Leif Enger, Back in Time

 In honor of the birthday of one of my all time favorite authors, Leif Enger, I am posting his brilliant answer to my time travel question. Happy Birthday (and Valentine's Day), Leif.

                         

IF YOU COULD GO BACK IN TIME

to any period from before recorded history to yesterday,

be safe from harm, be rich, poor or in-between, if appropriate to your choice,

actually experience what it was like to live in that time, anywhere at all,

meet anyone, if you desire, speak with them, listen to them, be with them.

When would you go?

Where would you go?

Who would you want to meet?

And most importantly, why do you think you chose this time?

Lucky

It cheers me up every day that Mom and Dad, a pair of North Dakotans with the Great Depression always in the next room, gave me the Christian name of a Norse sailor born a thousand years earlier.  From Dust Bowl grit to North Sea spray: how’s that for hope and change? A name, after all, is your parents’ first gift to you – their design for your future, a tacit instruction as to what sort of person you should be. (Not to make too much of this, it’s also true my parents alliterated their children’s names, and by the time I arrived there was a shortage of interesting Ls.)  

Still, Leif Ericson was one of my first real heroes, and the oldest attic in my brain is lit by the tart and moody lithographs of Ingri and Edgar D’Aulaire,

whose story-book Leif the Lucky was read aloud to me six hundred times before I could walk. Have you seen that book? 

Here is Leif as a boy: solid and blond in his scarlet wool tunic, feet braced for balance on the deck of his father’s ship, shading his eyes against the Snowstorm Sea.  Leif wears a sheath-knife on a lanyard round his neck and the knife and his hair snap in the gale.  How at home he looks on his father’s boat – and what a boat, with its curling tail and icy dragon prow. Also, what a father! Straight off we meet the fiery outlaw known as Erik the Red, banished from both Norway and Iceland for his fearsome temper and his “hands as red as his beard.”  This is the man Leif must live up to, but guess what: he doesn’t look worried about it.  He’s the youngest of three boys, the others being Torstein and Torvald – no doubt they absorbed the worst of Erik’s temper, always the job of elder sons. 

That we strive to live up to our names is a doubtful proposition -- if that were the case I would’ve done a brave thing by now.  But as a young Leif I did lay claim to certain traits that seemed to me a birthright from the great Norseman.  For starters, I assumed that as the baby of the family I was much wanted and more or less a commodity to be enjoyed.  Just as the other Leif was welcomed into his family (“We will let him live,” Erik the Red is supposed to have said, deeply pleased with the lusty infant) so I was taken everywhere, and read to, and played with, by a father who hit baseballs to his sons every night without fail and a mother who baked rolls three times a week. What better start for a confident Viking?  Then there was the nickname: the Lucky. The truth is I didn’t know anyone luckier than me. Do you need an example? I was born on February 14.  Every year they threw a party at school, with treats and cards for everyone. Only vaguely did I understand that all those sugar cookies weren’t baked on my account.

If it were handed to me, then, this ticket to anywhere, anytime, I’d leap to the day 

Leif bought the boat that would take him to the New World. He was in Greenland 

then and feeling restless. Probably he’d been restless for a while. Even today most 

people understand the thing to do about restlessness is to buy a boat. Happily, 

there was a good one on the market. 

It belonged to an old friend of Erik’s named Bjarni Herolfsson. 

Ten years earlier, around 990 AD, Bjarni had been voyaging from Iceland to 

Greenland -- apparently he was racing to catch up with his vacationing father 

who’d sailed to Greenland ahead of him.  In any case a storm developed and blew 

Bjarni’s ship off course. Nordic stoicism aside there was absolutely consternation, 

fear, men muttering in their drenched furs. When the skies lifted days later there 

rose up a land that didn’t match any description of Greenland Bjarni had ever 

heard. Trees swayed in the mild winds; luminous hills rose in the distance. His 

sailors were enchanted and wanted to go ashore, but Bjarni was tetchy and 

refused. No unscheduled stops for Bjarni!  “Dad needs me in Greenland right now,” 

he may have said, facing down his exasperated crew. “Don’t you know we are late 

already?”

Could Bjarni have guessed that his thanks for this restraint and remarkable sense 

of familial duty would be years of Viking mockery? Did he want to be called 

Bjarni the Timid?  But he was undeterred.  Putting temptation astern they set 

course for Greenland.  In fairness, even after reaching Greenland and telling his 

story, no one else ventured out to try completing Bjarni’s discovery for a full ten 

years -- during which Leif was growing up as fast as he could manage.  

Here’s the thing about buying a boat: on the day you do it, anything is possible. By the time Bjarni decided to sell, Leif had probably heard six hundred times about the luminous hillsides and the swaying trees. He was dreaming of it. He’d grown up sailing with Erik the Red, so not much scared him. He’d had loads of time to make a plan, and his plan was to round up some sailors and head north and west until he found the intoxicating land Bjarni had seen and decided not to explore. The boat had been there already -- it had done everything but land on the beach.  I’m picturing the magnetic attraction this little ship and its history had for Erik’s son, Leif.  He was writing history already.  He was walking the deck of a book that had almost been written, then been thought better of and scratched out.  I’d go back if I could and watch the two men watching each other: the one who turned back, and the one aching to go.

That ache is something else I claimed, another piece of birthright.  It is now September and I’m writing this aboard my own boat on the inland sea of Lake Superior.  Mine is a more modest craft than Leif’s, and my ambitions are less than his as well; but on the day we bought it, Robin and I, we looked at each other and said, This one’s tasted salt. This one’s gone a long way already, and could go a long way still.  It seems likely Leif uttered something similar the day he and Bjarni made their bargain.  Not out loud -- out loud he probably worried about deck rot and the state of the rigging.  And then he made his cautious offer.  And Bjarni put out his hand. 

And suppose he hadn’t?  Suppose Bjarni Herolfssson had decided at that point to have another go himself?  I’m lucky he didn’t. Because then Leif might’ve stayed home, and the Daulaires might’ve done lithos for a book called Bjarni the Bold. And I would be a guy named Louis writing about my wish to go back in time and spend a long evening in the company of the greatest trumpet player of the 20^th century.  

Thanks, Leif, for being a part of this project and for giving such a fantastic answer.