Chapter 3

"Not all warriors fight on the battlefield with sword in hand. A sailor makes his living battling the sea!"

- Leif Ericson

Beyond the Edge of the Sea (海の果ての果て) is the 3rd chapter of the Vinland Saga series.

Overview
Leif Ericson, visiting Iceland in 1002 A.D., tells a group of children about his voyage to a land far to the west, which he has named Vinland. Once Thorfinn's father Thors arrives home, the story is finished and Ari is tasked with walking the children home to rest. With the kids gone, Leif and Thors talk about the freezing weather in Greenland. The following day, while shovelling snow off their roof after a snowstorm, Ylva falls down and finds an unconscious and frostbitten slave buried in the snow. Out on the docks, Leif tells Thorfinn more stories about his past. Thorfinn angrily runs home when Leif tells him their ancestors had run away to Iceland a long time ago to escape the grasp of the heavy-handed King Harald, who had conquered their native Norway. Thors tries to resuscitate the unconscious slave in his home. The slave manages to awaken and reveals that he has run away from his owner, Halfdan, but has nowhere to go. Thors is asked to go to the docks to talk down Halfdan, who has just arrived by boat in search of his runaway slave.

Summary
In Iceland, 1002 A.D., Leif Ericson sits in Thors and Helga's home in a headdress, smoking a pipe and telling Thorfinn, Ari and other village children of his past feats. Thorfinn listens on in amazement as Leif tells them about his discovery of Vinland, a new land to be settled far across the sea to the west. The children excitedly ask him questions and he tells them Vinland is warmer than Iceland, immeasurably bigger, and full of forests and meadows ready to be grazed. He mentions his group met Skraelings - short of stature, black-haired and eyed and bearing stone spears, fascinated by their whiskers as their men could not grow them. Although they could not understand each other, they became fast friends. Their chieftain was the one who personally gifted Leif his headdress and pipe, which are only worn by true warriors.

As Thorfinn takes a closer look at Leif's headdress, Thors arrives inside, surprised the children are still awake. Helga tells him she wanted to let them hear Leif's stories. Thorfinn calls Leif amazing and Leif, who calls him smart, asks him if he'll ride on his ship when he grows up. Frustrated, Thorfinn asks why he can't sail with him now and mentions his father also says he has to grow up first. Another village child tells Leif his story doesn't make sense, as his grandfather told him the great serpent Jörmungand swallows the ships that venture too far west, and that beyond, the sea disappears into nothingness. He says Leif is not even a warrior. Leif clarifies that not all warriors yield swords and battle - he, for example, made his living battling the sea. The children laugh, saying everyone says Leif is a "big kid with whiskers" who goes on adventures and is useless in real fights. Leif asks if Thorfinn believes him. Thorfinn hesitantly replies that Leif must be a warrior if his father Thors says so. Leif asks Thors to set the record straight, since the children will apparently believe him. Thors tells the children it is time for bed and asks the older Ari if he can walk them home. The scene cuts to a lightly dressed man, trudging through a snowstorm with a broken chain hanging from his neck.

Inside, Thors, Leif and Helga discuss by the fire. Leif tells them the people are freezing in Greenland. He predicts a fiercer cold snap, likely caused by the weaker warm currents, will occur and probably lead to a large loss of livestock. Thors notes they have not suffered any major damage from the cold in Iceland yet, and wonders if the cold will continue to get worse as the years go on. Ylva enters, leading in two sheep that were taking chill to prevent them from dying in their pen out in the cold. Leif asks her to sit down and says he will warm her up, but she refuses and calls him a lecher. Ylva tells her mother she will do the rest and tells her to go to bed before she catches another cold, but Helga insists on helping with the sheep. Leif and Thors note things are not much easier in Iceland. Leif tells Thors that his brother Thorvald is making plans to leave Greenland. In the next room, Thorfinn dreams that he is on a boat, sailing west to Vinland when his crew is attacked by Jörmungand. Thorfinn, in the clutches of the serpent, tells his crew to go on without him as he attacks. He wakes up being squeezed by his older sister Ylva, who had snuck into his already warmed bed instead of using her own cold one. Annoyed at her, he notices the adults are still up and talking in the other room. Ylva tells him not to worry about it, as worrying is the grown-ups' job. The next morning, Thors and Ylva are up on the roof, shovelling off the accumulated snow. Ylva laments about the work and asks her father why he does not simply buy a slave, noting Ari's family has three and that she has a lot to do with Helga being sickly. Thors replies that they can manage between the four of them and that it is not their way. Ylva calls him eccentric and notes that it is really the labour of three, as Thorfinn is still very young and can only do a limited share of the chores. Ylva falls off the roof, scaring Thors, but her fall is luckily cushioned by a snow bank. Noticing she has fallen on something, she digs, finding a frozen man in the snow. Thors carries the man Ylva found in the snow into the house and asks Helga and Ylva to boil water, stoke the fire and bring in furs to warm him. Ylva remarks that the man already looks dead, as his limbs are rotting and he's not breathing, and that besides, he is bad news. Looking at the broken chain around his neck, she deduces he is a runaway slave from the nearest village over the mountain, which means they will be in trouble if someone comes looking for him and finds out they helped him.

Near the shore, Leif is doing maintenance on his knarr while Thorfinn sits nearby and questions him about how much of his stories are true. Leif says that they are all true and Thorfinn asks to ride on his ship, saying he'll believe it once he sees Vinland for himself. Leif tells him that's not what believing means and says he can always just ride his father's ship, a faster and bigger dragon-headed longship. Thorfinn grumbles that his father is no fun and says no every time he asks. Leif replies that his father just knows he does not have the strength to fight against the deadly sea yet. He tells Thorfinn of an incident in his youth, when he and his crew ran aground on ice floes near Brattalihd, getting stranded for a month as they were new to Greenland and did not know the sea well enough. He tells Thorfinn they ran out of food quickly and had to resort to eating ice. Thorfinn asks how they survived, and Leif tells him he was the only one of the seven who lived. Their ship crushed by ice, they crossed the treacherous ice on foot to look for land. After two days of walking, Leif turned back to find himself alone. Thorfinn asks Leif why they come so far north to live on a freezing island. Leif tells him that their ancestors lived far to the east in Norway a long time ago, until a powerful man named Harald conquered it and proclaimed himself its first king. Faced with choosing to kneel and serve or leave Norway forever, they ran away from the king's heavy hand and set out across the sea to get away from him, eventually ending up in Iceland, a land still without a king to this day. Thorfinn gets angry at the explanation and calls Leif a liar, saying their ancestors wouldn't have turned tail and ran away from their problems. Thorfinn runs home to ask his father about what really happened and walks in to find Thors giving the runaway slave chest compressions. To everyone's surprise, the slave starts breathing again. Thors inquires about where he is from and where he was going. The slave asks if Thors will take him back to Lord Halfdan's house, saying he does not want to go back there ever again, but does not have anywhere else to go. A village man walks into the house, notifying Thors about Halfdan's ship at the dock and asking him to come along, as he is the only one who can talk him down. At the docks, Leif asks Halfdan why he has come, barging into the port without permission with the dragonhead still attached to his ship, discounting sailor's courtesy. Halfdan replies that his business is a local one that does not concern a Greenlander, and that he believes someone in the village might currently be keeping one of his slaves.

Characters in Order of Appearance

 * Leif Ericson
 * Thorfinn
 * Helga
 * Thors Snorresson
 * Ari
 * Ylva
 * Halfdan