Out of the blue, one moment it’s 794 AD and steely-faced and strong-of-arm they’re bearing down on Lindisfarne with its pot-bellied monks and abundant stores of silver mead and mutton.
But the next moment it’s now. Tourist season in effect. The weather is perfectly the same, the same thick gray clouds, the same murky light, but with a slight crucial difference, which the Vikings feel as a deep sense of wrong. Then they see the castle, which wasn’t there before. And neither were the ruins, and neither were these people gathered together who don’t resemble monks at all. What is this rattles through their mind but there’s no time to think let alone relent. It’s row and land and storm this little island now. Silver mead and mutton. But it’s all so wrong, the battle axe doesn’t sit right in the palm, the shield suddenly feels light and thin, irrelevant.
“Welcome, everyone, to the Holy Isle of Lindisfarne. You are standing on hallowed ground, steeped in history. During the early Middle Ages, Saint Aidan transformed this place into the center of British Christianity. And it was also here that the Viking Age began, over 1200 years ago, when bands of marauders started raiding the island.” Peter, the tour-guide, took a long pause after these words. The tourists gathered around him were nudging one another, loudly whispering, distracted. This was Peter’s 27th summer conducting these tours and he was starting to think it would be his last. There were more tourists than ever but they either hardly listened or argued senselessly about the history of Lindisfarne and the Vikings. The problem was that bloody movie, Viking Rising, which had been filmed on the island. All the tourists wanted to see King Olaf’s castle and were none too happy to hear that its striking appearance was mainly the result of a renovation undertaken by a nineteenth-century lifestyle magazine magnate. It was also best not to bring up how the Vikings adopted Christianity, though this was a topic that Peter knew quite a bit about. When he described the slow work of conversion wrought by missionaries over centuries, he’d be interrupted and asked what he thought of King Olaf’s vision – on a cold, starry night – of a 300-foot-tall burning cross in the middle of a fjord. In the movie, it was a spectacular sight, and even Peter found himself moved, but it had little to do with history. Still, up until today, the tourists would give him a little time before losing interest. This was a new kind of rudeness.
The long pause continued as Peter turned and saw a Viking longship with a serpent head moving into the cove. The company had nothing like it, nothing seaworthy. “I’m not sure what that is,” Peter answered. The longship came closer but slowly; the people – the Vikings – weren’t rowing in sync, some of the oars just seemed to be stabbing the water. They made it to the shoreline and leapt out, two dozen of them or more, some screaming to themselves. There were a lot of them and they looked like Vikings, lurching up the sand until they reached the small grassy area where the tourists were standing. Peter still didn’t know what was going on except that this was “not part of the show.” He wanted to say something to these people, to establish what was happening here, but the sounds caught in his throat and he sank into the general confusion. There was a pause, the two groups, the tourists and the Vikings, quietly, almost shyly, considered one another until a burly man in his 40s or 50s with a goatee and wraparound sunglasses went up to a Viking and roared in his face.
What kind of warrior is this? The man was easily six feet tall, more than half a foot taller than the Viking, and outweighed him by at least 100 pounds. He wasn’t armed but his eyes were hidden; he’d roar and deeply grin, and roar again. He roared once more then stood with his chin held high until the Viking snapped-to and swung his battle axe through the warrior’s jaw.
For centuries, only pilgrims visited the Holy Island. They came for the sacred ruins of the Lindisfarne priory, set into the slope that dominates the tiny island. In the Elizabethan period, a fort was built above the ruins at the summit of the slope. Abandoned after the end of the Anglo-Scottish wars, the fort was largely forgotten until it was purchased in 1901 by Edward Hudson, publisher of the illustrated Country Life magazine. Hudson hired the renowned architect Edward Luytons to renovate the fort into a rural estate, which is how it acquired its distinctive pink sandstone facade and playful interior features such as the unnecessary winding passages and the steps going down followed by steps going up. In 1944, the castle was transferred into the care of the National Trust.
On the day the Vikings appeared, 35 men, women, and children had gathered for a tour of the island. All of them were there because of the movie except for 3 Russian pilgrims who’d come to pay their respects at the tomb of St. Cuthbert. He had been a miracle-worker, a real one, his incorrupt body a source of solace and godly inspiration and they were eager to prostrate themselves before his tomb.
The Vikings appeared.
After the innocent tourist dropped to the ground, panic took the cove. The tourists scurried, scrambling up the hill, hiding anywhere they could among the priory ruins.
Three of the fathers found themselves together with their backs against a tomb breathing hard and sweating buckets.
What the fuck are we gonna do?
There was no cell-service on the island and even if there was how long would it take for help to arrive? Thirty, twenty minutes at best? They’d all be dead by then. No, they had to act.
Normally, the sound of screaming defenseless victims would have energized the Vikings into spilling more blood. But not today. They were expecting monks but these people were not monks. And there were women and children, weird clothing, hair, and all the men were larger, in some cases much larger, than the largest of them.
