Stavanger Bay vikings mourn their dead

In the faith of the Northmen there were many Gods — some male and some female. They each played their own part, their own role critical to the Norse culture. Gyda did not fathom having only one God well at all, though Nerian had spoken of her strange and enigmatic deity enough. Gyda had not scoffed the Priestess for her faith, would never question his father's priestess wife to her face but Gyda could not make herself believe in just one. It ...everything was simply too much for one deity to rule. Odinn reigned as the sort of “King” of the Gods, but he was not alone. Freyja was his queen, the warrior goddess. And there was Thor, and Frigga, and Loki, Tyr and Hel. The mental list could have went on would Gyda not have re-focused her attention upon the topic at hand.

Brave. So many had such varying opinions on what constituted bravery; some say it borderlined on reckless abandon — but Gyda was not a reckless woman. She was ambitious. She was cunning and observant. Not unlike many women, surely. A Viking Queen she might have been but she was still just a woman. The only thing that separated the Valkyrie from the sheep was that she was not afraid to make the jump for what she wanted. She didn't settle, whether that was her mother or father's (or both) influence. She was concise. She knew what she wanted and she did not fear rejection. Rejection was not the end of the world — it could easily be chalked up to a learning experience. As Ragnar had once told her: rejection closed one door so that another might open.

“I want to feast and fight alongside him in Valhalla,” The young Queen admitted in a tenor so soft it was nearly a whisper. “but I want to make him proud. There is no honor in claiming something that I had nothing to do with. Always, I have had to prove myself. It is the ...standards I uphold for myself. I do not fear challenge, neither do I fear rejection.” Was that what made her brave? Or was it something that she did not yet recognize in herself.