By Mike Gray “Norway is great because we’re wolves in a world of sheep!” The calendar says it has been nearly a thousand years since the advent of Christ. But for Father Aillil, the priest of a recently converted Viking lord, the news of the “White Christ” is only now penetrating into Norse culture — and it’s meeting considerable resistance. Erling’s Word (1997) Collected in The Year of the Warrior (2000) “I think you’re as fair as a summer morning with the sun rising over Lough Erne. The grass is dewy and fat, so a man could live on it, and the flowers open their mouths and praise God with a song of sweet odor, and the birds raise a hymn they learned from Solomon two thousand years since, and have passed on in secret to their children ever after. And far across the water you can see swans swimming, and the sunrise tints them pink, and the breeze is so mild and gentle it’s like the hand of your mother on your forehead when you’re a child, and sick, and she fears to lose you.” Father Aillil hasn’t always been a priest. He is pretty much minding his own
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