Book 7, Chapter 5.0, King Canute Becomes King of All England (Circa 1017 AD), Excerpts:
(1017) Duke Richard of Normandy was the first foreign ruler to congratulate King Canute on his victory at the Battle of Assandun, and the first to offer him condolences on the sudden death of his co-king of all England, and the first to offer King Canute a marriage of alliance.
The Duke arrived in Southampton to visit his sister, Queen Emma of England, and they proceeded to Winchester to visit with King Canute. After pleasantries, Duke Richard got right down to business. “Now that King Edmund is dead and there is no longer two kings,” he began, “you shall have to marry my sister so she can continue on as Queen of England. And I would like to marry one of your daughters from Kiev as recompense for losing my sister.”
“I am already married to Princess Aelfgifu,” King Canute countered, “and I have taken up your Latin Christian faith that allows me but one wife. Princess Aelfgifu has no problem with Emma of Normandy remaining Queen of England.”
“Well,” the duke went on, “my sister is in ‘the way’ and I hold you responsible. I’ll not have her raising a ‘bastard’ and if she is to marry and stay queen, it is you she must marry.”
King Canute lorded over Wessex from Winchester, as he wanted to keep a firm hand on the rebellious Saxons there, but he allowed Earl Eadric to continue running Mercia from Oxford as always, and he’d already given Jarl Eirik Northumbria to rule from York and he gave East Anglia to Jarl Thorkel ‘the Tall’ to run from London. He also gave Eirik’s son, Jarl Haakon, Castle Gainsborough and surrounding area to run for him. He picked a young Saxon earl named Godwin from Sussex to help him run Wessex and Jarl Sigvald and his Jomsvikings continued to run Kent from Canterbury.
When Prince Hraerik and Queen Emma came up from Southampton to visit, Canute went through his new plan with them. Nobody came to the earl’s defence; there was no defending ‘the Grasper’. Then Valdy told Hraerik that he was going to follow his advice and find Princess Gyda a husband. Queen Emma mentioned a few young earls and princes in Southampton and Kent that were available and Valdy added them to the list of Mercian earls that Aelfgifu had given him and while they were discussing the best likely candidates, Earl Godwin arrived at Winchester palace from Sussex and he saw Princess Gyda playing with children in the palace gardens and he instantly fell in love with her. She was lovely and looked so gentle surrounded by the young children; he had no idea she was a trained assassin.
I have just posted a first draft of Chapter 5.0, King Canute Becomes King of All England (Circa 1017 AD),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.
“Aesir witches are the best!” she admitted. “My mother fashioned herself a Vanir witch. She professed to being Roman. She told me we were Londoners from way back. Our forefather had guarded the stone walls of London long before the new fyrds of London did during your sieges.”
“I imagine he guarded them just as fiercely. Did he take a wife here?” Valdy asked, brushing her hair back once more. He knew that she had been a whore on the wharfs of London, the daughter of a mother and daughter team that had gained repute for their acting and role playing while servicing sailors. Enough to gain the attention of King Athelred, who had frequented the Thames whore houses long before he had met Queen Emma.
“He retired here in London after his twenty years’ service and he took a Briton girl to wife,” she started. “He got land just outside the city, more land than if he had retired in Rome, and he ran a farm worked by British slaves. When the Angles came from Jutland and conquered the Britons after the Romans had left, he became the slave of his Anglish lord and just continued working his lord’s farm with his Briton slaves. He no longer lived in London, but many Londoners lived outside London at that time. When his offspring finally managed to get back into London, it was as Anglish slaves and we worked our way up to being whores. But by then, Londoners were not just Angles anymore. They were Britons and Romans and Angles and Saxons. They were Londoners. That is why the fierce fyrds of London, as you call them, never left their duty on the walls of London to fight elsewhere in England. They were always Londoners first. If you want to rule England, my king,” and she paused a moment for a look that would allow her to go on, and Valdy nodded to pry more from her, “you must first rule the Londoners, and for that, you must live here.”
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 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.
SeiberTeck: 'The Varangians Series' 