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 FIVE and SIX:
Hildigunn Giantsdottir on Learning of Arrow Odd’s Leaving
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 FIVE
5.0 ODDI AND THE NOR’WAY (Circa 856 AD)
“And his shield was called Hrae’s Ship’s Round,
And his followers were called the Hraes’.”
Eyvinder Skald-Despoiler; Skaldskaparmal.
(856 AD) Over the winter Oddi worked with Brak on Fair Faxi. The ship was old and there were many leaks between the strakes which had been weakened by many years of flexing in violent seas. It had made the Nor’Way crossing too many times. Oddi used his skill at making arrowheads to devise a nail clinching system to draw the strakes tightly together but Brak told him that it would not be enough. They added alloys from Damascus and Baghdad to their blooms of Indian steel and Oddi hammered them into clinching nails that would not corrode away once the strakes were tied together. Then they hauled Fair Faxi into a boat shed and began working on her over winter. It was time consuming and difficult work drilling holes and adding the strake-nails between the existing gut tied points, but Oddi and Asmund had the work completed before the snow was gone.
When spring came to Stavanger Fjord, Oddi became determined to join in on the Nor’Way trade, but he knew that King Roller would not let him travel with the trading fleet. His was no longer a ship of boys. All saw that they had come back from the Mediterranean quite changed. But they were not yet a ship of men. Oddi knew he would have to trail the fleet once more, but this time they were well aware of the route to be taken. They had all grown up hearing the tall tales of the Nor’Way and the seas to be crossed and the rivers to be travelled. Oddi decided that Fair Faxi would trail the trading fleet by two weeks, so they left Hraegunarstead well after the flotilla of Nor’Way ships had passed by from The Vik on their way to the north and then to the east.
Oddi had his men beach Fair Faxi in a small cove and he waved to his foster-father, Grim, in front of his large longhall in Hrafnista. It was the Hraes’ Trading Company jump off point for the Nor’Way crossing, so the hall was the largest in the north and the Raven Banners of Ragnar Lothbrok fluttered from points all around the building. There was no question of who you were representing when you became a Varanger on the other side of the crossing. It was a family business that welcomed all reputable merchants, but it was still a family business and King Roller ran the northern end of it, while Prince Erik ran the eastern end. The old man, Count Ragnar, himself ran the west end of it, the lucrative Hraes’ trading stations in Frankia, Angleland and Ireland. Jarl Grim greeted Oddi warmly and told him that his foster-brother, Gudmund and Cousin Sigurd awaited him with their ships on the other side of the island and were making offerings for a good crossing wind soon. Grim then welcomed Asmund and the rest of the crew into his hall and offered them food and drink. After the meal he presented Oddi with three golden arrows called Gusir’s Gifts, arrows that his father, Ketil Trout, took from the Finnish King Gusir, who’d had them fashioned by dwarves. “I give you these arrows because the stories we have heard of you and Asmund and your crew in the Mediterranean foretell of your future greatness, Oddi,” Grim said. “These arrows will help keep you alive to fulfil that omen.” Arrow Odd was a young expert at fashioning arrows, but he had never seen arrows such as these. The arrowheads were gold with inset steel blades, fine grained steel for sharpness, and gold for weight, knock down weight, and they had flights both fore and aft and hollow metal shafts that seemed surprisingly light from the balance of the darts. They were flawless in manufacture, so perfect that they made Oddi want to string his bow and shoot them. Grim had suspected this would happen so he had Oddi’s bow at the ready and three straw targets thirty paces outside the hall front doors. Oddi took his bow and the arrows and stepped out onto the porch. He let two of the arrows drop and they tick ticked into the deck of the porch, standing, quivering at the ready. He nocked the third and drew back on the bow then let the heavy dart fly. It flew straight and true, as if it had no weight at all, but when it hit the bullseye it knocked the target over as though it had been hit by a log. Oddi let loose the other two and they flew with much the same result.
Oddi met up with his young relatives on the other side of Hrafnista just as a crossing wind came up and the three Nor’Way ships set their awnings and raised their sails for their first crossing and were swept east into a storm of such ferocity that they were soon Varangians on the other side. It was dusk when they sailed past the Kola Peninsula and the wind just died as they weighed anchors to spend the night in a sheltered harbour. They did not know this land so they felt safer sleeping aboard their ships.
In the morning, they saw some Lapp tents inland a bit, so Gudmund and Sigurd’s crews rowed their ships in to shore and learned that the Lapp men were further inland herding reindeer so they raided the tents and plundered the Lapp women. The women were very upset with this abuse and even sent a group of girls to the shoreline to shout at Oddi and his ship for help. Oddi’s crew of youths wanted to go join the others in the mayhem on shore, but Oddi wouldn’t allow anyone to leave Fair Faxi. In the evening Gudmund and Sigurd’s crews rowed their ships back out to safe harbour.
“You raided the Lapps?” Oddi shouted as they approached and dropped anchors.
“We sure did,” Gudmund shouted back. “We got much loot and had a fine time making the Lapp women shout and swear at us. Will you come with us tomorrow?”
“We will certainly not!” Oddi shouted across the waves. “No good will come of this, mark my words. The Lapps have magic they can use against us.”
Gudmund thought about this and decided to make offerings for a good wind east. Still, it took three nights to get that wind and that was a long wait for Hrafnista men. They sailed past Kandalaks Bay into the White Sea and then up the Northern Dvina River into Bjarmia. They saw no men for several days then sailed past a clearing in which there was a huge gathering of Bjarmians. The men in the clearing watched them go by with complete indifference, so Gudmund suspected that something must be up. Further downriver they spotted a large ran and sailed past it but put in to shore upstream of it and doubled back through the bush to have a closer look. They saw a few people around the ran and their talking was like the twittering of birds, then they saw a Norse slave working in a nearby field, so they snatched him for questioning.
