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 SEVEN and EIGHT:
The Hraes’ Nail a Shield With Their Demands on the Gates of Constantinople
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 SEVEN
7.0 THE ATTACK ON CONSTANTINOPLE OF 860
“Like a thunderbolt from heaven.”
Patriarch Photius of Constantinople.
(859 AD) In the spring of 859, the war arrow was passed around Norway for ships and warriors in support of King Frodi of Konogard in an attack upon Constantinople. Oddi was now the captain of a ship of young men and he talked it over with them and was the first to volunteer his services to King Roller. But the Norwegian fleet wasn’t taking the usual Southern Way route to Constantinople like the Danish and Swedish fleets. They were sailing west around Frankia and south past Spain in order to enter the Mediterranean Sea through the Pillars of Hercules, following the path they had reconnoitred several years prior. King Roller’s fleet was to be part of a two pronged naval attack upon the Eastern Roman Empire. The fleet paused in the Anglish Channel and met up with Ragnar’s fleet off the coast of Frankia.
“The Romans are up to their old tricks,” Roller explained to his father. “They’re financing the rebuilding of the Fortress of Sarkel.”
“Let’s steal the gold again!” Ragnar exclaimed, laughing. “If only Jarl Brak was here to see it.”
“They don’t ship all the gold in one bireme anymore, Greek fire or not,” Roller laughed. “I’m glad to see you’re in good spirits, father.”
“Why wouldn’t I be? My sons are going to try to outdo me by sacking Constantinople while I only sacked Paris. I guess I’ll have to sack Rome next,” he laughed. “But I’m proud of you boys. Your fame will outshine mine.”
“Nothing will ever best the fame of the Hraes’ Gold Hoard!”
“The Franks and Germans are already stealing my story,” Ragnar complained. “They’re calling it the Rhine Gold Hoard now.”
“Is that why you’re stealing the Frank’s gold? They’re stealing your story?”
“I’m just maintaining our trading posts along the coasts.”
“And halfway up the Seine,” Roller laughed.
“Just as far as Rouen,” the old man corrected, drinking half a goblet of wine. He was half cut and in a fine mood. “Someday son,” he said, waving his free arm, “this will all be yours!”
Again, 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. But their fleet this time was over two hundred ships, so they sailed boldly into the Mediterranean. They stayed just out of sight of the coast of Africa and soon had Sicily off their port side. A week of good sailing put Crete off the fleet’s stearingboard side and they headed north into the Aegean Sea, again, undetected. The fleet found the secluded bay of the island where they had set up their base camp years before and King Roller took his longship east into the Sea of Marmara and on to Constantinople to meet up with Hraes’ traders there. He learned that a major Roman attack on Arabs in Anatolia had been delayed by a year and the main Roman army and navy was still deployed around Constantinople, so the Varangian attack would also be delayed a year.
(860 AD) King Roller returned to his base camp in the Aegean with the news of the delay, so the Norse fleet returned to Spain and began raiding there. They wintered in Southern Frankia, keeping a low profile, and in spring set off down the coast of Italy, attacking settlements along the way, including cities as large as Luna and Pisa. Ragnar wanted to attack Rome, but Roller could not risk taking his fleet through the Strait of Messina as the Roman navy was known to set traps there. They were on a schedule to arrive in Constantinople for the attack on it and could not afford any delays. The fleet headed out to open sea sailing straight south from Pisa and skirting the eastern coasts of Corsica and Sardinia then sailing southeast between Sicily and Malta and then straight east between Greece and Crete. They were making great time sailing by the sun and stars using crude instruments they had purchased from African caravans in Baghdad, instruments the Arab merchants used to guide their way across that great sea of sand, the Sahara Desert. But Roller kept feeling the need to get there sooner, even though they were ahead of schedule. They sailed north, winding through the Grecian Isles, then east into the Sea of Marmara.
