King Canute ‘the Great’ Sweynson was Prince Valdamar ‘the Great’ Sveinson

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I have just posted a first draft of Chapter 1.0,  ‘Prince Hraerik, The Magi Assassin’ of Book Seven of ‘The Lying Sagas of Denmark’ Series, “The Saga of King Canute ‘the Great’ Sweynson” to the website SeiberTeck.com under the Book Seven Heading.

Book 7, Chapter 1.0,  Prince Hraerik, The Magi Assassin  (Circa 1014 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.

Prince Hraerik sailed his Roman Dromon through the Pillars of Hercules into the Mediterranean Sea and immediately had his crew set up bright bronze Greek Fire tubes at the fore and aft of his ship.  The tubes had hoses that ran from them to below deck and not much more than that.  The Eastern Roman fire weapon was so feared by all that Hraerik had learned that just the sight of the bronze tubes was enough to keep away pirates and most Arab fleets.  Only the Romans wouldn’t be fooled by the ploy.  He met his grandson, Prince Valdamar in Baghdad and learned that Prince Harald, Valdy’s half-brother, had claimed the Danish throne for himself, so, in less than a year, Valdamar had lost both the English and Danish crowns that he had been entitled to inherit from his father, the late King Sweyn.  Hraerik tells him to be patient and let the Unicorn scorn pole he had erected in England do its work.  The Prince had foreseen terrible things that were to happen to England over the next year, so he knew the magic curse would bring terror to the Angles and Saxons there.

While in Baghdad, Hraerik had his trading agent, Saleem, track down a Zombie drug he had learned about through the Alchemists’ Guild.  He needed the drug and the antidote to execute a hit on a powerful leader who would live in a future time period.  His Indian wife, Myia, in Mumba was also tracking down the drug through the Guild in India.  It would be needed for an Aesir magic that allowed the spirit to leave the body for short periods of time, but it was very dangerous and could prove fatal if the spirit did not make it back in time.  But millions of future lives were at stake, so the effort was well worth the risk.  The Prince was being guided by the ghost of Princess Blaeja of York, the wife in a past life, of Hraerik’s son, Arrow Odd.  But a powerful Guild master had become involved in the drug acquisition and things got complicated really fast.

It is surprising just how much magic was involved in the Aesir tripartite gods religion, the Odin-Thor-Freya religion of the Scandinavians, but the sister religions, the Roman Vanir tripartite Jupiter-Mars-Mercury religion, and the Indian Brahman tripartite Brahma-Indra-Vishnu religion were also steeped in the witchcraft of the Magis, the magicians, of Persia.  The Vikings who attacked Spain were called Magis by their victims because they followed the religion of Magi witchcraft.  And the Viking Sagas, though cleansed somewhat by Christian writers and copyists, retain some, though not all, of the witchcraft of ancient times.  Therefore, it is only fitting that some of that witchcraft be gleaned from the sagas and writings that this series is based upon and be explored in areas it may have been employed.  It is hard to believe that people back then actually believed in witchcraft, but many Vikings lived and died by it.

Please Note: I shall begin posting Book Seven of my five book series, “The Saga of Canute ‘the Great’ Sweynson” to this website immediately. I know it sounds odd to be posting a book seven in a five book series, but I had to break up Book Four into Books Four, Five and Six because it was just getting too large. This shall be reflected in the final draft of the series. Overall, writing the seven books has provided me with an insight into the lives of the Varangian Rus’ that I had not expected to find. There is ample extant evidence to support the proposal that, not only did Saxo Grammaticus write the original ‘Hamlet’, but his Nine Books of Danish History also describes the Danish founding of Kievan Rus’ and that the Danes of King Frodi ‘the Peaceful’ were the original Varangians from across the sea that the Kievan Rus’ Primary Chronicle describes. This book series has taken on a life of its own and, once a few key discoveries were made, the lives of Ragnar Lothbrok, his sons, Erik and Roller, and their sons, Helgi ‘Arrow Odd’ and Ivar ‘the Boneless’ just fell into place. The following generation of Prince Svein ‘the Old’ Ivarson of Kiev and King Gorm ‘the Old’ Ivarson of Denmark metamorphized into a battle of King Sweyn ‘Forkbeard’ of Kiev and Lade against King Harald ‘Blue Tooth’ Gormson of Denmark that drew out to such length that when Prince Valdamar ‘the Great’ Sveinson of Kiev morphed into King Canute ‘the Great’ Sweynson of England, the father’s and son’s lives were too intermixed to be kept separate.

‘The VARANGIANS’ Series (AKA ‘The Lying Sagas of Denmark’ Series):

‘The Varangians’ series (‘AKA ‘The Lying Sagas of Denmark’ series) of five (seven) books is about the Danish Varangian Princes of early Rus’ (Ukraine), based on The Nine Books of Danish History of Saxo Grammaticus and the Rus’ Primary Chronicle of Nestor.  The Rus’ monk Nestor asserts that Rus’ was founded by three brothers, Rurik, Sineus and Truvor, but the Danish names in Book 5 of Saxo’s work are Erik, Sigfrodi (King Frodi) and Roller, three brothers from Denmark and Norway.

Book One of the five book Varangians Series places the Saga of King Frodi the Peaceful from Book Five of The First Nine Books of the Danish History of Saxo Grammaticus (c. 1200) into its proper chronological location in history.  In 1984, when I first started the book, I had placed the main character, Erik’s (Hraerik’s) birth at circa 800 CE, but have since revised it to 810 to better fit with the timelines of the following books in the series.  Saxo had originally placed the saga at the time of Christ’s birth and later experts have placed the story at about 400 CE to correspond with the arrival of the Huns on the European scene but when Attila was driven back to Asia, the Huns didn’t just disappear, they joined the Khazar Empire north of the Caspian Sea and helped the Khazars control the western end of the famous Silk Road trade route.

