Introducing Asta Beredottir.

Asta, fifteen years in the past, soon sixteen, was such a child as the one her mother now held, death her final lot. She was instead redeemed and presented Bere to be reared as a daughter. Asta's fate, Bere from the first, knew. She had questioned her brother. He told her that Asta, minutes after birth, would have been thrown into the sea, if he had not arranged to take her. Bere knew nothing more,  nothing of the girl's natural parents.
     The hungry newborn wailed. He would not stop. Bere motioned for Asta to have Helge, the nursing woman, come feed the child. Upon entry of the woman, a draft from the open door to the stairs, leading to the kitchen above, stirred the thin fabric framing the inside doorway that overlooked the fjord, lofting it high. Once settled to the floor, a prankster breeze caught it up and fluttered its ends. The draft too, churned the smoke above a hearth fire, in the center of the room. Blue smoke and red sparks drifted upward to the blackened rafters.
     Minutes later, Asta Beredottir settled herself onto a thick pillow of soft sealskin. The pillow was on a narrow, natural-rock bench, against the outside wall of the ledge protruding from the cavern opening. The ledge extended fifteen feet out and was from side to side, approximately twenty feet. It hung over a sixty-foot drop-off ending in jagged rocks and pointed pines. To the left of the cavern door, the ledge gradually sloped downward, and at its end it narrowed until finally a hidden and treacherous, moss-covered starway came into view, descending to an otherwise inaccessible white-sand beach.
     These stairs were now in Asta's thoughts. She had planned this day to take them down to the hidden beach, but with the babe's arrival she'd set the plans aside. She sighed and pulled a rigid pelt onto her lap to make a firm work surface, then tucked her bare feet into the folds of her heavy, gray wool skirt and leaned back against the rock wall. The soft breeze blowing in from the sea and nearer fjord was almost too cold to remain outside. She inhaled deeply, and let her thoughts wander to Thord and their impending marriage. She worked at good speed, without giving the routine thought, as she had mastered the weaving-craft when a very young girl. 
     A seagull cried, and another joined it. The two birds clicked to a noisy landing on the rock wall jutting from the cavern to Asta's right; this outcropping served as a natural barrier on the north perimeter of the ledge. Asta reluctantly pulled her eyes from the small handloom to watch the birds. She was a just this moment tying-off a section of the work, which called for her complete concentration. One of the birds had in its beak something the other wanted. They clashed beaks. She smiled at their antics, but not for long, for she did not care for the gulls, landing on the wall, soiling it with their unsightly waste.
     Later, that morning, Asta and her mother shared a simple meal of barley broth, bread and ale, during which their words turned to Asts's future husband, twenty-eight-year-old Jarl Thord Grimsson, and his whereabouts of which Asta had not been informed. She knew only that he was away from the compound and yards and would not be at evening's meal.