The breakup of an ice sheet off Ellesmere Island might be one more signal the Arctic ice will soon shrink enough to open the Northwest Passage . But has such a passage existed before?
Leif Erikson's posture suddenly changed: His eyes narrowed, squinting into the distance, and he spread his legs apart, bent at the knees, as if bracing himself against a rolling ocean swell or gray waves breaking over the prow of his knar.
He swayed as if with the rhythm of the ocean's heaves, confident his sturdy cargo ship could go wherever he steered it. He shivered, imagining the spray had soaked through his three-quarter coat into his woolen shirt and cloth trousers and made his socks and leather boots damp and cold even in the warmth of the supertanker's bridge.
I set the tanker's course through Davis Strait between Baffin Island and Greenland into the Northwest Passage across the Arctic and on to Japan and China . Each time the tanker sailed these waters Erikson became his Viking namesake; a thousand years counting for nothing.
Erikson turned to show me the Ring of the Heavens pendant dangling from a chain around his neck, a replica of a pendant Leif Erikson wore a thousand years ago.
"These are the eight winds and eight worlds, with Midgard, our Viking world, shining at the centre of creation," he explained, cradling the pendant in his palm. "It's never failed to guide my explorations…re lease the ravens. If they don't come back, there's no land close. And check the sun stone's color so we know how far west we've reached. Tonight when Polaris is high on our stjornbordi, our right hand, we'll steer due north towards it."
I scanned west to where Baffin Island would soon emerge from morning mists, still barren and treeless although the Arctic climate had starting warming at the end of the twentieth century, more than fifty years ago.
"The ravens have disappeared in the sun," I told Erikson, smiling. "Land must be near."
"It's Helluland, the Flat Rock Land ," he told me. "It was once truly Niflheim, the realm of eternal cold and darkness ." He shrugged. "Perhaps it will be again, but now there's grass, a kind of reindeer, great white bears, and seals and fish beyond counting. We can get the food we need to sail to Asia .. The traders trekked to the Baltic across Asia from Mongolia , but now by sea, in our great knarrs, it's so much easier." "
"It'll be easy…we've seen no ice," I reminded him, "the winter was very warm again."
Leif Erikson nodded. "In Vinland there's only a few small icebergs floating like ghosts past the bays. It's a wonderful place, there's salmon whenever we want, and green pastures for our cattle and forests as far as you can see."
I nodded; the Viking's Vinland settlement at L'Anse aux Meadows in Newfoundland was protected now in a Canadian National Park . The Vikings' ghosts would never leave.
"How long will this warm time last?" I wondered. "For ever?"
"I doubt it," Erikson told me, his English now heavily-accented. "Nothing is for ever. Even the gods must die."
I hesitated; could I risk angering him?
"The King of Norway converted you to Christianity," I finally dared tell him. "Your god will never die."
"I'm still a Viking," Erikson snapped. "There are several thousand settlers in Greenland , and they'll be there as long as the gods permit."
'Which was only a few hundred years,' I reminded myself, 'and then the cold returned, and the Skraeling came and chased them away.'
"I confess I was glad to leave Helluland," I admitted. "It was if Odin, our All-Father, had hurled us into Niflheim with Hel, but t he trees in Markland, the Forestland, are like those at home."
"Aaah, but the grapes in Vinland the Good, the Wineland, give more comfort than the trees," Erikson laughed. "Our houses are snug and warm, but it's the wine that keeps us happy all winter. And now t here will be new sagas," he said. "Many people will follow us to the new world in the west, perhaps far to the south."
"But what will happen if the cold returns?" I asked. "Will anyone know we were ever here if cold and ice obliterate everything?"
Erikson shook his head. "If – or when - the cold returns, the warmth will follow, cold, then warm, then cold, the great cycle of the Earth that only Jord, the earth goddess, can determine.
But in the next warm time, when Jord decides it, people will find the stone bases for the homes we build here, and stumble over cups and jars we leave behind."
I laughed. "They'll find our broken dishes?"
Erikson nodded, but he didn't smile. "They'll find things they'll know Skraeling never had, our hearths, iron boat rivets, copper knife blades, metal spear points, and they'll find the oak of the barrels and even the woolen clothing we left behind." Now he laughed.
"The Skraeling have never seen a sheep. "People in future warm times will know we were here, just as the Skraeling tell of a people who were here before them."
"The Skraeling carved my face in their soft stone," I told him, laughing. "I wonder what settlers in the future will think of that?"
"That might make them turn around and go home," he told me, grinning, "but I'm sure they' ll wonder if we sailed on, north and west, and reached the East."
"What will the Skraelings do when – if - it becomes cold again?" I asked. "Leave here to become the new settlers in Greenland ?"
Erikson's smile disappeared. "In the next cold, the Skraeling will leave Helluland and look for warmer places, and they could be a problem for Vikings in Greenland . The Skraeling we met were friendly, but if it's a matter of survival, I'm sure they'll fight."
"They say Odin is the god of wisdom, but to gain that wisdom he sacrificed an eye to drink from Mimir, the fountain of wisdom. I'll keep my eyes, thank you, and leave it to the gods to decide the future. Perhaps in a thousand years, when it's warm again, people will sail past Helluland to China and the East.
"And our knarrs will be ahead of them, their wakes showing the way," he said quietly. "Future sailors will know the Vikings were here before them."
Erikson suddenly stood upright, shaking himself as if just waking up, and turned slowly to face his First Officer.
"Strange, isn't it," he said, his heavy accent gone, "how even in the most remote places, we can never be alone? I wouldn't be surprised to look through the glass and see a sail, lonely Vikings in their knarr returning home."
I smiled. "I wouldn't either," I told Erikson. "I wouldn't either."
