THE SAGA OF PRINCE ERIK ‘BRAGI’ RAGNARSON Has Been Added to The Site Under the New Heading The VARANGIANS / UKRAINIANS Book Series – The True History of ‘The Great Viking Manifestation of Medieval Europe’© and the below Post Covers CHAPTER EIGHT:
BOOK TWO: THE SAGA OF PRINCE ERIK ‘BRAGI’ RAGNARSON
A Novel By Brian Howard Seibert
© Copyright by Brian Howard Seibert
CHAPTER EIGHT
8.0 LANDING AT LIERE (Circa 829 AD)
“Also, as they passed the sand hills, and bade
Him (Amleth) look at the meal, meaning the sand, he
replied that it had been ground small by the hoary
tempests of the ocean.” .
Amleth; Saxo Grammaticus.
(829 AD) The harbour of Liere was a looping exposed crescent of a bay that suffered the wrath of the storms of the sea as direly as any rocky promontory. Its beach was long and wide and scoured of sand, a cobblestone surface etched by wind and wave. But occasionally a storm would blow in from the north that was different from the rest, a slow, dull thudding storm that the Danes called Amlodi, and it would churn up the sea deep down to its bed and drive sand far up onto the beach, and the Danes called this sand Amlodi’s meal. And then smaller storms would come again and glean the shore of sand and return it to the sea–Amlodi’s meal bin.
A small harbour village lined the shore of the bay serving the town of Liere, the house of Danish Royalty, some fifteen miles inland. Longhalls of the merchant companies, large rans of the chieftains and the homes of individuals all crowded along the bay as close to the beach as Amlodi’s salty spray would allow. Their yards and gardens a wattled tapestry of greenery and colour amongst the grey weathered collection of buildings. Beyond the village scruffy little dunes ranged far inland. The scene was sparse, the village spare.
The sun was well past its peak when Fair Faxi slipped into the wide harbour. Erik stood at the forestem of his ship and studied the arrangement of vessels on the shore. He surveyed King Frodi’s naval vessels, dozens and dozens of longships, beached all in a row, ducks out of water, as Fair Faxi glided past them toward the commercial area of the bay. Erik had Roller steer for a spot that was clear and turned and gave the signal to cease rowing. Behind Fair Faxi was the strait between Denmark and Gotland, called The Sound, with rough wind whipped waves surging across her cold expanse. Winter had blown in from the northern sea and there was a chill in the air above the waters and light wisps of snow on the land. The crisp cold took one’s breath away if allowed.
The shore closed and Fair Faxi nudged gently over the beach sand. Erik grasped the forestem, jumped up onto the topstrake and leapt down to the beach, but, miscalculating momentum, pitched forward heavily on landing. He got up off his hands and knees and brushed sand off his pants. Roller jumped down from the ship and landed beside him. “Don’t abase yourself before the Danes,” Roller jested.
“Denmark has a peculiar taste that I find hard not to like,” Erik replied, spitting sand from his lips.
“Here comes the harbour pilot,” said Roller, raising a hand in salute.
“Hoi! Captains!” the rather plump harbour pilot called as he approached. “If you could land yourself as gently as you land your ship, your knees would outlast your keel and your luck would outlast your knees, for as luck would have it, Amlodi has been so kind as to deposit his meal to soften your landing.” And the jolly little harbour master greatly amused himself with his words, for he was an admirer of fine and clever speech.
Erik responded with a clever verse of his own:
“Striking land, the strake-man stumbles, goes a tumbling,
landing on his limbs and liking what he’s striking.
Tripping after trapping treading Frodi’s dreadnought.
Sounds like luck is sending sandy for-get-me-nots.”
“Spoken like a king’s skald,” the harbour master shouted with glee. “I hope your business will keep you about the harbour and not send you off to Liere. King Frodi has all the skalds he’s likely to want, but none, I think, as good as thee. My name is Alfgeir and I’m the harbour master, here to collect your particulars and the beaching fee.”