He was a Norwegian, captured on a trading mission of the Hraes’ Trading Company and he claimed to know Prince Erik personally. He also told Oddi about an offering mound that was in the clearing they had passed by and, there, Bjarmians celebrated births and deaths with a double handful offering of both soil and silver. There, the captive promised, they would find much silver just lying about. They waited till dusk, then rowed their ships downstream to the clearing and pulled up to the riverbank. The clearing was empty so they went ashore, Gudmund and Sigurd’s men first, filling sacks with silver, while the crew of Fair Faxi stood guard, then Oddi and Asmund and their crew of young men went out into the clearing. Somehow, between the shift change, the Norse slave had escaped. Soon Bjarmian warriors were flooding into the clearing, forcing Oddi and his youths back to their ship. The Norwegians stood on the riverbank, shields and swords at the ready, as they finished loading Fair Faxi. And the ships of Gudmund and Sigurd were nowhere to be seen. The Norse captive stepped to the front of the Bjarmians and hailed Oddi.
“Where did you go?” asked Oddi.
“I went to see where the Bjarmians were and this group was heading out to attack you, but I told them you would rather do some business.”
“And what business do they wish to do?”
“I suggested they trade their silver weapons for your steel blades.”
The silver weapons of the Bjarmians flashed in the fading sunlight, but they seemed more interested in the steel weapons of the Varangians and offered to trade swords of silver trimmed in gold for fine swords of steel trimmed in ton-stone. Oddi had his young men pull forth and spread out several hides piled high with fine Stavanger swords from the smithyshop of Hraegunarstead. Oddi traded sword for sword, steel for silver and gold and made himself a fortune that evening, for there did not seem to be any shortage of silver or gold in those Bjarmian lands. As the sword pile slowly diminished, the warriors began offering two silver swords for a blade and when the sword pile was gone they were offering silver swords for Seax knives and iron spears. As a final transaction, Oddi ransomed the Norse captive from the Bjarmians with his own last Stavanger blade and they gave the slave his freedom. The young Varangians rowed Fair Faxi out from shore and parted, if not friends, at least, not enemies.
“What should we do with the slave?” Asmund asked Oddi quietly.
“I ransomed him for Prince Erik of Gardariki,” Oddi whispered back. “The captive claims to know him. The prince may be grateful.”
“And what about Gudmund and Sigurd? They were supposed to wait for us.”
“That’s why we must run a tight ship and our young men must have discipline. They must be taught when to stand and when to run, when to raid and when to trade. Gudmund and Sigurd must learn this as well. So, let us row upriver until we find them. They’ll be washing the earth out of their melted bits of silver by dragging their sacks through the river and then they’ll stop to count it all up and divide some of it out amongst their men to keep them all happy.”
“And what shall we do?”
“We shall show discipline by washing our silver and using it all to buy furs from the Permians to sell to the Romans in Tmutorokan. Our men will get triple the silver for the furs there. But the Bjarmian swords are mine. Those Stavanger blades were all smithied by Brak and yours truly and the silver swords of the Bjarmians are so finely crafted, the Arabs in Gardariki will pay their weight in gold.”
So, they headed upriver.
Oddi watched the captive figit as his men rowed and he remembered what he had learned from Kraka about how men could be injured in their minds as well as their bodies during the bloodbath that was called war. She had taught Oddi how to handle the mentally wounded as well as the physically. And Oddi suspected that this captive was just one such wounded warrior, enslaved in mind as well as body by his captors. He would deliver the man to Prince Erik in Tmutorokan. Kraka was a healer and she had taught her sons this as well.
The three ships were soon progressing together up the Northern Dvina and when their crews were exhausted, for security, they made camp on an island in the midst of the river. In the middle of the night a huge brown bear came rustling through the camp and Oddi shot it dead with one of Gusir’s gifts. The arrow literally knocked the bear down dead. The next day, Oddi made a scorn pole using the great head of the bear and set it up facing out toward shore to ward off evil. He even added some fiery coals in the agape jaws of the bear, but the scorn pole did not work well, for an evil giantess soon wandered across the waves and attacked the Norwegians. She was huge and very muscular with thick long black hair like whale baleen; she was hideous and covered in a hide. As she approached, Oddi went over to the scorn pole with his bow and Gusir’s gifts and blew on the coals in the head of the bear until flames erupted. But the giantess kept coming, so Oddi set the arrow and drew the bow. She turned just as he shot and he caught her on the side of the head and the gift pierced both of her eyes, blinding her as she stepped out of the river. She fell back into the water and started swimming downstream with Gusir’s gift jutting wickedly from her temple. Oddi took off after her. With the bow and two more of Gusir’s gifts in hand, he dove into the river and began to swim after the giantess. She swam incredibly fast and was heading for some cliffs that made up the eastern riverbank. When she got to the cliffs, she dove and disappeared. Oddi swam around waiting for her to come up, but she didn’t. Then Oddi remembered what Ragnar had told him about the caves near Liere. The entrances were now below sea level, so he dove below the waves and soon found the submerged entrance to a cave.
“She must have gone in there,” he thought. Oddi went back up to the surface, took several great gulps of air, then went back down and entered the cave. He quietly broke the surface of a pool within the cave and could see the giantess complaining in a guttural language about what had happened to other giants who seemed to be her mother and father. The inside of the cave was faintly lit by crude torches, but Oddi could make out animal paintings all over the walls that looked just like those he had seen in Moorish Spain. Some of the animals were different, of course, but the style was the same, as if painted by artists who only knew of one way, a two dimensional way, to represent images. Artists who had reached their limits of imagination.
