Where is it that gods go after they've been banished?
Maybe they haven't gone anywhere. In oblique encounters with passing strangers, the lives of ordinary and not-so-ordinary people turn in new and interesting directions. These stories are based on the myths of the Vikings, but they contain nothing magical or supernatural. Or do they? Sometimes it's hard to tell. Perhaps the magic lies in living men and women as they spend, and sometimes end, their Days in Midgard.
From "The Solstice Guests", a story in "Days in Midgard":
Ketil Gunnarsson came around the corner of the house with another load of firewood, and was greeted by two ravens, one sitting on the gatepost, the other at the edge of the roof over the door. Surprised, he stopped there on the path. They sat at their stations, looking at him, and he at them, although he wasn’t sure why: he had seen ravens before. The one on the gatepost cocked its head sideways and inspected Ketil more closely. After a moment of this, the other one let out a squawk, which startled Ketil so that he dropped his firewood in the snow.
He bent to pick up his logs. One by one, he laid them back into the crook of his arm, knocking the snow off the bark of each before doing so. It wouldn’t do to have wet wood on the longest night of the year.
The raven on the roof stood its ground as Ketil approached the doorway of his home. They exchanged another look, and he passed in. Enough of this, he thought. There were several more loads to bring in before dark. He stacked the wood beside the hearth and looked over at his wife, working at the table, but she didn’t look at him. No, she was intent on kneading her bread, applying more energy to it than usual. Good. Maybe the bread wouldn’t be so flat this time. He went back outside to get another load.
The woodshed was an extension of the roof of the barn. Underneath, he had stacked row upon row of carefully cut firewood, organized by size and type of wood. Some kinds were better for starting the fire, some better for cooking, some better for burning long and keeping the house at least tolerably warm until morning, and his arms and shoulders and back knew the cost of each. He was proud of his woodpile. And even in the shadow of the barn, in the shadow of a mountain on a dark day in Swedish winter, he didn’t need to see to do his work there. When he reached out his hand, he knew what he would find in each place.
The sheep were restless on the other side of the wall.
When he came around the corner of the house again, he noticed that the ravens had moved, posting themselves instead in an upper branch of a tree across the road. They sat quietly and watched. Waiting for someone to come out and dump the kitchen scraps, he guessed. He went in and deposited his next load.
“I suppose you want a nice Yule dinner anyway,” his wife said sharply, still not looking at him.
“Yes,” he replied in a deliberately even tone, “especially since we can’t spend it with your family. I’ve been hearing the wolves up the mountain all day, and if we go, we’ll have a lot fewer sheep when we return. We should still have a nice dinner, even if we don’t have anyone to share it with.”
“Easy enough for you to say: you don’t have to cook it! You just go out and worry over your sheep. We wouldn’t have to think about things like wolves if you’d taken up my father’s business.”
“And if I’d been a younger man just starting out, I might have done that.”
He didn’t stay to hear whatever came next.
It had been a hard year and would probably get harder. First the cattle disease swept through the area, killing most of his sheep and three cows. Then the local hunters reported that most of the deer were gone also, which made his and his neighbors’ remaining animals all that much more attractive to the wolves. They had dispatched his sheepdog last month, taking six sheep along with them in one night. It would take years to rebuild his flock after all this. Meanwhile, he had bought more gunpowder with his little remaining cash, and become a very light sleeper.
Closing the door behind him, he stood there in the cold and thought again about the woman he should have married. But Sigrid was younger and someone said that was important. Ketil had long since determined never to listen to someone again. Nevertheless, he was also determined to be a good husband, and, he hoped, father. It had been four years, and that still hadn’t happened. Being a farmer’s wife required more than just riding horses in the meadow in the summertime. This girl from town had not liked to discover that, and she often showed her displeasure by sleeping in another nook.
Someday, he thought. He had been well on his way to becoming a wealthy farmer before last summer, and he knew he could do that again. He would do that again, but it would take some time.
One of the ravens flew off down the road toward town. The other stayed and watched as Ketil Gunnarsson returned to the woodshed for another load of logs.
About Steven T Abell
Steve Abell is a writer and storyteller with a lifelong interest in Norse Mythology. "Days in Midgard" began as a storytelling project over ten years ago. These stories were honed in front of live audiences before they were ever written down.
Where is it that gods go after they've been banished?
Steve Abell is a writer and storyteller with a lifelong interest in Norse Mythology. "Days in Midgard" began as a storytelling project over ten years ago. These stories were honed in front of live audiences before they were ever written down.