The brothers explained that they were Norwegian merchants tired of dealing in the rich Nor’Way trade and exploring opportunities in King Frodi’s growing southern route. The harbour master accepted their story and their fee, along with a handsome gratuity of silver Kufas that got them an invitation to stay as his guests in the harbourmaster’s longhall. Erik’s men made a camp of their own on the beach in front of Fair Faxi and there they set up a large merchant tent in which to conduct trade.
It so happened that the naval officer who had led the vigilantes in their search for cattle thieves was stationed in the harbour of Liere under the command of the harbour master and he too lived in the harbourmaster’s longhall. As time went on Einar Cuff became a good friend of both Erik and Roller. Soon great drinking bouts and entertainments were commonplace in the longhall, financed mostly with the silver of the Norwegians. Erik would impress the locals not only with his wealth and goods, but with his poetry and his ancient lore and his tales from the Eastern Realm, so it did not take long for Einar to put two and two together and deduce that this Erik was the Hraerik Bragi of tales seeping out of Norway about a young poet winning a ship by his eloquent tongue. Einar also figured that if Erik was the Hraerik who was King Gotar’s man, then he would most certainly be in Liere for reasons other than trading. He broached his concerns with Alfgeir, who had also grown to like the two Norwegians, and they decided to set themselves straight on this issue. One night, when there had been no entertainments planned, Einar and Alfgeir got into a bout of drinking with Erik and Roller, just the four of them. When they were well into their drinking, Einar made a request of Erik. “Could you recite me a poem, dear friend Hraerik,” he started, “that I’ve heard of, but not heard, and that is popular in the north these days.”
“I am more kenned in ancient verse than popular poems,” Erik confessed, “but I’ll try my best.”
“Could you recite ‘Dream of the Drums of War’?”
Erik and Roller looked at each other; Erik shrugged and began reciting the drapa. He paced both voice and step as he narrated his poem and he walked back and forth along the hearth between the fire and the men. The bright flames were an aura about Erik and his side facing the audience was cloaked in shadows, adding depth to his elocution. When he had finished he said, “And now that you know exactly who we are, let me add that at no time have we lied to you about ourselves, nor have we tried to conceal our identities. We don’t expect you to keep our secret, but we would like to know what your intentions are toward us.”
Einar stood up and replied, “Before we can decide what it is we must do, we must know the true intent of your business here.”
“Officially, we are here as King Gotar’s envoys to your King Frodi to express his sincerest regrets for any Norwegian incursion into Danish territory. Unofficially, we are here to kill the berserker sons of Westmar for the humiliation they suffered upon our father. We do not expect to survive either task.”
“The sons of Westmar were with Sea King Odd when they chased…” Einar Cuff started, then started again…”You are the sons of Ragnar Sigurdson.” The full weight of Erik’s burden flooded over him. “King Odd is dead then,” he continued in amazement. “Odin’s man is no more. And the sons of Westmar are to follow him.” He sat down heavily, and his jaw dropped open with the impact.
Einar and Alfgeir mulled over their situation for some time and then came to the decision to do nothing. Einar did, however, decide to give Erik and Roller a warning of what they were up against by telling them all about King Frodi and the sons of Westmar. If they were going to Liere, there were things they must know.
The high seats of the harbour longhall were empty that night. Erik, Roller, Einar and Alfgeir sat on benches about the roaring fire at the back of the hall near the scullery and the flickering flames of the hearth brought their sober faces to life with highlights and dancing shadows. Einar began his tale in hushed tones, between long draughts of ale, and the deep lines in his cheeks rose and fell like the tide as he struggled with his words. “King Frodi was seven years old,” he started, “when his father, King Fridleif ‘the Swift’, died. Huyrwils bane, he who had burned Dublin, he who had ravaged Britain, was no more. It is difficult to chart the decay of our Denmark, but his death marks the decline. Prince Frodi was elected king, but a struggle over who would be his guardian took place. Westmar was a berserker, and Fridleif’s foremost man, but others, the blood of the royal Danish house, wanted a hand in his upbringing. Whoever controlled Frodi, controlled Denmark, so finally, to keep the peace, it was agreed that a group would raise the young king. Westmar, his brother Koll, Isulf, Agg and eight others were chosen with the idea that Frodi’s mind as well as his body would benefit. But as Frodi grew, his supervision diminished. Some fell out of power, others died, until only Westmar and his brother Koll remained.
