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 NINE and TEN:
Gudrun and Sigrid of The Vik help Prince Helgi ‘Arrow Odd’ fight Slavers
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 NINE
9.0 HALFDAN’S GIFT (Circa 861 AD)
In the original Arrow Odd’s Saga the battles between sea captains
seem to be fought solely for pride and to prove who was the greater.
This may have made sense to the skalds of that time, but it makes
more sense that the fighting was over slavery as you may soon see.
Brian Howard Seibert
(861 AD) Oddi had Gudrun use her connections in The Vik to get a location on Halfdan’s raiding fleet while he sailed up the Nor’Way to get help and asked Gudmund and Sigurd, his kinsmen at Hrafnista, if they would like to raid against a very bad Viking named Halfdan. He explained that Halfdan was a raider who had begun to pillage the Nor’Way coast, taking captives without affording them the opportunity of ransom. He then told his foster-father Grim that they needed one more ship to complement their three and he promoted his blood-brother, Asmund, to captain of the fourth vessel.
Grim, a very wealthy and capable man, took charge and soon had all ships ready. “Now, would you have any idea,” Oddi asked, “where I might find this Viking?”
Grim said, “Halfdan anchors in the east, off Elfar Skerries, but he has thirty ships.”
“I’m sorry I asked for that fourth ship,” Odd then apologized, “when three were all we needed.”
They sailed south round Norway and visited The Vik to confirm Halfdan’s location with Gudrun and then they sailed south down the coast of Skane and when they came to the Elfar Skerries they anchored their ships, for Captain Halfdan was nearby. Once they had pitched their tents, Oddi went off in Fair Faxi with Asmund and a few others to where the Vikings were moored. Oddi saw a huge dragonship in the fleet and he called out to the ship and asked who the commander was. A sailor lifted up the ship’s awnings, “Halfdan is the name of this fleet’s leader, but who asks?”
“He is called Arrow Odd,” Asmund shouted in reply.
“Are you the Arrow Odd who went to Bjarmaland?”
“I have been there,” shouted Oddi, nonchalantly.
“What is your errand here?” Halfdan questioned.
“I want to know why you raid the Nor’Way coast, taking captives without affording them the opportunity of ransom” said Oddi. “It is contrary to both Roman and Viking customary law.”
“I captain for King Frodi of Denmark and I’ll do as I please!”
“Unless you release all your captives, prepare for a naval engagement.”
“How many ships have you got?” Halfdan said.
“We have three vessels,” said Oddi, “all big dragonships with a hundred and twenty men aboard each, and we will be here tomorrow to meet with you.”
“I think we’ll sleep soundly despite that,” laughed Halfdan.
Oddi and Asmund and their crew rowed Fair Faxi back to their own Vikings and told them what had happened.
“Why’d you have to tell Halfdan we had three big dragonships,” Gudmund complained, “when all we have are little Nor’Way ships. They’re gonna laugh when they see us coming.”
“I know that it seems like we will have our hands full,” said Oddi, “but I have a plan on how we’ll deal with Halfdan. First-off, the majority of the ships in his fleet are merchant vessels and they looked to be full of captives so we don’t have to worry about those ships attacking us. Secondly, only three of his ships are actually warships. So, we’ll beach our cargo to make our ships lighter, and we’ll cut down some trees, the largest and most leafy we can find, and we’ll put two on the foredecks of two ships, and two on the aftdecks of the other two,” and so they did. When they were ready, Oddi said: “I want you, Gudmund and Sigurd, to take your ships and board Halfdan’s dragonship from our left and Asmund and I will attack it with our ships from the right. We want to take out Halfdan before his other ships can engage.”
“But you told Halfdan,” Asmund started, “that we only have three ships.”
“I lied,” Oddi confessed. “Three on thirty sounds better, but at these odds, I think we’d best use all four.” And everybody agreed.
