Chapter 10: A New Life

After nearly a day of traveling, the wagon finally lurched to a stop outside a large longhouse. Even though it was still in the early afternoon, the sun was sinking low behind the longhouse. The fields around the farm lay barren as livestock grazed in pastures.

The man to whom Hiccup now belonged clambered down from the wagon and circled around back. He shouted up to the longhouse and a woman jogged out to meet them. The man hefted the trunk to which Hiccup's chain was attached and dragged it out of the wagon. The boy followed as the chain jerked on his collar. Hiccup's ankle caught in the wheel well on his way down and he sprawled in the muddy ground. From where his face was smashed into the soft earth, Hiccup watched as the woman from the longhouse untangled his ankle and removed the bruised limb from the twisted grip of the wagon. She hauled Hiccup to his feet.

"Hedda," the man addressed the woman as he unlatched Hiccup's chain from the trunk. "this is here to replace Olaf. Take it inside."

"Ja. I send oot Snortr und Skili to help," Hedda called over her shoulder as she frog-marched Hiccup up to the longhouse.

The house was long and considerably large for a single family. The roof was covered in patches of summer greenery as dirt walls sloped down to meet a stone foundation. A wooden door was framed by a wall of stone, holding up one end of the turf roof. Berk's position on a cliff and abundant use of cave systems and lumber had made the ancient construction of turf houses obsolete. It was only in the village stories and myths of heroes long since passed that the image of the large houses of grass, dirt, and stone had survived. Hiccup marveled at the primitive yet effective construction of the farm's great house.

Hedda released Hiccup arms to open the heavy wood door and shove him inside. The interior was dimly lit and filled with the sounds of domestic life. The scratching of wool carders mixed with the squawks of geese, the baying of a milk goat, and the loud howl of a fluffy creature with a long snout and a lolling tongue.

A long corridor stretched down the length of the building, flanked on either side by wooden benches built around floor-to-ceiling support columns. In the middle of the room a gaggle of women and girls sat around a central fire, carding wool, snapping beans, and preparing meat for the evening meal.

"Snortr, Skili!" Hedda bellowed as she slammed the door behind them against the wind and chill outside.

A young boy with wide gray eyes and broad shoulders materialized next to Hedda. Hiccup startled nervously at his sudden appearance.

"Where Skili?" Hedda demanded as she rounded on the boy.

"He's with die svín," Skili replied, gesturing towards the door.

Hedda heaved a frustrated sigh, "Ja, can't be h'lped. Go h'lp Master Sigfred unload vagninn."

Skili scampered out the door without another word, large feet squelching in the churned up mud. Hedda shut the door behind him before latching on to Hiccup's arms again. She marched him down the long corridor, around the gaggle of women, and back to a smaller corridor that branched off from the main one. This corridor was set lower in the ground, but the main walls were still lined with benches and support columns. There was a fire pit in the center of the room over which a sheep flank was roasting.

A girl with plaited brown hair and blue eyes was bent over a quern, grinding wheat. Her back was hunched in exertion as she turned the handstone. Hedda shoved Hiccup into the room before turning to the girl, "Geirhilda!"

The girl at the quern stopped grinding and sprang to her feet. "Ja, Hedda?"

"It needs tunic. Dann back to verk." Hedda instructed the girl while she led Hiccup over to an empty bench. "Ye sleep her'," she gestured to the empty bench.

"Send him oot vhen you are done," Hedda called to Geirhilda. Hiccup started at the order. He had just been addressed as a human being for the first time since coming to this strange land. Overwhelmed with his new surroundings and conflicting emotions, the boy sank onto the bench he had been assigned. The rough slab of wood was quite wide, but a good bit shorter than his height. A support column at his feet and another at his head separated his bench from the others lining this wall.

Geirhilda approached him warily, a tunic in her hands. She dropped the garment in Hiccup's lap without a word and went back to her quern. The sound of stones grinding wheat filled the small space. Hiccup watched her for a few moments before tugging the tunic over his head. The fabric caught on his collar and the boy struggled to maneuver it over the ghastly piece of iron. When the tunic finally was free, it tumbled down to below Hiccup's knees and the sleeves swallowed his hands whole. Hiccup tugged the laces at the neckline and sides as tight as they would go and rolled the sleeves up. The cloth was itchy against his skin and the dirty colour was one he had come to associate with undyed wool.

Almost as soon as he had finished adjusting the tunic, Geirhilda guided him out of the longhouse to stand blinking in the dimming twilight. The sun had almost fallen below the horizon and the moon was already climbing into the sky. Darkness was falling over the bustling farm.

"B'y!" Hedda's shrill and heavily accented voice cut through the farm. Hiccup jumped in surprise before hurrying over to the hefty woman's side where she stood next to a wagon. A larger man on top of the wagon was handing down a dense mass of dirt. Skili stood beside Hedda, helping to haul the dirt to a smaller turf house protruding from the side of the main turf house.

Hedda dumped several squares of dirt into Hiccup's arms and pushed him towards the smaller turf house. The dirt stank horribly of a bog and, after several armloads, Hiccup realized the stuff was peat. The fuel wasn't used often in Berk because of the abundance of wood and the scarcity of bogs, but one of the neighboring tribes relied heavily on it. Hiccup allowed his thoughts to wander back to the Barbaric Archipelago as he and Skili ran the peat up to the house, racing against nightfall before the wagon was finally emptied.

As the small group trudged back to the main house, Hiccup tried in vain to wipe off the filth that was now staining his tunic. The night meal was served without much excitement. After chewing on salted pork, some stale bread, and slurping down some mead Hiccup was exhausted. In a daze Hiccup barely registered Geirhilda leading him off to bed. He was shoved down onto his bench and automatically curled up into the ragged wool that someone had laid out for him.

Hiccup stared blankly at the dirt wall his bench was built into. It seemed hard to believe that just this morning he had stood on the auction block in the center of an unknown trading center. Hiccup sniffled slightly as his thoughts flew back to Berk and his family. He hoped his father would come and take him away from this nightmare. His eyes slipped closed unbidden and he fell into a dreamless sleep as his physical and emotional exhaustion took hold.

Angelina: Hiccup's new home is based off of the reconstructed Viking farm at Stong in Iceland.

Arthur: Stong was buried in the 1104 eruption of Mt. Hekla so it fits perfectly into our time frame for the story.

Angelina: The dialect I'm experimenting with is my own stereotypical swenglish pronunciation and a mixture of German and Icelandic words. One of the reasons some of these words aren't translated for you is because Hiccup would have spoken a Norse-Gael dialect and wouldn't have picked up on all of the Norse words and accents. I know very little Icelandic, but do speak some German so I'm favouring the German side (Hedda originated from a Germanic tribe, so she will mainly be the one using German words).

Arthur: We had a really hard time churning out a chapter this week. However, we managed to pull together this chapter and next week's chapter. Hopefully the story is still intriguing for you guys, we have a ways to go yet.

Edited May 2018 for clarity, name consistency, and typos.