I have just posted a first draft of Chapter 0.1  THE BIRTH OF SVEIN ‘THE OLD’ IVARSON  (Circa 943 AD) of “The Saga of Svein ‘the Old’ Ivarson” Book to the website SeiberTeck.com under the Book Heading of that name.

IVAR the BONELESS was PRINCE IVAR (Igor) of KIEV and his son SVEIN ‘the OLD’ IVARSON was PRINCE SVEINALD (Sviatoslav) of KIEV and KING SWEYN FORKBEARD of DENMARK

In the prior Book 3, “The Saga of Ivar ‘the Boneless’ Hraerikson”, we set out to show, using the Russian Primary Chronicle and extant Scandinavian Sagas, that Prince Ivar (Igor) Rurikson of Kiev left Russia to become King Harde Knute the 1st of Denmark, made an Anglish Princess Blaeja his queen and had a son, King Gorm ‘the Old’ Knutson there before returning to Russia to father Svein ‘the Old’ Ivarson with his first wife, Swedish Princess Helga (Olga) of Kiev.  Shortly after the birth of his second son, Prince Ivar died of the plague while fighting in the middle east, in Khazaria, leaving Princess Helga to raise young Prince Sveinald (Sviatoslav) on her own.  The Russian Primary Chronicle, Book Six of the Nine Books of Danish History and the Swedish Saga of Ingvar the Traveler were used as the main sources in reconstructing the life of Ivar ‘the Boneless’ Hraerikson in a manner that illustrates how young Scandinavian Rus’ Princes retired as middle aged Danish Kings after passing on the lucrative Rus’ ‘Southern Way’ trade route to their scions.

In Book 4, we shall be illustrating how Prince Sveinald (Sviatoslav) Ivarson of Kiev was raised by his mother, then rejected her newfound Christian values, to become the fiercest Varangian warrior Prince of Russian history.  He started his rule by attacking Khazaria, took a break from that to defeat the Bulgarian Empire, then returned to absolutely annihilate the Khazar Empire.  He then returned to Bulgaria and defeated the Latin Christians of Wallachia before attacking the Eastern Roman Empire.  He was finally defeated by the Romans and was forced to leave the land of Rus’ in the hands of his three sons and he went to Denmark where he learned that his half brother, King Gorm ‘the Old’, had died and he laid claim to the throne, which had been usurped by Gorm’s son, King Harald Bluetooth.  Sveinald fled Denmark for Norway and called himself King Sweyn Forkbeard while promoting his claim to the Danish throne from Trondheim.

If the Romans could barely contain Svein, the Danes didn’t have a hope in Hades of stopping him and eventually he killed King Harald and took the throne of Denmark for himself.  King Sweyn then attacked and conquered England in 1013 and died there in 1014.  His son, Grand Prince Valdamar (Vladimir) ‘the Great’ of Kiev then laid claim to the English throne and conquered England in 1016, ruling it until his death in 1035 as King Canute ‘the Great’ of England, Denmark and Norway.

But let us start first with his birth in Kiev in 943…

Book Three, “The Saga of Ivar ‘the Boneless’ Hraerikson,” reveals how Ivar the Boneless Ragnarson was actually Prince Eyfur/Ivar (Slavic: Igor) 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 Ivar’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”.

Book Four, “The Saga of Svein ‘the Old’ Ivarson,” demonstrates how Prince Svein ‘the Old’ (Slavic: Sviatoslav ‘the Brave’) of Kiev later moved to Norway and fought to become King Sweyn Forkbeard of Denmark.  But before being forced out of Russia, he sated his battle lust by crushing the Khazars and attacking the great great grandfather of Vlad the Impaler in a bloody campaign into the Heart of Darkness of Wallachia against the Army of the Impalers and their 666 salute.  The campaign was so mortifying that the fifteen thousand pounds of gold that the Emperor of Constantinople paid him to attack them seemed not nearly enough, so Prince Svein attacked the Eastern Roman Empire itself.  He came so close to defeating the greatest empire in the world, that later Danish Christian Kings would call his saga, and the sagas of his kin, “The Lying Sagas of Denmark” and set out to destroy them.