IVAR the BONELESS was PRINCE IVAR (Igor) of KIEV and his son

SVEIN ‘the OLD’ IVARSON was PRINCE SVEINALD (Sviatoslav) of KIEV

I have just posted a first draft of Chapter 12,  ‘THE PARTITIONING OF HRAES’ ’ of “The Saga of Svein ‘the Old’ Ivarson” Book to the website SeiberTeck.com under the Book Heading of that name.

World Warming Period of 1000 AD from Wiki and J. Esper et al

Book 4, Chapter 12, THE PARTITIONING OF HRAES’  (Circa 972-974 AD): 

When Prince Sveinald left Bulgaria, he took his gold and his legions to Tmutorokan and he and Princess Svia overwintered there with Prince Hraerik and Queen Silkisif.  In the early spring, Prince Svein took his three legions north to Kiev, but he had been warned by the Romans that the Khazars had paid eastern Pechenegs to attack him on his way home.  On the way up the Dnieper River he visited his Pecheneg ally, Kagan Baitzas of the Yavdi Erdem Pechenegs and he apologized for the loss of all the Pecheneg warriors at the Battle of Arcadiopolis.  “You were at your mother’s deathbed,” the Kagan said.  “Things would have been different,” Svein assured him, “had I been there.”  The kagan looked Svein in the eye and said, “At least your Count Vlad made the Romans pay for their treachery, life for life,” and he warned Svein that Kagan Kurya of the eastern Pechenegs was waiting with his horde north of the rapids.

Prince Svein met Kagan Kurya’s horde just north of the rapids and slaughtered half of them in a brilliantly deceptive stratagem and accepted the surrender of the rest and he gave them land in Khazaria.  In the Russian Primary Chronicle there are two Prince Sveins existing, Sviatoslav (Svein ‘the Slav’ – Svein’s Slavic name) and Sveinald (Svein ‘the Old’ – Svein’s Norse name) and Sviatoslav dies in battle fighting the Pechenegs while Sveinald survives and makes it back to Kiev.  In this tale, Kagan Kurya of the Pechenegs makes a gold encrusted drinking goblet of Prince Sviatoslav’s skull, but, as stated previously, I think we have sufficiently illustrated that golden skull cups were a Bulgarian thing (ie: Emperor Nikephoros the First was beheaded by Kagan Krum of the Bulgars and his skull was turned into a gold encrusted drinking cup a hundred and fifty years earlier).  The Nestorian monks of the Russian chronicles have fallen into a nasty habit of killing off any Hraes’ Princes or Princesses who leave their respective territories.  And, while not wanting to ‘dis’ ancient Christian writers, perhaps Nestor could have found a more original form of death for Sviatoslav than ripping off Emperor Nikephoros’ fated skull cup death.  I have worked a skull cup into the story, but it is made of the skull of Tzar Peter of Bulgaria and only Prince Svein knows there is a skull under all that gold plate.  Like I said, golden skull cups were a Bulgar thing. 

When Prince Svein arrived in Kiev, his sons thought that he would take back the lands he had given them but he didn’t.  He left Prince Ivar in Kiev to rule the Poljane with Hraerik’s wife, Princess Serah, as his guardian, then he took Prince Helgi to Chernigov and left him there with Princess Svia to rule the Drevjane and then he took the baby, Prince Valdamar, to Novgorod with his mother, Princess Malfrieda, to rule the Ilmen Slavs.  He spent some time in Hraes’ learning the craft of being a merchant and then he left for Liere in Denmark.

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.