A Broken Silence by Elizabeth Obadina

Nothing moved. Steel grey skies hung over steel grey seas. The bullfinches and great tits whose antics he’d been watching since the Jul[i] festivities had ended had deserted the now stripped julenek[ii] and disappeared into a tangle of bare branches weighted down by frozen snow. 

Suspended at the end of an icicle, a glob of water refused to fall. The world seemed to be holding its breath. Life felt in limbo in January 2023.

Somewhere in the house the thud, thud, thud of meltwater dripping on to wooden boarding drummed; incessant, urgent, like the heartbeat of something living straining to break through its icy restraints.

“If only they had listened,” the old man thought as he listened to the thudding beat and remembered long-departed lovers, old friends and neighbours who had all lost their faith.

His wives had listened and been faithful to the old ways and been rewarded with peaceful lives, especially Sif [iii],but that was long ago and their children had long disappeared. Their faith had disappeared too. 

Now all their children’s, children’s children would have to face the coming tempest, whose heartbeat the old man felt grow stronger every day, in ignorance. Did those unbelieving children realise it was a living thing they would have to confront, though the turmoil would have many faces? Did they realise? Perhaps they did for they named their storms with pretty names, but there would be nothing pretty, nothing dainty, nothing gentle about Storms Antoni, Betty, Cillian, Daisy, Elliot and Fleur [iv] when they arrive in 2023; nothing flowery about them at all and nothing kind either about the brother and sister storms which would follow. The people didn’t know. How could they understand when they had lost the faith?

In the corner of the hytte [v] the stove had burnt out leaving grey ashes, cold and dead like the world’s forests ripped from the earth. Later the old man would split a new log and set a new fire and warm himself close to the flames. There would be crackling and warmth and memories of glorious adventures washed down by ale shared by his comrades in arms. But now he just watched over the darkening world outside. He was alone.

Across the fjord the morning grew dimmer as freezing fog slid over pewter waters, gleaming, still and sinister. The silence thickened. An occasional car rolled silently by on the snow crusted road below his cabin, its headlights piercing the gathering noon-time gloom. A pale deer nosed its way past a row of rubbish bins before stepping delicately over blizzard-blown snow now frozen into ridges like piles of shattered glass, before finding a way into the shadows of the left-behind trees of its former forest home.

To make the homes for people, the people had dynamited the ancient rocks; stone which had been born in the world of fire, Muspelheim [vii], stone which had slumbered for millions of years through the world of ice, Niflheim[vii], and stone which then slept for thousands of years more covered by the living world, Midgard [viii]. Like the dragon slumbering at the foot of the giant ash tree, Yggdrasil [ix], whose tendrils bound all worlds together, the fiery hot rocks had cooled, stretched out and rested face down, their  stone feeling the distant pumping magma heart of all being as they slept safe and warm. Now their giant stone backs had been broken releasing explosive energies the people didn’t understand for how could they: they had lost the faith?

The old man listened to the thud, thud, thud of a million exposed and hurting stone hearts. He felt the stirrings of ancient energies, evil forces, sensed the release of devils from Hel [x].

Already in the kingdoms of the Rus [xi]ancient wars had reignited. Through the silence of the fog drifted the distant sound of battle. The old man sensed that a long-lost relative was whipping his legions of warriors into battle formations in the gun-metal clouds towering above the battlefields of Midgard to the east. Did these humans not realise the power of the ancient forces they had unleashed by going to war?

The old man sat ashen faced staring out beyond the lifeless, grey, short Nordic day seeing only storms in the years to come. He could feel his father Odin [xii] stamping gleefully in the lands of the Rus, fomenting wars to end wars, to end the time of human misrule. The old man was tired.

“Not again,” he thought as the dark day slid into the long northern night. Soon he could see nothing but his reflection in the hytte windows. He was still a tall, handsome man, little weathered by the ravages of time. His beard and thick head of hair had turned silver with age but he didn’t need glasses or hearing aids or false teeth and walking aids as many elderly people do. He stretched as he rose from his sentry post by the window. It had been a long time, but he would be needed again soon.

The old man carefully placed new logs in the stove and set the fire. Within seconds flames had taken hold and flickering golden light warmed the walls of the old cabin. The rosy glow melted away the wrinkles of age from the old man’s face, the radiance from the flames reflected in his silver hair and beard turning them golden. By the side of the wood basket a log-splitting hammer, fashioned in the infernos of Muspelheim aeons ago by dwarves blessed with magical skills, began to gleam and pulse.

“Ah Mjolnir [xiii],” the old man murmured, “you feel it too.”

