A Fine Day For Sailing

   The sun had not yet risen over the horizon, and the air was bitterly cold.  Garthar Svavarsson was impatient to be off, for the tide was rolling in quicker than expected.  His men were already drinking. He didn't mind.  Drunk men made the best sailors.  He ran his fingers over his ship's smooth side, admiring the way oak changed seamlessly to spruce at the hull and ash at the prow.  Oak was Odin's wood, and very strong, but spruce floated easier.  The ash was for his wife, who was waiting for him in Hebrides.  Garther wondered idly if he would return to Sweden.
    The forest to the North of the river was gone.  The timber had been used to build his new longship. He resented the baldness of the land, the ugly stumps.  Still, it had to be done.
    His grandfather used to tell him stories of his youth, when the land was still densely covered with forests.  Many of the forests had been cut down for shipbuilding.  A single longship took an entire grove, and an army of them...Garthar shuddered.  But Vikings always needed ships, for raiding was a risky enterprise.  A good ship could last many generations, but not when hacked at with swords or burnt by angry peasants.
     Sweden, like much of the European and Scandinavian countries, was once heavily forested, but the coming of the Viking Era had meant the destruction of many old groves.  Sacrifices were offered by the hundreds to appease the gods.  Odin would not have allowed the felling of his oaks otherwise.  Even before the Viking Era, northmen had been skilled seamen, and their ships were the swiftest in the world.  They were slim enough to navigate narrow fjords, shallow enough for rivers, but equally as good on the open seas.  They were worth more than a man’s life, but they took a lot of wood.  Garthar’s grandmother was a druid, and she had mourned the loss of the trees.  Trees were sacred to the druids, who, it was said, had learned to communicate with dryads.  Garthar sympathized with her, but he was a Viking raider, and he needed his ships.  They were his livelihood.  

And so the forests were felled.  But not all of them. The sacred groves were safe, and his grandmother went there with her basket of offerings every afternoon.  

But there was always the need for more farmland, and any man willing to destump the fields could have all the land that coins could buy.  After the Summer raids, he might be such a man.  Then he could bring Kristen back to Sweden with him.  Garthar tried to picture it.  

His men were pushing his ship out from the sand and into the fjord.  It was a beautiful ship, he thought with pride.  It didn’t matter that the northernmost end of his land was now uncomfortably bare.  If he could have an army of such longships he would clear out all of Sweden.  It would mean more land for he and Kristen in any case.  

It is not known what Garthar Svavarsson’s fate was after his journey to the Hebrides.  He is thought to be the first Scandinavian to circumnavigate and live in Iceland.  It is not clear if he ever got his army of patchwork longships.  

In the years that passed, Sweden did indeed grow sparser in forests and thicker in farmland.  After the last Viking raid in Normandy in the year 1066, many took to farming.  The landscape of the Scandinavian countries-Sweden included-changed.  The rich forest topsoil was excellent for turnips.