	Waiting for the Longships
        =========================

Astrid looked across the room at her son illuminated by the 
fire but obscured by the mist of its smoke. She hoped he 
wouldn't wake up and wonder what his parents were doing 
on the straw mattress opposite. Not that he wasn't used to 
the lovemaking Thorvald and she enjoyed together, 
especially after the long night of feasting that led to this 
moment of passion. 

It never bothered Thorvald, of course. And it certainly 
wouldn't tonight after all the ale he'd drunk. It was Astrid's 
duty to give pleasure to him, hoping as always that she 
might be blessed by another son as a result of his exertions.

Thorvald thrust away, caring little as to how his wife might 
feel. In any case, it was unlikely he'd last very long until his 
passion was defeated by his inebriation. But this was their 
last night together for so many months and Astrid had been 
waiting for this moment for so many hours As she tended 
to the domestic duties of the hearth: spinning flax, gutting 
fish, and comforting young Hromund, she had wanted this 
moment of lovemaking to be special. When next would 
Thorvald cross the threshold and take his wife in his strong 
arms, carry her to their bed and thrust inside her? 

She'd listened to the distant echo of the drunken carousing 
he and the other men enjoyed after the feast of venison and 
shark steak they partook together before it was time for the 
women to take their leave. It was only right that the men 
should so celebrate while their womenfolk attended to their 
domestic duties. After all, the men would suffer many days 
of privation until the longships reached their destination on 
the Hibernian shore. And now, along with the other women 
on the village, whose gasps of passion Astrid could hear 
carried on the chill spring air, she could enjoy the carnal 
passion of her husband. This was her moment of the 
evening, her last duty before the menfolk of the village 
launched their longships to sea to bring back the promised 
riches from the lands of those who worshipped other gods 
and spoke a different tongue.

Soon, and too soon for Astrid, Thorvald released his seed, 
his penis shrank inside her, and he collapsed on her bosom. 
His long hair and beard became a second comforting 
blanket under the elk-hide she pulled over their naked 
bodies. As Astrid lay on her back, her husband's arms 
around her and his body slumped on top, she hoped that 
this time Thorvald had blessed her with Freya's bounty and 
Hromund would at long last have a brother. She could still 
hear the passion of the other women of the village whose 
husbands had more stamina than hers and who had more 
good fortune than she in providing a reasonably sized 
family for her man.

The following day, when the menfolk had at last stirred 
from their slumbers, Astrid stood on the shore with the 
other women watching the longships set off across the 
ocean. This was what it was like every spring, as the men 
set off on the voyages that would bring the men back with 
many riches and tales of their exploits. She remembered 
with particular affection the golden cross that Thorvald 
showed her last year on his return, before it was melted and 
refashioned into less heathen form. The Hibernians were so 
rich in gold, just as they were in the grain, livestock and 
cloth the menfolk traded with the towns and villages along 
the shore. 

She knew the cross was a symbol of the Hibernian religion, 
but she had heard that theirs was a faith that denied the true 
gods of Asgard and worshipped instead a Jew who had 
been killed in a particularly brutal way by the Roman 
savages who now worshipped him. There was little else she 
knew about Christians, but she thanked Freya that the land 
of the Midnight Sun had been spared the cruelties of a faith 
that denied women their freedom and whose men took from 
them the keys to the household that was every Norse 
woman's right. Surely there was something perverse about 
a religion that worshipped a dead man rather than the living 
and immortal gods who feasted in the great halls beyond 
the rainbow.

The menfolk waved bravely at their wives and affianced 
when they had at last rowed the longships out into the 
deeper waters away from the shore. Astrid focused her 
gaze on the distant silhouette of Thorvald whose eyes she 
was sure were equally on her and young Hromund.

"And that's them gone for another summer!" said Gudrun, 
who stood beside her and was no longer waving. 

Astrid turned towards her neighbour, tears streaming from 
her eyes as they were from all the other wives. She was 
shocked to observe that Gudrun's eyes were not damp at 
all. Did she not miss her man? Or was it men, such was her 
reputation in the village. Gudrun was a woman who had no 
permanent man in her life, but was known to have enjoyed 
the attentions of many men, including, of course, the chief 
himself. Her hearth was hers alone. Her goats were her own 
and shared with no husband. The daughter she had borne 
had no father's name to honour. The flax she spun she 
exchanged for goods her smallholding didn't provide.

"The summer days will be long, hard and lonely!" wailed 
Astrid.