Roller’s concerns were warranted when they started to come across the wreckage of ships on the waters. Long ships. Dragon ships. Monoxylan. On the beaches west of Constantinople they found the remnants of the Hraes’ fleet, drawn up on the sand and under repairs. He spotted Erik’s Raven Banner and headed for that ship. Erik was busy supervising repairs to his long ship when Roller’s ship scudded into the beach sand. “Sorry we missed the fight,” he apologized. “I wanted to arrive sooner, but we had to evade the enemy.”
“This wasn’t from a fight.” Erik said, hugging his brother. “A storm came up and destroyed our fleet as we were preparing for the assault.” And Erik went on to tell him of how the Greeks had paraded their priests around the docks of Constantinople, dipping sacred vestments into the water of the Golden Horn, as their fleet was sailing by on the Sea of Marmara and a violent storm seemed to come out of nowhere and swept the Hraes’ fleet west and destroyed much of it. Most of the larger dragon ships survived the crashing waves, and all of the Nor’Way ships, but the rest were gone. “King Frodi is fine, and most of our people made it, but many Hraes’ went down with their ships. Now the small Roman home fleet is getting ready to sally forth and attack us. Our spies in Constantinople tell us that they have one fire breathing bireme and a hundred or so standard biremes. As expected, the main fleet and the army are off fighting the Arabs in the Levant.”
Roller made arrangements for his fleet to proceed east and anchor between the wrecked fleet and Constantinople and, as the last of the fleet passed them by, Fair Faxi broke off and was being rowed to shore. Erik instantly recognized his ship and saw his father at the forestem with young Oddi beside him. Ragnar slowly ambled down the side of the ship and onto the sand and Erik rushed up to hug him.
“We have brought you something special,” Ragnar interrupted. “A weapon against the Greek fireship,” and the old man had Oddi’s crew start unloading Fair Faxi. The barrels of fine wine the boys had loaded up back in Frankia were now unloaded onto the beach. And linen sacks of special awnings were hauled out from under rowing benches, foul smelling bags with hairs sticking out through the seams. “We’ve gotten used to the rawhide odour,” Ragnar said as he withdrew the contents of a sack. “I never go to Constantinople without these,” he declared as he pulled out black sheepskin awnings that carried the faint smell of vinegar. “We have enough barrels of vinegar and sacks of rawhides to outfit a longship.”
“That is exactly what we need,” Erik said. “The Byzants only have the one bireme equipped with a fire-tube and bellows. It will be at the vanguard and so will my ship.”
The next morning, they completed repairs on the ships and launched them all, dragging them out with the rising tide. Erik had his men lash twelve of the most damaged longships together and then they backed off the lashings so the ships spread apart enough to allow for rowing. He knew the biremes were equipped with rams and that the enemy would try to sail straight through his formations, busting up oars and breaking through strakes. A lot of ropes had washed up on shore from the broken wreckage, so the Hraes’ were planning to ensnare the Roman fleet. A fighting platform was all that many of the damaged ships were good for anymore. But the fire-breathing bireme would have to be dealt with first or the platform would be a sitting duck for the Greek fire.
Soon ships from the Norwegian fleet came from the east with news that the Roman fleet was approaching. Erik flagged Fair Faxi over to his own longship and had Ragnar and Oddi join him on his foredeck. “We’ve set up a field hospital in our shore camp, Oddi,” he started, “but we need a ship to collect up the injured during battle and ferry them to shore. The Hraes’ Trading Company is always short of warriors and sailors and we cannot afford to lose good men just because they’ve lost a hand or a foot, so the wounded must be gathered up and saved so that they can fight yet another day.
“This is a special job I have for your ship and crew. We’ll put a half dozen medics aboard Fair Faxi and they’ll let you know what needs to be done. You will be saving a lot of lives today and that is always better than taking them. Can you do it without Ragnar?”
Oddi looked over at the old man and said, “I suppose, but we came here to fight.”
“Good. I need him to help me tackle the fire-breather. He has experience. Then I’ll return him to you and you can join in the battle.”
“It’s been awhile,” Ragnar beamed, “but I think I can remember how it’s done.”
