Eric visits uncle Hogun

Eric visits uncle Hogun 5013 OTT Eric Olafson, Neo Viking Chapter 11 Uncle Hogun

Your father has promised to let you return to Fight and Heritage classes. You are also allowed to visit your uncle Hogun after school.

After school and after fight class I was now allowed go to Uncle Hogun He operated a guesthouse with a combined pub and restaurant right at the seaport of Halstaad Fjord he and his wife Aunt Freydis owned.

Aunt Freydis also was a midwife. While this was a virtually unknown profession on most other Union worlds as Mr. Walters said, here on Nifleheim babies came the old fashioned way and no one would even consider Arti-Wombs or anything like that. She was a very kind woman with very little to say. I was not that Uncle Hogun would not allow her to speak, Aunt Freydis had very few interests outside her Midwifing duties and there was simply nothing to ta talk about for more than two minutes. She did mother me in a warm simple manner whenever she was there. She took her midwife duties very seriously and was always in great demand. That was why she was gone more often than not to help some woman somewhere to deliver.

Uncle Hogun was my Fathers younger brother and traditions and the old ways were as important to him as any other Neo Viking. He was stronger and bigger than Father and conceivably one of the strongest men in our world. I was certain  I had never seen anyone taller or bigger than him. While I was in there I had seen him arm wrestle other men and he always won with ease. Once just a week ago even against two burly warriors at once.

Once a week, the cargo floater from the XChange would deliver barrels of ale, beer , and mead along with other supplies. While his helpers and the delivery men would struggle with the big and heavy barrels, he would lift them as if they were empty. Greifen told me that other Inns often had strong men employed to keep order and to throw out those men who had too much to drink and became rowdy.

He said, that there was no one on all Niflheim who could get drunk enough to find the courage to cause real ruckus in Hogun's Inn. The other day he had thrown out two strong and grown men by grabbing one at the belt and the other by the neck and transporting them outside with the same effortless ease as if he had nothing to slow him down at all. The rowdy men who had just moments ago tried to start a fight were as tame as Nubhir Wolf Puppies and did not try to fight him. When I arrived after school he would sit down with me at one of the wooden tables, since the Inn was not very busy during that time and help me with my homework assignments. I found out he was much more educated than the let on. He would teach me about our clan's history or instruct me in his backyard how to use our traditional weapons and to throw an ax. I had returned from the Halls of Hasvik now almost a month ago and we were well into the second year of Shortsummer. The weather was, for the most part, sunny and warm and we had moved into the back yard. "Uncle Hogun," I started a question after we had thrown hand axes on a swinging "pour-a-wood" target." Why is it we Neo Vikings use such archaic weapons? I mean we live in the 51st century and I heard you could order an Energy blaster right from GalNet. I know from school Earth had much more advanced weaponry than axes and swords long before even the Galactic Ascent . Would that not make guns and blasters traditional weapons as well?" He sat down on the wooden bench next to the back door and made a gesture toward the swinging target." You keep throwing and while you do that. I will try to explain!" So I went to the target, about ten or twelve meters away and retrieved the small throwing axes, he bellowed with his mighty voice inside the house after one of the servants and ordered himself a tankard of ale. He motioned me to throw, nodded and smiled as both axes hit true. "First of all we are not Neo Vikings. That is a Term the Off-Worlders gave us after we joined the Union." I wanted to correct him that this was actually done before we joined but I kept silent. He rested his massive hands on his thighs."We are Norse, Eric. The word Viking means nothing more than traveler in the old language. They would say we go viking and that meant to go on a trip. Either to pillage or on a trip to trade wares."

He got his tankard and took a long drought then wiped his beard, belched in such a manner that I was sure Odin would be jealous, got up kicked my feet a few inches apart. "This is how I told you to stand! It gives you a better position. Throwing an ax into a wooden target is easy. If that target is a man who tries to do the same to you, that's an entirely different story. However, to be prepared for exactly that is the reason for all these exercises. Don't be stiff as frozen fur in the Darkwind, relax and be light on your feet. Now go through the movements. Count with your breath to three, and get it into the rhythm of the swinging target and then throw."

"I hit it before!" "I want you to hit it every time and all the time. No misses, no two out of three. In battle, there are no second chances or do-it-over. There are no scores and points given. You hit first and you live, you don't and you're dead. That is the old way, that is Olafson tradition and that is how you will learn it from me!" Again I threw and the ax smacked with a cracking sound into the wooden plank. He nodded again. "Now I want to see that again, hitting the same spot!" He took the other ax and a honing stone and began to carefully sharpen the gleaming blade. "As you know we originally came from a planet called Earth now better known as Terra . The original settlers that came here and took their lore and culture to this new and harsh world. Life was hard especially when they started out." I threw the ax again and retrieved it." I know about that part, Leif Erikson gathered his people and all the worshipers of the Aseir as they were not welcome on Earth and came here to live true to the traditions and free of alien influences and all the things that made mankind soft." He tossed me the honing stone." Sit down and take care of your ax while I answer your original question." He put his ax back in the leather bag and tied the strings." Yes, Leif did that, but the nature of this world was more unforgiving then expected and it has little to give in the long time of Longnight . Especially to a culture that rejects all modern technology. Each clan started to have their own idea just what the traditions should be and who should be allowed to live on the rocks in the Burgs and who had to live on the ice up north. When a Contact ship from Earth came a few clans banded together captured it, and with it started to pillage other colonies around this neighborhood of space. Other clans refused to use this modern technology and called the others traitors to the true spirit of Leif, who had already been long dead by that time." He basically repeated what I had learned inside Muspelheim He stopped his narration to take the stone away from me, and then he dipped it in honing oil and gave it back." As you can imagine the other human colonies did not really like to be pillaged, robbed and killed. So they called the Union Navy for help. Battleships came and made a swift end to our planets short space pirate career. They gave us a choice after they destroyed our few pirate boats. Be forever isolated on our planet without any contact to the other worlds or to join the Union and accept Union law and with it Union help. It took the Elders back then very little time to choose the second option and Niflheim became a Union world. However the Elders back then did not speak for all clans as they do today. Other clans who didn't like the idea of using modern technology to go Off-world to pillage and pirate others in the first place also didn't like the idea that Niflheim now was a Union world. Not that they had anything against the piracy and pillage part but the way it was done, was against the old traditions, meaning the rejection of machinery and technology of course. Every clan had their own idea how much technology was good. Being on a new world new traditions formed as well and clashed with the old ideas and as you know our kind we are not the best diplomats and arguments usually ended up in fights." I simply nodded and kept pulling the stone over the edge of the ax in the way he had shown me.