The father giant saw Oddi rise out of the pool and walk onto a beach. The mother giant made a move as if to attack, so Oddi drew his bow and shot her right in the eye, knocking her down, dead. The girl giant wailed as her mother fell into her arms and Oddi could hear a baby crying in the background. The huge father giant moved quickly towards Oddi. He was massive, taller than Oddi and heavily muscled, weighing twenty to thirty stone. Oddi set the last of Gusir’s gifts onto his bowstring and instinctively drew and shot. His aim was true and he hit the giant in his left eye, but the gift failed to knock the giant down. He stopped in his tracks but was not killed. He stood there and, seeing that Oddi was now unarmed, said in a low slow voice, as if trying to use a language he had not used for some time, “I shall not kill you out of respect for your father, who rules the Nor’Way. But you must go now!”
“My father is dead,” Oddi protested, then caught himself.
“Your father rules the whole Nor’Way, Arrow Odd, so leave here now with your life and never come back.”
“Prince Erik gave me the byname Arrow Odd,” shouted Oddi.
“And Prince Erik rules the Nor’Way, go now Arrow Odd,” the giant replied. “and take your evil arrows with you!” he shouted, throwing Gusir’s Gifts across the cave to him.
Oddi was shocked that the giant knew his name. He gripped his bow and Gusir’s Gifts in his left hand and dove into the pool. The arrows had saved his life, but he was still shaken when he returned to the island and ordered his men to pack up their gear and shove off. Gudmund, Sigurd and Asmund could see that Oddi was deeply disturbed by something that had happened, but Oddi would not talk about it. Instead, he just said, “Make sure you bring the captive. Prince Erik will want to question him.”
And they sailed and rowed through the land of the Hraes’ so quickly, they almost caught up to the trading fleet that had left weeks before them.
When Oddi and his men arrived in Gardariki, it was just after the main trading fleet of the Nor’Way had arrived and the city was an absolute madhouse. There were merchants there from Constantinople and Baghdad and caravan traders from Cathay to West Africa. Some ships of the Nor’Way fleet would sail all the way to Constantinople or upriver to Baghdad to fetch better prices for their goods, but prices were so high in Gardariki, many captains cancelled their on-going travel plans and sold their goods right there. Oddi found some officers of the Tmutorokan Hraes’ Guard and he soon got an audience set up with Prince Erik regarding a recovered captive of the Nor’Way. Meanwhile, Oddi took the silver swords of the Bjarmians that he had traded for their weight in steel and traded them to Arab merchants for their weight in gold, so finely crafted were the gold trimmed silver blades. Oddi was now a very rich captain and his companions were very wealthy men so he had all his crews dressed in the finest white silk shirts with bright red piping, as was common practice among the Hraes’ Trading Company members. This practice had led Prince Erik ‘Bragi’ to garner a second byname of Hvitserk, or Whiteshirt. They soon met again in the Mese, the main street of Gardariki, where Erik was holding impromptu meetings with merchants and traders.
“I see you have profited well from this trading season, Captain Oddi,” Prince Erik declared. “King Roller told me all about your activities in the Mediterranean. I hope Fair Faxi has treated you well.”
“Thank you again for the gift, my Prince,” Oddi replied. “And I bring you a gift in return. A captive of the Bjarmians who claims to know you. I bought his release with a fine Stavanger sword that your foster-father Brak helped me forge.” And he had Gudmund, Sigurd and Asmund step forward with the captive, all of them dressed in white silk shirts and red velvet pants, as though in uniform.
Erik blinked and could not believe his eyes. “Is it you, An? Brother of my Lieutenant Ask?”
“It is I,” the captive replied. “Back from the dead.”
Prince Erik hugged the Varangian as though he was hugging a ghost…very gently. “You must all share the high seat spread with me tonight in my palace.” He waved over servants and instructed them to escort his guests to the palace to relax. “And feel free to use the chariots,” he ordered. “I’ll be back there as soon as I am done with these embassies. All your party is welcome.”
“Have you ever driven a chariot before?” was all the servant had to ask and Oddi snatched up the reins.
“Jump aboard, Asmund,” Oddi declared. “We are off to the palace.”
Gardariki was a jumble of buildings and walls, some log, some stone, but it seemed to be growing in a very organized pattern of broad streets and avenues. And standing tall above all other buildings was the royal palace, half built of stone and marble with the other half still under construction. The main hall was like a longhall but double the size in all dimensions. The entrance had great double doors of steel reinforced oak and four huge fireplaces divided the longhall lengthwise, and they had massive stone chimneys that carried the smoke straight up through the oak plank and beam roof. Servants sat Oddi and Asmund on the stone carved second highseat of the host highseats, while Gudmund and Sigurd occupied the third. An, the brother of Ask, sat on the first highseat that he would share with The Prince. It turned out that the captive had, indeed, known Prince Erik personally. Servants brought fresh fruits and cut crystal containers of juices on platters and laid them out on the arms of the highseats. Soon the crews of Oddi’s and Gudmund’s and Sigurd’s ships arrived and were seated at tables to the immediate left and right of the host highseats. The guest highseats began to fill with Roman officers of the Varangian Guard and ambassadors of the Caliph of Baghdad. The first highseat was reserved for a royal family member of the Emperor of the Han Dynasty of Cathay that might or might not show up. This was a far cry from camping on an island and being attacked by giants.
“I had planned to sit with embassies from the Poljane and Drevjane Slav Provinces, but they can wait,” Prince Erik declared when he arrived at the high seats. “I hope you find everything satisfactory, particularly the chariots.”
“The chariots were great!” Oddi exclaimed. “Very fast.”