Oddi and his men quietly rowed toward Halfdan’s ships which were anchored down the inlet. Halfdan saw four small ships approaching all green and covered with trees, when he was expecting three large dragonships. He watched the leafy ships approaching almost lazily and gave no orders to his fleet, sitting dead in the water. Oddi gauged their distance from Halfdan’s dragonship to be just right, then ordered his men to start rowing hard and the four ships leaped out of the water and began a rush for the flagship. They soon flanked the huge dragonship, and grappling hooks were thrown and lines were let and the smaller ships were soon towing the dragonship along with them, but one grappling hook let go and Asmund’s ship shot forward and away from the pack. Lines were cut and the trees all fell free from the rigging and the trunks crashed against the topstrakes of the dragonship and the men of Hrafnista dropped out of the leafy branches like red and yellow leaves in a fall breeze and they hit the deck running, taking the Vikings by surprise, and they beat at the Vikings through their tent awnings. Oddi and his foster-brothers battled so ferociously that they had the dragonship cleared as far as the quarterdeck before Halfdan even got to his feet, and Oddi slew him there on the quarterdeck, and then Oddi gave the survivors two choices, they could keep fighting or they could give up their captives, but they took the latter and surrendered.
Oddi had his men free all captives on the ships and put their Viking raiders into chains on one lone merchant ship and sent them off to Denmark. Then he had some of his men join the captives aboard their merchant ships and they all sailed back to The Vik, where Gudrun and Sigrid awaited them at her father’s farm on the coast. There they sorted through the captives and gave all the Angles one ship and all the Saxons another and the Irish a third and fourth and they did the same for the Skanians and the Swedes and Goths and lastly their fellow Norse who had been kidnapped from their homes along the Nor’Way. Oddi used the some of the silver that the giant, Hilder, had given him to provide the freed captives with provisions for their return to their homelands.
They held a great feast for the freed captives that night on the beach and they used the worst of the slaver ships as fuel for a great bonfire. Oddi took the lead dragonship into his possession and a second dragonship as well, but all the other ships either went to the freed captives or were fed to the flames. He gave a share of Halfdan’s treasure to each of the captives and the lead dragonship he had kept for himself he named ‘Halfdan’s Gift’. He gave the second dragonship to Asmund, who called it ‘Halfdan’s Shadow’. The two warships were of the latest design called Dragonships and were quite different from the Nor’Way ship Fair Faxi in that they had clear decks that were more suitable for fighting from and on. Because Fair Faxi was a Nor’Way ship designed to make the Varangian crossing to the White Sea, it had twice the normal crossmembers for greater strength, which made rowing benches necessary, but the Dragonships had clear decks and the rowers sat on square supply trunks that were lashed down to the decks and the different rowing took some getting used to. The lashings were a little loose on his trunk and Oddi could get the square box rocking a bit and it seemed to allow him to put some extra oomph into his oar strokes, but one of his men noticed the rocking and came and tightened the straps and this took the rocking away. Oddi thanked his man for the help and got back to rowing, but he missed that rocking action just a bit and it stuck with him like a burr under a saddle.
Gudrun was elated that so many people had been saved. Oddi and Asmund stayed with Gudrun and Sigrid just outside of The Vik because they didn’t want King Roller to know what they were up to. One night Oddi was tossing and turning so much that Gudrun woke up and watched her lover as he mumbled about Halfdan’s gift. Once he stopped mumbling Gudrun woke him up. “You were dreaming,” she said. “Tell me what you were dreaming about. It may be a portent.”
“The pirate Halfdan came to me in a dream,” he answered as he cleared his head. “He thanked me for calling the ship Halfdan’s Gift, but then he admitted it was not his ship to give, that it belonged to King Frodi of Kiev and he warned me that Angantyr Frodi would be wanting it back, that he would be coming after me.”
“Why would Halfdan warn you? Gudrun asked, incredulously. “You’re the one who killed him.”
