prettified with a few well-polished phrases, could have been the same as I heard from a conclave of the highly trained and perfumed advisers to the Basileus. I am talking about Christ's supposed representative on earth when he sits on his gilded throne in a chamber banded with porphyry and pretends that he is the incarnation of a thousand years of learning and refined civilisation.
The saddest aspect of Gudrid's drift towards the White Christ ways, now that I look back on it, is what a waste it proved to be. My foster mother would have made a truly remarkable priestess of the Old Ways if she had preferred to study under the Little Sibyl. For it is a striking feature of the old beliefs - and it would appal the monks around me if they knew - that the majority of its chief experts were women. There are fifteen different words in the Norse language to describe the various female specialisms in seidr, but fewer than half that number of words for male practitioners. Even Odinn the shape-changer has a strong element of the female about him, and you wonder about his enthusiasm for disguising himself as a woman. By contrast the White Christ expects his leading proponents to be male and women are excluded from their inner priesthood. Thus Gudrid diminished her horizons on the day she formally professed the faith of the White Christ. If she had followed the Old Ways she could have been respected and influential and helped those among whom she lived. But as a devout and saintly Christian she was finally obliged to become an anchoress and live on her own. However, that brings me far ahead of my story . . .
Thorvall and Tyrkir tried their best to make me understand that unless the Old Ways continued to be practised, they would soon be submerged by the advancing tide of White Christ beliefs. The speed with which the White Christ faith had taken hold in Iceland alarmed my tutors, and they feared that the same would happen in Greenland. 'I don't know how the White Christ people can claim to be peaceful and gentle,' said Thorvall sourly. 'The first missionary they sent to Iceland was a ruffian named Thang-brand. He swaggered about the countryside browbeating the farmers into taking his faith, and when he was teased about his crazy ideas, he lost his temper and killed two Icelanders in fights. To try to control him, a meeting was arranged between him and a learned volva at which the two of them would debate the merits of their beliefs. The volva made Thangbrand look an utter fool. He felt so humiliated that he took ship for Norway, and the volva proved her worth by asking Thor to send a storm, which nearly sank his ship on his journey home.
'The Icelanders were far too easy-going,' Tyrkir added. "When the missionaries came back to Iceland some years later and began their preaching all over again, the farmers had no more stomach for the endless debates and quarrels between those who decided to take the new faith and those who wanted to stay with the old ways. They got so fed up that their delegates met at the Althing with instructions to ask the Lawspeaker to come up with a solution. He went off, sat down and pulled his cloak over his head, and thought about it for nearly a day. Then he climbed up on the Law Rock and announced that it would be less bother if everyone accepted the new religion as a formality, but that anyone who wanted to keep with the Old Ways could do so.
'We completely failed to see that the White · Christ people would never give up until they had grabbed everyone. We were quite happy to live side by side with other beliefs; we never presumed to think that our ideas were the only correct ones. We made the mistake of thinking that the White Christ was just another God who would be welcomed in among all the other Gods and would coexist with them peaceably. How wrong we were.'
Inevitably, my education in paganism was patchy. Thorvall and Tyrkir often confused folklore with religion, but in the end it did not matter much. I
The saddest aspect of Gudrid's drift towards the White Christ ways, now that I look back on it, is what a waste it proved to be. My foster mother would have made a truly remarkable priestess of the Old Ways if she had preferred to study under the Little Sibyl. For it is a striking feature of the old beliefs - and it would appal the monks around me if they knew - that the majority of its chief experts were women. There are fifteen different words in the Norse language to describe the various female specialisms in seidr, but fewer than half that number of words for male practitioners. Even Odinn the shape-changer has a strong element of the female about him, and you wonder about his enthusiasm for disguising himself as a woman. By contrast the White Christ expects his leading proponents to be male and women are excluded from their inner priesthood. Thus Gudrid diminished her horizons on the day she formally professed the faith of the White Christ. If she had followed the Old Ways she could have been respected and influential and helped those among whom she lived. But as a devout and saintly Christian she was finally obliged to become an anchoress and live on her own. However, that brings me far ahead of my story . . .
Thorvall and Tyrkir tried their best to make me understand that unless the Old Ways continued to be practised, they would soon be submerged by the advancing tide of White Christ beliefs. The speed with which the White Christ faith had taken hold in Iceland alarmed my tutors, and they feared that the same would happen in Greenland. 'I don't know how the White Christ people can claim to be peaceful and gentle,' said Thorvall sourly. 'The first missionary they sent to Iceland was a ruffian named Thang-brand. He swaggered about the countryside browbeating the farmers into taking his faith, and when he was teased about his crazy ideas, he lost his temper and killed two Icelanders in fights. To try to control him, a meeting was arranged between him and a learned volva at which the two of them would debate the merits of their beliefs. The volva made Thangbrand look an utter fool. He felt so humiliated that he took ship for Norway, and the volva proved her worth by asking Thor to send a storm, which nearly sank his ship on his journey home.
'The Icelanders were far too easy-going,' Tyrkir added. "When the missionaries came back to Iceland some years later and began their preaching all over again, the farmers had no more stomach for the endless debates and quarrels between those who decided to take the new faith and those who wanted to stay with the old ways. They got so fed up that their delegates met at the Althing with instructions to ask the Lawspeaker to come up with a solution. He went off, sat down and pulled his cloak over his head, and thought about it for nearly a day. Then he climbed up on the Law Rock and announced that it would be less bother if everyone accepted the new religion as a formality, but that anyone who wanted to keep with the Old Ways could do so.
'We completely failed to see that the White · Christ people would never give up until they had grabbed everyone. We were quite happy to live side by side with other beliefs; we never presumed to think that our ideas were the only correct ones. We made the mistake of thinking that the White Christ was just another God who would be welcomed in among all the other Gods and would coexist with them peaceably. How wrong we were.'
Inevitably, my education in paganism was patchy. Thorvall and Tyrkir often confused folklore with religion, but in the end it did not matter much. I
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