Prince Erik sat down on the first highseat between An and Oddi. “I have news for you, An, about your brother Ask. He died in The Battle of the Goths and the Huns.”
“Did he die quickly?” An asked.
“Yes. And he died bravely,” Erik answered. “The battle of hosts can be strangely unnerving and Ask felt he was doomed to die, that there was an arrow with his name on it, so he may have wavered a bit, but in the end he fought bravely, and when an arrow struck him in the nose, he snapped it off and fought on, thinking he had escaped his fate. But there is no escaping fate and his arrow soon found its mark and struck him dead through his heart. No matter what you may hear told, he died bravely, fighting the Huns to his last breath.”
“Of all the things I missed in my captivity, I think it was the companionship of my brother that I missed the most. If he did not survive the Huns, I doubt very much if I would have. I guess I can thank the Bjarmians for more years and Captain Oddi, here, for as many more as the gods see fit to bless me with.”
“Well spoken, An,” The Prince said. “And you will always have a job with the Hraes’ Trading Company, and enough back pay to allow you to buy a place of your own here in Tmutorokan, if you so wish.”
“And thank you for finding the brother of my friend, Ask,” Erik told Oddi.
“Thank you, Prince,” Oddi replied, then paused as if deeply troubled.
“You are perplexed,” Erik responded. “What troubles you?”
“I killed a giant in Bjarmaland,” Oddi started, “and I find it quite troubling.”
“As though you have further contributed to a crime already inflicted upon them by man?”
“That’s it!” Oddi exclaimed. “That’s it exactly. How did you know?”
“I had a similar experience with dwarves in Giantland. Perhaps we could talk about it later this evening. Please stay with me in my palace for the rest of your time in Gardariki. You and Asmund and your ship of boys, and our common relatives from Hrafnista, too. But now I must wait on our ambassadors seated on the guest highseats. I see the Chinese Emperor’s cousin has just arrived.”
“Thank you, Prince,” Oddi said. “I look forward to our later talk.”
“As Ragnar once told me,” Erik extolled, “a merchant must attend to all his trade routes…Constantinople, Baghdad and Cathay…all in one hall.” And he rose and crossed the longhall to welcome his guests.
“When I hanged on the great tree of knowledge, Yggdrasil, for nine days near death, I learned of the birth of mankind,” Erik started, once again sharing the highseat with Oddi. He had a small Capuchin monkey with him, on a leash, and it clutched at the arm of the first highseat they were sharing. “Man was not unlike this monkey here. Living up in trees, naked and afraid, evolving and changing. At different times in history, various evolutions of man came down from those same trees in Africa and spread across the land, but he had one natural enemy,” he said, looking over to an Egyptian house cat that was roaming through the shadows of the now still hall. “Big cats, mainly tigers, hunted us as natural prey. Some tigers were such mankillers that they instinctively knew of one way to kill a man and that is from behind, snapping his neck quickly. Some evolutions came down from the trees and were wiped out, others came down and survived, becoming great hunters and inhabiting lands in which, they were particularly well suited. These giants you have seen are one of those evolutions. They came down from the trees before us and they spread out across the lands….Europe and Asia….preferring cooler climes. They made tools of stone, thrusting spears for killing woolly elephants and great beasts and giant cats. One giant even invented a thrusting spear that had replaceable tips so you could kill a woolly elephant with one spear and a dozen spear tips that were carried in a quiver like we do our arrows. They used fire but could not master it. They had beliefs in an afterlife, but they had no gods. All this I saw in the birth of this particular man.
“When we came down from the trees we were faster and smarter than these giants, but we had two particular advantages over them. We could throw stones and spears overhand, which, due to their immense strength, the giants could not. And we could lie. We could be so deceitful, we could even lie to ourselves and believe the lies we told ourselves. We spread out across those same lands and we had fire and we mastered it. And we had gods that we were taught, mastered us. Through deceit and throwing spears we drove the giants north into colder climes, but the whole world was warmer then and they could eke out a living in those cold northern lands. But then the world grew colder and great sheets of ice grew upon the land and drove the giants back south, where we were waiting to kill them. Some were killed, some were enslaved, the world’s first slaves, and some…they were so appalled by the horrors of this new man, they killed themselves. The giants you saw are what is left of this evolution of man. There are other evolutions that survive in the east, but their fate is pretty much the same.
“Things tend to evolve to a certain level of perfection and then, after that, all further evolution becomes overly complex and evil. And we are that man. What we did to the giants, we now freely do to ourselves. We kill ourselves, we enslave ourselves, we lord over each other as wolves devouring a kill. And that is why the giants hide from us. What is left of them, that is.”
“But the leader of the giants talked to me in Norse, and he knew my name. He called me Arrow Odd, and he claimed to know my father. He called him ruler of the Nor’Way. That is, you. How can this be? How could he know me?”
“The dwarves know of the giants and they treat them with respect. The dwarves are not another evolution of man. They are like us, but different. I saw, first-hand, the crimes we inflicted upon the dwarves and that is why I knew how you felt. The dwarves learn from us and they teach the giants and, perhaps, some giants see things as I do, in glimpses of the past and foretellings of the future. Do not feel bad about your encounter with the giants. Their fate has been determined long before your coming.”
“Thank you, Prince,” Oddi started. “Knowing this makes it easier for me to accept what happened. But I take no pride in it. I am a human being and I know right from wrong. Enslaving giants is no better than enslaving men. And that is what seems to be so much a part of the Nor’Way.”
