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 THREE:
BOOK TWO: THE SAGA OF PRINCE ERIK ‘BRAGI’ RAGNARSON
A Novel By Brian Howard Seibert
© Copyright by Brian Howard Seibert
CHAPTER TWENTY THREE
23.0 TRADING WITH THE ARABS OR MAGIS IN BAGHDAD (Circa 834 AD)
“The Raesir let the Rhine’s Sun shimmer
From the reddened Skull’s ship on the Sea-Fells.”
Markus; Skaldskaparmal
(834 AD) Ahmad Ibn-Yakut had called her a Slav princess, a slave, a captive that Ragnar would not part with for any sum. And Erik could not help but wonder if the Arab had met his mother. Boddi had been a captive, brought back to Thule by his father, but was she the princess Ahmad had seen in Bulgar? Erik’s meeting with the Arab merchant had been brief, a few passing minutes spent together in a hallway of the House of Lanterns in Constantinople, moments spanning decades, crossing generations. Threads of fate spinning thoughts of grandeur. It was all probably coincidence. Still, when Erik told King Olmar of Ahmad’s sighting of a Slav princess captive, in Bulgar, in the time of his father, the old king could hardly keep himself from tears; but he refused to discuss the occurrence. Erik spoke of his suspicions with Gunwar, who said only that she would love him as much the child of a captive as the son of a princess. Erik seemed to dismiss the old Arab’s words, forget about them, and he got back to the business of building an empire for his king. But when the summer’s trade with Constantinople was successfully completed, and it came time for the Rhos to return home, Erik and his Centuriata found themselves hugging the southern coast of the Black Sea while King Frodi led the rest of the Varangians north.
It was while sailing for the Arab lands that the words of Ahmad came back to Erik, propelling him into the dangers of a southern expedition. They sailed along the Black Sea coast, past Sinope, to the mouth of the River Halys then began rowing up the tributary. Ahmad had left a map for Erik in the House of Lanterns in Constantinople, and Erik followed the little lampblack line on the parchment to its source, and they portaged Fair Faxi across to the Euphrates and began a downstream journey into the Caliphate of Baghdad. Two thirds of the way down that second lampblack line, Erik had his men row in to the eastern bank and they waited for night before Erik led a small party out on horseback to locate the Tigris River and Baghdad–if Erik had read Ahmad’s map correctly. The Arabs of that time were the world’s foremost geographers and mapmakers and the Vikings the foremost explorers, so it did not surprise Erik, in the least, that, after several hours riding, they saw a reflection of the moon floating on the still waters of the Tigris and, several miles downstream, the faint lights of the city of Baghdad. Erik sent a man back to inform the others to await his return and he and several men continued into the city.
By morning, after fording the Tigris, they arrived in the capital of the Abbasid Caliphate, a new Arab dynasty replacing the long standing Ommayads. Much of the circular city was surrounded by a long low wall, but the commercial district for which they were bound stood beyond the protective enclosure, so they were not challenged nor was their progress impeded until they reached the house of Ahmad Ibn-Yakut. It was a huge sandstone house of two and a half stories on the outskirts of Baghdad, and a large eunuch guarding the front doors let them in without question or ceremony. The Varangians waited in the anteroom until a young man entered, introducing himself as Fadlan, the son of Ahmad, in an eloquent Greek that Erik’s months in Constantinople allowed him to comprehend.
“My father told us to expect Northmen,” Fadlan explained, “so, when our eunuch saw you, he knew right away who you were. Father is out right now, but we expect him back on the morrow. I shall have food and entertainment prepared. You are the guests of Ahmad Ibn-Yakut,” the young man offered, bowing graciously. There was pride of family in his voice as he talked on his father’s behalf.
Erik thanked Fadlan for his generosity, and the Norsemen were led into a sumptuously carpeted dining room. They were offered cushioned seats upon the floor and platters of food were brought in before them. Erik had not realized how hungry he had been until the tantalizing odours rose steaming from the plates, but the Varangians waited for their host to be seated and they watched his manner of dining then they copied it. The success of the Viking merchant was dependent on the care in which he blended into the civilizations he traded with, but Erik had never dealt with Moslems before and the lack of wine with the meal would have been a notable shortcoming had not Fadlan, realizing the dilemma, procured a bottle from a locked cabinet and offered it to the foreigners. Erik and his men added small quantities of the wine to their goblets of water, more to prevent illness than provide pleasure. The greatest enemy of the traveller was not the treachery of native citizens nor the danger of natural disaster, but rather the exposure to unfamiliar diseases. And the Norsemen were not the first to discover that alcohol cleansed and purified native waters of diseases against which they had little defence.
Following the meal, Fadlan called for the entertainment and several young female dancers entered the room and began a traditional dance, involving the slow removal of veils that the Norsemen found exciting. Several musicians that had entered with the dancers played upon unfamiliar stringed instruments and exotic flutes and Erik found the music had its own sensual quality quite apart from the dancing. Erik’s all night trek, combined with the music and the dancing, soon had the wine going to the head of the young Kagan Bek of the Hraes’, and when he awoke the next morning, it was with few recollections of the night before, except that the young woman sleeping in the bed next to him was one of the beautiful young dancers he had been so entertained by the previous night.
A knock at the door was followed by the entrance of Fadlan, who was smiling sheepishly. “We expect the arrival of my father within the hour,” he apologized. “Your companions are just down the hall, if you wish to arouse them for a morning meal,” Fadlan said, then left.
Erik was up on one elbow, and he looked down at the young woman who returned his gaze and smiled dreamily. She stroked Erik’s whiskered cheek with her delicate hand and the value of an hour weighed heavily upon the mind of the Varangian.
Erik was just coming down from upstairs when Ahmad Ibn-Yakut arrived home, and they met once again in a hallway, this time in Baghdad, not Constantinople. “Welcome to my humble abode,” Ahmad said, greeting the Norseman he had met only once before, and for only a very few minutes, as if he were a long-lost friend. “I must apologize for my son’s mistake. He had told me that he offered you wine from my cabinet, which, I’m afraid, wasn’t wine at all, but distilled liquor I acquired in my travels. It is exceedingly potent. We Moslems are forbidden to drink and so my son has no knowledge of such matters. Again, I apologize for my son’s error.”
Fadlan was behind his father and repeated his sentiments. “I am sorry for my mistake,” he said. “I hope you were not harmed by it.”
“I hope no harm was done,” Erik told the Arabs. “as I can barely recollect last night’s events and there is a severe pounding in my head.”
“Only Fazima, your dancer, can tell us of that for certain,” Fadlan explained. “You carried her off to your room in the evening and that is the last we saw of you two.”
It was Erik’s turn to apologize and, ruddy cheeked, he did just that.
“It is of no consequence,” Ahmad declared. “She is but a slave, and I hear she did not protest at all.”
Unlike Christians, the Moslems of that time accepted and promoted the dark practice of slavery. It was in support of the slave system that Ahmad had wished to establish a trade agreement with Erik and the Hraes’ Trading Company, for the one thing the Moslems and Pagans had in common, was their usage of slaves. After breakfast, Erik and Ahmad started working through a preliminary trade agreement, similar in scope to the Hraes’-Roman arrangement, for presentation to the merchant council of Baghdad. In the previous two centuries of Arab expansionism there had been no shortage of slaves, captives from war and tribute from subjugated peoples, but, under the Abbasid Dynasty, the Arab jihad, or holy war, lost impetus and a period of peace and prosperity had set in. A result of this harmony was a severe shortage of slaves that, coupled with the rising affluence of the people, drove up the price of thralls. After an hour of discussions, Erik’s headache forced them to take a break. “I have just the thing,” Ahmad exclaimed. “We shall take a few hours rest in the courtyard. I have the latest technology arriving, and it only requires you to remain still and at rest.”
True to his word, an alchemist soon arrived with several assistants and two large box-shaped devices were set up in the courtyard. Ahmad had two tall chairs set up in front of the courtyard colonnades and he and Erik posed for the pinhole cameras. The chemist carefully spread a thin film of asphaltic paste over two silver plates and placed one in each box so that the beams of light entering through the pinholes in the boxes targeted the full plate diameters. Erik had gathered his weapons, Tyrfingr and Rae’s-Ship’s-Round and he sat back and relaxed as did his host and occasionally they would sip orange juice out of silver goblets. Then the alchemist would come out from between the boxes and quickly re-adjust their poses, then return and monitor the exposures. After two hours he put clay seals on the pinholes and covered the boxes with heavy black drapes.