The Hraes’ fleet began forming up when the Eastern Roman fleet appeared on the horizon, matching them ship for ship across the sea. Erik led his fleet in his longship and the dozen damaged ships that were loosely lashed together were drawn up behind him. He hoped the background of ships and masts would blend in with the black rawhide sheepskin awnings that covered his own ship while he used an optical scope to scan the horizon full of biremes for the tell-tale bronze tube that would identify the one fire breather amongst them. “It should be in the center of the vanguard with its flanks well protected by the rest of the fleet,” Erik told Ragnar. And then he spotted it. A flash of gold at the forestem. Then the flash of the special plate armour byrnies of the fire officers. He had found his target and he pointed it out to his father, on the other side of the forestem. Ragnar squinted and then flashed a smile as he recognized their adversary. Erik looked to his left and saw Roller at the fore of his Norwegian-Norman fleet, then checked out King Frodi at the forestem of his damaged dragonship at the fore of the Hraes’ fleet on his right. Satisfied, he ordered his crew to row double time and his ship broke free of the main fleet and headed straight for the fireship.
The waters were calm and there was no wind to help either side and the Byzantine fire officer watched as a black longship accelerated towards their fireship. He could not make out the awnings on the ship but noted that the lack of sails in this calm would lessen the effect of the Greek fire in setting the enemy ships ablaze. As the lead Hraes’ ship closed in on them, the fire officer got close enough to realize that the awnings were raw wet sheep hides and a legend came to his mind of a gold hoard that was stolen from a Roman fireship a full generation past and he raised a general alarm and readied his fire tube for an attack that he realized was directed expressly towards his ship.
Ragnar was tying raw wet sheepskins to the shields of his son and other boarding party members, just as his wife, Ladgerda, had done for him many years before. The fireship roared and an arc of Greek fire belched towards the Hraes’ ship but fell short and landed on the water, still burning fiercely. The longship swerved wildly to avoid the fire on the water as the fire officers on the bireme recharged the firetube and re-pressurized the bellows system. Ragnar warned that the Byzantines would have one more shot before they would be able to attack them. And the shot soon followed, as the fire breathing bireme roared once more, ‘Hraaaaee’, and a long trail of liquid flame arced heavenward. Ragnar and Erik both jumped up on the topstrake at either side of the forestem and roared back. “Hraaae,” they shouted, imitating the roar of the fire-tube, as the fiery fluid flew towards them, then they grabbed at the awnings, jumped to the deck and pulled them closed just as the flaming emulsion hit. The Greek fire landed on the wet awnings and the vinegar in the soaked furs boiled but would not allow the sticky flaming gel to adhere, and the flaming mass of petroleum rolled off into the waves. Small bits of flame penetrated the awnings here and there, but the Frankish craftsmen and women the old man had paid to make the coverings had done their jobs well. The crew threw back the awnings and launched grappling hooks at the approaching bireme. They tied off the ropes to their stout rowing benches and pulled in their oars just as the longship started snapping off the oars of the bireme and the ropes sprang taut and drew the two ships together. The boarding crew threw up their short boarding ladders and their shields protected them from the arrows that were spattering all over the deck. The Tmutorokan Hraes’ charged up the ladders and immediately fell into deadly combat with the Roman marines waiting for them on the deck of the larger bireme. Erik led his men forward and they cut down the marines in a vicious assault as they made their way towards their one target….the firetube. The Byzantine lead fire officer had his sword drawn to protect his secret weapon and recognized Erik as one of the wild berserks who had shouted at them crazily from the longship. He lashed out at Erik and his sword stuck into the edge of the Hraes’ shield and Erik thrust out with his sword and caught the officer just below the jawline, killing him instantly. Erik then started hacking at a large leather hose that ran to valving on the firetube and the wash of liquid that flowed out of the hose instantly caught fire and set the deck of the bireme ablaze. The fiery liquid splashed across the deck and flowed back towards the masts of the Greek ship. Men that could not get away slipped in the gel and were set aflame, running on fire to the rear of the ship. Erik and his men beat a hasty retreat back to his ship and had to fight to keep the Byzantines from boarding his ship to escape the flames. They cut the ropes to escape the burning bireme and were soon under attack from biremes in the rear of the Byzantine fleet. Arrows were flying at the Hraes’ ship from all directions as the Varangians got to their oars and pushed off from the dying ship and began rowing for their own fleet while constantly under barrage. Ragnar could be heard shouting out orders and there was no question as to who was in command while his son was in a berserk frenzy.