"Long, I agree. But hard and lonely, not at all," said 
Gudrun, with a smile. "They are my favourite days. The 
birds sing. Nature is bountiful. The gods rejoice. Fair 
recompense for the long cold nights of winter."

"By the great tree, Yggdrasil, do you not miss the 
menfolk?"

"Not at all, sweet Astrid. And why should I worry about 
them. They'll have fun: pillage, murder and rape. It's what 
the men like to do most and what they like to sing about."

"Rape?" said Astrid aghast. "My Thorvald? Maybe the 
younger men, but not Thorvald."

"And why not? Do you think he honours the chastity of the 
women of Hibernia any more than he does the lives of the 
men he slaughters, the farms from which he brings back the 
grain and livestock, or the pagan shrines he desecrates? 
Men are beasts when they have their sword unsheathed and 
ale in their stomach. Your Thorvald is no different from 
other men. Indeed, as an older, experienced warrior he has 
to set the example."

"Not my Thorvald!" wept Astrid. 

Surely Gudrun's words were said in jest. Her husband 
assured her that no heathen woman had tempted him in this 
way, although he was often rather coarse in his description 
of their freckled, red-haired beauty. Although Astrid had no 
great love for Hibernian women, who were mere chattels to 
their men and worshipped the god of Charlemagne and 
Rome, she had no wish that they should suffer from the 
brutish passions of the village's menfolk, and most of all 
from Thorvald.

Astrid returned to her home, knowing that until the 
longships returned she and the other wives would have no 
one to help them in the duties of the hearth or field. It was 
true that Thorvald, like most men, was of only marginal use 
in this capacity. When he wasn't away in summer bringing 
back Hibernian bounty, his main preoccupation was hunting 
reindeer, elk and boar, whose meat, though very welcome, 
provided only occasional variety to a diet mostly of fish, 
mushrooms, goats milk and hare.

The summer days were indeed long. Soon the sun would 
never set and night become as much day as day became 
night in winter. These were the days when Astrid gathered 
together the food that kept hunger at bay in the long night, 
when it was sometimes too cold to venture far from the 
hearth for many days, and when a goat might need to be 
sacrificed to satisfy the clamour of the belly. The long 
nights when the men were most reluctant to hunt and snow 
piled high against the walls of their home.

In these summer days, however, when the only men left in 
the village were the very young and the old and feeble, 
Astrid came to know the other women more closely and 
intimately than was possible when the menfolk strode the 
village paths. The women formed a community of support 
and comfort: often visiting one another in each others' 
homes and exchanging gifts and gossip while the sun 
refused to descend beneath the horizon.

It was in these months that Astrid saw more of Gudrun. 
Before, she had been very wary about associating with a 
woman of such easy virtue, even though she was blessed by 
the favours of the chief, but Gudrun showed sympathy for 
Astrid's concerns for Thorvald. 

One day, she met Astrid weeping by the river when 
collecting water. While her daughter, Matilda, played with 
Hromund in the shadows of the trees, Gudrun so 
entertained Astrid with her wicked jokes and sly 
observations that Astrid forgot all her worries about her 
distant husband.

"It can't be," said Astrid when Gudrun speculated again on 
Thorvald's assault on the virtue of the Hibernian wenches.

"You don't know men as well as I do, Gudrun, do you?"

"I've known one man only and one man is enough for me," 
said Astrid sternly.

"If only that fidelity were so true of Thorvald!" said 
Gudrun, but refused to elaborate.

Astrid measured her wait by the phases of the moon, high 
in the sky and sharing the heavens with the ever-present 
Sun. There were normally two full moons before the men 
returned and life would return to normal and the days 
became shorter. After that, there would be the threat of 
winter when the autumn equinox heralded the difficult long 
nights to come. However, it was with alarm that Astrid 
observed the moon creep through all the phases of death 
and renewal, much like her own stubbornly consistent 
menstrual cycle, and the longships still hadn't returned.

The wait extended beyond one moon and through the entire 
cycle of the next. The subject of the men's delayed return 
was the only topic of conversation the women of the village 
ever discussed. What was delaying them? How long could 
it take to sell the riches they had taken from the Hibernians? 
It surely couldn't be that they had been bettered in battle? 
Or had the gods of the sea claimed the menfolk for their 
own?

It was better to hope that the men had perished in battle, if 
they were not merely delayed, than that the men had died a 
less than heroic death. Perhaps they were now dining in 
Valhalla with the immortals: laughing and joking with Thor, 
Baldur and Odin in the kingdom beyond the rainbow.

