Chapter 30: Return to Ullrsfjörðr
Vetrulfr’s fleet returned to their realm with riches beyond many of their wildest dreams, and legends to boast of for the next decade in their mead halls.
But he did not enter the docks of Ullrsfjörðr like a conqueror. No war horn sounded, no crowds gathered. There was only the hiss of the tide against the piers, and the creak of rope as the longship was fastened to the moorings.
Vetrulfr stepped down in silence. His boots met the wood of the dock without ceremony. Yet even in silence, there was presence. He turned and offered his hand.
Róisín took it, not because she trusted him; but because there was nothing else to hold onto.
Her feet touched the ground of a city older than it should have been. Not in age, but in soul. She had expected something savage. Crude. Huts and thatch, smoke and chaos.
That was what the monks said the Norse built; that is when they weren’t burning Christian towns or abducting girls like her.
Towering timber halls. Roads of cut stone. Runestones carved with silver veins. A watchtower crowned with an iron brazier. A citadel seated atop the motte like a throne above the sea. It was not just imposing.
She could not help but stare.
She thought of the ancient walls of Rome, as described by saints and scribes. Marble cities and imperial majesty. Her mind had always turned to the south, to the centers of Christendom, as the measure of all greatness.
So why… why did this feel more like the city of her childhood dreams than anything else?
Her lips moved before she could stop them.
“Did Christians build this?”
Vetrulfr smirked. She hadn’t spoken to him since their conversation on the river. But the city had made her forget herself. That, to him, was victory.
He gave her head a gentle pat, as one might a confused hound, and pointed toward the golden-roofed mead hall atop the motte.
“Christians?” he said, voice low and wry. “Here in Ísland? They came with their priests less than a century ago. Built nothing. Converted few. No… this is my city. I built it after I claimed this land as mine.”
Róisín rolled her eyes. It was easier than believing him. Easier to snort and dismiss than admit she felt small in a place so grand.
But before she could scoff aloud, another figure appeared.
A woman. Tall. Dressed in a grey cloak trimmed with arctic wolf fur. Her hair was pale gold, her face ageless; not with youth, but something stranger. Like a statue carved by gods, meant to look upon for centuries.
She moved as if to embrace Vetrulfr… but stopped.
Her eyes fixed on Róisín. No, not on her; but around her. As if something unseen lingered in her shadow.
“The blood of Brigid is strong in this one,” she said, her voice low, as if speaking not just to herself, but to something older listening on the wind. “After all these years… my efforts were not in vain. The First Hearth has a new keeper.”
Vetrulfr’s eyes narrowed. The playful smirk was gone.
“Are you certain, Mother?”
The woman approached. Róisín flinched.
She took the girl’s hands, warm fingers rough from years of toil, and rubbed her palms as if feeling for flame beneath the skin.
“Yes,” she said at last. “This one is like you. Her father was the son of Brigid. There is no hiding it from my eyes.”
“That’s absurd! My father wasn’t the son of Saint Brigid; no one is! She was a virgin! And she died long before—”
The woman chuckled. Not unkindly.
“I am not his wife,” she said. “That will be your role, daughter of mine.”
“This is my son. Vetrulfr. And when I say you are the granddaughter of Brigid, I do not mean the saint that the monks polished into holiness. I mean the goddess.
Brigid of fire and forge. Brigid of the spring and the flame. The one your people worshipped before your priests shackled her in white robes and scripture.”
Róisín’s thoughts spun. Goddess? Virgin saints were goddesses? What was true? What had been stolen?
Why didn’t they teach me this?
Before panic could take her fully, Vetrulfr placed a firm hand on her shoulder. His voice was low. Not commanding, but anchoring.
“None of these matters for now,” he said. “Come. The journey was long. You need warmth. Food. A bath. And clothes not soaked in the blood of old lives.”
He glanced at his mother. A look of warning.
Brynhildr said no more. But as they walked away, she smiled a knowing smile and whispered to the wind:
“To be young… and in love…”
Steam rolled across the dark stone tiles like morning mist across a fjord. Róisín sat waist-deep in the pool, her skin flushed pink from the heat, her eyes wide as the vaulted ceiling above her.
She had never seen anything like it.
Polished volcanic rock, carved with swirling runes and symbols of fire and frost. Pipes of bronze and dark iron hissed softly in the corners, bringing in water heated not by firewood, but the land itself; drawn from deep beneath the crust, where the gods still whispered through stone and steam.
The bath was not just warm. It was alive. Breathing. Pulsing with purpose.
Her fingertips traced the smooth rim of the pool, and she marveled; not just at its beauty, but at its impossibility.
This was Iceland. A land of ice and ash. Of scattered farms, turf huts, and wind-bitten stones. And yet here, nestled in the heart of a mead hall carved into the hill like a pagan cathedral, was something she would have expected in the depths of Rome or Byzantium.
“This can’t have been here long,” she whispered aloud, though no one was near to answer.
Only a year ago, this place had been wilderness. A few scattered longhouses. The ruins of a half-built Christian church. Now there was a city. A kingdom.
She sank deeper into the water until only her eyes and nose remained above the surface. The heat pulled the ache from her bones, the dirt from her skin, the numbness from her soul.
From the shadows, a voice broke her reverie.
“It is not ancient. It is earned.”
She turned. Vetrulfr stood at the edge of the chamber, barefoot, his arms folded. His tunic was simple, but there was iron in the posture. He did not enter.
“When I returned from the East,” he said, “I brought more than gold. I brought knowledge. Cisterns. Furnaces. Vaulting arches. I spent a decade beneath Hagia Sophia’s dome and in the halls of Emperors. When I came back, I gathered every smith, mason, and craftsman who would follow me. I promised them a future.”
He stepped forward one pace, into the steam. His boots tapped stone.
“I broke the island open. Paved roads through lava fields. Quarried rock from the cliffs. Had the baths fed by the hot veins of the fjord. They said it could not be done.”
Róisín’s lips parted, but she had no words. Only silence. Only awe. The heat in her chest was not from the water alone.
“You did all this in a year?” she asked at last.
His answer came without pride.
“No,” he said. “We did.”
Then, after a breath:
“But it was my will that bound them. Just as it is my will that brought you here.”
Not out of fear. But because something inside her was trembling. Shifting.
He did not try to explain himself further. He turned, cloak trailing mist, and walked toward the exit.
As he vanished behind a carved wooden screen, she looked up at the vented dome above—the oculus open to the night.
The stars were faint in the sky beyond, blurred by steam. But one shone clearly.
A tear rolled down her cheek into the bathwater.
How can a pagan city feel more sacred than anything I’ve ever known?
And for the first time in her life, she whispered the name: