The first ships had brought them across gray waters, Mercian villagers in rough wool, clutching what little they carried from hearth and home.
They arrived gaunt, weather-bitten, still half-believing they were bound for chains or sacrifice. Instead, the gates of Ullrsfjörðr opened, and fields long prepared for them waited.
The druids and seidkonur marked their foreheads with ash and oil, naming them born anew beneath the hammer of Thor and the blessing of Brigid.
In Greenland, Vinland, and even in Svalbard's icy settlements, land was parceled, plows given, seed shared.
By midsummer, their labor bore fruit.
Mercians worked alongside Norse settlers, guiding irrigation channels through Iceland's volcanic soil, tilling Greenland's fragile plots, and in Vinland, clearing forests for grain and grazing.
