THE SAGA OF PRINCE HELGI ‘ARROW ODD’ ERIKSON 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 CHAPTERS THREE and FOUR:
Prince Helgi/Oleg’s Prophecy by Viktor Vasnetsov 1899
BOOK THREE: THE SAGA OF PRINCE HELGI ‘ARROW ODD’ ERIKSON
A Novel By Brian Howard Seibert
© Copyright by Brian Howard Seibert
WRITER’S UNCUT EDITION
(Contains Scenes of Violence and Sexuality Consistent with the Viking Period)
(May be Offensive to Some)
CHAPTER THREE
3.0 THE PROPHECY (Circa 852 AD)
” Venom-filled snake shall sting you
From below the skull of Faxi.
The adder will bite from below your foot,
When you are terribly old, my lord.”
From The Saga of Arrow Odd
(852 AD) Over the years Oddi would progress from forging arrow heads to spear tips to seax knives and axes, then on to the famed Stavanger swords that Hraegunarstead was known for. By the time he was twelve, Oddi could hammer together a Stavanger tri-steel blade with trident guard as fast as any sword smith. Jarl Brak even taught Oddi how to make Indian steel, and how to hammer out the alloyed blooms into helmets and breastplates, ring-mail corselets and Roman plate-mail byrnies as well as chain mail coifs. Brak was primarily a weapons steel smith, but he also dabbled in defensive gear and was known for his shield bosses and perimeter rings.
There was a witch named Heid who knew how to predict the future. She was often invited to banquets to tell people their destinies. She had a troupe of fifteen boys and fifteen girls that would chant up spirits for her, and she was at a banquet not far away from Ingjald’s farm. One morning Ingjald got up early and went to where Oddi and Asmund rested and said, “I will send you two on an errand today.”
“Where will we go?” asked Oddi.
“You shall invite Heid, the seeress, over for your birthday naming feast,” answered Ingjald.
“I will not invite that old witch,” said Oddi, “and I will not like it if she comes here.”
“You must go then, Asmund,” said Ingjald, “and I expect you to do as you’re told.”
“Prince Erik is coming to the naming,” said Oddi, “and he hates witchcraft more than I do.”
But Asmund went and invited the seeress to the banquet anyway, and she promised to come. Ingjald went to meet her and invited her into his longhall. They had prepared preliminary auguries to be carried out the night before the naming feast and when some people started showing up early, the seeress went right to her night-time rituals with her followers chanting songs and spells to attract spirits. Ingjald went up to her and asked what the results of the auguries were. “I think,” she said, “that I have already learned all that you wish to know. I was going to tell all tonight so I didn’t have to stay for the naming feast, but Prince Erik shall be late for it, so I shall stay for it.”
“The Prince frightens you?” Ingjald asked her.
“The last time I told fortunes in Hraegunarstead,” she explained, “Prince Erik didn’t like my prophecy and threatened to strike me on the nose. I was warning him of what would happen to his son, but he thought I was talking of him and he flew into a rage and came towards me with murder in his eyes, but turned and left the hall instead. I never did get to complete the prophesy, but with him coming late, perhaps I can rectify that.”
“How do you know The Prince will be late?” Ingjald asked.
“Why, the hall is full of spirits,” she replied. “Can you not feel them?”
Ingjald gave a shiver. As evening approached, the last of the guests filed into the hall.
Prince Erik ‘Bragi’ and Jarl Grim ‘Hairy-Cheek’ were late coming down from Hrafnista, but King Roller was in early from The Vik. As he sat down at the guest high seat opposite Ingjald he saw Heid and had the feeling that he had seen this before.
“Everyone shall go to their seats,” said Ingjald, “and hear your words, Volva Heid.” And Ingjald was the first man to go to her.
“It is good, Ingjald,” she said as she sat on a highchair between the high seats, “that you have come here before me. I can tell you that you shall live here until you are old and with great dignity and respect,” and this prophesy was applauded by all.
Then Ingjald went off, and Asmund came. “It is well,” said Heid, “that you have come here, Asmund, for your honour and dignity will go around the world. You will not wrestle with old age, but you will be thought a good fellow and a great warrior wherever you are.” Asmund went to his seat, and others went before the witch and she told each of them their fortunes, and they were all well satisfied with the prophesies. Then she predicted the weather for the farmers and many other things as well. Ingjald thanked her for her predictions.
“Has everyone come before me that are to have their fortunes told?” Heid asked.
