The wind off the fjord carried knives that morning. It howled through the timber longhouse walls and rattled the shields above the benches, each gust a mournful groan. In the long dark of winter, every sound seemed to carry the weight of a coming storm. The village of Stenvik should have been busy with winter chores, with the chopping of wood and the mending of nets, but every soul was gathered in the frozen square. They stood with shoulders hunched against the biting cold, their eyes fixed on a figure that had arrived from the white horizon.
It was a man, or perhaps something older, wrapped in a cloak of frost-laced wolf hide. Ice glittered in his beard, and the air around him steamed in strange, spiraling patterns, as if the cold itself radiated from his flesh. He was the winter given form. In hushed, fearful whispers, they spoke his name: The Rime-Seer.
The Seer’s legend was old and terrifying. He was said to have wandered the north for centuries, a collector of lives, a hunter of mortal wit. He did not seek gold or battle, but something far more valuable to a being of ageless time: a moment of clarity, a flash of insight. This was a true Norse test of wisdom.
“Seven riddles,” he said, his voice like ice cracking on a river. “Answer them all, and I grant one wish. Fail, and you draw your last breath before the snow falls again. Begin, and you cannot stop.”
No one moved. The air was thick with the weight of his curse and the memory of the tales. And then Eirik stepped forward. The young man had always been like a spark thrown into dry moss leaping before the wind could think. He had sailed into a storm to prove a boast, leapt from the sea cliffs to impress a girl, and once wrestled a full-grown boar with nothing but a rope. Reckless, grinning, and dangerously sure of himself.
“I’ll take your game, old man,” Eirik said, a plume of confident breath in the air. “And when I win, I’ll ask for a ship to sail further than any man has gone, beyond the known world, to the shores of legends.”
The Seer’s pale eyes, the color of a frozen lake, gleamed with an unnerving interest. “A bold desire for one so young. Very well. The first riddle.”
Riddle One
“I have no legs, yet I run. I have no mouth, yet I roar. I am old as the mountains, yet I am born anew each day. What am I?”
Eirik’s grin did not falter. “A river.”
The Seer nodded once. The frost on his beard seemed to catch a glint of light. A collective sigh of relief passed through the crowd, like a soft wind through the village.
Riddle Two
“I am a hall with no doors. My roof is the sky, my floor the bones of the earth. All creatures enter, yet none remain.”
“Easy,” Eirik said, his voice laced with the easy confidence of a man who believes he cannot lose. “A grave.”
Again, the Seer inclined his head. This time, there was no sound from the crowd. They were too afraid to hope, too tense to breathe.
Riddle Three
“I turn winter into spring, yet I vanish when summer sings. I am carried in hands, yet I weigh nothing.”
Eirik thought for only a moment, a memory of a cold childhood and an old song giving him the answer. “A snowflake.”
Murmurs rippled through the gathered villagers. Three riddles, three victories. Eirik’s chest swelled with pride, and he gestured to the crowd, basking in their stunned admiration. They had thought him mad to challenge the Rime-Seer, but now they saw a hero.
The fourth riddle was longer, its words twisting like smoke from a dying fire. The air grew colder, and the Seer’s form seemed to grow taller, more menacing.
Riddle Four
“I guard all realms, yet I walk none. I am the crown of the sky and the root of the earth. I hold the worlds together, yet I am not alive.”
Eirik’s smile vanished. He frowned, his mind scrambling for an answer. The villagers shifted, waiting, their breath now visible as thick white clouds. The riddle spoke of worlds, of roots and crowns, but his recklessness gave him no foundation in such things.
“Yggdrasil,” someone whispered from the back, a name from the ancient sagas of the World Tree, which held the cosmos together. Eirik ignored them, convinced he knew better. He had won the first three on his own wit, and he would not take a coward’s help now. He said instead, “The mountains.”
The Seer’s smile was slow and cold. “Wrong.”