“That is an unfortunate part of the ‘Way. I, too, am a human being, but we are surrounded by men. It will take time. I have learned over the years that it is very difficult to change people and to change things. I thought I had changed my late wife, Gunwar’s brother, King Frodi into a man of peace. The Peace of Frodi we called it, but he murdered his wife, Queen Alfhild, and fell back into his old ways and couldn’t even be bothered to save his sister while I was imprisoned by the Romans. And now he blames the Romans instead of himself and is making plans against my sage advice. Change has proved to be very fleeting. My wife, Princess Gunwar, started a freedom movement against slavery right under my nose and I certainly wasn’t going to stop her. She even became a Christian because of their stand against slavery. I didn’t get a chance to tell her that I was working on real change that would come about in our time. Real change that will change history.”
“I’m not sure I understand,” Oddi said.
“Have you heard the old Roman saying, ‘those that do not study history are doomed to repeat it’?” and Oddi nodded. “Well…history is exactly that…his…story. It is the story of your father. And it is that immediate history one should study first, then work your way back and really know your history well, because it is all interrelated and the better you know it the more interrelated it becomes. I have seen how something that Julius Caesar did, before the birth of the Christian’s saviour, will affect our own offspring a thousand years later. And something I am working on now will affect the Persians a thousand years before that and will ultimately affect what the Romans believe in shortly after the reign of Julius.” Prince Erik was staring out across his stone highseat hall and Oddi suspected that he was sharing a vision. The Prince was famous for his foresight and, apparently his hindsight as well.
“I heard of your success,” the Prince went on, “in trading with the Bjarmians and that you have profited more in this trading season than any other merchant. And you did it trading steel swords for silver….no slaves. Shall I take your success as a sign that you may be back next year?”
“I shall be back,” Oddi reassured his prince. “I wish to learn more of my father, and I hear he was a Goth and was from here.”
“Good. We shall talk more then. No one has had as much success dealing with the Bjarmians as you have had.”
Oddi, Asmund, Gudmund and Sigurd spent the rest of the summer in Gardariki and Oddi learned much from his frequent discussions with Prince Erik. But as summer waned, King Roller’s trading fleet was expected back from Baghdad and Oddi wanted to head back to Hrafnista ahead of it so, they equipped their Nor’Way ships and sailed north on the Sea of Azov, entering the Don River and sailing past the ruined Fortress of Sarkel to the Volga portage, where they paid Hraes’ station workers to portage their ships overland to the Volga River. They sailed and rowed up the Volga and then the Kama Rivers to the Hawknista portage and paid Hraes’ station workers to again portage their ships to a tributary of the Northern Dvina. They sailed into Permia and stopped to purchase more furs to sell in Frankia, then continued on into Bjarmia, camping and resting on their island in the middle of the Dvina.
“This island is called Varg and is avoided by merchants because of the ferocious bears found hereabouts”, Oddi started. “We have not been bothered by them because I killed one of the most ferocious of the bears here last spring with a Gusir’s Gift arrow. Prince Erik told me that he had tried to kill one of these bears with a bow but half a quiver later they had to leave the island because darts would not kill it.”
“What else did The Prince tell you about our island?” Asmund asked.
“Erik told me to leave an offering for the giantess I killed. I think that if I don’t leave wergild, they will use their magic against me.”
So, Oddi took up a generous offering of his gold from one of his chests, put it in a sack and had Asmund row him across river to the cliffs on the east bank. “Wait for me on Varg, no matter how long this takes me,” he said, then dove into the river.
When Oddi entered the submerged cave entrance, he swam ahead and up until he broke the surface of the pool inside the cave. All was dark except for a shaft of light filtering in through an air hole. There were no torches lit and the place seemed deserted. Oddi could see faint light at the other end of the cave and he guessed that he would find an entrance there. He walked across the cave and he put his offering of gold wergild into a small grotto at the side of the cave’s entrance. Then he re-entered the pool and swam back under the cave entrance and came up in the river again just in time to call back Asmund in his boat. “There was no one there,” Oddi explained as he climbed into the boat, “so I just left the gold.”
“You’ve been gone for two weeks,” Asmund told him. “I was just rowing here again to see what was taking you so long!”
CHAPTER SIX
6.0 HILDER THE GIANT (Circa 856 AD)
“This is taken pretty literally from Arrow Odd’s Saga,
Perhaps a bit too literally, but it seems to follow Sinbad the Sailor,
Which is interesting because Oddi would have visited Baghdad
Just after Sinbad’s time, an Arab saga feeding a Norse saga.”
Brian Howard Seibert
(856 AD) “I’ve been gone two weeks?” Oddi asked Asmund as they sat around their campfire on Varg Island. “I just went into the cave and came right back out again.”
“No,” Asmund assured him. “You’ve been gone two weeks.” And Oddi’s men all agreed with Asmund and told Oddi he was gone two weeks. “Do you have any recollection of it at all?” Asmund inquired.
“No,” Oddi said. “I just remember swimming into the cave, leaving the gold, and swimming right back out again.”
“No more Giantland for you, my friend,” Asmund warned. “Something happened in that cave that you can’t remember and you’re not going back.”
After their supper Oddi said, “I’m tired and I’m going to bed,” and he went into his awning and realised that he had no bed. Just a warm fur on some straw. But he knew that and he shook his head and asked himself, ‘Why did I expect a bed?’ But he quickly fell asleep on his fur and he had a dream:
Oddi entered the submerged cave entrance and swam ahead and up until he broke the surface of the pool inside the cave. All was dark except for a shaft of light filtering in through an air hole. There were no torches lit and the place seemed deserted. Oddi could see faint light at the other end of the cave and he guessed that he would find an entrance there. He walked across the cave and he put his offering of gold wergild into a small grotto at the side of the cave’s entrance. He then stepped out into a sunny wood and he continued on until he came to a crag, and some big ravines, where a river fell in noisy waterfalls. He wondered how anyone could get across, and he saw no way forward. He had just sat down when something caught him up and lifted him into the air. A huge bird had come flying at Oddi and snatched him up with its claws so fast that he could not protect himself from it. “You’re in Giantland now,” Oddi thought, incredulously. The creature flew with Oddi to some cliffs and landed on a grassy ledge. Here its young waited. When it let Oddi loose, he tumbled into a nest and bowled over some chicks that were almost as big as he was.
