Copyright Oggbashan September 2018/September 2020
The author asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
This is a work of fiction. The events described here are imaginary; the settings and characters are fictitious and are not intended to represent specific places or living persons.
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Despite my extreme temperature sleeping bag I was cold. I was aware of three female bodies, each in similar sleeping bags, huddled around me. We were all cold. Soon we would have to leave as the ice returned.
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It started with the discovery of an obscure saga in a library's archives. It was only a short extract of a long saga that was well known but it had incidents that hadn't appeared in any other version of that saga.
On a remote island to the north of Norway there had been a Viking village occupied by seal hunters only in the summer months. One year, and the saga is unclear about the exact year, the Arctic ice sheet moved South much earlier than normal. The village and the sheltered harbour were threatened by spreading sea ice and a growing glacier.
The inhabitants had a real problem. They had to leave now or the harbour would be closed. They didn't have enough sea-going ships. Even loading the ships beyond their safe capacity four people would have to stay in the village until a ship could return.
The decision to leave Eric was obvious. He had two broken legs, the result of a fight with a polar bear. Although his legs were splinted he would need to lie down on the ship. There just wasn't enough room for anyone to lie down. Maybe by the time a ship returned he might be able to move with crutches.
Choosing the others was harder. The ships needed everyone who could row -- the men. They needed women who had children. That left three women who were childless and widowed. They weren't essential to the community's survival and would be left to look after Eric until the ship came back. The four were left with food. Although the village might be overwhelmed by the advancing glacier, it should last long enough for a ship to return. Even if the harbour had been closed by ice, the four could walk to the edge of the ice to be rescued.
Eric and the women watched the ships and their friends sail away. Hanne, one of the women, could write. She kept a record of the events, including after the ships had left after the ships had left, scratched onto sheets of slate. Her account was included in the saga.
The ships that left ran into a storm while close to their destination. They survived after sustaining severe damage that needed extensive repairs. It was more than a month before a ship was seaworthy enough to return to rescue the stranded Eric and the three women. They found them dead, covered in transparent ice, on a small boat close to the outer edge of the harbour. Hanne's slates were in the bow of the boat which was just protruding from the ice. The rescuers took them but couldn't retrieve the bodies because another storm was imminent.
What struck the rescuers was not that the four were dead, but that they were in an unusual position, a human pyramid. Why? And how?
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The Norwegian government had wanted an exploratory archaeological visit to the island to find out how much of the saga was based on fact. This summer the Arctic ice sheet had retreated further than normal and the harbour on the island was ice-free for the first time for nearly a hundred years. There was an opportunity now to see whether there were any remains of the village. If not this year, there might not be another chance for decades.
The three women were the archaeologists. I was the Arctic expert, the one carrying the gun in case of polar bears, the jack of all trades, and the representative of the commercial sponsors. I might not know as much as the others about archaeology. I did know about ice, ice-sheets, glaciers and survival. I was responsible for the women's safety.
We had been delivered by a large fishing boat equipped for high latitudes. They had unloaded the prefabricated hut and the crew had helped to assemble it. It was insulated and weatherproof but not meant for an Arctic winter. Its small size had decided how many would be left on the island. The multi-fuel heater was in a lean-to attached to the hut so we wouldn't have carbon monoxide poisoning. A larger hut would have been difficult to transport and erect. We didn't intend to be there once the weather turned colder and the nights would be almost endless. But...
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The women had found the village. They were excited because the village had been abandoned hurriedly on a specific date, even if they didn't yet know the exact date. It had never been reoccupied, and many items had been left in situ. The coverings of the buildings had been crushed by ice, sealing artefacts in place. The cold had preserved not just tools but organic materials too. They had work for years. The weather and advancing ice meant they had only weeks.
We had launched an underwater ROV shortly after we had arrived and had found the boat that Eric and the three women had been on. The cold water had preserved it fairly well although it had been crushed by the ice before it sank. The bodies were still well-preserved including their clothing but we could not raise them. They were too deep. But we had found out why they had been in a human pyramid. The mast, now lying across the wreck, had a rope jammed in the upper sheave making it impossible to raise a sail. Eric, propped up by the women because of his broken legs, had been probably trying to clear the blockage when they might have been overwhelmed by an ice storm.
The possibility of an ice storm frightened me. We could clear snow drifts but an ice storm might cover our hut and make it impossible to get out.
I was getting more worried. We had already stayed a week more than we had planned. The women wanted to stay longer and longer, as long as possible. I could see the ice beginning to form in the sheltered parts of the harbour. We would have to leave within days. The more the women found, the more cluttered the hut became. It would take hours to load their finds. Would we have hours? Loading could only happen if it was calm in the harbour and the harbour was navigable.
