IVAR the BONELESS was PRINCE IGOR of KIEV

I have just posted a first draft of Chapter 24 The Indus Valley Trade Route of “The Saga of Ivar ‘the Boneless’ Hraerikson” Book to the website SeiberTeck.com under the Book Heading of that name.

The new chapter finds Prince Ivar in Baghdad meeting Prince Rajan of Gujarat who has agreed to help Ivar set up a Varangian trade Route to India.  They will be following in the footsteps of Sinbad the Sailor, the Baghdad merchant who made seven voyages to India, all with saga like adventures.  I was hesitant about depicting Vikings as having visited India, but in my first research efforts I found an Indian website in which Jat Indians claim their origins to be from Jutland in Denmark!  Quite amazing, I thought.  It gave me a good starting point.

When Rajan first met Ivar in Baghdad, he told him that they both worshipped the same gods, so when they go to India we explore the similarities between the Odin, Thor, Tyr/Freya tripartite gods of the Heathen religion and the Brahma, Indra/Shiva, Vishnu tripartite gods of the Hindu religion.  We also touch on the Caste system and how it may have developed through a sequence of invasions and we look briefly at how the sequence of invasions of Britain had the potential of establishing a Caste system.  Some say the Jats may have worked their way up the Caste system and Prince Ivar is pleasantly surprised by one method of accomplishing this.

The Varangians return to Baghdad just in time to connect with the other Hraes’ and Viking merchants returning to the northern lands, but there are problems that must be overcome.  Prince Hraerik has been building a new Rioni/Kura Rivers portage route from the Black Sea to the Caspian Sea, but has been held up by military transgressions from the city of Tiflis.  And the Eastern Roman Empire is demanding tithes and duties be paid for goods transported across their lands by the Hraes’.  Prince Ivar wants to attack the Romans in Constantinople, but Prince Hraerik would prefer to take the fight to the Armenians of Tiflis, so he can get the trade route completed and return to Tmutorokan.  Compromises are made and a battle is fought and the newly hired General Sun Wu of the Tang Dynasty proves his worth.

Book Three, “The Saga of Ivar ‘the Boneless’ Hraerikson,” reveals how Ivar the Boneless Ragnarson was actually Prince Eyfur/Ivar (Igor in Slavic) Hraerikson of Kiev and then King Harde Knute of Denmark. By comparing a twenty year lacuna in the reign of Prince Igor in the Russian Chronicles with a coinciding twenty year appearance of a King Harde Knute (Hard Knot) of Denmark in European Chronicles, Prince Igor’s ‘death by sprung trees’, which reportedly tore his legs off, may have rather just left him a boneless and very angry young king. Loyal Danes claimed, “It was a hard knot indeed that sprung those trees,” but his conquered English subjects, not being quite as polite, just called him, “Ivar the Boneless”.