The main Roman fleet was engaging the Hraes’ fleet by now and, as the biremes charged at the twelve damaged longships, ropes were drawn up and out of the water, taut, as they drew up to pass each other and the biremes became entangled with the makeshift fighting platform, twisting sideways in the ropes, snapping some and getting caught up in others and the biremes behind them could not stop and began to ram their own biremes ahead of them. The Hraes’ troops on the fighting platform used grappling hooks to pull in the foundering biremes and board them in a battle that seemed more on land than on water. Scores of berserk warriors would clear the decks of ensnared biremes while sailors would use grappling hooks to reel in the next row of biremes. There were a multiple of slaughters launched from the fighting platform that floated so helplessly upon the sea, for the Roman soldiers were no match for the crazed berserks that ravaged up and down their decks.
As Erik’s longship rejoined his men at the fighting platform, he shouted for his men to save the ships. “Save all the Byzant ships,” he shouted as they cleared the decks. “We need them to get back home with.” Erik could see that everywhere on his flanks battles were raging between ships and Byzant decks were being cleared all over. He saw young Oddi rowing about in Fair Faxi, pulling the wounded out of the waters, both Hraes’ and Roman alike and he marvelled at the idealism of youth. He waved the ship of young men over to his longship and he could see its deck awash in the blood of the dead and the dying and he knew it was a ship of youths no more. As his crew passed the wounded over the bulwarks of Fair Faxi he shouted to Oddi, “Save all the Byzantines you please, Captain Oddi, but spread the word to save all their ships as well. We shall need them to sail home with.” Oddi nodded grimly but did not say a word. They saved as many lives as they could and spread the word to save ships as well, but when Oddi spotted a bireme making a break to escape, he had his crew double up on the oars to run it down. The bireme’s rowers were exhausted, so Fair Faxi quickly bore down on it and Oddi and Asmund launched grappling hooks into the air and yarded in and tied off the Byzant ship. They boarded the bireme and the Greeks immediately dropped their weapons and surrendered.
After the battle, Prince Erik met with King Frodi and King Roller. A few Byzant biremes escaped the slaughter, but sixty had been captured and the rest were sunk or sinking. “We have won a great victory here,” King Frodi announced, “but it is a Pyrrhic victory. We no longer have the forces we need to attack Constantinople.”
“We may not have enough of an army to take the city,” Erik started, “but they don’t know it.” With a hundred and sixty Norwegian warships, a hundred or so Hraes’ and Danish ships and the sixty captured biremes, it was still an impressive fleet that sailed before the walls of Constantinople to the Golden Horn. While a great chain blocked ships from entering the port, dozens of four oared boats were launched under the chain and Erik led a force of men up to the main quay and the city gate. He nailed a shield onto the gate with a list of their demands written in Greek. Then they rowed their boats back to their ships. The next day they found two signed treaties tied to the shield that met their demands. Prince Erik read out the Greek to King Frodi and King Roller and they all signed both of the treaties. Prince Erik then handed King Frodi one treaty and tied the other back onto the shield on the gate.