“Westmar raised Frodi among his twelve sons, the sons of Gotwar, Koll’s wife. Now it had happened many years before that Koll had married Gotwar and, when she had born him no fruit, it is said that, in a wild drinking session, Koll had challenged Westmar to pry sons from the barren woman. That night Westmar broke into the bedchamber of Gotwar and, with Koll’s help, raped her. In the morning, both men were ashamed of what they had done, but that night of sin had left Gotwar pregnant, so Westmar then assumed responsibilities for her, and the barren Koll dropped his berserker training and became quite the drunk. Gotwar gave birth to triplets at the same time that Fridleif’s wife gave birth to Frodi’s older sister, Princess Gunwar. Westmar named all three Grep in respect of their common birth. And Koll, though displeased with himself, took great pleasure in helping care for the three sons. No one could truly say that they were not his own. Westmar and Gotwar had nine more sons, while Fridleif and his queen had only one more child, Frodi, before she died. After her death, Gotwar raised her queen’s children as her own, so, when Westmar became King Frodi’s guardian, not much had changed.” Einar drank heavily from his cup then continued his tale.
“Now Gotwar is a woman over-proud,” he said, “conceiving herself as a champion of argument, degradation and flygting. It was Gotwar who first instilled in Frodi a deep respect for eloquent speech. She taught him what she knew of poetry and flygting, but King Frodi has never been overly adept at them, preferring to observe rather than participate in flygting competitions.
“After King Fridleif died, Westmar raised Frodi with his twelve sons and attempted to train the young king in the ways of the berserker, as he was training his own boys. But Frodi was a thinker, much smarter than his peers, and he felt that champions should become berserkers while kings should be philosophers. He trained in warfare with his foster-brothers and developed into a splendid warrior and horseman, but he never did acquire the mental intensity necessary to transcend physical limits into the realm of the berserker. The eldest Grep and his brothers, however, were astute apprentices in the art of their father and were closely linked with young Frodi, Grep being his best friend. All had sworn at an early age to be their king’s lifelong champions.
“As Frodi’s elite warriors and champions, Westmar’s sons excelled, but as friends they failed him miserably. The twelve brothers had always been wild and reckless, but, as they grew older, they also became exceedingly cruel. They had no respect at all for the common people and, as their power and control over Frodi increased, so also did their contempt for the local populace. The brothers established an underground rule of terror, operating within Frodi’s superficially peaceful reign. They organized a youthful league of chieftains’ and officers’ sons and initially limited their escapades to wild bouts of drinking and exotic orgies in the confines of military barracks, but as they grew older they grew bolder and soon were conducting vile affairs in the town of Liere, in our harbour town and often in the king’s hall itself. To my knowledge, Frodi has not participated in the immoral activities of his foster-brothers, but he does condone them. Anyway, as the youths became young men, their activities became wilder and wilder. Now their orgies are common affairs compared with the secret ceremonies they hold involving the deflowering of virgins. Young daughters are seduced, bribed, often kidnapped, and forced to participate in the debaucheries. Young men, friends and even brothers of the victims would select the girls of their preference in accordance with their own unstable pecking order and would ply them with wine, forcing the girls to drink to excess. They would then bed two or three young girls at a time and fornicate into the early hours of morning. The next day, they would swap tales of the bloodletting, the vomiting and the general degradation of the women. And if it sounds as though I speak from personal experience,” Einar confessed, staring down deeply into his cup of ale and seeing who knows what wanton sights. “it is because I, too, was one of these moral-less youths until Alfgeir, here, brought me to my senses. But Frodi condones all this and more, for even married women are now kidnapped and subjected to gang rapes. The morality of a whole generation of Danes is being systematically destroyed by young warriors and berserkers with little else to amuse themselves with in this time of peace.”
