Ride of the Oskorei

And so came the night for which I had waited some time. I have long corresponded via mail, telephone and the internet with a Norwegian history professor, a widely-admired Dr. Jensen Olafsson, who takes extraordinary interest in the lore and legend of his wide-roaming Viking ancestors. Being of mostly Nordic blood myself, and bearing a similar obsession with the mighty and much-feared sea raiders, I had arranged to meet with Dr. Olafsson some months ago on a trip to Norway, where we would walk amongst the wintry northern forests that enveloped his property during the days surrounding the Yule festival.

I met Olafsson at the Trondheim airport, and from there it was about an hour drive to his home, an estate of fair size hidden away from the world by a dense pine forest. Total dark was preparing to descend as his car glided swiftly along the paved driveway, which arched up and up with the ridge whereupon his house was placed. The sunlight that blessed my native lands in the American Midwest appeared as but a grayish sliver behind the black pine forest’s silhouette. Truly, it seemed, I had arrived at the edge of the earth.

We took in a simple but generous meal in Olafsson’s luxurious dining room, and talked of a few minor things; travel, weather, worldly issues, cultural differences. Such trivialities, however, soon gave way to the topic of the evening, and indeed, the topic that made our correspondence and this journey possible: Norway. Norway, and those that shaped its mysterious identity, men and gods alike. Despite having heard some of the information and legend before, it never ceased to surprise me how close the two often came to being one and the same.

One of the most dramatic examples of this deification were the blackly sinister Oskorei, a group of valkyries and einherjar that rode through the sky at the leadership of a higher god, sometimes the mighty hammer-weilding Thor in his chariot of rams, and, on rarer occasions, the one-eyed All-Father himself, Odin, riding Sleipnir of eight legs and waving his fabled spear, Gungnir. The once-revered gods had made this ride a thing of terror during the ages of Christian Norway, destroying buildings and assaulting people, sometimes even taking them up from the earth and carrying them off into the skies, with no hint of them ever to return to this mortal coil. This lore had been derived, oddly enough, from the tendency of young, intoxicated men to ride, during the festive Yule season, through their home villages at great speeds, spreading noise and random acts of vandalism and theft (and on rarer occasions, assault) across the otherwise tranquil countryside.

Such grim discussion was not to be kept up for long, and the doctor suggested we adjourn to his library for the experience of a warm fire, sweet wine and more pleasant conversation. Seeking a bit more warmth before our nocturnal walk, I agreed, but I must confess that the seed of impatience had been planted in my fertile unconscious.

The professor and I sat in the comfort of his study for a short time, and enjoyed a glass of wine. He did not hesitate to betray an eagerness akin to my own to start our exploration immediately. Thus, gearing up in plenty of warm clothing and equipping ourselves with flashlights and bottles of water, we went over the route for the evening, or at least, the good Dr. Olafsson attempted to explain the coming journey as best he could to an unfamiliar explorer of the territory such as myself. We would depart from the back of his home, and move down the opposite side of the ridge from whence the driveway came. Not far inside the forest was a rock-strewn stream that carved its way peacefully in a convoluted slope down the forested ridge. We would follow this for a time, straying every now and again just a few yards to see some select landmarks within the darkness of the forest. Finally, we would arrive at something that Olafsson promised would be a “spectacular sight.” He utterly refused to allow me the knowledge of what this was, but assured me that my life, and perhaps my very outlook on the world at large, would be altered by the climax of this evening.

With this looming mystery glowing at the end of the tunnel, we departed from the house under a blaze in the northern sky; the aurora borealis shimmered incandescently through the heavens, as though the World Serpent of Nordic myth, Jormungand, had somehow slipped from round his equatorial quarters, and was now being consumed by magic fire amongst the stars. Incredibly, borealis aside, the full moon shone its mystical blue-tinged light down upon the snow-riddled landscape. To be sure, this was a rare and beautiful night in Norway, perfect for wandering mental landscapes and contemplating one’s eternal fate and the divinity that is Nature. As I let my mind fly freely into the heavens, there was conjured in me the distinct feeling that what I was seeing was the way that the earth in its entirety once was, and ultimately, the state to which it was destined to return. There was a dark, blotched sky above a land of absolute blackness, with the petrified silhouette of trees the only discernible border between the two. The breeze howled now and again, but that was all the sound; all else was dead. Said wind bit coldly into my cheeks as I gazed upward, but I soon enough returned to the surface of earth, and followed my scholarly guide into the pitch black forested darkness.