They returned to the fleets and the captured Roman biremes were portioned out amongst the Hraes’ fleet and, after a great victory feast, the remnants of the Hraes’ army returned to Gardar: the Tmutorokan Hraes’ to Gardariki, the Kievan Hraes’ to Konogard, the Northern Hraes’ to Novgorod and the Scandinavians to their respective lands beyond the Baltic. The Norwegians and Normans, however, returned the way they had come, via the Mediterranean. Captain Oddi and Fair Faxi were in the vanguard of the fleet right behind King Roller’s longship and Count Reginheri, in a captured Byzant bireme, and the rest of the Norwegian and Norman fleets were taking up the rear. They sailed south and then straight west across the Mediterranean, circumventing Sicily and sailing for the Pillars of Hercules. They did not want to accidentally run into the main Eastern Roman fleet on its way back from Syria.
Off the coast of Barbary, they were spotted by the fleet of Al-Andalus of Muslim Spain who set off in pursuit of the Varangians. Roller signalled for his fleet to run for it and rowers gathered up their oars and began rowing, adding some speed to the power of their sails. The flagship of the Andalus fleet was equipped with a form of Greek fire that they delivered by catapult. The slower Norman ships at the rear of the Norse fleet soon fell victim to the fiery catapult, so Ragnar had his ship rigged up on the fly for fighting Greek fire and, once the awnings were soaked and hung, he signalled for his Norman fleet to turn about and attack. Years earlier, he had marked himself with a spear as a sacrifice to Odin. He could not run from a fight…it was a contract with the gods. Ragnar headed his bireme straight for the Andalusian flagship and several volleys of Greek fire rolled harmlessly off his vinegar soaked sheepskin awnings before he was close enough to ram the Arab galley. His men dropped from the topstrake of the taller bireme and were soon clearing the galley decks of Moroccan sailors. Soon the whole Norman fleet was engaged with the Muslims and the flagship became a victim of its own Greek fire. Roller and his Norwegian fleet were soon turned about and ready to engage, but the Muslim fleet disengaged and allowed the Norse fleet passage through the Strait of Hercules. Ragnar had lost half his Norman fleet in the battle but had captured many Arab galleys and he cursed the fact that Odin had not taken him.
CHAPTER EIGHT
8.0 THE SIEGE OF KIEV (Circa 861 AD)
“You can’t just sit becalmed and bored and wait for wind and inspiration.
You must raise your arms and sail after it with a club!”
Jack of London; Arrow Odd’s Saga
(861 AD) King Frodi, the Great Kagan of the Hraes’, returned to his fortress in Kiev with one tenth of the troops he had left with three months earlier. And Prince Erik, Kagan-Bek of the Hraes’, returned to Tmutorokan with not too many more. When the Poljane and Drevjane learned the extent of their king’s losses, they rebelled and laid siege to his capital. They hated King Frodi because of his extreme cruelty; his byname, Angantyr, the hanging god king, had been gained by reputation. As the siege of Kiev dragged on over weeks, King Frodi and the remnants of his beleaguered army sought terms from the leader of the rebellion, Vadim the Brave of Novgorod.
About this time, King Roller and his Norse fleet arrived back in Frankia and Count Ragnar and his Normans prepared a great feast for their Norwegian allies. The next morning the Norwegian fleet made preparations to carry on east and then north to The Vik Fjord. Arrow Oddi had planned to take his ship of young men straight back to Stavanger Fjord and Hraegunarstead, but King Roller invited him to join him in The Vik for the summer.
Vadim the Brave had waited patiently in Staraya Ladoga for the remnants of the Danish and Swedish fleets to return to their homes across the Baltic Sea, then rallied the Ilmen Slavs, who then trekked south along the Lovat River, linking up with Dregovichi and Radimichi Slavs along the Dnieper River. Vadim commandeered monoxyla in Smolensk and led these peoples further south down the Dnieper, convincing the Drevjane and then the Poljane to join in the rebellion and they surrounded King Frodi’s fortress in Kiev. They presented the Kievan Hraes’ with a series of demands that included the elimination of the capture and enslavement of Slavic peoples for sale in the slave markets of the Baghdad Caliphate and the Eastern Roman Empire. They also wanted to establish their own trading companies for fur and honey sales in the southern markets.