The women's misery was compounded by the shortening 
days and the worsening weather. Soon, the first flakes of 
snow arrived, not, thankfully, to settle, as the strong winds 
and rain that followed drove away the thin coating of white. 
But a later snowfall was more permanent and the isles were 
now adorned in their winter coat. Without the men to 
comfort them, the prospect of the night that never ended 
held a particular dread.

Although Gudrun mourned no man, she was clearly as 
anxious as Astrid of a winter where the village was run only 
by women, without the excitement of the men preparing for 
their hunting expeditions and the welcome meat with which 
they returned, although Gudrun commented that the 
reindeer they found were more likely stolen from the 
nomads of the inland plains than hunted down with quite 
the valour recounted in the tales they regaled their grateful 
womenfolk.

"Where is Thorvald?" Astrid wailed. "Where are the 
longships? They honoured the gods before they left. Surely 
the gods would protect them!"

"Perhaps they've been having a more fruitful time in 
Hibernia than on earlier expeditions," Gudrun speculated. 
"Perhaps they'll return next year, when the sun appears on 
the horizon again."

"I hope so. Oh! I hope so!"

"That's if they haven't settled down with freckle-faced 
Hibernian wives?" Gudrun muttered bitterly.

Astrid stared at her friend, totally aghast.

"I don't believe you said that! Our menfolk, especially not 
Thorvald, would never abandon a good Norse wife for 
heathen chattel."

Gudrun smiled. "I'm joking, Astrid. There's every chance 
the gods will bring them back eventually. Remember the 
women of the southern isles. Their men returned the 
following spring bringing back bounty from distant 
Andalusia ruled by the men of the camel."

Astrid smiled. She nursed the same hope that the expedition 
had merely taken the men further south to the mythically 
rich lands where even the winters were warmer than the 
Norse summer and the natives had permanently sun-
darkened skin.

Gudrun and Astrid spent much more time together, not just 
through the day when they helped each other in their 
domestic duties, but at night when they kept each other 
company. Their children had become such good friends. 
They played together in the claustrophobic confines of the 
hearth when the blizzards were most intense. To stay warm, 
the two children slept together under the same hides, as did, 
on the other side of the fire, their mothers.

Most women of the village shared their homes in much the 
same way as did Astrid and Gudrun. It was one less fire 
each night to tend and domestic chores were less 
burdensome when the work was divided between two or 
more women. It was natural for the womenfolk to express 
their solidarity for one another and it kept at bay the 
privations of the long sunless days just as it lessened the 
agony of loneliness and anxiety.

"I miss Thorvald so much!" sighed Astrid one day as the 
two women sat together around the fire, whilst outside 
their two children were playing in the dusk of the few 
minutes of midday sun that heralded the end at last of the 
worst days of winter.

"I miss the men too," agreed Gudrun. "I miss their 
company. I miss my lovers. I miss the richer meat than hare 
and lemming they bring back from the hunt."

"It's not men I miss. It's Thorvald!"

"And why is that?"

Astrid raised her skirt to reveal the thick triangular bush of 
blonde hair between her thighs. "It's here I miss him most," 
she said, indicating the rich flesh that swelled through the 
knotted strands. "There is not a night I don't wish Thorvald 
could satisfy the itch I feel."

"You want a man's cock inside you again?"

"Yes," said Astrid, blushing at the strange intensity of 
Gudrun's stare and hastily rearranging her skirt. "But not 
any man's. It's Thorvald's I want!"

The question occurred again when Astrid and Gudrun 
settled for sleep beneath the hides piled over them. In these 
winter nights, people slept and rested for many more hours 
just as in summer they would often forego sleep altogether. 
When Astrid slept she did so with a depth that escaped her 
in summer, but she would also often simply enjoy the 
warmth of her bed. She felt no more guilty at her idleness in 
winter than did any other woman. There were fewer chores 
to attend to in the months when no crops were to be tended 
or gathered, and good reason to conserve what warmth 
there was.

"It's here you most miss Thorvald?" asked Gudrun, placing 
her hand over the linen-covered mound of Astrid's crotch.

Astrid nodded.

"My womanhood itches too," said Gudrun, pressing 
Astrid's hand on her own crotch which she was shocked to 
find was not covered by thick cloth. Gudrun had pulled up 
the linen so that Astrid's fingers were pressed against a 
thick tangle of hair. "It burns. Feel the heat it gives. If only 
I could use the warmth of my cunt to warm my toes. At 
best it can only warm my fingers."

"It's very hot!" remarked Astrid with wonder. 