Oddi was left alone with the vulture’s young in the nest. There was a high cliff above, while a sheer drop was underneath. Oddi could see no way to escape without risking his life and jumping into the river that the waterfalls spilled into. The chicks were still unfledged. The vulture was rarely home in the nest, as it was always out looking for prey. Oddi tied up the beaks of the young and concealed himself in a rock cleft behind the nest. The vulture returned with fish and birds and human flesh, and all sorts of animals and livestock. It even began carrying cooked meat there. When the vulture left, Oddi came out and took the food but he concealed himself during feedings.
One day Oddi saw a great giant rowing in a stone boat towards the nest. The giant shouted and said: “An evil bird is nesting there, and she has been stealing away my freshly boiled meat day after day. I shall avenge myself somehow. When I take the oxen of the king, I did not mean that a bird should have them.”
Oddi stood up and killed the chicks and called to the giant: “Here is all that you are looking for, and I have taken care of it.”
The giant went into the nest and took his meat and bore it to the boat. Then he said, “Where is the little boy that I saw here? Don’t be scared, step out and come with me for your reward.” Oddi showed himself then, and the giant took him and put him in the boat. He said: “How shall I kill this beast?”
Oddi said, “Set fire to the nest, and when the vulture comes back, she will fly so near that the fire will burn its feathers, and then we can kill it.” It happened as Oddi said, and they killed the vulture. Oddi took its beaks and claws and climbed into the boat, and the giant rowed away.
“Do you have a name, boy,” the giant asked as he rowed.
“I am Arrow Odd,” was the reply and Oddi asked him his name, and he said he was Hilder and that he was one of the giants of Giantland and he had a wife called Hildirid, and a daughter named Hildigunn.
“And I have a son called Godmund,” Hilder added, “and he was born yesterday.”
Hilder rowed some more, then he said, “I am one of three brothers. The name of one is Ulf, the other Ylfing. We have set up a meeting next summer to see who will be the next King of Giantland, namely, whoever does the most remarkable deeds and has the most savage dog in the dogfight at the meeting.”
Oddi said, “Who do you think, out of you three brothers, will become king?”
Hilder answered: “It seems to go that one of the other two receives it, because I’ve always been the lesser of us three, and so it will likely still be.”
Oddi said, “Would you choose to be king if chance was in your favour?”
Hilder answered: “I would like to be king, but it is very unlikely, because Ulf has a wolf that is so ferocious that no dog can take him. And Ulf has killed an animal called a tiger, and he has the head of the beast to prove it. But Ylfing is even harder, since he has an unbeatable polar bear, and he has killed an animal called a unicorn. I have no deeds to compare with theirs and no dog to compare either.”
“Well, it seems to me,” said Oddi, “that I might have a solution if someone was sympathetic to my cause.”
Hilder said, “I have never met a child as little as you, nor as arrogant, nor as crafty, and because I think you may be too clever by half, you are the greatest treasure. I will bring you to Hildigunn, my daughter, and she can have you to play with and foster you and bring you up with Godmund, my son.”
After that Hilder rowed home to Giantland and Oddi thought that the boat went very fast. When Hilder got home, he showed them the child that he had found, and asked his daughter to take care of him as if he were her own. Hildigunn took Oddi and when he walked with her, he stood thigh high, but Hilder was taller than her, as a father would be. Hildigunn picked up Odd and put him on her knee, then she turned him to look at him, and said: “This tiny pip has a tuft under his nose, but Godmund is bigger, though born just yesterday.”
She put him in the cradle with the giant baby and sang lullabies to the child and cuddled with them. But when Oddi was restless in the cradle, she took him to bed with her and caressed him, and was startled when Oddi grew erect as though sporting a mast bearing the bedsheet as a sail. Hildigunn threw back the covers and exclaimed, “Your lower tuft has a pip of its own!”
Then Oddi told her that he was not a child, though he was smaller than local men. And that the people of Giantland were so much bigger and stronger than any other kind; they were friendly and handsome, but no wiser than other people.
“You can touch it if you wish,” Oddi offered, as she sat on the bed and stared at it.
“Why are you naked?” she asked, reaching out for it.
“I always sleep naked,” Oddi said. “I kicked your doll clothes off and down to the end of the bed.” She wanted to look towards the end of the bed but she could not take her eyes off of it. She touched it and it was very hot and hard and it seemed to elude her so she grabbed it in her hand. “You should try it,” Oddi said, and she put her mouth over it and began to suck it. “I meant sleeping naked,” he corrected himself, “you should try sleeping naked. But don’t stop!”
Hildigunn could see that Oddi found pleasure in what she was doing so she kept it up but then stopped suddenly with a sour look on her face and she spit out across the bed and a hot stream landed on the wooden floor.
“It peed in my mouth!” she complained.
“That’s not piss,” he told her. “It’s semen, and if you got it in the other end you could get pregnant and have a baby. You just gave me an orgasm. Ejaculations!”
“Oh…,” she said slowly. “I think I understand. That is how Godmund came about.”
Hildigunn began getting undressed.
“What are you doing?” Oddi asked.