And now it was Alfgeir’s turn to add to this sorry tale. “Our youth is destroying itself,” he started, “and, when the older generation protests about the sordid morals of our children, our king refuses to constrain his champions and young officers. Numerous old chieftains and warriors have died trying to avenge the outrages to their families. Personal combat is the only recourse left to the people and the sons of Westmar are truly invincible, whether they fight singly or as a group. They are true berserks, the whole lot, and no steel will mark them when they are in their rage. So, the general populace continues to groan and suffer under the rule of young King Frodi.”
“And it is not only the common people that suffer,” Einar said, picking up the story once more. “The eldest Grep, Frodi’s closest friend, eventually tired of this immoderate promiscuity and began to covet the hand of Frodi’s sister, Princess Gunwar ‘the Fair’, but, while our young king’s morals were in decay, his love for his older sister was ever strong and he would not allow her to be approached against her will. And Gunwar, a gentle blossom amongst the raging turmoil of Frodi’s fortress, had only revulsion for Grep and his berserker brothers. She judged them to be wild animals and she hated them. Many of her friends had been accosted and defiled by them and she swore that she would never forgive them. She also did not trust the power Frodi held over them, so she had her own longhall erected and has staffed it with thirty young warrior maidens, training and becoming a shield-maiden herself. Gunwar’s hall is off limits to all Danish soldiery and her Valkyries ensure that this rule is complied with.
“This was but the start of Grep’s excesses. Three years ago, he and Westmar and five of his brothers, along with Gotwar, travelled the southern route and brought Frodi back a wife, Queen Hanund, a princess of the Khazars. No sooner had their wedding been blessed by Freya when Grep engaged upon the seduction of his queen. He plied her with gifts and personal favours and soon rumours of their liaisons were widespread, but King Frodi does not suspect his friend and no one dares to broach the subject with him. Grep remains his best friend, even after his handling of the suitors of fair Princess Gunwar.”
Erik had heard of the terrible murders of the suitors of Gunwar. The tale had swept across the northern lands at the same time it had torn through the Holy Roman Empire.
Einar could see that Erik and Roller had heard of the black deed, but he followed his lead and carried on with his narration, nonetheless. “King Frodi so much enjoyed his new married life that he became determined to find his sister, Gunwar, a husband. Grep volunteered to solicit meritable suitors and he travelled throughout Denmark and Germany gathering up thirty princes and chieftain’s sons, young men of, for the most part, lesser nobility. He staged a great banquet in King Frodi’s hall, where Princess Gunwar met all her potential husbands. She was quite pleased with her prospects, for they were very handsome young men, on the whole. When the festivities were over for the evening, Princess Gunwar retired to her hall and the young men rested on the benches in King Frodi’s longhall. That night Grep and his brothers murdered the young princes in their sleep and they somehow managed to slip undetected into the hall of fair Gunwar and they lined the wainscot of her room with the heads of those they had slain. It was a gory tragedy to which Princess Gunwar awakened the next morn, a horrible nightmare from which she yet suffers. Grep shrugged the incident off by explaining to King Frodi that none of the suitors had been worthy of mixing blood with the descendants of the famed King Fridleif and their Skioldung royal blood. Since that day, Princess Gunwar has hated the sons of Westmar, Grep in particular, and awaits the day she may exact her vengeance. If you may expect help from any quarter in your attack upon these berserks, she is most likely of all to provide you aid.” Thus, Einar ended his tale of warning with the hint of a strategy.