“I think now almost everyone,” said Ingjald.
“What about Oddi, the subject of this naming feast? What lies on that bench over there?” she asked. “A fur cloak is lying there, but I think it stirs sometimes when I look at it.”
Oddi threw off the fur and sat up on the bench. “That’s right,” said Oddi, “you thought that a sleeping man might be stirring under the fur, and it is a man trying to sleep, and what he would like is for you to be quiet and not talk about my future, because I do not believe in what you say.” Oddi had a rod in his hand and said: “I will hit you on the nose with this, if you prophesize about my future.”
“You are yet a child,” Heid said. “You will be a man on the morrow when your father, The Prince, arrives, but right now you are still a child. I will speak, and you will listen.” Then all ears perked up as poetry came to her lips:
“Awe me not, Odd of Stavanger,
With that rod, although we row.
This story will hold true, as said by the seeress.
She knows beforehand all men’s fate.
You will not swim wide firths,
Nor go a long way over lands and bays,
Though the water will well and wash over you,
You will burn here, at Berurjod.
Venom-filled snake shall sting you
From below the skull of Faxi.
The adder will bite from below your foot,
When you are terribly old, my lord.”
Heid saw that Oddi was angry and she ended her poesy and switched to prose. “This is to say, Odd,” she started, “that you are destined to live much longer than others. You shall live to be three hundred years old, and go from land to land, and always seem the greatest wherever you go. Your reputation will go around the world but, travel as far as you try, you’ll die here, in Berurjod.”
“You make the worst prophecies of any old woman I have ever known,” said Oddi. He jumped up as she was about to speak and he brought the rod down on her nose and blood soon flowed.
“Pack up my belongings,” said the witch, holding her face in her hands, “as I wish leave of this place. I have never been treated, beaten like this before.”
“Do not leave,” pleaded Ingjald, “for there’s recompense for every ill, and you will stay here for three nights more and get good gifts.” Heid took the gifts but left anyway.
King Roller got up and stood beside Oddi in front of the highchair where Heid had been seated. “I’ve heard this poesy before,” he told Oddi. “Heid foretold it to my brother, Prince Erik, many years ago.” Oddi looked up at his king. “Erik wanted to punch her in the nose back then. The stick might have been a bit much.”
“Will Prince Erik be here tomorrow?” Oddi asked.
“He will,” Roller answered. “He and Grim will be bringing your naming gift and shall be here tomorrow some time.”
Later that night, Oddi and Asmund went to the barn and they took Ingjald’s favorite horse, Faxi, and put a bridle on him and led him off towards the bay. There they dug a deep pit and Oddi killed Faxi, striking the horse squarely between the eyes with the haft of an axe, and they dropped him into the hole. Oddi and Asmund brought the largest stones they could find and piled them over him, and then they poured sand between every stone. Then they smoothed the grave over and, when they had finished their work, Oddi said, “I suppose witches shall have a hand in it if Faxi gets up out of this. I think I’ve thwarted the fey that he will be the death of me.”
When they got back to the hall Ingjald had already gone to bed and Heid was long gone, but when they went into Oddi’s bed chamber there were two beautiful young chantreusses sitting on the bed awaiting their prince. “Witch Heid has gone off to a naming feast in Stavanger,” the blonde girl explained. “We are to make a man of you,” the older brunette stated, matter of factly, as she got up off the bed. “It is Heid’s gift to you, then you are to take us to Stavanger at your convenience.”
“I’m already a man,” Oddi lied. “Asmund and I share everything and we shared…”
“That young milking girl,” Asmund piped in. “We shared her in the dairy barn a month or two back.”
The older girl looked at the boys sceptically. But the younger blonde stared up at Oddi adoringly. Oddi began talking with her and sat beside her on the bed, turning his back on the other girl. “Your room is next over?” the older girl asked Asmund, and when he nodded she took him by the hand and led him out into the hallway and closed the door on the young smitten couple.
The next day, Erik, Grim and Lofthaena arrived at Berurjod and they had Oddi’s gift with them. “What do you think of your gift?” Prince Erik asked Oddi from the bow of the ship as it nudged gently into the sand and he swept his hand back to present him the ship.
“It’s Fair Faxi!” Oddi shouted. “And she is beautiful!” Oddi jumped into the freshly painted ship. “I shall sail her across the Nor’Way!”
“She’s a little old for that trip,” Erik laughed. “But she is fine for coastal waters and just right for young men to train in.”
