand Norwegian after so many centuries of isolation.

Ingrid had been out along the border of the village picking wildflowers when the strange shapes had approached the port. The first born daughter of Jarl Gudrun, she had lived a life of privilege. Her clothes were adorned with the most expensive of wool, her gold was polished the brightest however she had always maintained a modest attitude towards the people she would eventually rule.

She was sitting in the tall grass with her friend Hilde who had come from one of the noble families, picking flowers and searching for the first sign of berries for the season when the clouds broke to become strange shapes with sharp edges, almost like their own longships. But there was no one scheduled to come back to port that day. Standing up, Ingrid’s eyes narrowed as she tried to focus on the strange clouds as they grew larger, coming closer.

“Go notify my father that there are strange intruders approaching,” Ingrid told her friend, “I am going to go to the port.”

Ingrid was not one to shy away from risk and was constantly curious about the outside world. She had heard of the Native Tribes across the sea but her father had never allowed his heir to leave their land on any trading escapades for fear of the risk involved. This in turn made Ingrid want to go even more. And she did go. Every time her father allowed her leave to go do some mundane task, Ingrid took the opportunity to explore the neighbouring lands outside of the village. During these times, she had spent time navigating her way along the shore and over the moors to mentally map the land.

Standing up and brushing off her apron and her dress from the strange blades of grass, Ingrid began to walk down the hill towards the port. Her reddish blonde hair was half tied up in a braid that ran along the top of her head while her hazel eyes were wide and innocent. The skin on her cheeks were marked with small brown freckles while the rest of her skin was a pale alabaster. Walking through the grass until she arrived at the road leading down the hill, she began to jog through the traders and farmers crowding around, obviously with the same curiosity of the Jarl’s daughter. Weaving her way through the crowd, Ingrid made her way towards the mooring where the strange ship had stopped. The ‘clouds’ were indeed the sails of the ship, but they were a stark white. The ship itself was very tall, with many levels of wood and glass that seemed to lead up to the sky. Then several smaller boats emerged from the side of the ship. Standing on the rocky shore, many of the men and women who had stopped were now retreating back into the village, leaving only Ingrid and a few more adventurous dock hands and farmers to stare at the strangers.

Ingrid watched with as much curiosity and nervousness as everyone else on the beach as men jumped from the boats onto the small wooden dock jutting out into the bay from the beach. She was the only woman left amongst the few that remained before one of the men turned and began to speak in some strange language. Ingrid tilted her head to the side as her eyes narrowed in both confusion and curiosity as she took a slight step forward.

“Who are you? Why are you here?” she asked in her own tongue, an Ancient Norse tongue that hadn’t been heard in decades outside of her own village.