“Can I ask you,” Erik started, “why you are warning us as to the extent of our trial instead of turning us in, as one might have thought?”
“Why…it’s because you have slain King Odd, Hraerik,” Einar Cuff began. “Odin’s fickle support has flipped on Oddi. You must be Odin’s man sent down to save our King Frodi from himself and those about him. Hraegunar Sigurdson is Odin’s man, and I suspect his son is too.”
Pride coursed through Erik at being called the son of Ragnar Sigurdson. But then a shudder of revulsion followed at being called Odin’s man and he said, “I owe allegiance to no gods, living my life by the strength of my arm.”
“Well, the more to you then,” Einar Cuff humoured him. “Slaying Sea King Odd in his own kingdom was no mean feat without help from the gods.”
“We’ve a larger task at hand right now and we thank you for your support. We had better turn in now, for I have a feeling that important occurrences await us on the morrow.”
As Erik and Roller got up and walked to their sleeping benches, Alfgeir turned to Einar and said, “Powerful forces are at work here.”
Chapter 9: CONFRONTATION WITH GREP (Circa 829 AD) of BOOK 2: THE SAGA OF PRINCE ERIK ‘BRAGI’ RAGNARSON shall follow on next Post or may be found under Heading of The VARANGIANS / UKRAINIANS Book Series – The True History of ‘The Great Viking Manifestation of The Middle Ages’© in Book Two: The Saga of Prince Erik ‘Bragi’ Ragnarson.
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 / UKRAINIANS or The Nine Books of Saxo’s Danish History Per Brian Howard Seibert
BOOK ONE: The Saga of King Ragnar ‘Lothbrok’ Sigurdson
King Ragnar ‘Lothbrok’ Sigurdson’s third wife, Princess Aslaug, was a young survivor of the Saga of the Volsungs and was a daughter of King Sigurd ‘the Dragon-Slayer’ Fafnirsbane, so this is where Ragnar’s story begins in almost all the ancient tales (except Saxo’s). In our series, we explore this tail end of the Volsungs Saga because King Sigurd appears to be the first ‘Dragon-Slayer’ and King Ragnar ‘Lothbrok’ would seem to be the second so, it is a good opportunity to postulate the origins of Fire Breathing Dragons and how they were slain. King Ragnar would lose his Zealand Denmark to the Anglish Danes of Jutland, who spoke Anglish, as did the majority of Vikings who attacked England, which spoke both Anglish and Saxon languages, sometimes mistakenly called a common Anglo-Saxon language. The Angles and Saxons of England never really did get along, as shall be demonstrated in the following books. King Ragnar assuaged the loss of Zealand by taking York or Jorvik, the City of the Boar, in Angleland and Stavanger Fjord in Thule from which he established his Nor’Way trade route into Scythia.
BOOK TWO: The Saga of Prince Erik ‘Bragi’ Ragnarson
Book Two of the Nine Book The Varangians / Ukrainians Series places The Saga of Prince Erik ‘Bragi’ Ragnarson from Book Five of The First Nine Books of the Danish History of Saxo Grammaticus (c. 1200 AD) about King Frodi ‘the Peaceful’ into its proper chronological location in history. In 1984, when I first started work on the book, I placed Prince Erik’s birth at circa 800 CE, but it has since been revised to 810 CE to better reflect 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, just north of the Caspian Sea, and helped the Khazars control the western end of the famous Silk Road Trade Route. Princes Erik and Roller, both sons of Ragnar ‘Lothbrok’, sail off to Zealand to avenge their father’s loss, but Erik falls in love with Princess Gunwar, the sister of the Anglish King Frodi of Jutland and, after his successful Battle Upon the Ice, wherein he destroys the House of Westmar, Erik marries Gunwar and both brothers become King Frodi’s foremost men instead, and the story moves on to the founding of Hraes’ and Gardar Ukraine.