That evening, at the naming feast, Prince Erik ‘Bragi’ Ragnarson gave Oddi his full name: Arrow Odd Gregoryson and he told the people a few stories from the east about Brother Gregory, Oddi’s father. When Brother Gregory had lost his life bringing news of Gunwar’s death from the east, Prince Erik considered him a member of the Hraes’ family and his son, Odd, was to be provided for by The Prince and the Hraes’ Trading Company.
Prince Erik and the people of Berurjod and Hraegunarstead feasted and drank late into the evening and he recited many great poems while folk line danced through Ingjald’s high seat hall. Next day, The Prince returned to Gardariki, King Roller returned to The Vik, Ingjald looked for his favourite horse Faxi, and Oddi and Asmund learned how to sail his new Nor’Way ship by taking two beautiful young ladies to Stavanger.
CHAPTER FOUR
4.0 THE VARANGERS OF SEVILLE (Circa 855 AD)
“Perhaps Arrow Odd’s prophecy is a medieval metaphor,
A metaphor for the STD Syphilis? Natives of the Newfoundland carried it.
First Syphilis infects us, then goes away,
Second, it returns from time to time, then seems to go away forever,
Thirdly, up to thirty years later, no matter what we do, it comes for us,
It bites us on the foot and takes us away forever.
We shall see…”
Brian Howard Seibert
(855 AD) When Oddi turned fifteen, King Roller planned to do some raiding in Frisia. Oddi reasoned that this would be a good opportunity for him to thank Prince Erik and his family for the ship, so he gathered up Asmund and a group of two dozen local fifteen year old youths into Fair Faxi and they followed the Norwegian fleet out to sea. But the fleet wasn’t really going to raid Frisia at all. King Roller planned on sailing west around Frankia and south past Spain in order to enter the Mediterranean Sea through the Pillars of Hercules. King Roller’s father, Ragnar ‘Lothbrok’, had acquired some vellum maps of Europe during his sacking of Paris years earlier and his son was now going to follow those maps as part of a planned reconnaissance of the Mediterranean for a sea route to Constantinople. Count Ragnar of Frankia was also going to lend his son some ships for the raid. The Norse fleet was halfway to Frankia before they discovered they were being followed. When King Roller found out that young Captain Oddi had trailed his ships all the way from Norway, he was furious and wanted to send him back to Stavanger. But it would be too dangerous to send a ship full of boys back alone, so they were allowed to join the fleet, at least until they met up with Ragnar’s fleet on the Seine.
When he met up with his father, Roller brought up the problem that had arisen from Oddi’s following his fleet. “Could you take care of this ship full of boys for me while I’m in the Mediterranean? I can’t be taking them off to raid with me.”
“I’ll have to meet them first,” Ragnar stated. “I don’t have any wet nurses in my fleet, so they can’t be in their swaddling clothes.”
Ragnar met with Captain Oddi and his crew and he was immediately taken by the mettle of the boys. The youthful captain reminded him of his two sons, both of them, almost as if they had been forged together into one young man. He inspected their weapons and Oddi’s ship and told his son he would take them. “I don’t think it’s a fair trade, half of my fleet going to Spain with you while I get all these fine young men, but I’ll find some way to make up the difference to you.” He stood at the forestem of Fair Faxi with Oddi as they watched the combined Norwegian/Viking fleet continue westward along the coast of Frankia. “I was plying the Nor’Way trade when Erik won this ship from King Gotar with a portent drapa. I don’t think he was that much older than you are now,” he said. “Your king thinks I’m too old to go to the Mediterranean with him.”
“And he thinks I’m too young,” Oddi complained.
“If I loaned you a few of my years,” Ragnar started, “we’d both be just about right.”
“Quite a few of your years,” Oddi quipped.
“Let’s get your crew some decent weapons,” the old man laughed, giving the boy a quick cuff. “And I’ll get us a nice chest of gold. We may need supplies on the way to Spain.” Ragnar gave each of the boys fine weapons, swords and bucklers, spears and bows. And they loaded baskets full of arrows onto the ship and some strange linen sacks Ragnar’s craftsmen brought out from a shed and then barrel after barrel of fine Frankish wine. Oddi wondered just how much the old man was planning to drink on the way to Spain.
