Viking blood

"Of course we are all beautiful, the gorgeous hunk of man said. I had remarked how handsome (and tall) I'd found the Norwegians.

We were a café in Oslo Norway and at eleven at night it was still daylight on the pleasant May night.

"We were Vikings. We only captured the most beautiful women."

Fast forward many decades and like many others I had my DNA tested. Much of what came back, I already knew: English and French predominated.

But there was a surprise. A tiny bit of my DNA contained Norwegian heritage.

It made sense with all the Viking raids in the late 700s, I had an ancestor that crossed the dangerous seas to land in the Angl-Saxon area of what is now the UK.

Did his arms get tired as he rowed? Was he seasick?

Did he worry his wolf helmet would rust from the salt water if he had one.

Then when the boat landed how much did he plunder and kill? He must have found a local woman and like the man in that café said, select a beautiful one.

Did he rape her?

Or did he fall in love, and like some other Vikings stay and farm, and raise off springs one of which who passed their DNA onto me? Since such a little part of my DNA is Norwegian, I assume he did not take the woman back to Scandinavia.

Or did he just leave the woman pregnant. When she gave birth was she shunned by the community, or were they glad they had survived the onslaught and accepted her and the child?

I like to think of it as a love story. That tired of the cold of his homeland, sick of the sea, he was happy to settle down.

I will never know although I am tempted to do a series of short stories with the different possibilities...or not.

Sigh.