Eaters of the Dead

by Michael Crichton

“You Arabs are like old women, you tremble at the sight of life.”

The custom of the Northmen reveres the life of war. Verily, these huge men fight continually; they are never at peace, neither among themselves nor among different tribes of their kind. They sing songs of their warfare and bravery, and believe that the death of a warrior is the highest honor.

“The first time she said, ‘Lo, I see here my father and mother’; the second time, ‘Lo, now I see all my deceased relatives sitting’; the third time, ‘Lo, there is my master, who is sitting in Paradise. Paradise is so beautiful, so green. With him are his men and boys. He calls me, so bring me to him.’ ”

“The fog is always feared, whenever it comes.”

“The name cannot be said, for it is forbidden to speak it, lest the utterance of the name call forth the demons.”

“The angel of death has spoken,” my interpreter said. “The party of Buliwyf must be thirteen, and of these one must be no Northman, and so you shall be the thirteenth.”

Finally I said to Herger, “The rain is cold.” To this he laughed. “How can the rain be cold?” he said. “You are cold and you are unhappy. The rain is not cold or unhappy.”

Herger said to me, “Which God do you praise?” I answered that I praised the one God whose name was Allah. Herger said, “One God cannot be enough.”

We say: A man should be moderately wise, but not overwise, lest he know his fate in advance. The man whose mind is most free of care does not know his fate in advance.”

This, I was told, is the Northmen’s custom before a sea voyage, for no man knows if he shall survive the journey, and thus he departs with excessive revelry.

I inquired with all discretion if she were chaste, and he laughed in my face and said to me: “I sail upon the seas, and I may never return, or I may be absent many years. My wife is not dead.”

It was a wonder to me to see these huge strong warriors giggle and laugh like the Caliph’s harem, and yet they saw nothing unmanly in this.

Then also I saw that while the Northmen are gigantic, these doorways were so low that even I must bend in two to enter one of the houses. I inquired of Herger, who said: “If we are attacked, a single warrior may remain inside the house, and with his sword cut off the heads of all who enter. The door is low so that heads will be bent for cutting.”

Upon our departure from Trelburg, the warriors assembled there beat their staves upon their shields, raising a loud noise for our ship which set sail. This, I was told, was to draw the attention of Odin, one of the number of their gods, so that this Odin would look with favor upon the journey of Buliwyf and his twelve men.

Also, this I learned: that the number thirteen is significant to the Norsemen, because the moon grows and dies thirteen times in the passage of one year, by their reckoning. For this reason, all important accountings must include the number thirteen.

Thus a two-handed man is cunning. A related meaning was once attached to the word “shifty,” which now means deceitful and evasive, but formerly had a more positive sense of “resourceful, full of maneuvers.”

“Animals die, friends die, and I shall die, but one thing never dies, and that is the reputation we leave behind at our death.”

“No man is so good as to be free from all evil, nor so bad as to be worth nothing.

The Northmen believe that how a man dies determines his condition in the afterlife, and they value the death of a warrior in battle above all. A “straw death” is shameful.

Any man who dies in his sleep is said by them to be strangled by the maran, or mare of the night. This creature is a woman, which makes such a death shameful, for to die at the hands of a woman is degrading above all things.

“What is Korgon?” He said to me, “The glowworm dragon, which swoops down through the air.”

Herger had told me that unknown women, especially if attractive or seductive, were to be mistrusted. Herger said to me that within the forests and wild places of the North country there live women who are called woodwomen. These woodwomen entice men by their beauty and soft words, yet when a man approaches them, he finds that they are hollow at the back part, and are apparitions. Then the woodwomen cast a spell upon the seduced man and he becomes their captive.

Yet I have discovered that if all those around you believe some particular thing, you will soon be tempted to share in that belief, and so it was with me.

“Keep your teeth together,” Herger said, which is a North expression meaning do not talk.

Cleverness in battle and manly things is accounted a greater virtue than pure strength in warriorship.

“A wolf that lies in its lair never gets meat, or a sleeping man victory.”

I inquired what was the meaning of the carved stone, and he said to me, “That is the image of the mother of the eaters of the dead, she who presides over them, and directs them in the eating.”

“It is always thus, now and in Valhalla,” which is their idea of heaven. In this heaven, which is to them a great hall, warriors battle from dawn to dusk; then those who are dead are revived, and all share a feast in the night, with endless food and drink; and then upon the day they battle again; and those who die are revived, and there is a feast; and this is the nature of their heaven through all eternity.*

I said to him, “I am afraid.” Herger replied to me: “That is because you think upon what is to come, and imagine fearsome things that would stop the blood of any man. Do not think ahead, and be cheerful by knowing that no man lives forever.”

“In my society,” I said, “we have a saying which is: ‘Thank Allah, for in his wisdom he put death at the end of life, and not at the beginning.’ ”

thus do strange things cease to be strange upon repetition.

“Praise not the day until evening has come; a woman until she is burnt; a sword until it is tried; a maiden until she is married; ice until it has been crossed; beer until it has been drunk.”

“Each person bears a fear which is special to him. One man fears a close space and another man fears drowning; each laughs at the other and calls him stupid. Thus fear is only a preference, to be counted the same as the preference for one woman or another, or mutton for pig, or cabbage for onion. We say, fear is fear.”

“I believe in one God, who is Allah, the All-Merciful and Compassionate.” “I know this,” Herger said. “Perhaps in your lands, one god is enough, but not here; here there are many gods and each has his importance, so we shall pray to all of them on your behalf.”

“The risk is too great. A man cannot place too much faith in any one thing, neither a woman, nor a horse, nor a weapon, nor any single thing.” “Yet I do,” I said. “As you see best,” Herger replied, “but there is too much that man does not know. And what man does not know, that is the province of the gods.”