"Is yours equally as hot, dear Astrid?" wondered Gudrun, 
who tugged at her friend's skirt.

"No!" said Astrid sharply, pulling her hand away from 
Astrid's crotch which seemed slightly moist as well as hot. 
She rolled over on her side and faced away from Gudrun, 
though she didn't resist her friend's comforting arms around 
her shoulders where they normally rest each night.

Throughout the following day, Astrid remembered the 
sensation of her fingers on Gudrun's crotch as they sat 
together spinning flax or skinning hare. She sometimes 
caught Gudrun's eyes as they wandered towards Astrid's 
crotch hidden under coarse linen. She knew well the 
sensation of damp warmth that burnt from her own vagina, 
but, although she had no reason to doubt that other women 
didn't also burn in the same way, it was a revelation to 
know for sure.

The following night, when Gudrun's fingers again found 
their way to Astrid's crotch, pulling her dress slowly up her 
thighs, this time there was less resistance, although Gudrun, 
as much as she, was not at all sure whether a comforting 
stroke of the tangled hair should be all this invasion 
amounted to. As Astrid slumbered after this brief 
adventure, her crotch itched uncontrollably and she was 
obliged to use her own fingers to extinguish the heat that 
normally Thorvald was best equipped to handle.

Neither Gudrun nor Astrid had words to describe the turn 
in which their relationship took. At first, it seemed merely 
like friends comforting each other, though Astrid was 
aware that their exploration of each other's crotches 
became steadily more adventurous and more sensual. Soon, 
every night was spent in urgent mutual masturbation, their 
fingers digging deep inside, as deep, it sometimes felt, as a 
man's penis might venture. And every day was spent 
looking forward to their passionate fumbling. 

All the while, the brief dusk of midday became steadily 
longer until the sun was wholly above the horizon. Even 
though these were normally the days of worst hunger and 
misery as the rations were spent and yet to be replenished, 
Astrid enjoyed these winter nights more than she'd done 
since Thorvald and she were newly wed. 

Gudrun was as uncertain as Astrid. Their new affection was 
as strange to her as it was to Astrid. Their first kiss was a 
shared revelation for both women. The passion they felt 
when they shed their clothes was equal to any they ever felt 
with a man. They ignored the chill on the side of the bed 
not facing the fire, as they replenished the missing warmth 
with the heat of their conjoined flesh. This was the first 
time that Astrid had ever seen a woman's naked body so 
close, except for those few balmy days of summer when it 
was warm enough for the women of the village to brave the 
chill water to bathe together in the river. Astrid wasn't sure 
how much her feeling of desire as her friend shed her 
clothes was because she admired a woman's body so much 
as she very much admired Gudrun's. But admire it she did. 

The beautiful bosom, with nipples erect with desire rather 
than from the chill of a river's flow. The skin that matched 
her own for paleness. The rich odour of Gudrun's vagina 
that filled her nostrils, while her lover's tongue reciprocated 
below. The smells that were so much Gudrun's, different 
from those of Thorvald, but different again from her own.

"Listen!" said Gudrun, one night as the two of them lay 
naked in one another's arms under the elk-hide.

"Listen to what?" wondered Astrid, hearing the distant hoot 
of an owl.

"I'm not sure," admitted Gudrun. "A kind of panting, 
grunting noise."

Astrid frowned, but in the unnatural silence of her 
heightened attention she listened as hard as she could. 
Although the snow was turning to slush and there was less 
often the fragile crunch of distant footpads, there were, she 
was sure, some strange animal noises. She hoped it wasn't a 
wolf or bear visiting the village on the prowl for a child to 
snatch away.

As her ear became attuned to the night silence, she 
recognised it at last as a sound she was most familiar with 
when amplified by proximity. It was much like the sound of 
urgent lovemaking she heard on Thorvald's last night when 
the men and women of the village marked their final hours 
together with connubial passion. But it was a sound only of 
women. There were no men's voices in that chorus.

She and Gudrun were not the only womenfolk who had 
learnt to comfort each other in the pleasures of the flesh. 
Indeed, as Astrid's ears strained yet further, could there be 
a woman in the village who had not overcome the anxiety 
of the longships' delay in this way?

Now she had reason to believe this was so, Astrid soon saw 
more evidence that she and Gudrun were by no means 
unique in the way their friendship had changed in character. 
She saw women holding hands and exchanging sly glances 
that signalled greater affection towards one another than 
just shared grief and loneliness. She even saw Bolla and 
Ingeltore kiss each other in the shadow of a tree when they 
thought no one else could see them.