It took Erik only two days to come to a full trade agreement with the Arabs.
The night before Erik was to return to his ship, he and Ahmad Ibn-Yakut celebrated their success with a feast. Following the meal, Ahmad rose and went to a sideboard and retrieved two silver plates and presented Erik with one and Fadlan with the other. “They were delivered this afternoon,” Ahmad explained, and Erik could see they were identical pictures of he and Ahmad posing in the courtyard. The pictures were incredibly detailed in various shades from black to very light gray and the clothing details, though slightly blurred, were very fine. But the courtyard features were outstanding, the colonnades were finely fluted and the architectural details were extremely clear. Static items seemed very clear while the subject faces and extremities were slightly blurred but very recognizable. “The alchemist who exposed the plates is our foremost optical scientist and an expert in light sensitive oils and chemicals. He hopes to soon have films that react faster to light and even some oils that can register colours. While these exposures have been treated to no longer react to light, it is still best to store them in darkness,” and Ahmad presented Erik with a polished wood chest with a black velvet lining in which the picture could be stored and special inks with which the picture could be touched up.
Ahmad then offered Erik an after-dinner liqueur by apologizing, once again, for his son’s administration of liquor, which, once said, served as an excuse for him to procure another bottle and demonstrate how it should have been drunk.
“I got this liquor from a merchant friend, during a trade mission in Spain, who got it from the Franks, who, in turn got it from the Irish in England. Have you heard of the Irish?” Ahmad asked, pouring Erik a drink.
“I have heard of an Irishman called Brendan who claims there is a vast land beyond the western sea,” Erik answered.
“Interesting,” Ahmad breathed, pouring himself a drink also. “I am allowed to drink this because it has been purified through distillation,” he explained. “At least that is what I say in my prayers,” he added, laughing. “It is a failing caused by my many travels.”
“Speaking of your travels,” Erik started in a very ponderous and deliberate Greek, “I wish to know more of your meeting with my father, Ragnar, that you had called Gunar. How did you come to meet him?”
Ahmad studied Erik a moment, sat back, relaxed and sipped his liquor. “During the Caliphate of al-Rashid, I was sent on an embassy to the Khazars and the Bulgars. It was a brief period of peace following many years of war and it was my mission to try to maintain that peace. If you wish to establish a peace,” Ahmad explained confidentially, glancing about himself, “send as your envoy a diplomat; to end a peace send a soldier; and to maintain a peace send a merchant. Further,” he added, “if you wish to know all about the situation in a country, don’t ask your present ambassador to that state……ask the former ambassador, for the previous diplomat often keeps better track of that country than the present one, and when they tell you what is happening there, they will also tell you the why of it.” The liquor was having its effect upon Ibn-Yakut. “My embassy to the Khazars was an utter failure. I was to have ensured a maintenance of peace with their empire in the event of my country’s going to war with Constantinople, but the Khazars remained loyal to their Roman allies and I was lucky to leave their land with my life intact. There is a secret connection,” Ahmad began to whisper, “between the Khazars and the Romans. I’ve never learned what it is, but it almost cost me dearly,” he said, drawing a fingernail across his throat. A white line was left on the dark skin of the Arab. “Never trust the word of the Romans when the Khazars are involved. There is something strange, something significant in their relations. I’ve never been able to place it, but I must emphasize that you must not trust the Greeks. I know already, from accounts of your Rhos in Constantinople, that you have no trust in the Khazars, and that is good, because they will have your head on a pike if they ever get a chance.”
Erik was beginning to show signs of impatience with Ahmad’s digressions.
“To get on with it,” Ahmad continued, “I left Khazaria, but I did not, as a wise man would, return to Baghdad. Instead, I carried on to the Kingdom of the Volga Bulgars, and it was there that I met your father. He was trading with the Bulgars: amber and weapons and slaves for silver Kufas and Roman gold. I, personally, bought several of his slaves.”
Erik was waiting eagerly upon Ahmad’s every word. “You told me in Constantinople that he had a captive, a princess?”
“Yes,” Ahmad said, wistfully. “She certainly looked a princess. I tried to buy her, but Gunar would not part with her for any sum. She was Slav, I believe. The slaves I bought from your father were Slavs, at any rate. Poljane, I believe–all of them captives. They’d been intercepted by thieves on their way to Khazaria and Ragnar told me he’d intercepted the thieves.”
