In Denmark I was born, I belong here,
here I am rooted, from here my boats steer.
Oh Danish speech, you are the tongue of my mother,
so sweetly blessed you reach my heart.
Oh brisk beach sand,
with nests of wild swans,
in green isles, the home of my heart!
I love you! Denmark, my fatherland.*
Wild images flashing.
Shields drenched in blood. The heads of Saxon kings. Lush hills covered in dark green moss. A Viking standing on the hilltop alone, his legs crumbled but his head high. A sea of blood. The ax over the sword. White shirts spotted with red. Odin with his foot on the chest of Christ. An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth.
The sons will avenge the death of their father.
...
Before she could even open her eyes, Frida smelled the lovely fragrance of a newborn child. Its sweetness and innocence filled her nostrils as she finally breathed in fully for the first time in what seemed like ages, but she found herself furrowing her brows when the sweet perfume was accompanied by the smell of smoke, of dust and burning candles, of cooked meat and charred wooden logs.
When she forced her heavy eyelids open, she was not met by a green view of the forest like she had expected.
Instead, she found herself staring into a wooden loft. The wooden loft of her bedroom.
She made an eager attempt to sit up straight in the bed, but a sharp pain shooting from her pelvis had her exhaling a strained whimper, and she quickly let herself fall back to the soft covers of her bed.
She let her eyes scan the bedroom, and she was surprised to see that it was empty.
Ragnar was not there, no child of hers was sitting and waiting for his or her mother to wake up, not even a single servant there ready to greet her. Frida let her eyes travel to the small wooden stump of a table that stood by her bedside, and she realized that she might have been unconscious for quite a while.
Small bundles of different flowers that had already begun to whither were gathered there, and she recognized some of them to be Freyja's hair, while several wooden figures and bones carved with runes were spread between the flowers. On top of some of the flowery bundles she noticed a small golden necklace that held a sharp tooth in it at the end, and she barely managed to reach her arm over to grab it.
She was very weak, and her mouth was completely dried out, but despite that, she inspected the tooth of the necklace.
It seemed to have belonged to a beast of prey, a dog of some sort… Her eyes widened.
"Freke," she croaked in an inaudible whisper, and she immediately reached her hand up to grab at her throat. It was as dry as sand on a hot summer's day, and she sensed how a throbbing headache started to pound over her forehead as she inspected the wolf tooth in the necklace.
It was very delicate, beautiful and raw there in the palm of her hand, and she felt her heart starting to work harder to keep her body awake, her senses already weakened heavily merely by her efforts of looking around.
She did however hear some noise starting to sound from outside her bedroom door, and soon she recognized a desperate scratching on the door to her bedroom, which was opened almost immediately only to reveal a large silvery fur shooting over to greet her with a wet and slimy tongue that washed some of the sleep out of her eyes, followed by a wicked smell of rotten meat to sneak into her nostrils.
Frida could not help but to giggle out in her croaking voice by the wolf's reaction to her waking up, and she strained herself to reach her hand up and pat its furry head slowly.
"Good boy," she whispered to him as his silver light eyes traveled to hers, and she felt her heart warm when she noticed the attentiveness of his ears and tail.
Out of the corner of her eyes, Frida noticed someone else moving behind the big wolf that had jumped up on the bed, and she stretched her neck to see whether it was Ragnar who had come to see her.
But she was surprised when she laid her eyes upon a couple of dark circles, Floki staring at her with alertness shining from his eyes that otherwise seemed tired and worn.
She could not help but to smile widely as she was genuinely happy to see the tall Norseman again. Floki hissed out a nervous giggle, and he narrowed his eyes at her, a small smile curling one side of his mouth.
"Welcome back, queen Frida," he breathed as he took a step closer to her, his fingers twisting strangely in front of him. "I will let Ragnar know that you are awake."
He immediately turned on his heel to exit the bedroom, but Frida finally managed to sit up in the bed, urging Freke to lie down beside her.
"Wait!" she blurted out in a hoarse whisper, reaching up her hand to have it hang awkwardly in the air between them.
She stared at him with widened eyes. "What happened?"
Floki turned his head to look over his shoulder, another crooked smile curling the corner of his mouth. "You gave birth in front of the gods. When I took you here, Freyja had already honored you and Ragnar with her gifts."
Frida sank hard, but there was not much to swallow, and she bit her lower lip, furrowing her brows slightly at the man in front of her. She did not know what to say.