“I’m going to try sleeping naked with you,” she replied and she laid back next to Oddi and she pulled the covers over them both. In the candlelight she soon saw the mast rise up once more and the sheet seemed to flutter like a sail. “I’m not sucking on it again,” she said. “It’ll go off in my mouth again.”
“You can just stroke it with your hand and watch it go off,” Oddi coached. She threw back the covers once more and she took it up in her hands and laid next to it and she stroked it and it was soon going off up into the candlelit air. She was excited by the force of the flow and Oddi had her taste it and she was soon lapping it up off his chest and she wanted to do it again. And again. Then Hildigunn cuddled with Oddi for a time and then they laid beside each other under the sheets.
“How do we make a baby,” Hildigunn asked. Oddi showed her and it was her turn to have multiple orgasms.
“I don’t think it will work though,” Oddi admitted, after having his way with the girl. “You are far too young to have a baby.”
“We’ll have to keep trying,” Hildigunn said. “I’m a giant and time is different with us.” They got along much better after that night together.
Oddi stayed with them a while and he asked Hilder how generous he would be to the man who got him a dog that could beat his brothers’. Hilder answered “I would give him anything he asked for. Can you get me such a dog?”
Oddi said, “Perhaps I can show you it, but you will have to grab it yourself.”
Hilder answered, “I will grab it if you show me it.”
Oddi said, “There is a beast on Varg Island that hibernates. Such is its nature that it sleeps all winter, but in spring it wakes up hungry as a bear and then it is so greedy and cruel that nothing is safe, neither cattle nor men nor anything that moves. Now I’m pretty sure that this animal would beat your brothers’ dogs.”
Hilder said, “Take me to this dog, and if it turns out to be true, then I will pay you well when I’m in power.” They got ready to go.
Then Hildigunn spoke to Oddi. “Will you be coming back after this?”
He said that he did not know for sure.
“I hope you do,” she said, “because I love you greatly, even though you are small. I must tell you that I am with child, though it seems unlikely that you could do this, as small and feeble as you are, but there is no one except you who can be the father. And though I love you very much, I will not stop you going, because I know your character is to go where you please, but do not doubt that you cannot get away from here without my letting you. But I would rather bear grief and sorrow, than hold you here against your will. Still, I would like to know what you want me to do with our child?”
“You must send him to me,” said Oddi, “if it’s a boy, when he is twelve years old, and of naming age because I have much to offer him. But if it is a girl, then she should be brought up here, and you should look after her yourself, because I will be of no use to her.”
“You shall have your way in this as in everything else,” she said, “so farewell.” She then cried tragically, but Oddi had his way and went to the stone boat.
Hilder rowed. To Oddi the way seemed too long and the progress too slow with oars, so, he raised his arms like a true Hrafnista man and he hoisted the sail, and there came along a fair wind, and they sailed out of the country. But, before long, Hilder got to his feet in the boat and seized Oddi and pushed him down. “I will kill you if you don’t stop this magic of yours,” he warned, “for the land and the mountains rush past as though sheep and the ship will soon sink under us.”
Oddi explained, “You are dizzy because you’re not accustomed to sailing; let me up and I’ll show you how it works.” Hilder did as he asked and Oddi reefed the sail and the shore and mountains were calm again. Oddi told him not to worry about the speed because he could stop whenever he wished. Hilder was now calm after that and he realized that sailing would be quicker than rowing; Oddi hoisted the sails and the wind took the boat along as before and Hilder sat quietly.
When they got to Varg Island, they went ashore. There was a large scree slope nearby and Oddi asked Hilder to stretch his hand down among the stones and see if he could feel anything. He did so and drove his arm into the stones up to the shoulder, and said, “Oh, there’s something odd inside. I’ll get my rowing glove,” and once so armed, he drove his arm back into the scree and then pulled out a bear by the ears. Oddi said, “Now, treat this dog just as I said; take it home with you and don’t let it loose or feed it until the meeting when it fights the dogs.” Hilder had bites all over his hand. He said, “This should do the trick, Arrow Odd. Come to this grim place next spring, at this time and I’ll have your reward for you.” Oddi agreed to it. Hilder returned Oddi to the cave and took the beast home with him and Oddi re-entered the pool in the cave and swam back underwater to the entrance and came up in the river and saw Asmund looking for him in his boat.
The next morning Oddi got up and walked over to the campfire. “You were gone two weeks,” Asmund said as Oddi walked into the clearing. “Did you at least make your offering?”
“There were no giants left there. But I think I was taken captive by another giant named Hilder and he spoke Norse fluently and Oddi sat down and told his men all about his dream of his adventure in Giantland. When he got to the end of his tale and he told them he would be returning the next spring for a reward, just to find out if it actually happened, the men laughed skeptically, some laughing so hard they rolled backwards off the log they were sitting upon. “That giant won’t pay up, even if he beats his brothers,” they claimed in unison.
“Where is Gudmund and Sigurd?” Oddi asked.
“They waited as long as they could,” Asmund replied, “but they wanted to make the crossing and get back home to Hrafnista. They have to help Grim get ready to receive the Norwegian merchant fleet.”
“We should go then,” Oddi said. “They won’t be getting a crossing wind without us.”
And it was as Oddi had said, for when they had sailed down the Northern Dvina and crossed the White Sea and sailed past Kandalaks Bay, there on the Kola Peninsula sat the ships of Gudmund and Sigurd, becalmed in a harbour. Oddi threw out Fair Faxi’s anchor and they all slept aboard ship in the harbour. When night waxed, they awoke to a great crashing in the air, the likes of which they had never heard before. Oddi asked Sigurd and Gudmund if they had heard such a racket before, and as they were discussing this, there was another great crash, and then came a third, and it was the greatest of them all.
“What do you think causes this, Oddi?” Gudmund asked.
