The Dragon Ship in Lake MacBride

Johnson: "An Army Corps of Engineers excavator found the longship imbedded in a silt-filled drainage. Our conservation facility at the University of Emmetsburg was the only one large enough to handle the artifact, and so it came to us. The artifact included the oaken keel, 5 articulated hull planks and 3 ribs, all dating to approximately 800-950 AD using standard C-14 tests. As the remains were rescued from a highly compromised aquatic environment, little information about the site was uncovered. However, a runic inscription carved along one edge of one of the ribs identifies the origin as Viking."

     Or so the preliminary report ran when I submitted it to the State Projects Review Board this past March. How her skipper and crew miraculously sailed the ship from the coasts of Norway to the middle of eastern Iowa will never be known. Suffice it to say their daring oddessy drove me to Oslo, Norway. And suffice it to say, I now voyage into a shadow-world of myth, fact, and destiny for us all.

     The flight to Norway was bumpy, the food evil and unnatural. When I arrived that morning in Oslo, I should have gone to sleep at my hotel, but I headed directly for my appoinment with Dr. Thorkild Lundholm, Curator of the Viking Ship Museum.

     "Iowa? And before Leif Erricson?" he furrowed his bushy gray brows at the photos and C-14 printout. "These are runes? You are certain of this?"

     I nodded. He muttered something in Norwegian and opened a queer, dark carved wooden box on his desk. He shuffled through some things and at last handed me a palm-sized oval stone covered with dragon head carvings.

     "This you may be looking for," he said, and pointed out the tiny cryptic norse runes running along the neck of each dragon head. One string of runes was identical to those of the longship's rib.

     "What does it say?" I asked.

     "I am not entirely certain; no antiquarian has ever encountered such in old norse writings. But they seem to talk about 'Kag-Ydor's runestone' coming from beyond the Slavs. See, here it is." He turned over the stone. In the center, a pictogram showed a large rectangular stone set in the bow of a longship and a party of three warriors manning the oars. Abruptly, we looked at each other in the moment of discovery.

     "The date of this stone is-" I gasped.

     "It came from a priest's grave, from about 900 A.D."

     He wanted me to take the stone, but I insisted he give me some detailed drawings instead. He promised to send them to my hotel that afternoon.

     It was just before 11 pm that night when I got up from the drawings to answer the knocking at my door. A fragile, pallid man in black coat and gloves smiled a thin smile at me.

     "I have some news about the dragonship." He pushed into the room, heading for the drawings.

     "What sort?" I asked, snatching up the drawings before he could reach them.

     "You know of the Kag-Ydor stone?" When I nodded, he continued. "You can not pursue it further, Dr. Abbingdon-Hyde," his voice oilly, his expression supple. "I am here for your own protection. You are entering an endeavor that certain parties will find--distressing?"

     "And you're?" I asked.

     "Hinge from the Levatsky Museum. You know of us."

     "Why are you in Oslo?"

     "Purely for your own welfare. Now, if you'll give me the drawings..."

     "Now, I find that idea distressing," I warned.

     "Just a formality," he shook his head slowly. "Dr. Lundholm, the dear man, gave us the stone-just before he died." He let that sink in, then suddenly snatched me up by my collar above his head with a viscious unnatural power.

     "You have been warned, puny lump of excrement! My master has bade you cease your inquiry!"

     I sputtered helplessly; he smiled his thin, evil smile.

     "Return to Emmetsburg, my dear Professor! Go back and stay there!" He hurled me across the room into a chair and left.

     I have been in Iowa pouring over drawings and books for two months, hunting down the story of the stone. Before the Norse, it came from the Slavs. Before the Slavs, the Goths. Before the Goths, the Romans hid it in an nameless shrine near Constantinople. Before the Romans, it was an altarstone used by the Celtic colonists in Turkey called "Galatians". Before Galatia, it was in Baktria. And before that-Sumer, where the cuneiform fragments call it "The Tablet of K'dhor".

     Now the stone lies in Iowa. The Viking crew's fate and whether they bore the stone as talisman or curse remains shrouded by time. Suffice it to say, Hinge knows I am searching. And suffice it to say, my dreams crawl with dragon heads and his pallid, smiling face.