The Vikings wanted to heed the impulse, vibrating in their blood, to chase after the non-monks and hack them to pieces, but their bodies would not respond. Coated in lethargy from head to foot, they felt slow and a little dizzy, and they wanted to sit down.
The fathers noticed. They also noticed that the Vikings were small, none of them taller than five-and-a-half-feet. Some were stout but even the biggest ones couldn’t have weighed more than 150 pounds. And there was something wrong with them; they were scared or confused.
Time to attack.
The fathers convened the other fathers and quickly decided on a plan. Each of them would gather up some rocks and rush down the slope throwing rocks at the Vikings and then engage them in hand-to-hand combat on the beach. In the meantime, the women and children would hide amidst the priory ruins and fling smaller, lighter rocks at the Vikings as they could.
Alright it’s about us here, one of the fathers said, we go down, we go down fighting. We didn’t come here to die. Let’s do this.
And do this they did.
The Vikings staggered when the first rock was thrown. Some of them fell down before any of the fathers even reached them. Their weapons felt wrong, their armor felt light, the sky was oppressive, and the castle towering above them seemed to leer into their souls. They raised their arms but only to try and ward off the blows that rained down upon them. It was not much of a fight.
The fathers were ecstatic. Aside from sore knuckles and a few scratches here and there, everyone on their side was fine.
But who were these “Vikings?”
None of them had wallets or cell-phones or any ID. Just Viking stuff. Some fancy wooden combs and worn-looking coins in little purses tied to their belts. They wore fuzzy wool pants and long flowy shirts, like nightgowns, without any brand names or tags or even pockets.
They didn’t speak English or pretended not to know the language. One of them now and then said something, which each of the others would quietly echo, but it was just a long string of sounds, like something between song and speech, and the fathers couldn’t make any sense of it at all.
They had small dark eyes, weathered faces, and a lot of missing teeth. Low brows, weak jawlines, dark stringy hair. They looked a lot alike, as if they all came from the same family.
The fathers were stumped. These people didn’t look like Vikings but they’d gone all in on the Viking act. Were they terrorists? Or maybe communists? Or maybe, a teen suggested, they’d all been screwed by society and were cosplaying as Vikings to get their revenge?
This last possibility led to an argument until the wife of the innocent man screamed out: Who cares! That one killed my husband and all of them helped. They have to pay for what they did.
The fathers nodded in agreement and decided to sink the Viking boat, stranding the Vikings on the island. In the meantime, they’d get back on the tour boat and start heading back to the mainland. Hopefully, they’d get cell-reception even before reaching shore.
But as they began putting this plan into action, one of the fathers, who’d been contemplative for some time, quietly said stop.
Listen, he said. What if, what if, these are Vikings? Just hear me out. What if there’s been a miracle? This is the Holy Isle of Lindisfarne, there’s energy in the air, it can happen fellas.
And saying this, he turned for affirmation to the three pilgrims, who rolled their heads shyly down and then up until they were looking high above into the heavens.
It’s possible, the father continued. And do you know what will happen to them if they are Vikings? Nothing. The one who killed our friend here, the one who widowed this poor woman and orphaned this child? He won’t pay, they’ll “study” him and put them all up in nice houses, and start trying to speak to them like that can change anything. And our friend here won’t receive any justice. The father paused. And take a look at these motherfuckers. Remember King Olaf had that way of finding out who among the Vikings could be a real Christian? He’d put his hands on their heads and feel for bumps and figure it out. And a lot of them didn’t make the cut, maybe they even spoke the good word, maybe they’d committed to the Christian faith but they still showed Viking tendencies. The father paused. And these Vikings…I’m seeing a lot of bumpy heads… So they’re not gonna pay and they’re not even Christian!
So what do you suggest we do? they asked.
What do we do? We do to unto them what they tried to do unto us, the father said.
No explanation needed, the fathers got the Vikings on their feet – 26 of them – and set them to walking up the rock-strewn slope to the summit of the island. Up there, at the foot of the castle, they arranged them in a tight line with the one in front standing directly on “the Spot.”
In the movie, this was the place where King Olaf beheaded Lief, his childhood friend. Lief had converted eagerly but there was something off about his temperament, and his skull showed the sinister bumps. For the task, King Olaf used the “Sword of Destiny,” a plastic toy version of which a berry-eyed boy carried that day. The father who’d said this was a miracle took the sword in hand and held it high above his head while the Vikings shed what could be tears. Amidst the sound of the gently lapping waves, and as the setting sun began to scoot its rays beneath the clouds, the father spoke to those gathered there.
He said it didn’t have to end this way but crimes had been committed and the perpetrators had to pay. He said that if they didn’t give the victims justice no one would. He said that God is always on the side of the righteous; He sees the pure goodness of those who believe in His might.
Saying this, the father brought his Sword down slowly against the neck of the Viking while another father, who would be omitted from recollections of this miraculous day, stabbed the ancient man in the neck with his trusty pocket knife. And so it went, one after another, until every last Viking had bled out of the present.
Semyon Kokhlov
Semyon Khokhlov is a librarian and writer living in Philadelphia. He edits LEAN magazine.