Frost bloomed across Eirik’s beard, crawling up his neck and across his chest. His knees buckled, and he collapsed onto the snow. A pale mist curled from his mouth, carrying the heat of his life. He was not bleeding or broken; he was simply being unmade by the cold.
“Stop.”
The voice came from the crowd—soft, but carrying the unmistakable weight of command. Solveig stepped forward, her hood drawn low over her dark hair. Eirik’s sister had always been the still water to his rushing stream. She read more than she spoke, watched more than she acted, and saw paths others missed. She had followed her foolish brother to the square, knowing this might be his final mistake.
“If I take his place,” she said, her eyes never leaving the Seer’s, “and fail, you take us both. If I win, you release him—and end this game for all.”
The Seer studied her for a long moment, a woman of quiet strength facing down an eternal being of ice and cold. He could feel the fire in her heart, a different kind of flame from her brother’s reckless ambition. Then he bowed his head, a slight, almost respectful gesture. “So be it. The game has new players.”
Riddle Five
“I drink the sun’s fire, yet the more I drink, the smaller I become. I vanish in death, but my ashes still speak.”
Solveig’s eyes never left the Seer’s. She didn’t look to the crowd or her brother. She thought of their longhouse hearth, of the flickering flame that provided light and warmth. She pictured the small, glowing wick being consumed by the fire it gave life to. “A candle,” she said simply.
A flicker of approval, like a distant star, crossed his face. The frost on Eirik’s beard receded a little, the mist from his mouth thinning.
Riddle Six
“I am the first-born of storms, A serpent without flesh, I lash without anger, and tear without teeth.”
She thought of the sagas—of Thor battling the Midgard Serpent—but shook her head. The Seer’s words were meant to misdirect. A serpent without flesh. A lash without anger. She closed her eyes for a moment and pictured a black summer sky, split by a sudden, violent crack. “Lightning.”
The Seer’s smile thinned, a sign that she had hit upon a difficult truth. Only one riddle remained. The tension was a physical thing, a crushing weight on the air. This final Viking riddle would decide everything.
Riddle Seven
“I am older than Odin, yet I was never born. I cannot be seen, yet all fear me. I end all games, all feasts, all lives— Yet I am not death.”
The crowd held its breath. Solveig’s mind turned like a millstone. Not death… but something deeper. Inevitable. The Seer’s words seemed to echo the ancient Norse concept of fate, or wyrd, a force that bound all things. She saw the frost in his beard, the endless patience in his eyes, and understood. He was a being of eternity, and what could be more eternal, more inescapable, than what he represented? Not death itself, which was merely an end, but the thing that brought the end to all things.
And then she knew. The answer was woven into the very fabric of the cosmos, the same tapestry woven by the Norns themselves.
“Time,” she said, her voice clear and unwavering.
The Seer closed his eyes. The frost on his cloak melted into mist, and the cold that had held the village captive receded, as if the sun had suddenly appeared. A warm, gentle breeze, not the harsh fjord wind, swept through the square.
“Your wish?” he asked quietly, his voice no longer cold, but like the rustle of leaves in autumn.
Solveig did not hesitate. Her mind did not turn to gold or power or land. She glanced at her brother, now standing pale and confused, and then back to the Seer.
“End the game,” she said. “Let no one else in these lands ever die for your riddles.”
The Seer bowed, a profound and final gesture. His form faded into drifting snow, his wolf-hide cloak dissolving into the winter air. “So be it.”
When the square was empty again, Eirik stood beside his sister, still pale from the cold. He looked at her with a new, sober expression, no longer the cocky youth who had challenged a godlike being for a ship. He saw the woman who had traded everything for his life.
“You could have wished for gold. For land. For anything.”
She smiled faintly, a smile filled with both sorrow and peace. “I did. I wished for tomorrow.”
And somewhere, far beyond the horizon, the frost-wind carried a whisper that only the wisest might hear: Until the game returns... Her quick thinking and selfless loyalty were a testament to the virtues of the Norse spirit. For more on this code, see The Nine Noble Virtues of the Viking Code.