‘So what are we actually looking for?’ Eddie asked as they began their trek into the forest. ‘Valhalla’s some sort of hall, but I doubt we’re going to find a building just standing in the middle of the woods.’
‘I do not know,’ admitted Tova. ‘It depends on how much of the Eddas are based on truth, and how much Snorri created himself, or took from sources that had already added their own details to the mythology. In the Poetic Edda, Valhalla is described as a hall with five hundred and forty rooms.’
‘Big place. The heating bills must be a bugger.’
She smiled. ‘In the Prose Edda, though, the huge golden hall that King Gylfi sees when he arrives in Asgard may be an illusion created to impress him. So there is no way to know what was real.’
‘Until we find it,’ said Nina. ‘But if the runestones were describing a real place, we can’t be far from it now. Is there anything else mentioned in the Eddas or other sources that might be useful? Like a landmark?’
‘There is a tree, or a grove of trees, called Glasir,’ Tova replied. ‘It depends on the translation whether it is just one tree or many. But Glasir is supposed to mark the entrance to Valhalla. There has been speculation that it is connected to Yggdrasil, the world-tree, which would make it an ash.’
‘So we just need to watch out for an ash tree, then,’ said Eddie. ‘Not that I know what an ash tree looks like. Anyone else?’ Nina and Kagan shrugged.
‘I do,’ said Tova, before adding, ‘I think.’
He smiled sardonically. ‘I’d look it up on my phone, but I don’t think I’ll get much of a signal out here.’
‘I think it’ll just be a case of “not one of these”,’ Nina joked, gesturing towards the conifers surrounding them.
Eddie grinned, then continued onwards. After a few minutes, he spotted something ahead. ‘Ay up.’
‘You’ve seen an ash tree?’ said his wife.
‘No, but that matches what Tova said, don’t you think?’ A hundred yards away, the forest was split by an ice-filled stream bed that had cut deeply into the ground. ‘What was the translation? Something about following a stream to a waterfall?’ Tova nodded.
‘The water is frozen, though,’ said Kagan as they approached. ‘Which way do we follow it?’
‘I’m not an expert,’ Nina said with gentle sarcasm, ‘but I’m fairly sure that water doesn’t run uphill.’ She looked up the slope towards the stream’s source. ‘Over there.’ In the distance between the trees, the group saw the rocky line of a cliff.
They followed the icy waterway. ‘Oh, that is beautiful,’ said Tova as they reached the cliff’s foot. There was indeed the base of a waterfall there, but like the stream it was frozen, cascading water turned to overlapping sheets of icicles.
Eddie was more interested in the surrounding rocks. The falls had cut quite deeply into the cliff, exposing step-like strata on each side. ‘Shouldn’t be too hard to climb up,’ he said, clambering on to the lowest level. ‘I’ll find a good route, then you follow me.’
He began his ascent. As he had predicted, it was not a difficult task; there were a few places where he had to haul himself up to higher ledges, producing grunts of exertion and muttered obscenities, but before long he was at the top. ‘Okay, it’s pretty straightforward,’ he announced. ‘Just watch out for that ledge about halfway up — there’s a lot of ice on it.’
‘Got it,’ said Nina, beginning her own climb. ‘What can you see up there?’
‘Loads of future Billy bookshelves. Which way are we supposed to go?’
‘The runes said to the summit,’ Tova called to him. ‘You must be close.’
‘All right. I’ll have a look around.’
‘Don’t get lost,’ said Nina.
He smiled, then disappeared from view. She kept climbing. It took her longer than Eddie to reach the top, taking care negotiating the ledge he had warned her about, but she pulled herself up on to level ground with nothing more than a slight shortness of breath.
She glanced down to see how Tova and Kagan were doing. The Russian was following the archaeologist, his injured leg only slowing him slightly. Beyond them, the stream had carved a path through the forest — providing another view back along the frozen river. If anything, the sight was even more captivating than it had been from the rock bridge.
Nina finally turned away, finding with mild surprise that her husband was out of sight. ‘Eddie? Where are you?’ The dappled light through the trees made his tracks in the snow surprisingly hard to follow.
‘Over here,’ came the reply from a dip about fifty yards away. She headed for it. Eddie came into view below as she approached its edge. ‘Have a gander at this.’
‘At what?’ she asked. There was nothing immediately unusual in sight; a large bowl-shaped depression had a long hump at its centre, snow-laden trees atop it. But his expectant half-smirk told her she had missed something. She followed his path down the slope, looking in all directions. Was there an opening in the ground, or a group of stones that might once have been part of a structure? Nothing presented itself—
The answer suddenly appeared with such obviousness that she couldn’t believe she hadn’t seen it immediately. ‘You got it now?’ Eddie asked.
‘Yeah, I got it,’ she said, laughing. ‘Talk about not seeing the wood for the trees.’
The forest surrounding them was made up entirely of evergreens — but the trees on top of the mound were devoid of leaves beneath their coatings of snow and ice. Wiry branches spread out to form roughly spherical shapes, in contrast to the distinctive cones of the conifers. ‘So you think that’s an ash tree?’ said Eddie.
‘I think that’s an ash tree,’ gasped Tova, hurrying up behind Nina.
‘An ash grove,’ Nina corrected. She counted at least a dozen of the interlopers. A few small evergreens had managed to take root amongst the group, but otherwise the ashes seemed to have been in possession of the hillock for a long time. ‘Is this it? Have we found Valhalla?’
‘I do not know. Come on, we must search!’ Tova rushed past Nina down the slope.
‘If there were any buildings here, they’re long gone,’ Eddie said as Nina followed the Swede.
‘I don’t think we’re looking for an actual building,’ she replied. ‘I think we’re looking for that.’ She pointed at the hump.
He was less than impressed. ‘You think that’s Valhalla? ’
‘No, but Valhalla is under it!’ said Tova. ‘The Vikings often put their dead in burial mounds — the largest in Sweden is called Anundshög, in Västmanland. It is big, over nine metres high.’ She led the way around the little hill. ‘Perhaps that is even where the name came from; “Valhalla” means “the hall of the slain”, but if whatever was built here was buried to hide or protect it, then it would have looked just like a burial mound.’
‘It’d match the runes,’ Nina noted. ‘They said Odin’s hall was now of the slain.’
‘You mean Valhalla might just be a nickname?’ Eddie asked dubiously.
Nina smiled. ‘You’ve heard of Emperor Caligula?’
‘The mad, pervy one? Course I have.’
‘Caligula was a nickname — it was a type of soldier’s boot. His real name was Gaius Germanicus.’
‘No wonder he changed it. But if this place was so important to the Vikings, why would they bury it? What were they trying to protect?’
‘The eitr,’ said Kagan as he caught up. ‘They were afraid of it, because they knew how deadly it was — but they also knew some people would still be crazy enough to look for it.’
‘That might be where the myth of Loki comes from,’ Nina said thoughtfully. ‘He was a Norse god like Thor and Odin, but he betrayed them and sided with the serpent and the wolf at Ragnarök. Maybe he was like Hoyt — he wanted to use the eitr as a weapon.’