Who was Lothin Vegeirsson?
In the short story "Lothin Strongarm" a fourteen year old boy is one of the crew of a Viking ship raiding through the western isles of what would become Scotland. But could someone so young really have been part of such a raid?
The character of Lothin Strongarm was born during the 1990s. The remains of a Viking grave were discovered in the sand of Balnakeil Bay up in the very north west point of Scotland, a little to the east of Cape Wrath. (It couldn't have been much to the west, I suppose!)
The skeleton had been uncovered by bad weather. Once it was examined by archaeologists and forensics it was discovered to have the remains of a shield and weapons buried with it. The shield perhaps put in place to protect the head and torso. But what really got my attention was the fact that the remains were that of a "child" and, only partly through the passage of time, it was not possible to say whether it was male or female. "Must have been a male" was my immediate reaction and I've never changed that opinion. It seems inexplicable to bury a girl with overtly masculine artefacts. A girl would have been just as reverently buried but the artefacts would not have been those of warfare. So how could a young boy, believed to have been approximately twelve or thirteen years old, have been accorded the funeral rites of a warrior? And daft as it might first appear, could he have in some way been regarded as a warrior?
"Well not with a sword and shield" I thought. But with a bow a boy could kill a man. And a boy who could pull such a bow would be worthy of the epithet "Strongarm." That thought teased me for a while until I got a sense of what his story could be. The original was a novel length tale but I think the current short story version is closer to what I was trying to create twenty five years ago.
In the story I have made him a little older to ease my own sense of credibility. Lothin's not dead, he's survived his first encounter with the Picts. I have a feeling he won't end his life on a deserted beach with only a shield to protect him until Ragnarok calls.
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