Beyond the prickling rustle of the evergreens, my ears discovered faintly the babbling of a gentle brook. The professor, turning on his flashlight, signaled the direction of the stream with a tilt of his head, and we shifted our trajectory accordingly. After I had similarly activated my light, the both of us were forced to walk in an uncomfortable half-crouch, owing to the low-hanging nature of the pines, but I was quite grateful to the forest for allowing me to escape the bite of the icy wind.

The snow crunched beneath our tread, as the ice in the trees creaked and snapped under the burden of its own weight. Having never occupied my time in a wintry nighttime forest before, I was a bit unnerved at the potentially sharp bits of ice tumbling down from the treetops, but never once did my guide waver or a look of concern penetrate his resolve, and thus after a time I paid the overhead cracking no heed.

We came upon the stream, a flume of water that rushed quietly downhill perpendicular to our direction of travel. Its depth could not have been any more than the height of a man’s calf, perhaps his knee if it were the season for a flood. Olafsson gestured briefly downstream, and thusly we progressed. It seemed the old fellow was in somewhat of a hurry, though of course such a haste was perfectly understandable given the dual prods of cold and darkness, even with the presence of our coats and flashlights.

Our progress unfolded much like this, following the stream along its winding course. The trees would occasionally break and provide a stunning glimpse of the moon in the black northern sky, and I had to resist the temptation to stop and behold its quiet, glowing glory. It was the same luminescent beauty that has bewitched the imaginations of mankind for as long as we could crane our necks to looks skyward, and shall continue until the day she is finally devoured by the mighty wolf Skoll, and Ragnarok shall ensue.

A was startled into letting out a sharp cry in the midst of the night forest when, not half a foot from my ear, came the voice of Olafsson: “Up here, ahead.” He gestured with a swipe of his flashlight beam, and so I followed his direction to a large, squat boulder that sat, quite immobile, on the sloping forest floor. He stood slightly offset to the rock, allowing me room to have a fine view of its ancient, weathered surface. My eyes did widen as the lights revealed the reason Olafsson chose to show me this landmark.

Carved into the side of the massive stone, in varying sizes and hands, were countless Runic inscriptions, forming messages in Old Norse, the language of the medieval people of Scandinavia and the progenitor to modern Norwegian, Icelandic, Swedish, Danish, German, and even English. I could not immediately translate the messages, due in part to amateurism with the language and part to excitement, but Olafsson quickly came to my aid.

“They are all different,” he began, taking up his familiar lecturing tone, “Some directions, some religious inscriptions, some warnings.” He took a step closer, lifted his flashlight, and pointed at a very large, very brief sequence of runes. “But here, sir, is something quite intriguing. Translated to English, this reads ‘Wild Hunt, North.’”

I failed to grasp the immediate significance of these words, although a faint feeling of familiarity commenced to tugging at the back of my mind. Olafsson, caught up in his moment of excitement, initially appeared enraged at my obvious lack of understanding, but rather than explain the mysterious inscription, simply scoffed and motioned for me to continue to follow. As we continue our trod alongside the creek, mutterings in low Norwegian floated onto my ears. My ignorance had apparently offended my host, and I strained my gray matter to determine why.

The natural apprehension of the dark and unknown possessed by every human flared up in me now, as my guide had changed from the cheery, warm host he had become into an impatient, distant man on a drive deeper into the arcane forests. He no longer seemed to care whether or not I followed, although I had little choice; without his guidance, even with the stream I may not have been able to find my way in short order back to the house.

There came then about five minutes more of our trek before Olafsson once more broke away from the stream, and used his light as a machete to carve his way into the suffocating blackness. A gulp of fear slid down my throat as I followed suit, nearly tripping on the frozen hunk of a dead log. Something skittered out of its carcass as I stumbled, and nearly elicited from me a further gasp. I looked up with pounding head and heart to see – nothing. Neither Olafsson nor his bouncing beam of illumination were anywhere in sight. It had only taken a brief second or two, but it had happened; I had been left behind out here in the bitter cold wilderness, where I did not know my way.

Of course I began to panic as everything around me seemed to increase in extremity; the darkness was black as pitch, the cold was immobilizing, the wind bit like a ravenous wolf. I felt the beginnings of hyperventilation set in, accompanied by my eyes racing this way and that without the aid of my flashlight, finding only emptiness and the cracking of the ice in the trees.