Oddi said, “I’ve heard it said that two winds will blow at the same time and clash and from their collision will come a big crash. Now we should expect rough weather soon coming our way.” And they built a bulwark across their ships and lashed them together following Oddi’s instructions, and when it was all done, weather struck that was so evil it swept them clear of the land, and they were carried off out of control and they had to keep bailing so their vessels would not founder beneath them.
Then Gudmund called from his ship to Oddi and said: “What should be done now?”
“There is only one thing left to do,” said Oddi.
“What is that?” said Gudmund.
“Take all your Lappish plunder and toss it overboard,” said Oddi.
“What good will that do?” said Gudmund.
“The Lapps will decide that for themselves,” said Oddi. All did as Oddi instructed, and when it was done, the Lappish plunder was all broken up. Then they saw that it was driven along one side of the ships, and back to the other, so that it became one mass, and then it was driven rapidly against the wind, and then it was gone. Soon after this Oddi stood up, spread out his arms and a crossing wind arose to take them west. They sailed all the way to Hrafnista, arriving just in time to beat the merchant fleet. They put all their vast wealth into the hands of Grim and overwintered there. Midwinter, Oddi and Asmund returned to Hraegunarstead and Asmund visited with Ingjald while Brak and Oddi forged more Stavanger blades for Bjarmia.
(857 AD) The next spring, Oddi and his foster-brothers sailed the Nor’Way once more, following two weeks behind the Norwegian contingent of the Hraes’ Trading Company fleet. Again they traded weapons with the Bjarmians, steel and ton-stone for silver and gold and then they returned to Varg Island and rested there. Oddi snuck off alone to the place where the giant, Hilder, had agreed to meet. The young Varanger arrived early and hid in the woods a short way from there so Hilder would not see him if he showed up, if he even existed. He did not want to meet him, because he was likely just the product of a dream, of a nightmare. Soon he heard the sound of oars and saw Hilder come ashore. In one hand he had a large kettle full of silver, and under his other arm two very heavy chests. He came to the spot where they had agreed to meet and he waited there a long while, but there was no sign of Oddi. Then Hilder called out to the woods, “It is a shame now, Arrow Odd, foster son, that you did not come, but I see no point in staying here any longer, because my domain is leaderless while I am away, so, I will leave these boxes here, which are full of gold, and a kettle full of silver; please take this treasure, even if you come later. I will put this flat stone on top of it so no wind blows the treasure away. Also, I am leaving these gifts, a sword, a helmet and a shield. But if you are about and can hear my words, then I shall tell you that I was chosen king out of my brothers and I had a great savage dog because it bit to death both the dogs of my brothers and many of the men who tried to save the dogs. I produced the beak and claws of the vulture we killed and that deed seemed greater than those of my brothers. I was declared king of the land and now I shall return to my kingdom. Come with me and I shall give you the best of everything. I can also announce that my daughter, Hildigunn, has given birth to a boy we named Vignir, and she said that you fathered him upon her, so, I shall bring him up to be a lord and I shall teach him sports and do all for him as I will for my own son, and when he is twelve years old, your naming age, he will be sent to you, according to what you told her to do.” Then he rowed off in his stone boat. Oddi stood up and went to the treasure, but it was under the stone slab, and the rock was so big a ship’s crew could not have stirred it. Fortunately for Oddi, he had three ships’ crews on the island at that time, so he donned his new helmet, sword and shield and returned to their camp to get help. It took two full crews to get the stone slab off of the heavy wooden chests and when they opened them, they found them full of gold coins and bars. And between the chests sat a huge silver kettle full of silver Kufas from Baghdad. They buried the gold chests on the island and used the silver Kufas to by the finest sables the Permians had to offer.
Oddi and his men were becoming more confident with the eastern trade so they stopped in Gardariki to visit with Prince Erik then carried on to Baghdad to trade their sables and silver swords for chests of gold. It was in Baghdad that Oddi first saw black men and women, slaves in chains, being sold in competition with the Slavs and the Irish and the Frisians the Hraes’ were selling in the marketplaces. And the African caravans carried elephant tusks tied to the backs of camels and he was told that they were the tusks or teeth of the great beasts of the jungle and that they were worth their weight in gold.
When they returned to Gardariki, they spent more time with their prince and he again told them they were once more the richest merchants of the Nor’Way trade that season. That was even before Oddi told Prince Erik that he had given a giant named Hilder a Varg Island brown bear for two chests of gold and a silver kettle full of Kufas.
The following trading season, Oddi greatly expanded his fleet, and they went out early spring in search of walruses and their tusks and then they increased trade with the Bjarmians and Permians and began supplying the alchemists of Gardariki with ton-stone from Sweden. Arrow Odd gained such fame for his deeds and his wealth gained in Bjarmaland that no one thinks any greater thing has ever been achieved from Norway. It is said that the name of the northern province of Halogaland means Helgi’s land, but that could be for quite a different matter. There was great joy in the winter and much drinking. When spring came, Odd asked his kinsmen what they wished to do next. “You can decide for us,” they said. But the decision had already been made for Arrow Odd. The war arrow of King Roller of The Vik arrived in Hrafnista midwinter, and it carried news of a planned attack on Constantinople in the summer.
At first, Oddi thought this would work into his plans for even greater eastern trade, but he later learned that the Norwegians were not going to Constantinople via the Nor’Way but would be attacking from the west via the Mediterranean. He then realized that the trip he had taken a few years earlier following King Roller across the Roman Sea was a dry run for this attack on Constantinople, and he marvelled at the foresight of the Sons of Ragnar ‘Lothbrok’.
Chapter 7: THE ATTACK ON CONSTANTINOPLE OF 860 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' 