While the Siege of Kiev wore on, Prince Erik of Gardariki continued trade with the Arabs and Greeks through his family’s Nor’Way trade route. For the South-Eastern Hraes’ it was business as usual. During the Siege of Constantinople, Prince Erik had gained exclusive trade agreements on all Scythian trade for his Hraes’ Trading Company and he now moved to establish exclusive agreements with the Arab Caliphate in Baghdad. The Khazar Empire was still reeling from their defeat by the Hraes’ in the Battle of the Goths and the Huns, so Erik only had to worry about containing the Slav threat. But he had lost a great many of his troops in the storm that had preceded the Siege of Constantinople, so he was in no position to relieve the Siege of Kiev. He could only quash their plans of replacing the Hraes’ Trading Company, and he did so by shifting trade from the blockaded Dan’Way to the older established Nor’Way and by sending his fleet of longships up the Dnieper to reinforce the Kievan fleet. King Frodi controlled Kiev and the quays along their side of the river and there was no way that monoxyla could win a river battle against sleek Danish longships, so a stalemate developed.
Arrow Oddi and his ship of youths arrived in The Vik as homecoming heroes. Many of the Norse warriors who had been injured during the sea battle with the Romans were grateful to the young men who had manned Fair Faxi and had saved many lives by performing triage and by ferrying the wounded to shore where tent hospitals had been set up by Medical Alchemists from Gardariki. Offers of free drinks and lodgings abounded for the youths and the eligible young women of The Vik were not shy in expressing their gratitude as well.
“The Vik has grown since you were last here,” King Roller said as he shared his highseat and horn of mead with Captain Odd. The young captain looked around the highseat hall and recollected the village of The Vik without and compared it to the cities of Rouen and Pisa and Constantinople and Gardariki that he had just visited and politely said, “I have never been here before.”
“We are having a great feast for our victory over the Romans tonight,” the king went on, “and we would like your entire crew to join us in the square outside my longhall. There will be benches for all in the hall afterwards, but there will be many young ladies at the feast tonight and I suspect they will invite many of your young men to their homes to meet their families.”
“Am I going to lose more of my men to the ladies of The Vik than I did to the Roman fleet?” Oddi asked.
“You remind me of someone,” King Roller said wistfully. “I can’t quite place it but it will come to me.”
That evening the feast started in the square and everybody of any importance for miles around was there. Young warriors and maidens, poets and musicians, parents and grandparents, Swedes and Danes, Angles and Jutes from Britain and Vikings from Frankia. Several steers had been roasted and numerous pigs were on spits; ales and meads were flowing freely. Crowds circulated through the tables and benches in the square and people moved in and out of the three longhalls that bordered the square. There were hearthfires in the longhalls and bonfires in the square and torches appeared at each table as the evening wore on. Oddi was sharing the highseat with his king but stepped away from it to check on his men in the square. Asmund was there at the tables of his crew and he could see that all his young men were sharing their benches and entertaining ladies. Asmund had a beautiful girl on either side of him on his bench and he saw Oddi coming and said, “Captain Arrow Odd, I’d like you to meet Sigrid and her sister Gudrun,” and Gudrun looked up at him and it happened. A shiver coursed through his body and he felt as though he was standing too close to one of the distant bonfires and he could only nod. He could no longer speak.
“Please join us, Captain Odd,” Gudrun said, patting the bench beside her. “Asmund has told us so much about you. Our father is a merchant for the Hraes’ Trading Company.” And Oddi sat down beside Gudrun as she offered him food and drink that was in abundance at their table. Eventually he found his voice and said, “We have much in common then, for I captain a Nor’Way ship for the Hraes’ Trading Company. When I’m not fighting the Romans in Constantinople that is…,” and it was Gudrun’s turn as a great shiver coursed through her lean body, and her dirty blonde hair, cropped at the shoulders, shook. Her blue green eyes flashed brightly in the firelight and her dainty nose sat calmly above her pursed full lips.