The furry object that slammed down and held tightly to my shoulder was instantly made by my mental state into the powerful paw of a great lycanthropic varulv, as they are called in Norway. Of course, I spun around to look into the very excited eyes of Professor Olafsson, who seemed to take great amusement in my fear. He gestured off into the black infinity with an elation on his features that he had not worn since we sat before the fireplace in that warm, distant house. Flexing my white knuckles to regain their use, I reluctantly walked after this ever-changing character into whose hands I had placed my guidance.

What we came upon as that black forest opened into a desolate clearing chilled me to my bones, and its memory continues to do so even now; even with the further memory of what was to come later. What little of the dark sky that was visible seemed so strangely bright from within the dungeon of this forest. The Norwegian pines that loomed all around stood so perfectly vertical, so frighteningly straight, that this sudden of opposing angles seemed almost a blasphemy amidst the divine natural harmony of this forest. And in many senses, so it was.

Our lights played upon the charred, festering surface of a torched building. Much of the right side was completely collapsed, leaving the fire-blasted skeleton of the ruin exposed, like the arched ribs of eviscerated carrion left to rot in the sun. I could almost hear the buzz of flesh-devouring flies, and it was as though my ear were being tickled by the devil himself. My fingers trembled violently with the desire to be away from this place with all haste. All this was only made worse by my momentary discovery of this building’s nature: a small flicker of light by the door of the obscene structure caught my eye as my flashlight beam passed over it.

Crunching slowly over the needle-laden snow, I trod my way closer to this crumbling relic to examine what strange artifact lay amongst its ruin. It was of course covered by the fallen matter of nature, and by incinerated bits of soft wood. Using the toe of my boot, I brushed aside all which obstructed my direct view of the gleaming thing, and bent over to retrieve it from the ground. I took only a single look at the silvery cross in my hand, and dropped it once more.

We were standing before the gutted, burned-out remnants of an ancient church. This charred mass of wooden horror was intended initially to be a holy site, the light of the civilized Christian God amongst the dark heathen forests of the ancient One-Eye. I wondered how old the church itself was, and how long it had been in its current state. Olafsson seemed to read my mind.

“Come here, there is something important about these ruins,” said the excited professor, leading me off to the collapsed portion of the building, and in through the massive hole in the side. The interior of that incinerated hulk was like being inside of a shipwreck. Support beams and nail-filled planks jutted out from random angles all along the structure. I nervously shone my flashlight beam around, trying to avoid stepping on any of the hideously sharp protrusions. The pews still sat in eerily precise rows, some of them half-covered in snow due to the gaping wound in the walls. What wasn’t covered in snow bore piles of ash, wood chips, burned prayer books, or pine needles. As we walked down the aisle between the pews, several rats scattered away from the dissembled skeleton of a cannibalized former comrade.

We came then to the altar, and Olafsson handed his flashlight to me, telling me to “keep it steady.” From the interior of his jacket, he removed a miniature crowbar, and began to pry up the boards of the antique wooden altar.

“What are you doing?” I demanded, in shock. Olafsson stopped for a moment, and rose to look me right in the eye. He was grimly serious.

“You want to see what Norway really is?” he said, almost a whisper. “You want to see the ancient history that lies beneath this modern veneer?” He cracked his knuckles, and hefted the crowbar. As he began to pull up the altar again, he said “I’m going to show you.”

Within moments, a large section of the altar was gone; Olafsson’s work was easily accelerated by the fragile nature of the old, burnt lumber. He stepped away from his excavation, apparently satisfied, and took back his flashlight, which he shone upon the ground beneath what had been a Christian altar. I added my light to his, and was intrigued and unsettled by what I saw lay beneath.

“There it is,” the professor said, with awe and reverence in his voice. “Norway, unfettered and wild.”

A horrible smell of mildew and rotting and intimidating antiquity floated up from the damnable space beneath where the altar had been. The thing that our lights played upon, however, was what truly set my hands to shaking. A large platform hewn of stone by nature’s own hands sat almost directly beneath the altar. Parts of it were obscured by moss and the dust from the church, but it was quite clear that it was an ancient boulder protruding from the earth in what was once an empty clearing, before any Judeo-Christian set foot in Norway. Runic inscriptions, of a much longer nature than on the evening’s previous landmark, dotted the rock platform.

“It is called a horg.” Olafsson said, without looking at me. “It is a heathen altar, used for centuries by the followers of Odin in celebrating his glory.” Now, the professor did turn his gaze to me, and he was glaring with rage. “The Christian invaders built their churches upon these sacred altars, knowing what they represented to the Norse. It is one way they beat down the spirit of the Vikings.”