With Ragnar’s experience, they were able to trail the Norwegian fleet halfway down the coast of Spain before they were spotted. But again, the fleet was too far gone to send the ship of boys back. It was an angry Roller that allowed Ragnar and the ship of boys to join the rear echelon of his fleet. When Captain Oddi and his crew would drag Fair Faxi up onto the beach to camp for the night with the rest of the fleet, Ragnar would entertain the youths with tales of fire-breathing dragon ships and Hraes’ gold hoards, battles of Goths and Huns and the dwarves and giants of the eastern realm. He also told them of his first attack on Spain.
“It was King Charles’ idea,” Ragnar said. “He paid me to attack the Caliphate of Cordoba. I would have done it for free, but he paid me a thousand pounds of gold and he gave me a map, so the year before I sacked Paris, I sacked Seville!”
“Why would he pay you to sack Seville?” Oddi asked, incredulously.
“The Muslims were attacking Frankia’s southern borders, so he wanted me to attack their southern borders by sea. So, we headed down the coast of Spain and we raided a few places we had raided before, but we carried on further to the south of Spain and we raided cities as we went along. We captured Lisbon in the summer and we held her until they paid us a ransom then we sailed further south, then rowed upriver to Seville and captured her, but we could not take her walled citadel, so we surrounded the fortress and demanded a ransom for the city. They refused to pay, so we looted the city and occupied it until a Muslim army arrived and set up camp on a hill outside Seville. Since we had already earned our Frankish gold and we were already burdened with loot, we prepared our ships to retreat downriver. My son, Roller, led his Norwegian fleet south first, then I left with my Viking fleet, but one of my lieutenants, Hastein, wasn’t in any hurry to leave because his thirty ships were on the river and the Muslim army was on the other side of it from Seville, so he wanted to harass them a bit because he had converted to Christianity and he wanted to kill himself an Emir or two.
A small contingent of the Muslim army came down from the hill dragging a couple of small catapults with them, so Hastein had his portside archers let loose on them. And, of course, the Muslims loosed arrows in return and a skirmish commenced. Then the little catapults let loose, but they weren’t launching stones. They were firing pottery canisters of Greek fire and launching them at Hastein’s ships. They fired up the downstream ships first, trapping the rest of his fleet upstream. Now we didn’t even know the Arabs had Greek fire,” Ragnar exclaimed, waving his arms in the campfire light, and the butt of a log popped and sizzled as if to emphasize his words. “Only the Eastern Romans are supposed to possess it! We could only watch from downstream as the Muslims fired up the rest of Hastein’s ships. Those that dove into the river were fished out of the water and hanged from the palm trees lining the riverbanks. We stayed and watched to the very end, out of range of their archers and catapults. I lost a thousand men that day, and Hastein and thirty ships. But I learned two very important things in Spain that year,” and the old man looked about himself to the youths all around him.
“That the Arabs have Greek fire!” Oddi and Asmund shouted out at the same time.
“And?” King Ragnar asked, pausing. “That an unwalled city…”
“Is easy to attack,” Oddi shouted. “And you attacked Paris the very next year!”
“Yes,” the old man shouted, raising his arms to the campfire once more. “And I ransomed her for seven fold the men I lost in Spain. Seven thousand pounds of gold and silver for the ships and men I’d lost. Had King Charles not converted Hastein to Christianity, he’d be alive today.”
As the Norwegian fleet approached the Pillars of Hercules, Roller warned his captains that Arab and Roman fleets could be lying in wait for them. They would row under cover of darkness and would hide in bays or sea caves during the day. The Spanish shores had many bays and the cliffs were perforated with limestone caves that ships could navigate through. While the fleet took cover in sea caves in the northern Mons Calpe Pillar, Ragnar had his ship of boys row over to Roller’s dragon ship. “I have seen these cave paintings before,” he called out to his son. “It is Grendal,” he continued.
Roller peered out into the darkness of the cave walls and could make out crude faded drawings of deer and other animals.
“I’ve seen paintings like this in the sea caves near Heorot, north of Liere. When I was a boy you could see the tops of the sea caves at low tide and as youths, we would dive into the sea and swim underwater into the caves and rise up into the air pockets of the cave roofs and there would be paintings just like these, but now, with rising oceans, the caves are all below the waves.”
When night came, the fleet continued along the coast of Spain, then headed east, out into the Mediterranean. They stayed just out of sight of the coast of Africa and soon had Sicily off their port side. Some of the boys began complaining about the odours emanating from the sacks under their rowing benches. “Those are raw sheep skins,” King Ragnar explained, “enough to cover two ships with awnings. And the wine barrels are full of sour wine that can be used to put out Greek fire.”