When the feasting was over the skalds began their recitations of past and present stories of valour and great victories, often accompanied by musicians when the drapas were of the cadence for ring dancing. All the people got up for those recitations and joined hands and danced in lines that flowed in and out of the tables in the square. Once the poetry was over, King Roller invited Oddi, Asmund and their ladies into his highseat hall for some fine Frankish wines.
“I’ve never been here before,” Gudrun started, “in our king’s highseat hall, I mean.”
“I should give you a tour,” Oddi said. “Come Asmund. Let’s give Gudrun and Sigrid a tour.” The king’s longhall was twice the size of a standard longhall but pretty much followed the standard layout, front double door entry with six massive hearths running down the hall, twenty four sleeping benches down either side then triple highseats on a raised dais on the right and guest triple highseats on a raised dais on the left, then another twenty four sleeping benches per side further down the hall and at the back a hallway set between numerous bedchambers on either side and the king’s bedchamber with double doors across the back of the hall. When they reached the back of the hall, Oddi said, “This is my bedchamber, right next to the king’s,” and he pushed open the door and Gudrun could see a massive goose down bed from the hallway, “and this one is Asmund’s, right next to mine.” As they were returning down the hall Oddi stopped and warned the girls, “At night there will be two warriors posted in front of the king’s bedchamber, so don’t let them startle you if we stay up later than expected.”
“There you are,” King Roller said, as they re-entered the main hall. “I have some Devil’s Wine, as the Christians call it, that I acquired in Constantinople. They call it that because it sparkles and foams,” and he prized the cork from the bottle with a loud pop and it flowed on its own for a bit, like a wine in orgasm. He filled some Frank wine glasses and passed them out to his young guests and they sampled the fizzy white wine.
The next morning Gudrun asked Oddi if he had ever heard of the freedom movement. “I only ask you this, because you have been to Gardariki and the movement was founded by Princess Gunwar of Gardariki.”
“Not only have I heard of it, but I have also discussed it with Prince Erik of Gardariki, Princess Gunwar’s husband. He still grieves for her. He knew that she secretly started the movement but he chose not to stop her. His mother was a captive, taken during a raid. Her name was Boddi, but her family was never given a chance to ransom her, so she remained a captive, not a slave. And her father was King Olmar of Kiev, so she would have been ransomed. Prince Erik only learned of all this after he conquered Kiev.”
“And what do you think of the movement she started?”
“I think I could support it. I’m glad Prince Erik had the wisdom not to try to stop her. But he doesn’t think the movement will succeed, not in our lifetimes anyway.”
“Why would he think that?” she whispered, drawing herself closer to him. “All he would have to do is order slavery to stop and it would stop.”
“He says that sudden change is always fleeting. Even if his orders were followed, as soon as he was gone, slavery would come back and likely in a worse form. He is seeking a more permanent solution.”
“Spoken like a true king!” Gudrun spat. “What if I told you that your fellow Norwegians were being raided right now and enslaved without right to ransom?”
“I would be compelled to stop it!”
“There is a Viking raider called Halfdan and he has thirty ships.”
The siege of Kiev carried on over the summer and King Frodi bargained for safe passage for all Varangians back to Denmark before winter. There were not enough provisions to carry the siege through the brutally cold winter months, so a retreat was the only option for the Kievan Hraes’. They packed up their wealth and belongings into their ships at the quays of Kiev and set off up the Danepar as per their negotiated terms. Vadim the Brave and his Slav forces moved into Kiev and began to set up the first Pan-Slavic state. King Frodi arrived back in Liere in the fall and began preparations for the retaking of Kiev. Prince Erik of Gardariki moved his fleet of blockading longships to the mouth of the Dnieper on the Scythian Sea and he welcomed his returning merchant fleets from Constantinople and Baghdad. Their ships were modified in Gardariki and equipped with awnings to handle the Varanger crossing, then most of them began their return trek north up the Don River, past the ruins of the Khazar Fortress of Sarkel and onward to the Nor’Way trade route of Ragnar ‘Lothbrok’.
Chapter 9: HALFDAN’S GIFT 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' 