The passion with which Olafsson spoke made me realize that coming here had been a mistake. This man, like the country he professed so much love for, was wild and barbaric beneath his civilized outer shell. However, this seemed to be the revelation to which he had alluded earlier in the evening. It was clearly time to head back to the house.

“Such a tragedy,” I agreed, and then remained silent, letting the tension fester in the foul air. After a time, my voice and courage found me again, and I suggested, “How tired one gets from walking out here in the cold! I’m anxiously awaiting a night in that comfortable guest bed, professor.”

Olafsson looked at me for a moment as if he didn’t know what I was talking about. Then, slow realization set into his features, and he shook his head.

“We are not finished out here, American,” he said, (and I must admit the use of my nationality rather than my name set me aback) and added, “There is but one stop left to make. Come.”

Seeing little choice, I followed as he picked his way carefully out of the debris around the hole in the building. I took one last look back at the ruined altar, and the horribly ancient pagan artifact that lay seething for centuries beneath it. If this wasn’t the climax of the evening, the revelation that changed my outlook on Norway…what in the name of all that is modern and civilized could it be?

I had plenty of time to contemplate as I followed this disturbed Nordic professor back to our guiding creek, and continued on its course downstream. After a time I noted by sound that the water seemed to be rushing by much faster. A quick casting of the flashlight beam downwards revealed this to be the truth. A few more minutes travel, and the strong winds could be heard howling in the distance, with slight drafts darting round the trees and ridges, carrying the cold of the icy soil and the smell of the pine trees. Clearly, there was a change in geography in store for us shortly.

Thunder rumbled through the atmosphere, and a squinting look up through the treetops allowed me to see that the clear skies beneath which we had begun the evening had been shrouded in sinister dark clouds. A quick flash of lightning briefly illuminated our surroundings, but revealed little that was unexpected, as unnerving as the change in weather was. Still, I pursued my guide without protest; he was determined to reach whatever destination for which he was bound, and thus any suggestion to do otherwise seemed futile.

I was beginning to think I should simply turn back into the wilderness and try to find my own way, when the howl of a wolf tore through the forest, and reverberated in the depths of my soul. A chill having little to do with climate rattled my frame, and I sought to stay close to Olafsson, if for no other reason that human companionship. The howl had seemed frightfully proximate, but for the sake of my sanity I reasoned that it could have been merely a trick of the ear performed by the forest.

Suddenly, everything began to speed up. Seemingly without warning, we came upon the summit of an intraversibly steep downward grade in the forest floor, terminating in what could only have been a vertical cliff face. Beyond this, a pitch black gorge opened up in the earth, the opposite side of which was barely visible in the dark haze that hung in the air, as though a coal fire burned nearby. The gale winds whipped by, whistling fiercely; I could have sworn to the high heavens, or to Valhalla in Asgard, due to my location, that I heard medieval cries of rage in battle riding on the wind.

Another flash of lightning hung in the sky for a bit longer now, and this time, all was not right. A glance off to my right, where Olafsson had been upon exiting the dense forest, revealed that he had climbed upon an enormous rock protrusion that extended far out above the steep grade. He had already scaled the thing to its very tip, and now cast his arms up to the grey-clouded winter skies as the punishing wind lifted his coat and tugged wildly at his hair. The thunder sent tremors through the very ground, and it was then that I heard the professor calling out words in a language that seemed vaguely familiar, and was only later able to place it as Old Norse, the language of the Viking raiders themselves.

Yet more thunderbolts lit up the terrain, and the situation had worsened still. With howls like a chorus of hellions, a pack of wolves made themselves heard and seen to be in assemblage all around us. The storm reached full force now, and as I turned back to the sky, the pinnacle of Olafsson’s journey began.

The sound of eight hooves pounded across the heavens, echoing through the deep gorge below. Olafsson cried out in triumph, which was dwarfed only a moment later by the addition of more hoofbeats. Hundreds, thousands of them in fact. But no horses were riding along the landscape. These were, unmistakably, hoofbeats ringing down from the sky, as though some great mounted horde had found the secret to defying gravity.