“I don’t know,” Oddi answered, “I sent him to Valhalla, to a better place, with a warrior’s death? Anyway, he gave me a gift. I was tossing and turning because I had an idea in my head but I just couldn’t put my finger on it. Halfdan drew a picture of my idea in my head with his finger tip and it was a square rowing trunk, but he drew a curved lid on top of it like the roof of a wagon or carriage has to keep the rain out.”
“Or a jewelry box?” Gudrun said, excitedly.
“Yes,” Oddi replied, “but he turned it over on its top and he rocked it back and forth and then he put a padded seat on the bottom of the trunk, which was now on the top, and I could see that it was a rocking rowing bench I was trying to invent. Then he told me it was a sailor’s sea chest and that I must have them custom built for each of my men so that rowing hard becomes easier and my ships will go faster when King Frodi comes after me. Then he told me that all future sailors’ chests will have curved tops because of me. ‘Call my ship Halfdan’s gift, if you wish’ he said in a low bear-like voice,” and Oddi nuzzled Gudrun’s breasts like a bear, “however he added, ‘but my gift to you is the chest!’ and he left.”
“That was so exciting! The ghost of Halfdan was in my bed!” Gudrun said. “I heard he was quite the lover. Perhaps some of that rubbed off on you! However shall I get back to sleep wondering such thoughts?” and she fell back and Oddi was on her like a tiger.
In the morning, after all the freed had sailed off, Oddi asked Gudrun, “Where can we find a slaver who is truly bad?” and Gudrun said, “I have already looked into it and Soti is the name of a powerful Viking, and he lies south of Skane. He too has thirty ships. I would recommend using more than just three this time,” she advised him and she kissed him dearly and led him back to her father’s longhall. Her parents were still in the east, even though the Southern Way was effectively shut down for the time being. They just moved themselves from Polotsk to a new Gardar town further east and began operating their branch of the Hraes’ Trading Company as a part of the Nor’Way trade route. In this way, Prince Erik shifted most of the trade to Ragnar ‘Lothbrok’s trade route without missing a beat. And his warfleet at the mouth of the Dnieper effectively kept the Slavs of Kiev from trading with the Romans. They did not have a signed trading contract with the Emperor in Constantinople and he did.
CHAPTER TEN
10.0 SOTI’S GIFT (Circa 861 AD)
While Halfdan was likely half Danish and half Norwegian, operating
in northern waters, Soti was likely full Dane, operating as a slaver
in southern waters. This battle would quickly be brought to the
attention of King Frodi.
Brian Howard Seibert
(861 AD) The kinsmen sailed from The Vik with five ships and were soon moored south off Skane. Soti heard of Oddi’s activity and sallied forth to meet him and set up an encounter. When Soti came up against contrary winds, he told his men, “Let us lash our ships two full oars apart, side by side in a line, with my dragonship in the middle, and because I have heard that Arrow Odd is a man of daring, I think that he will sail his ships straight for us. But when they come at us and drive back the center, we will encircle their ships and not one mother’s son shall escape.”
“I think I know what Soti has planned,” Oddi told his kinsmen as they saw the Danish fleet. “They believe that we will sail straight at their centermost vessels.”
“Then we’d best not do what he expects,” said Gudmund.
“We do not want to disappoint Soti,” said Oddi, “but we should take advantage of knowing that he knows what we will be doing. I’ll sail my dragonship first, on the right up to where Soti is, and you Asmund will attack on the left and we’ll clear the whole deck back to the mast. And you Hrafnistamen will follow me in your ships and break through their lashings and when they close their trap, the only thing left in the middle will be Soti…dead.” But this time, instead of unloading their ships to lighten them, Oddi had his men double the ballast on board them by adding stones from along the coast.
