Inviting Vikings

The Vikings came, but by invitation.  The peoples of what is now Northern Russian needed assistance to bring order from chaos and turned to their Nordic neighbors for help.  The ancient crumbling fortress of Izborsk stands as testament to that dark time.  It sits on a flat hilltop overlooking a long valley that runs into a lake fed by twelve springs that pour out of the side of a hill like mortal wounds. 

My time at Izborsk was part of a day trip from the Pskov Caves Holy Dormition Monastery where I'd been staying with my three traveling companions.  We had arrived by bus over roads that nearly jarred the teeth out of my head: three Russian seminarians, a monk novice, and me, a lost American.  Just inside the gaping hole that used to be the main gate sat a small Orthodox church with a graveyard.  The tombstones had distinctive Scandinavian  shapes, darkened and  worn by centuries of weather.  A nun carrying a basket of blackberries greeted us with a lovely smile, her face peeking through the opening of a once black head covering that had faded to gray. 

We dropped our backpacks in a simple one room house that she made available to us.  A thick blackberry preserve was offered and shared amongst us five weary pilgrims.  The sweet sticky mash renewed our vigor and brightened our spirits.  In the midst of our simple feast, one of our company suddenly jumped back in surprise and pointed at his backpack lying on the floor.  It was moving!  He poked at it with a stick as we all held our breath waiting to see what would happen next.  A curious kitten stuck its head out of the open flap and laughter poured out of us like soda from a shaken bottle.   

We then took a long hike down to the lake to see the "Spring of the Twelve Apostles" and passed through a large forested cemetery outside of the fortress walls.  At the entrance was a large flat-topped boulder with three concentric squares chiseled into its top.  I was following the lines and intersections with my finger while sitting on the boulder when an epiphany struck.  I knew what this strange configuration was!  I called my Russian friends over to see what I'd discovered.

I explained to them that it was an ancient Viking game known in England as "Nine Men's Morris", a game mentioned in one of Shakespeare's plays.  They were dully impressed. I knew of it from a program I had on my computer called "Games of the World" that included the Chinese game Go and the African game Mancala along with Nine Men's Morris.  Each game was prefaced by a multimedia history lesson that explained the game's origins.  I remembered it showing a photo of an excavated Viking ship that had been found with a Nine Men's Morris board carved into its deck.  And here in Northern Russia I'd found one on the top of a rock.

We continued on through the countryside until stopping at a spring bubbling up into a small pool under a tree.  We knelt and drank some of the water, water that was so cold it was like a slap in the face.  My seminarian friend informed me that this was a blessed spring, famous for curing those with maladies of the eye.  I immediately thought of my friend back home, Kevin, who suffered from poor vision due to having had retina blastoma as a child.  I felt compelled to get some of this water to him but was unsure of how to do it.  I asked the others if they had water bottles, but no one did.  They found a nearby farmer's house and explained the situation to the man living there.  He disappeared into his house and came out a few minutes later with a glass bottle and a cork.

The day was spent like that, exploring this obscure part of Russia with deep roots and great beauty.  The memories are only fragments now as they happened fifteen years ago over a twelve hour period and I am only just now writing them down.