If you squint your eyes a little, and really use your imagination, you can still see them. Huge wooden hulls built for long voyages in frigid, often-violent waters. Sail unfurled, perhaps snapping in a stiff wind. A long ship built to navigate what even today remain some of the world’s most difficult seas.
As I stood on a ridge, bundling against cold spring gusts, a whole subarctic world unfolded at my feet. Rugged, windswept hills, dark with heather. Stone towers and sturdy homes lined the shores of the gunmetal gray inlet. A moody sky above—and out there, in the vast beyond of the North Sea—the waves that brought the Vikings to this land….