And so that is what they did, and Oddi’s dragonship, Halfdan’s Gift, charged fast, and it was all covered in iron bands right round the prow, so it went with its keel just scraping bottom, straight for Soti’s dragonship and the others followed in his wake. All the rowers in Oddi’s fleet sat upon their new custom fitted curved rowing chests and the faster speed of the ships was noticed by the awaiting Danes. As Oddi got close to the Viking ships he could see how well they were lashed together and he shouted, “I think with our new greater speed that their ropes will break.” Asmund hopefully nodded back to him from the deck of Halfdan’s Shadow. Oddi sailed his dragonship as fast as it could go and he crashed through the lashings all the way past mid-mast, and Oddi and Asmund and their men rushed aboard Soti’s ship and they cleared the deck and killed him before Sigurd and Gudmund came up in their wake and crashed through the remaining lashings and did an about face outside the encircling ring. Then Oddi and Asmund had Halfdan’s Gift and Shadow join their formation and they gave the Vikings the choice of taking peace from Arrow Odd or keeping up the fight. With their encirclement broken and their formation scattered, they decided on peace.
Again, it seemed that most of Soti’s fleet had been made up of merchant ships full of captives so, again, he had the surviving raiders put in chains and sent off to Denmark, all crowded on one merchant vessel. Then they sailed the rest of the fleet back to The Vik and Gudrun’s farm, where volunteers of the Freedom Movement helped organize the return trips of the freed. But this time they found that all the captives were from Ireland only and there were so many that only two old slaver ships were fed to the bonfire on the beach. The captives claimed there was a Viking town in Ireland called Dub-Lin and it looked to be a slavers’ haven.
That night, in bed, Oddi thanked Gudrun for the use of her family stead while her father was off trading on the Nor’Way. Then he told Gudrun something disturbing they had discovered that day. “Some of the young girls that we freed today had been captives for some time,” he explained slowly. “We found girls as young as eight years old wearing makeup and women’s clothing. The Irish called them wee folk and told us that Soti and his captains found them cheaper to keep and more compliant than older slave girls. These are Irish children being abused by the Danes. The Irish don’t have the power to save them, so they call them wee folk to make them seem older, and they do look older, the way they dress, but they’re still eight and nine year old children.”
Gudrun was pale. “If the Irish can’t save them,” she said, regaining her composure, “then we must!” And then Gudrun began making love to Oddi with a desperation and a desire that came of wanting to change the world. They made love late into the night and in the witching hour Oddi swore at times that he was making love to young Hildigunn. She was certainly not wee folk, she was a giant, still, she was barely older than the young girl that the Viking Soti had taken for a wee wife. But it was definitely Gudrun who cried out in orgasm and young Hildigunn was gone.
In the middle of the night the Viking Captain Soti came to Oddi in a dream and he asked Oddi to rename his ship Soti’s gift. “It’s King Frodi’s ship,” he began, “but it was my blood on the deck,” he said. “I killed Halfdan today in Valhall,” he continued, “for telling you about the curve-top rowing chests. And I’ll kill him again tomorrow!” Soti sat at the edge of the bed and looked down at Oddi, shaking his head. “It was the extra speed that took your ships through my lashings. I thought it was the extra weight you crammed in your ballast, and that did help some, but the god Loki explained it to me in a way my thick head could fathom it. ‘While doubling the weight will double the force of impact,’ Loki told me, ‘doubling the speed will give you four times the impact’, and that’s what made the difference.” Soti sat back against the headboard proudly. “So my gift, my little pearl of wisdom for you is this: Speed is Everything!” And Soti was gone.
The next day, Oddi and Gudrun saw off the Irish fleet of freed captives, wee folk and all. Oddi gave Gudmund and Sigurd Soti’s new style dragonship and he told them to call it Soti’s Gift and they sailed back to Hrafnista shortly after the Irish left. ‘Fock Angantyr Frodi,’ Oddi thought as he watched his cousins sail off. He and Asmund stayed on the farm with Gudrun and Sigrid and spent a few weeks resting and healing there. Oddi had the whole of the dragonship Halfdan’s Gift brightly painted and he gilded both dragon head and weathervane in gold and Asmund did the same to its shadow. When all the ships were repaired and ready to sail, Odd rested upon his elbow in bed and asked Gudrun, “Now tell me, my beloved, where does the best slaver and raider you know of prowl?”