“Can you tell me more about the woman?” Erik said excitedly.
“Ahh…I thought you looked familiar in Constantinople,” Ahmad said, “but it wasn’t Gunar you reminded me of. It was the woman with Gunar. He was going to take her back across…what did he call it? His Northern Way? She is your mother, Erik?” Ahmad asked.
The thin white line, though faint, was still visible on the throat of the Arab. “I’m not sure,” Erik answered. “She died at my birth and Ragnar, himself, is unsure who she was.”
“I’m sorry to hear she died,” Ahmad added, sympathetically.
“Tell me about her,” Erik asked.
“She was a distraught, frightened young woman when I saw her, but she was still exceptionally beautiful. Her eyes were dark and mysterious, matching her flowing black hair, much like yours. She had the fine bearing of a princess, but one sensed she could take care of herself. In fact, one of your father’s men had tried to take a golden cloak pin from her and she stabbed him in the hand with it. `None could take that bodkin from her,’ Gunar had told me with pride. It was a strange, trident shaped thing, more dagger than bodkin,” Ahmad said, “and I think she carried it more for protection than mending or pinning.” When Erik pulled his bodkin out from under his shirt, Ahmad said, “That is it. It looked just as that one.”
“This belonged to my mother,” Erik said, sadly. “It is all I have to remember her by.”
Ahmad Ibn-Yakut felt Prince Erik’s immense sadness and offered him more liquor, then continued. “Our embassy to Bulgar was a failure also and we were expelled from their land; and, when we tried to skirt around Khazaria, we were stopped by Hunnish troops. They were searching for a Kievan caravan that was to have arrived in Atil weeks earlier, so they were caught between taking us back, letting us go, or Allah forbid, killing us outright. As it turned out, the slaves we bought from Gunar, your Ragnar, were from this caravan, and they spoke to the Huns in their Slav language, and they pleaded for our lives because we had treated them respectfully, so the soldiers decided to set us free. But the Huns took our slaves north with them in search of the rest of the caravan’s party. I never learned what precious treasure the caravan carried, but it had been destined for King Hunn, the Kagan Bek of the Khazars, and he was sparing no effort in getting it back.
“As you may guess,” Ahmad concluded, “we made it back to Baghdad with our lives, but not much else, I’m afraid. That is all that occurred on my embassy to Bulgar and may Allah deem that I never, nor any of my sons, for that matter, ever return to that god forsaken land.
“Tell me,” Ahmad started, leaning close to Erik, “we have but one God to whom we pray for all favours; with your pantheon of pagan gods, how is it you determine which god to pray to for a particular blessing?”
“In our Aesir religion,” Erik answered, “for favours in war we pray to Odin, in personal combat we pray to Thor, for justice we pray to Tyr and for harvest we pray to Frey. I must confess, though,” Erik admitted, “I pray to no gods.”
“You pray not?” Ahmad asked in disbelief.
“I do not believe in gods,” Erik answered.
“How is it you have come to not believe in gods?” Ahmad blurted, as though he had just seen a ghost.
Again, the liquor was having its toxic way with Erik. “I’ve had visions.”
“A man who has visions yet professes belief in no gods,” Ahmad said. “This is most curious. I must know more. But first a warning,” Ahmad explained, and he looked about the room to ensure it was empty. “If a believer in the true faith knows you worship pagan gods, he will try to convert you. If he knows you worship no gods, he will try to kill you. Tell no other Moslem about this,” Ahmad said. “Now tell me of these visions.”
Erik talked at length on his visions, telling Ahmad of his nine days of dreams while under the influence of Kraka’s potions. And Ahmad listened intently well into the night. Before they parted in the hallway of the sleeping chambers, Ahmad said, “When you return next year, I have some people you must talk with.”
The next day, Ahmad’s men escorted Erik and his companions to Fair Faxi on the Euphrates and, after several hours of preparation, the Varangians began rowing up the river that had cradled so much of civilization’s early development. After several weeks of hard rowing, with very little support from the wind, they reached a bend in the river that told Erik they were now back in Roman territory and would soon have to disembark and portage across land to the Halys River. Once across the land bridge, the rowing was downstream, but Erik and his men did not relax. “The sooner they were out of Greek lands and out upon the open sea, the better,” Erik thought.