Would we have fuel? Food? Our fuel supplies were running low. We would have food but a very restricted diet. Despite protests I had contacted the mainland via our satellite dish and asked for us to be taken off the island in three days time. The response had worried me.
"We'll try," they had said, "but there's a storm brewing to the West. The trawler might have to stand off or run for shelter if the storm is early."
The satellite dish was heavily used. Several times a day the women were uploading photographs and data about their work. Daylight hours were shortening but they worked in the hut cataloguing and packing the finds. The increasing pile of boxes worried me.
Apart from being the Arctic expert I was the chief cook and the domestic help. I was washing clothes and trying to keep at least some of the small hut clear enough for sleeping. Each day the area for sleeping became smaller.
I should have been enjoying myself. I had three attractive women in close proximity to me every night. That was the problem. There were three of them. I couldn't make love to one without the other two seeing and hearing everything. I had kisses and cuddles from all three but couldn't go further, nor have an obvious favourite. I wondered how Eric had fared with his broken legs.
I began to dream about the original Eric. He was helpless and had three women with him. I wasn't helpless but frustrated. My dreams began to be wish-fulfilment. I was Eric being seduced and used by three women at once. In my dream the three women were those huddled around me in their sleeping bags.
Gerla is the expedition leader. She is tall, blonde, and when she takes off her outdoor clothing her large breasts are very obvious. Ragnil is another blonde slightly shorter than Gerla but slim and athletic. Helga is a well-rounded brunette. I enjoy cuddles from Helga. I am well aware of Helga's curves. She makes sure that I am. If I were to be alone with Helga? I think she'd drag me off to make love.
But we are all too cold to contemplate love-making. If the fuel runs out we will be in real danger of freezing to death as Eric and the three women did over a thousand years ago.
Two days after my message asking to be taken off the storm arrived. We couldn't leave the hut because of a white-out blizzard outside. I had to make sure the ventilation and hut's chimney were kept clear otherwise we might suffer from carbon monoxide poisoning just from breathing. I kept shoving a broom handle up the chimney to keep it clear of snow. There was no way I could keep the hut's main door free. It was on the side facing the snow and in a snow drift about twelve feet high.
There are two escape hatches in the hut. One, about three feet square, was on the back wall away from the wind. The other was in the roof but both were frozen shut from condensation from inside. I managed to clear the boxes away from the back escape hatch just before Gerla announced that we had lost any signal from the satellite dish. I suspected that it had been covered in snow. I dressed in my cold weather gear and used boiling water from a kettle to free the hatch. I we ran out of fuel for the kettle we would be trapped.
I took a broom before wriggling out and up the ladder to the hut's roof. I had to return to swap the broom for a spade. The snow covering the dish had frozen in a lump. I had to chip it away before the dish was working again. Gerla shouted up to me that she had a signal and I came back in, very cold. Once I had shut the hatch I was shivering but Gerla and Helga shoved me into a pre-warmed sleeping bag before cuddling me with their warm bodies. If I hadn't been so cold that would have been very arousing.
Gerla could get not get through to the trawler but could email the land base. They replied that the trawler was sheltering among some islands but their satellite dish, despite gyro stabilisation, could not maintain more than a very intermittent a link to the satellite because of the violent seas. The weather forecast was for the storm to last at three more days before it might be safe for the trawler to leave shelter, and two more days before they could reach us.
That worried me. At the present rate of fuel usage we only had enough for three days and at would be at least five days before we were relieved. I ordered the heater to be turned off immediately and that we should get in our sleeping bags and stay there. The residual heat kept the hut above freezing for several hours but we were losing heat because of the continual cold wind outside. Our heater would have burned driftwood, but there wasn't any that wasn't buried deep under ice. Gerla reported our plight to base but they could offer no solution. The trawler couldn't leave without real danger of being swamped in the storm which was Force ten gusting eleven. Even in three days' time it would only reduce to Force eight but six or less on day five and six. Even if the force was five or six extracting us might be problematic because any sea ice would be in constant motion, and ice was beginning to form in the harbour now.
That night, perhaps because I was so cold, I seemed to have delusions. I seemed to be the original Eric, sleeping under layers of furs. But I had a Hanne, who looked remarkably like Helga, resting on my body with her cleft filled by my diminished erection. Eric had recently been drained by Hanne. Gunvar, who looked like Gerla, was naked against my right side. Reidun, similar to the modern Ragnil, was on my left. I was warm and satisfied.
The old Eric seemed to be talking in my head.
"Eric, why were we in a pyramid? It was my fault. The rope for the mainsail had part of it resting in frozen bilge water. I hadn't noticed until the frozen section stuck at the top of the mast. I couldn't pull it back so the women were propping me up as I tried to free the blockage. Then the ice storm hit and we froze instantly."