A gradual recognition of the new order soon became widely 
known, but it wasn't spoken of. The women knew they 
should honour their husbands whether they were alive or 
not, and it was not right to have relationships that would 
not, and could not, bring forth children; but there were no 
men, at least not of the age or fitness to be good fathers, 
and the survival of the village needed the women to pool 
together their resources. And if there was pleasure to be 
gained in the companionship of other women, was this not 
fair compensation for the loss of the men who normally 
fulfilled this need?

As the days became longer and spring gave way to summer, 
Astrid was sure that the village was actually a better run 
and more prosperous place than it was when the men spent 
their time drinking or hunting. In fact, some women even 
took on themselves the task of hunting boar or deer, and 
were no less successful in their efforts than the men. On the 
whole, she was happy in her life of passion and love with 
Gudrun, though she sometimes missed Thorvald. After all, 
Matilda might be a child with no father, but didn't Hromund 
deserve better?

It was more than a year since the longships' departure and 
the sun now refused to set, when news at last came back of 
the fortune of the men's expedition. Astrid hastened with all 
the other women, Hromund and Gudrun in tow, when word 
spread that one of the menfolk had returned. The worry 
that gripped Astrid as she ran to the village square was that 
only one man was there. Where were the others? And 
where, above all, was Thorvald?

The sole survivor was Sigfast who sat in the middle of a 
circle of concerned wives who clamoured for good news. 
But alas it was not to be! Sigfast was but a shadow of the 
warrior he once was. He was lame in his right leg and there 
was a cavernous emptiness where once his left eye shone. 
He leaned on his staff that had accompanied him for many 
leagues along the Norse shores and recounted the news the 
wives had feared so much.

"We were sailing back from Hibernia," he said. "We had 
gold and meat aplenty. We were full of good spirits and had 
imbibed heavily of ale. Thor had been generous to us, we 
thought. He had brought us victory in battle and the spoils 
of our valour were great. But as our ships steered north of 
the land of stone circles, we were cursed by the demons of 
the sea who brought upon us a vicious storm.

"Our seamanship was tested to the utmost, but the winds 
from the icy North were unkind. They tore our ships apart 
and one by one they were smashed against rocks at sea. I 
saw the ship in which sailed valiant Leiknir, brave Thorvald 
and the chief break into splinters on the guano-painted 
rocks. Our ship fared better and we prayed to Odin and 
Thor that we should be spared. Unfortunately not! The 
waves crashed high, the wind blew strong, and the rain 
lashed hard. We were pulled and thrown from side to side, 
water coming in over the bows. And then, struggle as we 
did against the oars, we too met our fate on the rocks."

The women moaned in misery, Astrid amongst them. 
Thorvald dead, not as she might have hoped as a hero in 
battle, now to be feasting in Valhalla, but the more 
wretched death of a sailor. His soul was lost and he would 
not serve the honour and distinction of fighting with the 
gods in the last great battle of Ragnarok.

"I was carried by the waves to the Orcadian shore: the last 
of our company. I thought I would die, but the gods spared 
me. The sea claimed only my eye and the strength of my 
leg. Fortunately, there are many blond-haired Norse settlers 
in the land of the stone circles who tended me and kept me 
alive through the long days of winter, but months much less 
cold than here. The snow settles but lightly and the midday 
sun remains above the horizon even during the midwinter 
solstice festival. And soon a passing longship took me back 
to Norse shores many leagues to the south from whence I 
have come."

So it was to be only Ingulfrid, Sigfast's wife, for whom this 
homecoming brought good tidings. For all the other wives 
and those who had hoped to be wives on the longships' 
return, it was the news they had dreaded most throughout 
the long Winter night.

Gudrun comforted Astrid as best she could. Their bodies 
glistened with the perspiration of their conjoined passion, 
compromised as it was by the knowledge that Thorvald, 
nor any other village man, would satisfy them again. 

The two lay together on their backs: Astrid weeping once 
more with Gudrun's arms around her shoulder. Her lover 
smiled at her.

"Perhaps this is how the gods meant it to be, Astrid," said 
Gudrun softly. "Our love was meant to be. It is truly 
blessed by Freya."

Astrid nodded sadly. But she wasn't sure how much her 
tears were for the grief she felt for Thorvald or how much 
was secretly relieved that she and Gudrun could remain 
together. The ways of the gods were mysterious, but she 
was sure Gudrun was right. As sure as summer would 
become winter once more, theirs was a love that was meant 
to last.










