A Sail
Thor never got used to those Norwegian winters. Months of half-light and soft bark. But his fire smoldered on, year after year, until one fresh June day brought a breakthrough in Thor’s plans to float away from the steely fjords of his homeland and never return.
He had just turned twenty-five, officially becoming a senior citizen, and his friends were throwing him a party at the local chieftain’s hall where he ran into an old raid mate from his youth named Soren. During a diplomatic mission that winter, Soren met a merchant who wandered north on a journey of discovery (and possible suicide), and who sold Soren a sail salvaged from a fallen navy off the coast of Salerno. And Thor, leaning on Soren’s friendship and pity, was able to trade for the sail in exchange for his pit house, a barbed javelin, his favorite long-muzzled hound, his ex-wife’s collection of whalebone combs, and a complete set of Erik the Red commemorative rune stones.
For it wasn’t the ship that Thor was worried about. Oh no, he could find a ship. He could build a ship. But there would be no one to row it—no band of warriors chanting at the oars, burning into the night, fueled by the anticipatory fear and lust of combat. with a sail Thor could travel alone, as he surely would.
But a sail cost more than a ship itself. And he couldn’t make one because he didn’t have any sheep, which meant a wool sail was out of the question. So was flax, since Thor didn’t own any land and spent most of his money on ale and home brewing supplies like malted wheat and elderflower blossoms.
And so, the sail.
That first evening he unfolded it in the meadow where his tent was staked. Besides a bit of mildew in the creases, it was flawless: An empty canvas. A ruffled wing.
Later that summer, Thor set out in an old but sturdy longboat. The hull was patched with tar and the traditional dragon’s head out in front had splintered off years ago, but the boat didn’t sink. His friends loaded him down with carrots, and garlic, dried herring and eel and perch, pots of honey, crab apples, soda bread, and salted pork, and his daughter gave him a bag of coriander and thyme and a cinnamon stick. When he was out of sight they clucked their tongues and shook their heads and mourned briefly, thankful to be spared the effort of an actual funeral, and quite certain that Thor was, for all intents and purposes, literally and figuratively dead.
But Thor made it all the way to the Caliphate of Cordoba, where he lived well as a frequent guest and sometimes military advisor to caliphs of the Umayyad dynasty. The caliphs, in particular Hisham II, were quite charmed by Thor’s yellow hair and his impressive battle scars.
Thor, for his part, thrived under the naked light of the Iberian sun—his seasonal melancholy dissipated quickly and he became a successful businessman, embracing the relatively new market for imported Persian cosmetics like toothpaste and deodorant. He also played percussion for a local music group that laid the groundwork for a kind of traditional Andalusian music that can still be heard today.
Thor died during the skirmishes that marked the transition from the Umayyad to the Hammudid dynasties. He was buried in a tomb near the top of a dusty hillside west of the city where 972 years later he was unearthed by a team of French archeologists who were dazzled by the quality of his burial shroud, a perfectly preserved piece of sail cloth with no markings whatsoever. The team was also puzzled by finding evidence of this ancient mariner’s tradition so far inland, under the lucid blue skies of Cordoba, the Pearl of Moorish Spain, rather than at the bottom of the vast and infinite sea.