It was late fall when Erik returned to Kiev. He had been with Gunwar only two weeks in almost two years. As he walked up the banks of the Dnieper to meet her, a strange sense of great loss swept across his breast. She looked older, somehow, her youth slowly waning with the recurring moons, and he knew that he must look older, as well, but they were not growing old together. Princess Gunwar rushed down to meet him, and they embraced each other as if, together, they could stop up the flow of passing time.
Erik spent the whole winter in Kiev and, while others complained about the bitter cold, he took in the wondrous beauty of his wife, and he enjoyed the company of his king and queen, and he played with brave Prince Alf and Princess Eyfura. He and Gunwar made great sacrifices to the goddess Freya in prayer that Gunwar should become one with child, but, in the end, when Erik set out in the spring with the merchants of the Hraes’ Trading Company, it was without any sign of his wife being pregnant.
It had been decided that King Frodi would lead half the merchants to Constantinople and Erik would lead the others, the half that wished to trade in slaves and captives as well as furs and amber, to Baghdad. They met Chaleus in Cherson and, while no Greek merchants joined Erik’s expedition, several Goth merchants gathered up local slaves and decided to travel with Erik’s fleet.
In Baghdad, Erik met his friend, Ahmad Ibn-Yakut once more and stayed with him at his estate. Ever true to his word, Ahmad indeed had several ancient scholars he introduced to Erik. They were priests…Magi of the Zoroastrian religion and after their evening repast they had many questions for Erik. Their religion was ancient. It was old before acquiring its name from the prophet Zoroaster, almost a millennium before the birth of the Christians’ prophet, Jesus of Nazareth.
“Tell us of your visions,” the eldest Magus requested.
Erik and Ahmad sat alone with six of the Zoroastrians. Ahmad translated as Erik told them of the visions he had experienced while under the influence of Kraka’s potions. And the priests burned incense and aromatic oils as Erik talked of the creation of all things, of the universe as being a skull within a skull within a skull, so many layers of opposing matter that kept the elements apart, so they could exist. He went on to describe events of the past, present and future as though guided in his words by the three Norns of his even more ancient religion. And the oils the Magi were burning were influencing him, for he had never been able to recall his visions so clearly. He saw, once more, the timelessly infinite perfection of space and Erik could see, again, the many minute points pulsing variously within the enormous void, and he knew the pulses to be time, or a variant of time, and then he saw once more the minute point that he had first seen suddenly burst forth in two opposing directions, forming first a linear anomaly of pulsing waves of positive and negative energy and he explained to the Magi how they quickly cancelled each other out as they advanced outwards, linearly, in two opposing directions for as long as it took the cadence of the unique pulsing to count off an infinite number, then, again, the point panned out in a wave all around itself and a planar universe came into existence for as long as it took the pulsing to count off a second infinite number and then another brilliant flash burst forth in all directions, sweeping away the abyss. This perfect anomaly shot outwards, propagating itself in all six directions of the three-dimensional world, until the cadence of the universal pulsing had counted off an infinite number that coincided with his own time and the stars and the planets were formed. It was that particular infinite number that defined his own time and Erik explained that if he could lower that number he could go back in time and if that number was increased he would go forward in time, for the pulsing was a record of all that ever was and was yet to be. But, of course, he could not do that. He could only see that it could be done, that it would be done.
Erik went on to describe the birth of their own world as he had seen it, seething in front of him, and cooling as it revolved around its own mother star as continents formed and the world ocean pooled, and life was formed in it and evolved up onto the land.
Erik went on to describe the rise and fall of the dragon beasts and the mammal evolution to world dominance, culminating in man, who must stride out into the wave of the exploding universe. “The explosion continues on, even as I speak,” Erik explained. “All the stars that we can see now, the universe is but a small portion of the ever-expanding wave of matter that follows behind that on-going explosion of particles in all directions, and it shall move forever outwards. And man, in order to survive, must ride that wave for eternity.”
“And behind us?” the old man coaxed.
“Behind us is only evil,” Erik answered and he saw again the face of evil that had almost taken him when he was nine days under the potions of Kraka and he shook himself free of the trance-like state he had fallen into. “Pained is the life of the over wise,” he told the old magus, and he shivered involuntarily.
