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 TWENTY:
BOOK TWO: THE SAGA OF PRINCE ERIK ‘BRAGI’ RAGNARSON
A Novel By Brian Howard Seibert
© Copyright by Brian Howard Seibert
CHAPTER TWENTY
20.0 THE KHAZAR WAR OR SWIFT DANES (Circa 831 AD)
“These sentences give good sense if we abstract
the words Áŋœřȧȿ … ßàþõ, for we then
get left with the ordinary aetiological
explanation of the two names of the Rus’,
‘Rhos’ and ‘Dromitai’: they are called ‘Rhos’
after the name of a mighty man of valour so called,
and ‘Dromitai’ because they can run fast.”
Jenkins, Romilly: Studies on Byzantine
History of the 9th and 10th Centuries
(831 AD) “How great were the forces of King Hunn?” King Frodi asked Erik incredulously, as they sat among the riders of his scouting unit that had come upon the camp of the Huns.
“We’ve come upon a vast array!” Erik started. “Thick flare the flames of their campfires and whole woods are consumed by the insatiable blaze. The night sky is alight with the sweet sap’s song and a night breeze flows towards the Hunnish host from all directions in answer to their signal flares. This spectacle before you now can only be matched by the sight of this army on the move. The very earth groans beneath its mass; the creaking wagons of its train sound of thunder, and the rattle of steel weapons peals across the plains. I saw fifteen kingly standards each with a hundred lesser standards and twenty behind each of these. And a captain was at the staff of each standard, and a hundred men followed each captain on foot. And vast are the formations of their archers and much vaster their horse.”
“With what shall we oppose so formidable a host?” King Frodi asked.
“They await us on yon plain. King Hunn shall make no move until we have drawn up our array. The Khazars are experienced in the handling of hosts,” Erik said. “They shall make no mistakes in the drawing up of their lines. They shall answer our wedge with their crescent and surround and crush us with their mass.” The warning of King Olmar came to Erik now. ‘Trust not to fate’ had been the gist of it, and Erik knew the sooth had been said for this moment. “We must retire towards home,” Erik started sadly, “and cause the enemy to perish of its own huge size.”
“No!” King Frodi exclaimed. “All the honour we’ve won in the battles we’ve fought will be lost. I will be called King Frodi ‘the Swift’, like my father! No one shall follow the standard of King Frodi once he has run from battle!” young Frodi answered vehemently, clutching up Erik’s sleeve in his tight fist. “Have we strayed too far?” Frodi cried. “Cannot this day yet be won?”
The orient light was breaking over the Khazar mountains, the tips of the Mirkwood forest just emerging from the darkness in the distance. Erik fought back tears as he told his king of the depressing plan that had been forming in his mind while they had tramped along the coast of the Black Sea. It had been the cause of his melancholy. “We can yet win this day,” Erik whispered hoarsely, “just not on this day. We must win it with our minds, not our hearts, in another place, at another time.” Erik looked up to the faint full moon, and tears streamed down his cheeks as he spoke through clenched teeth. “We shall return to Kiev, slashing and burning as we go. We must leave nothing for the Huns. Their army shall perish of its own vast size.”
King Frodi looked out upon the huge Hun host and he wept in bitter agreement. The Khazar army was just too large for the Danes to defeat in open combat. Erik had known this when he had first seen the horde, but he had always hoped that King Hunn would make a mistake, maybe meet the Danes in their own element, the sea, or meet them upon some terrain that would have offered an advantage to the Danes superior fighting ability; but King Hunn had made no mistakes. He had followed the military strategy of their day precisely. Erik had only one resource left to his employ and that was his foresight. He would not be the last to use the vast size of the Asian plains against an enemy. A millennium would pass before a small general of the Franks would lead his army across the Scythian plain to his own downfall, and a further century would pass before a tyrant of the Holy Roman Empire would bleed his armies white on those glassy plains in the Asian winter. But, Erik would be the first to use the one strength of the Scythian plain against a vast enemy…its vast expanse.
Summer was waning as the Danish army made its way back along the sea of Azov. The sunshine was no longer warm, the sky was no longer blue; a grey pallor hung over the land as the troops slashed and burned their way along the coast. Erik knew that the Hunnish host would be following behind, but its very size would keep it from catching them. And King Hunn would make no mistakes, like sending his cavalry out ahead to fight the Danes alone. Erik knew he would march his army along as he had originally planned, establishing lines of supply and fortifications as he went, marching all the way to Denmark, if need be, and when the Danes had nowhere left to run, and nowhere left to hide, they would be forced to stand and fight.
