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

King SWEYN ‘FORKBEARD’ IVARSON was Prince SVEINALD (Sviatoslav) of KIEV

I have just posted a first draft of Chapter 19,  ‘KING HARALD “BLUE TOOTH’S” END’ of “The Saga of Svein ‘the Old’ Ivarson” Book Four to the website SeiberTeck.com under the Book Heading of that name.

Book 4, Chapter 19, ‘KING HARALD “BLUE TOOTH’S” END’  (Circa 986 AD):

Please Note: This website is about Vikings and Varangians and the way they lived over a thousand years ago.  The content is as explicit as Vikings of that time were and scenes of violence and sexuality are depicted without reservation or apology.  Reader discretion is advised.

The goddess Irpa is slow to leave the body of the witch, Hallveig, and her five Jomsviking captives from the Battle of Hjorungavagr are tasked with each impregnating her so that she will soon be blessed with quintuplets.  Prince Sweyn wryly remarks to her apprentice Emma, “It’s a good trick if she can pull it off!”  Meanwhile, two mobile legions from Hraes’ arrive in Lade so, Sweyn takes them south to Denmark to claim the throne from his usurper nephew, King Harald ‘Blue Tooth’ Gormson, and Harald soon flees with his fleet to Jomsborg, leaving his palace in Roskilde at the mercy of Sweyn.  His queen and children have been left behind in the panic of Harald’s flight and ‘King’ Sweyn helps himself to Queen Gyritha and her daughter, Princess Gunhilde.

Word is sent to King Sweyn that his forces have trapped Harald’s fleet in a bay on the island of Jom so, he gathers up additional forces and heads to the Isle of the Jomsvikings to do battle, but a treacherous Jomsviking murders Harald ‘Blue Tooth’ and the battle is not required.  Sweyn buries Harald in the Christian fashion at the head of the fjord and secretly takes Harald’s head off with him.  He returns to Roskilde and marries his new wives in the Aesir fashion and brings in his old wives from Lade and Kiev.  Then he sets about reverting Denmark to the pagan faith of old.  Christian churches are burned and sacred groves and halls are reopened and Odin, Thor and Tyr are the main gods worshipped by the Danes and most did not complain.

King Sweyn and Prince Valdamar lead the merchant fleet east through Hraes’ to Constantinople and King Sweyn presents the Roman Emperors with the head of the dead King Harald to prove he is now king there and he even lifts a lip to display the famous ‘Blue Tooth’ to the Porphyrogennetos royals.  Then he demands the co-Emperorship he was promised fourteen years earlier for defeating the Bulgarians for them.  Emperor Basil told Sweyn they would have to deliberate on the request and Constantine asked Sweyn if he could put down a rebellion for them in Anatolia and they agree upon a sum of fifteen thousand Roman pounds of gold, the ‘Red Gold of Byzantium’.  He must bring them back the head of the rogue Armenian general, Bardas Skleros.

While Sweyn is searching Anatolia for the errant general, Emperor Constantine leads four Roman legions into the mountains of Bulgaria to attack their capital of Sofia and he gets caught up in an ambush and barely makes it out of the mountains with his life.  His four legions aren’t so lucky and are slaughtered in a mountain pass.  Only the Bulgar’s latent fear of Svein ‘the Brave’ Ivarson keeps the Bulgarians from attacking Constantinople.  But the treachery of the Emperors causes King Sweyn and Prince Valdamar to attack and lay siege to the Roman city of Cherson in southern Hraes’.

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.