So the last week has been rather... invigorating. Several weeks ago my old Scout master phoned me and asked me to return as an assistant leader to which I agreed to. The last few days I have been away with the Scout group on their annual summer camp, at which I have quelled the pyrotechnic in me for a week or two.
Stupidly I set off with all my various notebooks and plenty of paper, expecting to have lots of spare time while the kids were off on one adventure or another, time that I could use to catch up on the recent lull in working on Vinland. How very wrong I was, I got back on Wednesday evening and checked through my notes to find that I had only one new entry (spoiler alert): “The sirens were really whales”. There we go, all my hopes of an industrious week essentially came to just that one sentence.
Going on this camp however did bring back many good memories of my own childhood, and made me remember just how tough it can be to survive in the wilderness, skills and insights I fully intend to incorporate into Vinland. Just how will Leif and his crew feel in the middle of night, with the creatures of the night creeping all around them, wondering if their hidden watchers were walking on four legs or two, having no idea if this new world is inhabited or not. Just how tough is it to survive on what the land can give, the identification of edible plants and skills at hunting and tracking – and the bane of all backwoods campers; finding enough dry firewood to burn in order to cook at all.
Shelter is of course another concern, and while we came packed with nice modern tents, the Vikings would be left with making do with what they could. I saw a number of bivouacs in the forest by our site, none of them looking particularly healthy. Bear in mind that the Vikings of Greenland have no forests in which to acclimatise themselves, and the dense woodland of North America would have been entirely alien to them.
Finally there are the social implications of living so close together which must be considered. While true cabin fever can take weeks to set in, living in an enclosed space with only a few other individuals can quickly lead to conflict. With the Scouts we came away with only a bloody lip or two, but how would the heavily armed Vikings fare, especially when they come to Vinland already packing all the problems from back home.
What will become their greatest enemy? Will it be the ruthless natives, the uncompromising land... or will it prove to be themselves?
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