The Danes bypassed the Crimean Peninsula, and many found it strange when Erik ordered the retreating occupational forces to bring the mad monk, Brother Gregory, north with them. Erik met with the monk in his bright pavilion and they argued for several hours, but when they emerged it was apparent that they had come to some agreement, for Erik was smiling and the monk was not nearly as loud as he had been when first led into the tent. Following the meeting, Erik ordered his men not to plunder the lands of the Goths in their retreat. Greek settlements, however, were sacked mercilessly. The Greeks, themselves, were still holed up safely within the walled city of Cherson, still awaiting the aid of their Emperor. As the occupying Danish forces withdrew from the peninsula, the Greeks gave them a name they were to bear for many years: ‘Dromitai’, meaning men who run fast.
But not all the Danes would run for it. The Danish navy remained at the mouth of the Dnieper, the rapids cutting them off from retreat upriver. King Frodi sent them orders to fend for themselves on the Black Sea. They could not take the chance of having the Khazar army catch them traversing the Ford of Vrar.
When the Danish army reached Kiev, they joined up with the Danish occupational forces there, including the wives and families of many of the officers. Queen Alfhild and her children, Alf and Eyfura, were there, as well as Princess Gunwar. Much construction had been done in preparing Kiev as a major junction of the Southern Way, so it was with trepidation that the Danes returned the city to the rule of King Olmar in return for his promise of neutrality in the upcoming conflict. Although Kiev was spared, the countryside was not, and the lands of the Poljane and Drevjane were razed in the retreat of the Danes.
King Hunn was patient in his pursuit and the Khazar army, though always trailing, never pressed the Danes. The Danes razed the outpost of Alfgeir’s family in the land of the Radimichi and crossed the land bridge to the source of the Dvina. There, the Danes had put up a number of ships too large to portage across to the Dnieper and into these King Frodi placed a precious cargo: the wives and children the Danes had brought with them on campaign. They were to sail back to Liere, while the remaining Danish army led the Khazars north into the barren wastelands of the Karelians and Finns. There, King Ragnar ‘Lothbrok’ had learned a lesson from the Finns about how a smaller host could challenge a larger force and so, that was where Erik wanted to lead the Huns. The Danish ships set off on a dangerous trip northwest through the land of the Lithuanians, and the army carried on straight north, leaving no trace of the naval expedition’s start. And so, the Khazars pursued the Danish army many weeks up the marshy banks of the Lovat river, until their provisions began to dwindle and their supplies coming up from the south slowed to a mere trickle. King Hunn received word that Crimean brigands were wreaking havoc on the Khazar supply lines. And a Danish naval force on the Black Sea carried out daring attacks on Khazar caravans travelling up the Dnieper, and, in the land of the Goths, Christian zealots, led by a mad monk, attacked the Jewish and Muslim merchants carrying supplies north to Kiev. Finally, on the shores of Lake Ilmen, the Khazar pursuit ground to a halt. The Danes set up a large camp on a marshy island at the mouth of the Volkov River, and they called it Holmgard, meaning Island Keep. From there, Erik began the Danish counter-offensive. Raiding parties were sent out daily to harass the bogged down horde, and the Khazar supplies further dwindled until the cavalry gave up their horses to the roasting spits, and the foot-soldiers dined upon their attack dogs. When King Hunn failed to re-establish his supply lines with the south, he ordered a general retreat, but the provisions were gone, and the Danes raided daily and soon disease set upon the Huns. In their dire despair the Huns committed crimes against nature, as well as man, and they devoured impure rodents as well as their own dead and the Black Death set upon them.
When word spread to the Danes that there was a plague among the Huns, Erik ordered the daily attacks against them ceased. None could understand why they should not assist the disease, a pox delivered by Odin, according to old Gotwar, in dispatching the Khazars, but Erik remembered the unseen tribe he had traded with on the White Sea coast, and he remembered Brak’s explanation for their shyness. Once a Norse party had visited the tribe and an outbreak of disease soon followed, devastating the native population, causing the tribe to avoid all contact with the Northmen. Erik decided to use this native strategy to ensure that his forces, too, did not fall victim to this Odin spawned plague. There was much opposition to Erik’s order, but King Frodi, as always, gave Erik his full support.
