Six Ostriches by Philipp Schott

Author:Philipp Schott
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: ECW Press
Published: 2023-05-23T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Twenty-Two

Laura called to Peter from the living room as soon as he stepped in the door. “I think I found something!”

“Great!” Peter called back as he took his boots off and hung up his jacket. “And wait until I tell you what happened at Dan’s!”

Peter stepped into the living room. “But first, where’s my boy?”

Pippin stood up from his dog bed near the fireplace and wagged his tail. He seemed to know that his IV line would prevent him from coming up to greet Peter, so he didn’t try, although he clearly had the energy now to do so.

“Something crazy?” Laura asked while Peter gave Pippin a good ear scratch, murmuring, “Not yet, boy. A little longer on the fluids. Just a little.”

“Yeah, they found a letter in their mailbox this morning accusing them of occupying sacred Norse land. They called it . . .” Peter paused as he tried to recall the compound Icelandic name, “. . . Vesturvatnsland. And the letter referred to Dan and Kim as Skraelings, which is apparently a racist term.”

“It wasn’t originally. It was a neutral way of referring to unfamiliar groups of people who weren’t Norse. The Irish were called Skraelings too. But it’s taken on a different meaning these days, which plugs in neatly with what I found.”

Peter sat down in his armchair opposite Laura, wondering as he did so whether he should make some tea first, but deciding that he was curious enough to hear what she had to say that the tea could wait.

“I did a bit more digging online after you left,” she continued. “Specifically, I decided to do a deep dive into the Canadian 8kun folkist message boards. And bingo, I started finding references to a Manitoba-based group called the Saga Study Society. They don’t have any kind of internet footprint elsewhere, but on these message boards the members openly talk about how the Norse need to be considered among the original peoples of Canada and be accorded rights as such.”

“Ha!” Peter laughed. “So, they wish they had had the ‘right’” — Peter used air quotes — “to be sent to residential schools? The ‘right’ to have their culture considered inferior? The ‘right’ to be given crappy little parcels of land in the bush in exchange for their freedom?” He laughed again.

“Yeah, no. That doesn’t come up. But the point is, that seems to be the same philosophy as whoever wrote that letter.”

“For sure. I don’t suppose any of the posts are signed ‘nutty-archeologyprof101’?”

Laura smiled. “No. The main people seem to be ‘valkyrie3939,’ ‘MBthorsbondsman,’ and ‘vesturvatnslander88.’”

“I get 88, but are there really 3,938 other valkyries out there?”

“Maybe, but three and nine are also sacred numbers in Norse mythology. What’s 88?”

“Eighth letter of the alphabet is H, so 88 is H H, or Heil Hitler.” Peter rolled his eyes as he said this.

“Oh, Jesus. It always goes back to Hitler, doesn’t it? Who did these doorknobs worship before him? Genghis Khan? But it is starting to make sense now.

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