BOOK THREE: The Saga of Prince Helgi ‘Arrow Odd’ Erikson
Book Three, The Saga of Prince Helgi ‘Arrow Odd’ Erikson, recreates Arrow Odd’s Saga of circa 1200 AD to illustrate how Arrow Odd was Prince Helgi (Oleg in Slavic) Erikson 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 Ragnar ‘Lothbrok’ by poisoned blood-snakes in York or Jorvik, the ‘City of the Boar’, and how his curse of ‘calling his young porkers to avenge the old boar’ sets up a death spiral between swine and snake that lasts for generations. The book then illustrates the famous Battle of the Berserks on Samso, where Helgi ‘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 Denmark to ravage Norway and then England and on to Helluland in Saint Brendan’s Newfoundland. A surprise cycle of vengeance manifests itself in the ‘death by snakebite’ of Helgi ‘Arrow Odd’.
BOOK FOUR: The Saga of Prince Ivar ‘the Boneless’ Erikson
Book Four, The Saga of Prince Ivar ‘the Boneless’ Erikson, reveals how Ivar ‘the Boneless’ Ragnarson was actually Prince Eyfur or Ivar (Igor in Slavic) Erikson of Kiev and then King Harde Knute ‘the First’ of Denmark. By comparing a twenty year lacuna in the reign of Prince Igor in The Hraes’ Primary Chronicle with a coinciding twenty year appearance of a King Harde Knute (Hard Knot) of Denmark in European Chronicles, Prince Igor’s punishment by sprung trees, which reportedly tore him apart, 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’. The book expands on the death curse of Ragnar ‘Lothbrok’ and the calling of ‘his young porkers to avenge the old boar’ when Ivar leaves his first son, King Gorm (Snake) ‘the Old’, to rule in Denmark and his last son, Prince Svein (Swine) ‘the Old’ to rule in Hraes’, further setting up the death spiral between the swine and snake of the ‘Lothbrok’ curse.
BOOK FIVE: The Saga of Prince Svein ‘the Old’ Ivarson
Book Five, The Saga of Prince Svein ‘the Old’ Ivarson, demonstrates how Prince Sveinald (Sviatoslav in Slavic) ‘the Brave’ of Kiev was really Prince Svein ‘the Old’ 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 then 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 and included the famed 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 close to defeating the greatest empire in the world, but lost and was forced to leave Hraes’ to his three sons. He returned to the Nor’Way and spent twelve years rebuilding Ragnar’s old trade route there.
BOOK SIX: The Saga of Grand Prince Valdamar ‘the Great’ Sveinson
Book Six, The Saga of Grand Prince Valdamar ‘the Great’ Sveinson, establishes how Grand Prince Valdamar (Vladimir in Slavic) ‘the Great’ of Kiev, expanded the Hraes’ Empire and his own family Hamingja by marrying 700 wives that he pampered in estates in and around Kiev. Unlike his father, Svein, 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 of Constantinople, 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 Hraes’ Grand Princes were called ‘Czars’ and their offspring were earnestly sought after, matrimonially, by European royalty.
BOOK SEVEN: The Saga of King Sweyn ‘Forkbeard’ Ivarson
In The Saga of King Sweyn ‘Forkbeard’ Ivarson, Prince Svein anonymously takes the name of Sweyn ‘Forkbeard’ in Norway and befriends the Jarls of Lade in Trondheim Fjord in Norway as he expands the Nor’Way trade route of his grandfather, Ragnar ‘Lothbrok’. He had come close to defeating the Eastern Roman Empire, and still felt that he was due at least a shared throne in Constantinople. He used the gold from the Nor’Way trade to rebuild his legions and his Hraes’ cataphracts and though his brother, King Gorm ‘the Old’, was dead, his son, Sweyn’s nephew, King Harald ‘Bluetooth’ Gormson had usurped the throne of Denmark and had hired the famed Jomsvikings to attack Prince Sweyn in Norway, setting up the famous Battle of Hjorungavagr in a fjord south of Lade. King Sweyn ‘Forkbeard’ would emerge from that confrontation and then he would defeat King Olaf Tryggvason of Norway in the Battle of Svolder in 1000 AD, in an engagement precipitated over the hand of Queen Sigrid ‘the Haughty’ of Sweden. Later he attacked England in revenge for the following St. Brice’s Day Massacre of Danes in 1002 AD and he fought a protracted war with the Saxon King Aethelred ‘the Unready’ that could only be described as the harvesting of the English for sale as slaves in Baghdad and Constantinople. With the help of his son, Prince Valdamar of Kiev, and the legions and cataphracts of Hraes’, he conquered England on Christmas Day of 1013, but victory was not kind to him.
