Alright, this was the perfect vacation. Even as I turned my head on my pillow under the incredibly soft covers when I began slowly waking up in the morning, I had a stunning view of the ocean and seascape out a large window next to the bed.
I just got up slowly, made myself coffee, and went right back to my plush bed to enjoy it. No rush this first day.
I began to look around my cabin as I sipped my coffee. I'd never really noticed what was inside it the previous night. Even this cabin was a museum of dragon and Viking lore, something I could only dream of as I pored over books on this era back home. The replica maps, the copies of ancient documents, even drawings . . . I could be kept busy for days studying them all.
"Certainly something to do when it rains around here," I mused.
Fortunately, I had already learned how to read Viking runic characters somewhat back home through my intensive studies. The characters themselves weren't all that hard to recognize and distinguish. The Old Norse language, and its grammar and syntax, was something else however.
I began to scan the framed document replicas within easy eyesight from the comfort of my bed.
"Wow . . . 'Dragon Manual'," I said reading what looked like a decorated title page from an ancient book. "They really went to that level of detail to document myths," I added, somewhat amazed.
Then I looked at a framed copy of a map next to it.
"Isle of Berk," I translated. "Hmmm . . . the island has what looks like a significant village on it. The Vikings who made the original of this map must have lived there."
Something drew me out of my plush bed now to take a closer look. My eyes zeroed in on the village of Berk. Some of the individually drawn houses were marked with clan or family names, indicating who lived in which house.
I suddenly experienced a shock.
"Ýsa . . . Hyse . . . Haddock . . ." I progressively translated. "My . . . My ancestors lived there!" I realized. "I truly am home."
I sat back down on the edge of my bed in stunned amazement. A flood of thoughts and sensations, perhaps even recessed ancestral memories, seemed to run through me now. I didn't know what I wanted to do first. But something now made me want, even compelled me, to plan on making my way to wherever Berk was.
"Easy, Lance . . . you're on vacation now," I had to remind myself.
I deliberately slowed myself down, going back to bed with a second cup of coffee, along with a nice Danish. But while I tried to relax again, and eat and drink leisurely, my mind was racing nonetheless. You have to get to Berk! it said almost incessantly. You have got to get to Berk!
"Alright," I sighed, basically giving in to my now seemingly fevered brain. "I'll make an inquiry, after an enjoyable shower."
— — — — —
"Do you know where a place called 'Berk' is?" I asked Mr. Johannsen almost immediately upon entering the inn's lobby a short time later.
"I thought you might be interested in that," the innkeeper smiled. "Unfortunately that village site is on an exposed island, further out along the rugged coast here. People haven't lived there in centuries—not since the Viking chiefdoms were merged by the Christian kings and their armies into what became Norway. Vhy live at such an inhospitable place when there are easier places within the same kingdom to live in?"
"Is there any way you could help me get there? Visit there?" I asked with a degree of urgency.
"Saw the map in your cabin, did you?" Johannsen smiled. "As vell as your family name on one of the houses?"
"Yes, I did," I replied.
"Did you see another name on one of the other houses?" he asked. "A 'Johann'?"
"Why yes, I did," I somehow recalled.
"That vas my ancestor," the elderly gentleman smiled. "Our families vere neighbours there, even friends. A journal I have seen even describes my ancestor. He vas a metal smith in the village, and tall, like me."
All of a sudden, I had an indescribable feeling of meeting a long-lost friend, even a brother of sorts. That we must have been thirty or forty years apart in age no longer mattered.
"Johann . . . sen," I involuntarily said.
I looked away and shook myself a bit. "Sorry," I said. "I don't know what came over me there."
The innkeeper just continued to smile.
"Ve are in touch with our history, every day here," he noted. "You, my friend, are just rediscovering it, or perhaps discovering it for the first time.
"Come," he then invited. "Enjoy a late breakfast in our dining room, while I make a call. I have a friend who can take us to Berk."
I teared up a little at those words, but I did not know why.
— — — — —
No sooner had I finished an excellent Scandinavian breakfast, than Mr. Johannsen was driving me in his car to a boat harbour nearby.
"Fortunately Olly was at home to get my call a little vhile ago," Johannsen noted as we drove. "I am looking forward to this as vell, actually. It has been a vhile since my last visit to our ancestral village. Here ve are."
We now drove down a steep, narrow road among more evergreen trees to a small cove filled with docks and boats. Once the car was parked and we got out, I looked around, taking it all in—savouring everything around me. The sea air, the cry of the seagulls, the rocky and tree-filled crags . . . I felt alive here, as never before.