The ancient Zoroastrian sensed Erik’s fear and decided to talk about their prophet and their religion. “We have, since time immemorial, attended to the preaching of prophets both within our religion and without. While Zoroaster is the one true prophet, many of our faith attended to the Jewish prophet Moses, three of our Magi followed a star to Bethlehem in Judea to witness the birth of the Christian prophet, first of the star born, and we witnessed, as well, a lightening of the night sky that attended the birth of Mohammed, prophet of the Moslems. Tell me then, did any celestial occurrence attend to your birth?”
“My birth was attended only by the death of my mother,” Erik answered bitterly. “But at childhood’s end, I was sent a falling star and from a star stone I pulled a sword,” and he showed the Magus the hilts of Tyrfingr. “However, I do not claim to be a prophet. I only wish to understand the meaning of my visions.”
“By understanding the visions of the prophets, perhaps you may find the answers you seek,” the old Magus replied.
“There are no prophets,” Erik explained. “Only tricksters.”
“Are you familiar with the transmutation of metals?” the old man asked. “The turning of base metals into gold?”
“Many kings and generals have turned metals into gold,” Erik answered. “When it was found that tin could turn copper into bronze, kings wasted no time in turning this tin into gold, for the bronze weapons their smithies made turned their warriors into gods and the gold of other men became their gold.”
“And the same thing occurred again when iron displaced bronze,” the Magus replied, growing impatient. “Our true prophet, Zoroaster learned the secret of turning lead into gold. The true transmutation of metals.”
“And the prophets that follow him, these three generals you mentioned,” Erik began, “do they know the secret as well?”
“Do not call these prophets generals,” the Magi protested. “They are prophets of the one true god.”
“Did not this Moses destroy the army of an Egyptian Pharaoh without losing a man?” Erik asked. “And did not Mohammad lead an army out of Medina to destroy the warriors of Mecca?”
“And Jesus of Nazareth?” the old man asked.
“His pacifist Christian assault on Rome cost more lives than any Jewish revolt ever did, either before him or after. Had the Romans not killed him when they did, your Jesus of Nazareth would have had Rome on its knees in forty years. Without him, it took his disciples four hundred.”
“You have seen all this?” the old man asked.
“That and more,” Erik replied. “The three Magi you said attended the birth of Jesus were in Judea searching for the Arc of the Covenant…the last Arc, but they could not find it for it was no more.”
“They were attending to the birth of the Christian Prophet, Jesus; the last of the long line of the House of King David and the first of the star born.”
“And like David,” Erik concluded, “Jesus, too, slew a giant with a stone: his sling was a cross. his stone was his disciple, Peter, and his giant was called Rome.”
“You have seen all this?” the old man asked, bracing himself with the back of a chair. “You have seen the taking of Mecca? You have seen the fall of Rome? You have seen the parting of the Red Sea?”
“Any merchant knows that you part a sea with a ship,” Erik started, “and there are no better merchants than the Semites.” Erik looked across the room as though he were recalling a vision. “The early Egyptians believed their Nile Valley was the full extent of the world because that is all they could see, but their natural philosophers, their scientists, deduced that the world was round and calculated its very size just by studying the shadows of their monuments. But it was for his temple, his monument, that their pharaoh, Ramses needed the science of the Jews…their philosopher’s stone and its technique of lights. Moses used their stone, their Arc, to light the Pharaoh’s pyramids and secretly used it to transmute, as you say, lead into gold. They stole the gold statuary of their captors and replaced them with gold plated lead figures and Moses gave the Phoenician fleet this stolen gold to part the Red Sea for his people, but the Phoenicians had other plans. They were tired of paying for Ramses’ monuments with tithes and taxes on their portages and caravans between the Mediterranean and Arabian seas, so they forewarned the Pharaoh of the flight of the Jews and he led his army after them. Now the Phoenicians brought two types of ships to the Egyptian shore of the Red Sea that day, their fine new cedar horse ships and their aging merchant galleys. They used their horse ships to ferry the Israelites to the Sinai side, leaving their old galleys behind. Ramses paid a fortune in gold, his personal gold and jewels and that of his princes, and the golden rings of his champions, for the Phoenicians to ferry his army across the Red Sea after them. And, as the old Phoenician fleet set off in pursuit of the Israelites in the new fleet, the Phoenicians struck a second bargain with Moses. If his people would set up and maintain Phoenician caravan routes across the Sinai for forty years, they would destroy the Pharaoh’s army. To this, Moses acquiesced, and the Phoenicians scuttled their old fleet. Their picked sailors swam to shore, but the Egyptian soldiers all perished, for none of them could swim. It was Moses’ transmuted gold that had parted the Red Sea, but it was the Pharaoh’s greed that had closed it. Such is the extent to which a merchant will go to escape a tithe.”
