Nets were cast, lumber was cut, and wheat was threshed, much as it had been for time immemorial for the people of Naantali. The world beyond may well have changed a great deal, but a mixture of disinterest and difficulty kept the settlement isolated.
Oh, there was much trade, to be sure: Balts, Danes, Geats, Nords, Swedes, and maybe the occasional Sarmatian once in thirty years, but the folk of Naantali never went out of their way to see what these foreigners spoke of. To them, stories had sufficed thus far. For every golden hall, there was a dragon; for every land of plenty, there were jealous trolls and other cretins. If it meant not risking life, limb, and spirit against defiant beasts and fiends of the underworld, the tales and glories of wayfarer’s would do.
But then there came different stories. Golden halls and lands of plenty, to be sure, but they also spoke of a wild joy as well. There was a people, far to the south, down the Dneiper, who claimed to have killed their gods!
No. No, not gods. A god. To them, the God. Such barbarity was repugnant among the most selfish of pillagers! More than this, they celebrated this murder every day they could, by invoking terrible rites that transfigured the humblest of life’s bounties - bread and wine - into flesh and blood of this god. And they would then, with great solemnity, devour it. This mad faith had spread rapidly, and eventually it became the law of the land, despite the best attempts of the kings and thanes to squelch it.
But more was learned of it - this god was slain, yes, but had allowed himself to be. He was not overwhelmed, nor beset by fell magics. It was as if he wanted to die; were these people delighting in the end of their god’s misery when they celebrated as they did?
But there was more! It was said these people were not celebrating death at all, but their god’s return to life. How can this be? Even the gods must die: Yggdrasil withers, and Ragnarok consumes existence, and the new creation arises... But all must be consumed to be renewed, no? Not so according to they.
To these odd men, these “Christians,” a god had let his people murder him and then rise from death. Was this to show his might? That he is beyond life and death?
It seems not. This god had to become man to die at all, and died as such. By being a man, and committing such a sacrifice, all debts had been paid. The sacrifice of animals, and offerings to Odin and Freyja? These were all mere niceties, it seemed; the obligations of man to the divine had been fulfilled by the perfect human sacrifice.
Such was their delight and freedom, then. Oblivion’s jaws had been shut forever; Asgard was not reserved for the few anymore. The former lines had been broken. Aesir and Vanir, man and woman, highborn and lowborn, ancient and new, strong or limp, it no longer mattered. There was a new measure of man’s worth, it seemed - righteousness. A ship was set upon the Dneiper, to journey south to this fabled faith, to the city of Constantinopolis...
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