"This vay to the boat," Johannsen smiled as he gestured. "I hope you don't get sea sick," he now cautioned as we began walking along a nearby dock. "It is often not a smooth trip."
"I'm ready for it," I assured.
"Olly!" Johannsen now greeted as we approached a stocky fisherman clad in a thick, white sweater and yellow oilskins alongside one boat. "This is our visitor I told you about, Doctor Lance Hyse," he continued in English for my apparent benefit. "This is Olly Haloffsen," my elderly friend now introduced to me.
"Doctor Husa," Olly said very deferentially, as if I were a celebrity or even royalty, but pronouncing it the Norwegian way. I didn't correct him, realizing it was probably my grandparents or great-grandparents who had taken to deliberately mispronouncing it themselves to try and fit in better with society in English Canada over time.
"A pleasure," I replied as I shook his hand, while I gave a curious glance towards Johannsen as to Olly's reaction to me.
"Most people here are aware that your ancestors were once legendary chieftains of Berk," my host explained. "You are indeed a celebrity to anyone here who knows and appreciates our history, as there haven't been any others of your family around here for a long time."
Olly then ushered us both aboard his boat before starting its diesel engine. As he untied and took in the mooring ropes and we backed away from the dock, I once again now found myself misty eyed. This place was pulling strongly at my heart, and now I knew why.
— — — — —
Soon, we emerged out of the cove onto the open sea, puttering somewhat noisily along at about fifteen knots or so. I excused myself from my companions and went onto the bow of the fishing boat we were on, seating myself down on the boat's white cabin top.
I felt something miraculous in me now. As the vessel moved along, I began to feel I was almost soaring across the waters. The only thing that was holding me to the present was the infernal noise of the boat's diesel engine, whining loudly as we now went at the full speed it was capable of. I wanted that engine gone. I looked up, trying to imagine the sail of a Viking ship above me instead, with nothing but the waves around us, and the creak of wood timbers for sounds.
"Gods, ancestors . . . speak to me . . . reach and touch me," I quietly prayed, with more intensity than I had ever known. "Connect me with you . . . please."
I felt as if I was on the edge of something now. Something incredible. For the first time since my divorce, I was glad I was on this quest by myself, even that my ex-wife had left me. Now, I was discovering things that had been waiting for me. Things that were meant just for me alone.
With no one around me on the bow of that boat, I allowed myself to be overcome for a moment, with wonder and indescribable joy. That I was here, experiencing these things, now seemed like a miracle in itself. I meditated and marvelled as we travelled upon that sea, even a fair distance it seemed away from the coast.
Eventually, thick mists parted to reveal several offshore rocks and barren hillside beyond . . . a place that just felt sacred to me.
"Berk," Johannsen simply said from behind me near the bow. I knew what it was though, even before he had said its name.
But although it had once been a thriving village from what I'd seen on the map in my cabin, and had even somehow sensed about the place, there now was almost no sign that anyone had ever lived there. I say almost, because there were large squares and rectangles dug at various places into the hillside, along with a central set of stone steps that went up to a tall, cave-like opening in a rocky mountain.
"Archaeological excavations," Johannsen explained, almost anticipating my question. "The National Museum and Oslo University are exploring the site for artefacts. I am verking to establish at least some claim on things that might be related to my family. I am perfectly villing to have them displayed in a museum, but I vant it known that the things that vere once used by my family, still belong to my family.
"The thing though is they're just not finding much here," he added. "This vas an important village, yet the residents left little behind. They seem to have taken most everything vith them, or came back and reclaimed them. The archaeologists are most puzzled."
He seemed to smile that the archaeologists were confounded.
We now entered a cove.
"According to the map you've seen, this vas the boat harbour for the village," Johannsen explained. "There vere once vooden ramps up to the village, but those have been long gone now. There is a steep path along the cliff face you can see there ve can climb up though."
"You up to that?" I cautioned, now seeing how steep and narrow the path really was, and becoming concerned about Johannsen's advancing age.
"For my ancestors, I am up to it," he answered proudly.
The boat slowed as we pulled up alongside a modern wooden float that was secured by steel cables to the face of the cliff. Olly easily looped the boat's lines around cleats on the float while also shutting down the boat's engine. Finally, the peace and gentler sounds of nature were able to surround us.
"Shall ve go?" my host invited with a smile.
Soon, Johannsen and I were climbing up the path hewn along the dark, rocky cliff. Fortunately, there was a hand rope made of more steel cable and secured by pad eyes driven into the cliff face to hold onto, likely placed there by the archaeological teams. I just tried not to look down the further up the path we got. But as we went, I began to feel what I can only describe as presences. I felt I was passing among them, almost hearing bits of their conversations echoing in my mind.