“These are the secrets that your visions unfold?” the old Magi asked weakly.
“That and more,” Erik continued. “In their rush to escape, the Israelites had to leave their philosophers’ stone in Egypt, but only the Jews knew how it worked. Many Egyptian philosophers died trying to learn its secret. Moses, meanwhile, built another Arc in the desert, or, rather, he built a War Arc for the plating of gold and a Covenant Arc to power it. ”
“You must tell me more of this philosophers’ stone,” the old mage started excitedly. “For its secret has been lost.”
“Ask your Zoroaster to tell you more,” Erik replied.
“I have,” the Magi started, “but there is now a problem with the secret of the stone. I converse with Zoroaster through this,” the old man said, withdrawing a book from his smock. It was a little red book, a hand long and a hand wide and about a hand thick. It was a book Erik had seen before and, as he reached out to touch it, the mage pulled it away, but Erik reassured him with a glance and he touched it with his fingertips. It was over two thousand years old Erik sensed, and just like the old book hidden in Ragnar’s high seat hall.
“You have seen this book before?” the Magi asked.
“No,” Erik lied. “But I sense it is very old.”
The priests retired to their chambers discussing the prophecies they had just witnessed in their own Persian tongue. The Zoroastrian priests determined Erik to be, not a prophet, but an enlightened one, and the old Magi told his acolytes, “He has seen this book before.”
“The visions you have revisited have taken their toll on you,” Ibn-Yakut stated later, trying to calm Erik. “I have a strong Spanish liqueur you must sample,” he added, walking to his cabinet and coming back with two goblets. Erik and Ahmad finished off the bottle and when the prince retired to his bedchamber he slept fitfully. The Old Zoroastrian priest had said that his Magi religion was older than Zoroastrianism itself, and Erik knew this to be true because the Magi religion before the coming of Zoroaster had been the tripartite gods religion Aran, the original base religion of the Aesir and Vanir and Brahman tripartite gods religions. Zoroaster and his one true god religion had crushed the Persian Aran branch, the eastern branch of the tripartite gods religion and the related Christian one true god religion had crushed the western Roman Vanir branch, leaving only the northern Scandinavian Aesir and the southern Indian Brahman branches to survive them. But the Christians continued their attack in the north and the followers of Buddha were slowly working upon the other in the south. And Erik had seen in his visions how they both ended and it was not pretty.
Erik’s visions had also shown him that, while many Magis professed to be the followers of Zoroaster, many other Magis still secretly practised the old Aran tripartite gods religion and were warlocks and witches of the old Aran versions of Odin, Thor and Frey. Their older magic was very powerful and Erik did not want to have anything to do with it. His visions had shown him the names of the Aran pantheon of gods, but he had pushed that knowledge into the deep back crevasses of his mind. He did not trust the old Zoroastrian priest and he suspected that the old Magi knew those three names and the names of the gods that were worshipped below them. Erik was becoming a man of science, and the only magic he wanted to see was more along the lines of the emulsion exposures he had witnessed between the colonnades.
When Erik’s entourage had concluded their trade with the Arabs and were about to portage between the Euphrates and Halys Rivers, they were met by a large force of Roman troops who demanded a ten percent tithe on all trade passing through their territory as stipulated in the contract that Erik had hammered out with the administrators of Emperor Theophilos. Erik had little choice but to pay the tax; he had been bested by the politics of the Greeks, but he became determined to avoid any future Roman taxes. To achieve this end, when the rest of the merchants returned to Cherson and Kiev, Erik and his Centuriata remained upon the Black Sea and searched for a fabled waterway between it and the Caspian Sea.
Chapter 24: GARDARIKI; ERIK’S KEEP (Circa 835 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' 