When King Frodi’s Danes started their ninth century ‘Southern Way’ incursions into the rivers of present day Russia, they ran into the Khazar Khaganate that was controlling Silk Road trade there and cooperation looked promising when he married King Hun’s daughter, Princess Hanund.  But she cheated on him and he sent her back to Khazaria in disgrace and things got ugly, fast.  Two Norwegian princes, Hraerik and Hraelauger Hraegunarson, sons of the famous Hraegunar Lothbrok, visited Frodi’s court in Liere with a dangerous plan to protect their own Nor’Way trade route to Khazaria, but that plan changed when Prince Hraerik fell in love with and married Princess Gunwar, King Frodi’s sister.

When news arrived in Liere that the Huns planned to attack Denmark, Prince Hraerik convinced King Frodi to assemble a Varangian Army of the North and lead a pre-emptive strike against the Khazar Empire.  Following the capture of Kiev, the three brothers, Frodi, Hraerik and Hraelauger established the Hraes’ (Rus’) Trading Company and built an empire that exists in many forms to this very day, including Russia, Normandy, Great Britain and L’Anse Aux Meadows in America.  The wealth of the Hraes’ Trading Empire they created powered the prolific Viking expansion in Medieval Europe that still fascinates us today.

Book One, “The Saga of Hraerik ‘Bragi’ Hraegunarson,” recreates Book Five of Saxo’s work to illuminate the origins of the name Rus’ and how it evolved from Hraes’ in ninth century Russia and how the name Varangians originally meant Va Rangers or Way Wanderers of the Nor’Way.  The book examines the death of Princess Gunwar (Hervor) at the hands of the Hunnish Prince Hlod and how it drives Prince Hraerik ‘Bragi the Old’ Hraegunarson (Hraegunar Lothbrok’s son) to write a famous poem of praise that both saves his head and rallies the northern kingdoms to fight the infamous Battle of the Goths and the Huns on the Don Plain of Gardariki (Gnita Heath of Tmutorokan).

Book Two, “The Saga of Helgi ‘Arrow Odd’ Hraerikson,” recreates Arrow Odd’s Saga of c. 1200 to illustrate how Arrow Odd was Prince Helgi (Oleg in Slavic) Hraerikson of Kiev, by showing that their identical deaths from the bite of a snake was more than just coincidence.  The book investigates the true death of Hraegunar Lothbrok by poisoned blood-snakes (kenning for swords) and how his curse of ‘calling his young porkers to avenge the old boar’ sets up a death spiral between swine (Sveinald) and snakes (Gorm ‘the Old’) that lasts for generations.  It then goes on to depict the famous Battle of the Berserks on Samso, where Arrow Odd and Hjalmar the Brave slay the twelve berserk grandsons of King Frodi on the Danish Island of Samso, setting up a death struggle that takes the Great Pagan Army of the Danes from the ravaged coast of Norway to England and on to Helluland in Saint Brendan’s Newfoundland.

Book Three, “The Saga of Ivar ‘the Boneless’ Hraerikson,” reveals how Ivar ‘the Boneless’ Ragnarson was actually Prince Eyfur (Ivar in Danish, 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 I (Hard Knot or Knytling) 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, called him, Ivar ‘the Boneless’. And the Danish ‘Knytling’ line of kings carried on for ‘the Old’ Fridleif/Frodi line of kings.

Books Four, Five and Six, “The Saga of Svein ‘the Old’ Ivarson“, “The Saga of Valdamar ‘the Great’ Sveinson” and “The Saga of Sweyn ‘Forkbeard’ Ivarson” demonstrate how Prince Sviatoslav ‘the Brave’ of Kiev was really Prince Svein Ivarson of Kiev, who later moved to Norway and fought to become King Sweyn ‘Forkbeard’ of Denmark and England.  But before being forced out of Russia, the Swine Prince 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 that seemed to herald the coming of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse with the 666 Salute of the Army of the Impalers.  The campaign was so mortifying that the fifteen thousand pounds of gold that the Emperor of Constantinople paid him to attack the Army of the Impalers 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 would set out to destroy them, claiming that, “true Christians will never read this saga”.

Book Seven, “The Saga of Canute ‘the Great’ Sweynson”, establishes how Grand Prince Vladimir ‘the Great’ of Kiev was also known as Prince Valdamar Sveinson of Gardar, who supported his father, Sweyn ‘Forkbeard’, in attacks upon England and later became King Canute ‘the Great’ of England and also King Knute ‘the Great’ of Denmark and Norway.  Unlike his father, he came to the aid of a Roman Emperor, leading six thousand picked Varangian cataphracts against Anatolian rebels, and was rewarded with the hand of Princess Anna Porphyrogennetos, a true Roman Princess born of the purple who could trace her bloodline back to Julius and Augustus Caesar.  She was called Czarina, and after her, all Rus’ Grand Princes were called Czars and their offspring were sought matrimonially by European royalty.

Conclusion:

By recreating the lives of four generations of Russian Princes and exhibiting how each generation, in succession, later ascended to their inherited thrones in Denmark, the author proves the parallels of the dual rules of Russian Princes and Danish Kings to be cumulatively more than just coincidence.  And the author proves that the Danish Kings Harde Knute I, Gorm ‘the Old’ and Harald ‘Bluetooth’ Gormson/Sweyn ‘Forkbeard’ were not Stranger Kings, but were Danes of the Old Jelling Skioldung Fridlief/Frodi line of kings who only began their princely careers in Rus’ and returned to their kingly duties in Denmark with a lot of Byzantine Roman ideas and heavy cavalry and cataphracts.