“I haven’t had time to check this fully,” said Gudrun, “but I have heard of two Vikings that are raiding the Kattegat and they are supposed to be the best in everything. One is Hjalmar ‘the Brave’, and the other is called Thord ‘Prow-Gleam’. But I must warn you that I know they are raiders, but I’m not sure if they are slavers. They are based out of Sweden, so my contacts in The Vik don’t have much on them.”
“Where are they,” said Oddi, “and how many ships do they have?”
“They have fifteen ships,” said Gudrun, “and a hundred men aboard each.”
“Where is their home?” asked Odd.
“Uppsala, and Hlodver is the name of their king in Sweden. They stay with him in the winter but stay aboard their warships in the summer. I’ve heard that Sweden has a Freedom Movement so they may not be slavers,” Gudrun warned.
“Prince Erik told me that when he was King of Sweden the son of the king he had deposed was involved in a freedom movement. Prince Bjorn of the Barrows would sit upon the howe of his father, throwing stones at birds and flying kites all the time, even if it was raining. He would sing in the rain and dance in the sunshine, all the time flying his kites, two, three, four at a time. Everyone thought him quite mad and, of course, harmless. But the whole time he was secretly involved in a freedom movement. When news travelled north about the death of Princess Gunwar at the hands of her nephew Prince Hlod and the Huns, Prince Erik fell into a deep depression, caring not whether he lived or died. Bjorn of the Barrows took advantage of this and, with support of this freedom movement, stole the royal highseats back from him. Bjorn decreed that Prince Erik was to be beheaded and as the date for it approached, the Bragning Prince wrote a beautiful drapa poem in memory of Princess Gunwar and recited it for all in Bjorn’s highseat hall. King Bjorn was so moved by the poem that he offered to spare Prince Erik if he could but recite such a drapa in his praise before the execution time on the morrow. Prince Erik laughed at the offer, not caring if he died the next day, for he could not bear to go on living without his princess. But Bjorn persisted with his offer by reminding Erik that it was his duty to avenge the death of his wife and to that end all of Sweden would join in and aid him in this effort, and the highseat hall rang with cheers of support for the prince. Erik bolted himself up in his chamber and worked all night on a drapa in praise of King Bjorn, but it was difficult because King Bjorn had very few accomplishments outside of having regained the family throne. But then the Prince remembered a story he had been told in a prison cell in Constantinople, by no less than the Roman Emperor himself, about a Roman Prince Brutus who had, too, saved his own life by playing the part of a mad fool. By starting the drapa with this ancient Roman tale and progressing through to Bjorn of the Barrows in our modern times, Prince Erik managed to draw out a full drapa that was rich enough in heroic deeds that it just might save his own head. And King Bjorn was very pleased with Prince Erik’s recitation the next day and he spared his head and gave him his full support in his fight against the Huns. Word of Prince Erik’s saving his own head by writing a full drapa overnight spread throughout the northern lands and kings struggled to outdo King Bjorn in his support of Erik’s noble cause. The act became a rallying cry that launched a thousand longships across the Baltic and into the land of the Hraes’ for what would become The Battle of the Goths and the Huns. And both Prince Hlod and King Hunn fell to the bite of that terrible blade, Tyrfingr, the sword that had fallen from the hands of Princess Gunwar when she had died at the hands of her nephew.”
Gudrun was in tears by the time Oddi had finished his recollection. She had, of course, heard the tale before, what northern girl hadn’t? but she knew that he was telling her the tale as it had been told him by The Prince, Prince Erik himself, the hero of the tale. And when they were ready to go, Gudrun went down with Oddi to the ships, and they parted with much affection.
Chapter 11: HJALMAR ‘THE BRAVE’ 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' 