"You feel them?" Johannsen asked as he carefully climbed ahead of me.
"Yes . . ." I said, amazed. "You feel and hear them, too?"
"They are our families and our friends across time," he replied. "Only those of us who have had family here can sense them. This, and they, are meant for us . . . for us alone. That is vhy Olly is staying vith the boat. He does not vant to disturb us as ve connect vith our ancestors."
We now emerged onto sloping, grassy hillside that was laced with terraces, and those rectangular holes.
"The heart of the village vas here," Johannsen noted as we both looked around. "Listen, feel . . . quietly for a moment," he encouraged. "Let them reach you."
I closed my eyes, sensing and even hearing voices more intensely now . . . feeling energies and presences around me. Something was really weird however, but it felt wonderful.
"Not all of them are human," I sensed out loud. "Sorry, I don't know why I just said that."
The old man smiled. "As you say in North America, 'Go vith it.' But come," he then said, "I will show you vhere your family's house vas." We climbed further up the hill now.
"Here," he said pointing to one long rectangle dug into the earth that was off by itself near the stone stairs and a rocky cliff face. "This vas your family's home, vhere they lived. Go, step inside," he encouraged. "Feel it fully."
I stepped into the rectangular hole. I was home. I felt . . . love. It came from all directions. It was everywhere, reaching to me across time it was so powerful. I could almost see a warm cooking fire, and almost hear laughter and warm words in a language I couldn't quite understand, and yet didn't have to. I prayed, I meditated. I just let it in.
And then, I began to feel sadness, and loss. I suddenly experienced an unending, gaping emptiness . . . of things being burned and swept away.
Finally, I found myself now returned to the present, and standing in the empty hole that had once supported my family's house. I wept now for the loss that I now keenly felt. I found myself silently swearing that somehow, the good that I had just felt here would not die . . . that it would carry on, somehow, within me. I would devote myself to doing whatever I would have to so that this good, this love I had just experienced, would live.
"Vhat have you felt?" my host and guide now asked.
"I can't describe it," I said, looking up at him with a tear-stained face now.
"Don't try to," he advised. "Your answer is already on your face."
"Will I be able to see this place? To be here, again?" I asked.
"Yes," he simply said as he helped me step up out of the hole. "But come, let me show you vhat vas the Mead Hall, and then let's go to my family's house."
"There are no houses," I noted as we climbed the nearby steps that still existed up to the Mead Hall. "But yet you speak like the houses are still here."
"They are here," he replied as we climbed the last step. "You felt your family's house, didn't you?"
"Yes, I did," I admitted with a smile.
"That is vhy this village, this place, still belongs to us, to our families," he said as we entered and briefly explored the large cavern that had been the Mead Hall. "It belongs to us far more than it does to any outsiders, or to any archaeologists or museums."
"But aren't I an outsider?" I asked. "After all, I come from Canada."
"No," my elderly friend said as we emerged from the stone hall again and looked out upon the village. "You come from here."
— — — — —
We soon walked down the hill and visited the Johannsen or Johann's home.
"Vitness me, as I enter my family's home," he invited as he now stepped into another rectangle, one among several in a row along the hillside.
He closed his eyes once he had stepped inside. Soon, tears were streaming down his face, just as they had on mine.
A few moments later, he walked to the edge of the hole and quietly reached for my hand. I helped him up.
"You are the only other person I have seen react the vay I have vhen I have stepped into a home here," he told me. "Everyone else just thinks of these as holes—not homes, vhere families once lived . . . vhere their hopes, joys, sadnesses, and love echoed, and echo still. Vell, actually," he then added, "that is not completely true. But please, do not ask me to explain it now."
"I won't," I assured respectfully.
"But sadly, it is getting late, and a storm is coming from the north," he now noted with regret. "Ve must go."
"Let me go ahead of you, down the trail," I offered as we turned to leave the village.
"Thank you," Johannsen accepted as I started to climb down ahead of him.
"It's a shame there isn't an easier way up and down this bluff," I noted to him as we descended carefully, clutching the hand ropes.
"There should not be," he simply replied behind me, almost seeming to deliberately leave something else out.
We made it back down to the float where Olly was still waiting with the boat. Fortunately, its engine had been off while we were up in the village, but now with a guttural roar, it seemed to jerk us back to the present again.
It now started to rain around us as we began leaving Berk's stony cove. I sat outside the boat's covered area on its transom or stern though, looking back at the village as we left it. Johannsen silently passed me a yellow rain slicker and hat. I put them on. I then just watched as Berk disappeared again into the rain and fog behind us.
America, even Canada, weren't home to me anymore. Somehow, this was.
And now, I never wanted to leave home again.