"Thank you, Floki," was the only thing she could come up with.
And that was enough.
Floki bowed his head in a quick movement before disappearing behind the bedroom door. She tried to remember something, anything from the day she had given birth to her and Ragnar's child, but she could not remember anything else but seeing the giant Yggdrasil and then… darkness.
Darkness filled with flashing images of something she had not seen before with her own eyes. The image of a white shirt flashing by before her eyes was the thing she remembered the best. She did not know what it meant, however, before she could start straining her mind to evoke something more that could help her understand, Ragnar appeared in the door.
Frida immediately felt her heart beat rise, warmth pulsating quickly through her veins as she took in the sight of him there, smiling lovingly at her with tenderness so obvious in his blue crystals that she felt like melting away right there in the bed.
But when her eyes traveled down to see what he was holding in her arms, her heart almost gave in.
She gasped out in surprise.
There, in the arms of her husband, lay not one but two healthy looking newborns, both of them piercing her with ocean blue eyes from behind the soft cloths wrapped around their small bodies.
Frida felt like fainting.
Ragnar chuckled sweetly at her as he walked closer to her, closing the distance between them, while he planted small kisses on each of the newborns' heads. The faces of the two children were very similar, almost terrifyingly identical, and she furrowed her brows at her husband as he sat down next to her on the bed.
Frida stared at the two children in his arms, and she could not seem to gather her thoughts as to speak, to say something, anything.
She was speechless.
"You can't imagine how impatient I have been for you to wake up, my love," Ragnar soothed in a calm, raspy voice, hugging his arms tighter around the two newborns.
Frida simply stared at him with big eyes. She could not even remember how to breathe properly.
She heard Ragnar chuckle lightly.
"See how you spoil me?" he continued in his tender voice. "I am the luckiest man alive."
Frida felt something warm travel down her cheeks, and she felt her lips stretch into a wide smile as she looked at the soft and round cheeks of the children in Ragnar's arms. They were hers. Both of them.
She tried to open her mouth but she was still at a loss for words.
How does one respond to something as marvelous and unthinkable as this?
Ragnar continued, knowing how hard it would have to be for her to comprehend: "I want you to meet our two boys, Ragnvald and Halfdan. I already named them. I hope you don't mind?"
Frida heard herself sobbing out, as she reached her weak hand up to stroke her thumb over the cheeks of both of the small boys in Ragnar's arms. One of them seemed to be smiling already.
She could not believe how she was not dead. How all three of them had survived.
This was definitely a work of the gods. This was impossible in England.
"Ragnvald and Halfdan," Frida finally whispered in a small breath with tears streaming down her face and a light head as she looked at the beauty that was her two sons.
Twins.
Identical boys that looked exactly like their father. They were the most beautiful thing she had ever seen in her life.
"Which one is which?" she asked as she cupped both of their heads with her hands.
Ragnar barked out a loving laugh and urged her to take one of them.
"Beats me," he chuckled as she reached up to take one of the boys and hug him tight, "but Floki made them necklaces so we can tell them apart. He has been very helpful in the last couple of weeks. I don't think I would have managed this by myself."
Frida stared at Ragnar with widened eyes. "Weeks?"
A quick note of pain flashed over his eyes as he looked down to the boy in his arms, and he nodded slowly.
"Yes, you have been still for a long time. But I always knew that you would wake up again. I felt it in my heart, the gods told me the same day that you brought these two wonders to the world."
Frida let her eyes fall to the little man in her arms, and she reached her hand up to nudge the cloth wrapped around him away to reveal a small leather necklace that held the smallest wooden figure she had ever seen in her life.
It represented a tree, and Frida could not help but to smile widely as she realized it must have been made by Floki. No one else in Kattegat was this skilled at the art of wood carving but him.
She sensed Ragnar looking at the figure as well.
"I named that one Halfdan*," he soothed. "It means half Dane."
Frida looked into the eyes of her son Halfdan, and she felt her heart explode with warmth and love inside her chest.
"And this one here I named Ragnvald. He carries the symbol of a raven."
Frida whimpered out something between a sob and a chuckle.
"Halfdan and Ragnvald Ragnarsson. I love you both with all my heart. You will grow to be strong men just like your father."
* Inspired by a beautiful poem written by H.C. Andersen (1850), whom you might know ;)
* Fatherland: I know that it is weird to say this in English, because you would probably say "mother country." But we always say "fædreland" (fathers' land) in Danish, so I translated it to this.