I saw movement against the dark clouds, and squinted to make out the alien black forms. My heart jumped into my chest as I spied two ravens carving a path through the stormy air. Their wings flapped gracefully, their flight true and undaunted despite the furious storm. Suddenly, something snapped in my mind. It was the phrase carved on the boulder, the first place we stopped in the woods. “Wild Hunt, North.” Wild Hunt. In Germany, Wild Hunt was the more common name for the phenomenon that had been known for centuries in Norway as the Oskoreian, the flight of Odin and his glorious dead through the skies on horseback. No sooner did this realization hit my mind, than I saw that sight which mankind is not reputed to be able to witness without being struck dead by the very majesty of it all.

They tore through the heavens like a modern destruction-minded military jet, but far more terrible, and infinitely more glorious. They were men whose bodies and horses were painted with black splotches, but who seemed to glow with the fury of that trait that only the pagan Norsemen possessed, and all others feared; the berzerkergang. All around them, carrying shields of bronze that bore the emblem of the sun-cross and wielding spears, rode golden-haired maidens whose very radiating beauty made me sink to my knees, and brought tears to my eyes. I begged them silently to come down to me, and to collect my soul; for at the moment my eyes beheld them, I wanted to be nowhere else but in their arms. So captivating were the Valkyries that my mortal words cannot do them justice.

And then, at their very helm and yet separate from them all, was He.

The One-Eyed All-father, King of Asgard and Master of Valhalla, Odin bore His bloody spear Gungnir, whose lethal tip had pierced His side as He hung in self-sacrifice from Yggdrasil, in times so ancient that it was hideous to fathom and in a place that no living mortal man was ever destined to see. He rode upon the fabled eight-legged Sleipnir, who galloped without fear across a terrain that no normal horse could ever imagine traversing. The God Himself had shimmering white hair that trailed forever behind Him, various strands of it bound into braids; the same description was adequate for His ample beard. He wore a black patch over His right eye, and a look of rage on His features that froze me in my place and made me cry out for mercy without ever His gaze resting upon me, and as I shamefully discovered later, loosed all control I had of my water. Such was the undescribable magnificence of a real and true God before men.

Then He raised to his lips a great horn, and into this He sent a blast of air so mighty and voluminous that no human lung would ever be capable of matching it, no matter where evolution chose to carry the species. My ears tore in agony, and the planet itself shook in an earthquake that dislodged boulders and ripped trees from their very roots. Somehow, through it all, Olafsson remained on his feet.

It was as I turned my attention back to the crazed professor that I realized the divine war party in the sky was doing the same. He had actually stripped down so that his bare chest and arms were exposed to the scathing wind and cold, and his panting breath came out in fog as he cried out to the terrible Oskorei in Old Norse. The riders from Asgard shifted their trajectory, and bore down on the summit which Olafsson and I occupied. I needn’t add that it was quite impossible for me to move, in my agape-faced, abject terror, and so I was forced to simply remain and watch all that took place.

The All-father was only a few feet from the protrusion upon which stood Olafsson, when he pulled up on Sleipnir’s reigns. Æsir horse and rider together swooped back up to the sky, with the Oskorei procession preparing to do the same in his trail. It took only seconds, but as the Wild Hunt passed over Olafsson, I saw a black-painted hand reach down from the mass of the Einherjar, and grip the professor’s forearm like a vise. Then he was pulled from this earth and accompanied the Oskorei as they vanished into the black uncharted, never to set foot on this mortal coil again.

How I returned to the house, I will never know. I do not even recall regaining consciousness after that most incredible zenith, but I woke up lying before the fireplace in Olafsson’s vacant house. I searched all over for him, and even braved to re-enter the woods in search of him. I walked for what had to have been hours, following the stream up and down again in what little daylight the winter season could muster, but, to my extreme fear, I could not again locate that rock protrusion, or that slope, or even the empty gorge in the earth. I returned to the first landmark of the night, the boulder, and found that the inscription bearing the words “Wild Hunt, North” was impossible to discern anywhere on the face of the rock. After this grievous blow to my sanity, I dared not try to approach that horrid church again, instead heading back to the house.

I managed to call for a taxi, and fled Norway via Trondheim Airport. I have not slept many nights since that day, and I don’t really believe I ever will again. I rarely venture outdoors any longer either, especially on stormy or overcast days, when the sunlight does not penetrate the clouds. My thoughts often wander back to the last sight my eyes beheld of Olafsson, an image that I believe will be ingrained upon my eyes as I lay on my deathbed; it is the picture of the old professor, nude from the waist up in the frigid sub-arctic winter, his hand gripping that of a man who had been cut down in a Viking battle centuries ago, and was now part of an army of dead who were defying gravity, following that glorious and terrible God into thunderous oblivion.