The thud, thud, thud shuddered through the silence of the dark night. This was not dripping meltwater which would have frozen by now into icicles like an arsenal of luminous daggers around the old man’s house. The old man – who wasn’t an old man any longer - murmured, “I hear you. I’m ready.”

From far away to the east he could hear the wailing of the Valkyries [xiv] as they collected the souls of the bravest warriors killed in the lands of the Rus. From far away to the west he could hear the howling of Skadi [xv]as she brought extreme winter to the western continents.

“And so it begins,” he sighed. “Ragnarok [xvi] I’ve been waiting for you for a very long time.”

Throughout Midgard the thud, thud, thud of drums of war were beating in time to the heartbeat of Ragnarok, or Armageddon as most people call it in 2023. The beating of the drums, of the waking heart of Ragnarok were breaking through the great silence, though the people could not hear them. The people couldn’t, they had lost their faith, but the gods could.

Inside the hytte the man savoured the warmth of the dying embers of the stove. When the fire had died he rose, reborn, a warrior god who would protect the people of Midgard as best he could despite their foolishness. Picking up his hammer, Mjolnir, he opened the hytte door and stepped out into the frozen night. A chariot drawn by two goats was waiting for him.

“Welcome faithful Tanngrisnir [xvii] and Tanngnjóstr [xviii]” he said, stroking the grizzly heads of the two goats, “we have another battle to fight with the spirits of Hel who, with the help of unwitting humans, have escaped the fires of Muspelheim and have melted the icy prisons of Niflheim and let loose the terrors of Ragnarok. The living world, Midgard, is in mortal danger and Odin in his wisdom is rejoicing in this war to hasten the end of this old world of human corruption and pollution. Skadi is revelling in the weather chaos these humans have released. My old friends we must try to save these humans from themselves and end Ragnarok.”

Hefting Mjolnir into the chariot beside him, he shook the reins of the two goats and soared through the misty night into the storm clouds gathering above the world.

As he flew higher and higher, thunder rumbled across the world. In the fog bound, snow bound, freezing silence of the north people were puzzled. Thunder wasn’t usual for this sort of extreme weather. But for some, ancient memories stirred of a time when the worlds of the gods clashed and the god Thor rode out to battle to protect Midgard, the human world.

It was said then that thunder sounded as Thor passed overhead.

Millennia later during the icy, silent January nights of the early years of Midgard’s second millennium, the old gods shrugged off their human forms and rode again to revel with or fight against the monstrous Ragnarok which had been released into the troubled world of Midgard, by the unthinking people of Midgard.

The strange thunder rumbling through that frozen, foggy Norwegian, January night was heard by the people below who had forgotten about their ancient saviour god, Thor, and the sound his chariot made as he went into battle to protect them.

 *

The old man’s neighbours worried when they found the old hytte deserted. Had the friendly, old chap got lost in the smothering fog? When he was reported missing no one could recall his full name. He had been simply known as Björn to all his friends and neighbours but when a search was made there were no records of his existence.

It was a mystery.

---

[i] Christmas

[ii] Sheaf of wheat or oats bound with ribbons hung out for the birds at Christmas time

[iii] Sif is the Norse goddess of Wheat, Earth, Harvest and Family.

[iv] Met Office/WMO official names for the first storms to be named in 2023

[v] A cabin – often a holiday home

[vi] One of the 9 worlds in Norse mythology they were Asgard – home of the gods, Midgard - home of humanity, Jotunheim – home of the giants, Alfheim -  home of the elves, Svartalfheim -  home of the dwarves, Hel – world of the dead and two primordial worlds of fire -Muspelheim and ice – Niflheim.

[vii] World of Ice

[viii] World of Humans

[ix] A giant ash tree, the tree of life which connects all the above 9 worlds

[x] World of the dead and where the devil and demons live

[xi] The ancient Viking raiders who established settlements in Kiev and Moscow

[xii] Father of the Norse Gods and god of war and wisdom

[xiii] Name of the mythical hammer wielded by Thor

[xiv]  one of a host of female figures who guide souls of dead warriors slain in battle to the god Odin's hall Valhalla.

[xv] Giant (evil) goddess of snow and winter

[xvi] Ragnarök  (Old Norse: “Doom of the Gods”), in Scandinavian mythology, the end of the world of gods and men. Ragnarök will be preceded by cruel winters and moral chaos. Giants and demons approaching from all points of the compass will attack the gods, who will meet them and face death like heroes. The sun will be darkened, the stars will vanish, and the earth will sink into the sea. Afterward, the earth will rise again, the innocent will return from the dead, and the hosts of the just will live in a hall roofed with gold. (ex Encyclopaedia Britannica)

[xvii] Thin Tooth and

[xviii] Gap Tooth – names of the goats pulling Thor’s chariot