On a cool autumn evening, a group of berserk warriors and worshippers of Odin gathered in a wooded clearing on the shore opposite of Holmgard, and they prepared themselves for a terror raid upon the Huns. Scouts had headed south of Lake Volkov that morning and found an isolated Khazar unit camped along the Lovat River. The berserks and warriors were to meet the scouts at the mouth of the Lovat, and the combined force would fall upon their prey at midnight, the hallowed hour of Odin. Had the enemy been Norse, the night slaughter would have been murder, but the Khazars were Mohammedans mostly, and the midnight massacre would be considered sacrificial. So, the small but tough troop rode south hard and met up with their confederates in a small camp on the east bank of the Lovat. They dismounted, stripped themselves of their clothing and began to paint their bodies black with soot and pitch. Equipped with ancient weapons and helmets, they remounted and rode off for the camp of the Huns.
The Khazars had broken their main camp into hundreds of smaller camps in a futile attempt to prevent the spread of the disease. All camps had constructed their own stockades of stunted swamp tamaracks and pines, and it was atop just such a stockade that Prince Erik’s brother, King Roller, was now perched. His body was jet black with soot and his sword was painted in pitch and his teeth flashed whitely as he shouted the order to attack. Blood curdling cries were heard all along the stockade, as the Danes dropped like black wraiths into the camp of the Huns. Blackened warriors rushed about between the campfires, cutting down the Huns as they emerged from their tents. Torches were torn from the fires and launched into the pavilions of the captains, and the officers who huddled inside soon fled out into the open to be hacked to pieces by Roller and the other berserks. Many men refused to leave their tents and they suffocated in the smoke of their awnings, and the Danes, wrongly, thought this to be an act of great cowardice. Their scouts had not checked on the activities of the camp or they might have determined that the unit carried the plague. The camp burned that night, saving the Khazars the trouble of torching it, and the Danish berserks and warriors returned to Holmgard with tales of reckless courage.
When Erik learned of the covert attack, he was distressed beyond anyone’s expectations. He met with King Frodi, and they discussed at length who might have perpetrated such treason, and Erik sent messengers among his troops offering amnesty for all if they would just come forward and admit to their insubordination, but none stepped forward. After several days, the first outbreak of the plague erupted in the Danish camp. Roller, realizing it was one of his men, entered his brother’s bright pavilion and confessed to Erik that he had led the attack.
“I do not blame you, Roller,” Erik started, “but rather the warrior within you. It was unfair of me to ask the cream of our soldiery to hike up their cloaks and run from the Huns, but I had no other recourse, just as it is unfair for me to keep those same soldiers from attacking an enemy that has pursued them with such derision, yet again I have no choice. You must tell me who the others were, and you must all be kept apart from the rest of us, and those of you who survive may rejoin us, and those who don’t may join Odin in Valhall with their deaths attributed to battle and not disease.”
“I cannot tell you who they all were,” Roller said, protecting his followers, “but I will ask them to step forth and they all shall.”
“To the last man?” Erik asked.
“To the last man.” Roller stepped towards Erik, stopped himself, shook his head and turned to leave. He stopped at the entrance and turned back to Erik. “It was a magnificent slaughter, Erik,” he said nervously and then he left.
Erik followed him out of the pavilion and watched him from the entrance as he made his way through the wooded tent city that was Holmgard. That evening, a troop of soldiers, some ill, some dying, moved out of Holmgard and set up a camp across the river in a wooded clearing. Erik saw them off, wishing them all well and wondering if he would ever see his brother alive again.
While the Danes watched a growing number of their comrades die across the cold waters of the Volkov River, King Hunn watched whole units melt into the marshes, many dying, more deserting, until, at last, he led the tattered remnants of the Khazar army south. The Danish army prepared to pursue the Hun retreat, but Erik would not lead them until he saw his brother, Roller, return safely from across the river. Roller had not been touched by the disease, but he had watched a lot of his fellows die and this fact changed him, distanced him from Erik. Roller remained in charge of Holmgard while Erik and King Frodi set out after the Khazars. The Danish army emerged from the marshes of the Lovat hurting somewhat, but intact, and the stray Khazar units they came across they put to the sword quickly.
King Olmar had showed the retreating Huns nothing but a closed gate, but when the Danes returned he welcomed them as brothers, causing feasts to be prepared and celebrations to be made. Brother Gregory welcomed the Danes back to the Crimea and General Ygg was there, too, to welcome Erik. He had completed his service to the Huns with their successful retreat and now offered his services to King Frodi. The Danish fleet was found anchored in the gentle harbour of Sugedea and even the Greeks of Cherson came out from their defenses and made peace with the Danes. A naval squadron was dispatched to Denmark to bring back the women and children of the officers, and Prince Erik and King Frodi sat down and planned the development of the Southern Way.
Chapter 21: THE SOUTHERN WAY or THE CITY OF CHERSON (Circa 832 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' 