“So, we cover our ships with sheepskins and we soak the wool in vinegar,” Oddi concluded.
“And then we attack the fire breathing dragon ship that is after us!” King Ragnar exclaimed. “Just as I attacked Fafnir while Jarl Brak steered our ship!”
There were no more complaints about the odour and the boys kept a good eye out for Arab and Roman ships. A week of good sailing put Crete off the fleet’s starboard and they headed north into the Aegean Sea, as yet undetected. The fleet found a secluded bay of an island that seemed uninhabited according to one of the maps that Roller had been studying, so the Norse set up a Viking base there. King Roller’s longship was the fastest in the fleet and would be the ship to go it alone into the Sea of Marmara and on to Constantinople to meet up with Hraes’ traders already there. He would be meeting his brother, Erik, if everything continued to go as planned. And Roller’s longship was already equipped with its own bags of sheepskin awnings and barrels of sour wine.
The Norse fleet waited anxiously in the secluded bay for a week before King Roller’s ship was spotted returning from the Sea of Marmara. Oddi and his ship of boys could not wait and rowed out with Ragnar to meet him.
“How did it go?” Ragnar shouted across the waves.
“Erik sends his regards,” Roller shouted. “No Romans suspected I came from the west.”
The Mediterranean reconnaissance mission was a success. King Roller proved it was possible to take a fleet across the Mediterranean all the way to Constantinople undetected. The Varangers of Seville had proven it so.
Once the fleet was back in Frankia, Arrow Odd decided he would take his ship of young men straight back to Stavanger Fjord and Hraegunarstead. Oddi knew he would miss the old man his stead was named after so he sought him out before leaving for Nor’Way.
“When you were loading Fair Faxi with all your gear, those smelly linen bags of rawhides and barrel after barrel of wine, I thought you might be quite the drunkard. Then, when you didn’t seem inclined to tap a keg at all, I wondered at what kind of a drunk you were, or perhaps weren’t. Next, I heard that you had marked yourself with a spear and sacrificed yourself to Odin. And you know how to defeat Greek fireships! I have learned so much from you….please tell me of your sacrifice to Odin?”
“When Erik was just a few years older than you are now, he and Roller went to Denmark to avenge my honour by attacking the Sea King Spear Odd and the twelve berserker sons of Westmar. My sons defeated and killed Spear Odd upon the waters, but they knew they could not defeat King Frodi’s twelve champions on land, so they devised a plan to battle the twelve berserkers on ice, upon frozen waters. They would traverse the waters on skates of bone and slay the twelve brothers as they slipped and slid upon the ice. But the gods were fickle the night before battle and they threatened to put a foot of snow on the ice, turning it back to land again. My wife, the renowned Witch Kraka, Princess Aslaug Sigurdsdottir, told me that the gods required a sacrifice, so I marked myself with a spear and I set out roving with two longships and men likewise dedicated to Odin. The gods held back their snow and my sons prevailed over the berserkers and became King Frodi’s foremost men.
“I attacked Angleland first, King AElla of North Umbria, and the gods blessed me with victories and treasure, but not with a warrior’s famous death. So, I tried my luck in Frankia, aiming to regain lands I had lost there and, again, I was blessed with victories and spoils, but yet again, no famous death. I thought, surely, if I attacked Paris, surely the Franks would kill me. So, with the help of my sons, I sacked Paris and the Franks gave me back all my lands and more plus seven thousand pounds of gold and silver just to leave the city. King Charles even titled me Count Reginheri, but he refused to acknowledge me as a Vik king. That may change once he forces his brothers to recognize him as Holy Roman Emperor, king of kings. Then he will need minor kings such as myself to lord it over. I soon consigned myself to the belief that the gods did not want my sacrifice and I have worked to rebuild my trading centres in the Province of Rouen, and in Frisia and Ireland and Angleland and the Vik Provinces” Ragnar concluded.
“Perhaps the gods have a special death planned for you….a death so famous that poets will sing about it for a thousand years,” Oddi said, encouragingly. “Spoken like a true prophet,” King Ragnar told Oddi. “My son, Erik ‘Bragi’, could not have said it better.”
Chapter 5: ODDI AND THE NOR’WAY (Circa 856 AD) of BOOK 3: THE SAGA OF PRINCE HELGI ‘ARROW ODD’ ERIKSON shall follow on next Post.
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' 