BOOK EIGHT: The Saga of King Canute ‘the Great’ Sweynson
Prince Valdamar ‘the Great’ Sveinson of Kiev, who had supported his father, King Sweyn ‘Forkbeard’ of Denmark in attacks upon England left his ‘Czar’ sons in charge of Hraes’ and took over as King Valdamar of England, but the Latin Christian English revolted against his eastern name and Orthodox Christian religion and brought King Aethelred back from exile in Normandy and Valdamar had to return to Hraes’ and gather up the legions he had already sent back after his father’s victory. His half brother was ruling in Denmark and his sons were ruling in Hraes’ so, in 1015 AD Grand Prince Valdamar ‘the Great’ of Kiev was written out of Hraes’ history and in 1016 the Latin Christian Prince Canute ‘the Great’ returned to England to reclaim his throne. He defeated Aethelred’s son, King Edmund ‘Ironside’ of England, at the Battle of Assandun to become King Canute ‘the Great’ of England and later King Knute ‘the Great’ of Denmark and Norway as well. But that is just the start of his story and later Danish Christian Kings would call his saga, and the sagas of his forefathers, The Lying Sagas of Denmark, and would set out to destroy them, claiming that, “true Christians will never read these Sagas”.
BOOK NINE: The Saga of King William ‘the Conqueror’ Robertson
The Third Danish Conquest of Angleland was seen to herald the end of the Great Viking Manifestation of the Middle Ages, but this, of course, was contested by the Vikings who were still in control of it all. Danish Varangians still ruled in Kiev and Danes still ruled the Northern Empire of Canute ‘the Great’, for the Normans were but Danish Vikings that had taken up the French language, and even Greenland and the Newfoundland were under Danish control in a Hraes’ Empire that ran from the Silk Road of Cathay in the east to the Mayan Road of Yucatan in the west. “We are all the children of Ragnar ‘Lothbrok’,” Queen Emma of Normandy often said. Out of sheer spite the Saxons of England took over the Varangian Guard of Constantinople and would continue their fight against the Normans in Southern Italy as mercenaries of the Byzantine Roman Empire. They would lose there as well, when in the Fourth Crusade of 1204, the Norman Danes would sack the City of Constantinople and hold it long enough to stop the Mongol hoards that would crush the City of Kiev. It would be Emperor Baldwin ‘the First’ of Flanders and Constantinople who would defeat the Mongol Mongke Khan in Thrace. But the Mongols would hold Hraes’ for three hundred years and this heralded the end of the Great Viking Manifestation. The Silk Road was dead awaiting Marco Polo for its revival. But the western Mayan Road would continue to operate for another hundred years until another unforeseen disaster struck. Its repercussions would be witnessed by the Spanish conquerors who followed Christopher Columbus a hundred and fifty years later in the Valley of the Mound Builders.
Conclusion:
By recreating the lives of four generations of Hraes’ Ukrainian 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 Hraes’ Ukrainian 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 Hraes’ and returned to their kingly duties in Denmark with a lot of Byzantine Roman ideas and heavy cavalry and cataphracts.
SeiberTeck: 'The Varangians Series' 