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 CHAPTER SIXTEEN:

                                    

Prince Helgi ‘Arrow Odd’ Brings News of Hjalmar ‘the Brave’

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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)

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CHAPTER SIXTEEN

16.0  HOLMGANGER ON SAMSO  (Circa 865 AD)

“Hervard, Hjorvard,      Hrani, Angantyr,

 Bild and Bui,               Barri and Toki,

 Tind and Tyrfing,        two Haddings,

 East in Bolm            they were bairns,

 Sons of Arngrim    and Princess Eyfura.”

Arrow Odd’s Saga;  Author Unknown (Chappell).

(865 AD)  Arrow Odd gripped a bow in his left hand and held three arrows called Gusir’s Gifts in his right and he surveyed the misty shores of Samso Island, struggling to keep his balance as the waves of Munarvagr Bay rocked his Nor’Way ship, Fair Faxi.  He had never seen Samsey, as the locals called it, but he was sure this was the right island, the island where the holmganger had been called, west of Zealand, east of Jutland, smack in the middle of Denmark.  The bay looked just as Hjalmar’s lord, King Hlodver, had described it, strangely mystical in a moonlit dusk, with a bright curving beach that instantly turned, with a grassy lip, into forest.  “This must be it!” he called out towards the other longship pulling up beside him.

Hjalmar ‘the Brave’ stood at the forestem of that ship and answered back, “I see no one here.  I think they are late.”

“That’s okay,” Oddi shouted.  “Tomorrow we’ll work on your ship.”  They had hit a bit of rough weather while sailing from Sweden.  Hjalmar was in need of a new rudder oar.  The awnings were let on both ships, lookouts were posted and the crews slept at their benches, weapons at the ready.

On the way to Samso Island, Angantyr, a giant of a man a head taller than his eleven berserker brothers, touched in at Jarl Bjarmar’s stead and he married Svafa, the Jarl’s daughter…not because he wanted her, but because he did not want Ingibjorg.  He wanted to give the world notice that he was after their heads, Arrow Odd’s and Hjalmar ‘the Brave’s.  And that’s why they were late.  After their wedding nuptials, Angantyr had a portent dream and he stirred so much in his sleep that he woke Svafa.  The next morning he told Jarl Bjarmar about it.

“In my dream,” Angantyr said, “we went to Samsey and we found a lot of birds there and we slew them all.  Then we walked further and two eagles came at us; I struggled with the first and we fought long and hard and the second eagle fought my brothers and seemed to get the upper hand.  I woke in a cold sweat and I fear the dream’s meaning.”

Jarl Bjarmar told Angantyr to return to Holmgard and tell his father, Prince Arngrim about the dream, because the felling of mighty oaks seemed to have been foretold.

So Angantyr and Svafa returned to Holmgard with the brothers and Prince Arngrim understood the portents of the dream and he told his sons that he had never before feared for his sons in their travels, but he agreed with Jarl Bjarmar’s interpretation.  Princess Eyfura pleaded with her sons to stay, but they refused to have their honour rebuked, but she would not let Svafa leave with them.  Prince Arngrim accompanied his sons to their ship and gave Angantyr the famed sword of Prince Erik, Tyrfingr, saying, “I think that good weapons will be needed now.”

When the twelve berserk brothers came to Samso from the east, they saw two longships anchored in the exposed expanse of the bay called Munarvag.  They knew right away that they were the ships of Arrow Odd and Hjalmar ‘the Brave’.  They rowed their own longship hard toward the other two and, just when the two crews had got their oars into the water, the berserks’ ship came crashing through them.  Shattered oars kicked up and sent men flying, as the sons of Princess Eyfura drew their swords and gnawed their Lindenwood shields before flying into their berserk rages.  Of the twelve, only Angantyr was not a berserker.  He was so big and so strong, he didn’t need to fly into fits.

“Odin is with us,” Angantyr called as he leapt aboard Oddi’s Nor’Way ship.  Five crazed brothers followed and six more attacked the crew of Hjalmar’s ship on their starboard side.  The warriors raged up the foredeck of Fair Faxi, hacking and hewing their way through men as though possessed and six more berserks raged up the length of Hjalmar’s ship with sword moves and sword strokes so fast and furious that the furies, who were watching from hell, were impressed, and the two warrior groups fought on until they met at the after decks, and both decks had been totally cleared of their men.  A dozen wolves howled on the aft decks as Sweden’s finest lay dead or dying.

Angantyr looked about and he realized that the battle had been far too easy for champions the likes of Hjalmar and Odd.  When his brothers came out of their furies, he said, “Our grandfather, King Frodi, has that foremost man named Ogmund Eythjofsbane Tussock and he told me that Hjalmar ‘the Brave’ and Arrow Odd were the greatest foes he had ever encountered, and you all know what a killer Ogmund is,” and he led them to shore and pointed out two sets of tracks going inland across the wet sandy beach and disappearing into that grassy lip that turned into woods.  “We have killed only birds.  The eagles have escaped us,” Angantyr swore bitterly.  Amid all this death, his portent, his dream, was coming to life.  “Even though you are all exhausted from your fits, we must go inland and kill them both,” Angantyr said.  “If we return to King Frodi in Kiev without Arrow Odd’s head, we shall throw shame on our father.”

Just then Hjalmar and Oddi stepped out of the woods carrying a freshly hewn rudder for the Swede’s ship.  The berserk brothers all started howling furiously and fear set upon Oddi momentarily.  Hjalmar shouted, “They have slain all our men!”

“I think we should escape into the forest,” Oddi blurted.

“Let us never flee our enemies,” Hjalmar cried.  “We must endure their weapons even though we rest tonight in Valhall.”  Then Hjalmar bolstered Oddi with these words:

“Mighty are the warriors       our warships leaving,

 Twelve men together,         inglorious in giving;

 We shall be Odin’s             guests this evening,

 Two sworn brothers,           with the twelve still living.”

Oddi suddenly realized that the berserk brothers were all now weak from their fits and he knew that now would be the best time to fight them, so he encouraged Hjalmar with these words:

        “Now we’ll fight them           weak from rages:

         And to your words         I say, I give:

         They shall this evening       be Odin’s pages,

         These twelve berserks;        and we two shall live!”

The fully armed berserks approached the champions in a clearing in the woods and the sunlight, dappling down through the leaves, brought the forest floor to life.  Angantyr strode foremost and drew the famed sword, Tyrfingr, and a ray of light flashed from it as though a beam of sunlight had burst through the verdant canopy above.  Then Hjorvard stepped forward and drew his sword beside him. 

“I shall take on Angantyr,” Hjalmar pledged.

“I should fight Angantyr,” replied Oddi, slipping the rudder oar off of his shoulder.  “He has that famed sword, Tyrfingr, and shall lash out harshly with it.  I have more faith in my plate-mail shirt than you must have in your ring-mail byrnie.”

“When have you ever taken priority in battle?” Hjalmar shouted angrily.  “You wish to fight him because it shall be the more famed combat.  I am the principal here, and you are my second.  I fight for the hand of Princess Ingibjorg.  It is I who shall fight Angantyr with his famed blade,” and he stepped forward to face him, drawing his sword.

They were ill prepared to fight, having only their shirts and their swords, while the berserks had their swords and shields and mail draped helms, and long byrnies and greaves and arm-rings of red gold.  Oddi patted the haft of the rudder and called out to the berserks:

         “Singly shall we fight,         strong men in mail,

          Unless you be soft,            or your spirit doth fail!” 

He had always preferred a good strong club when fighting berserks, blade blunters or giants.

Hjorvard stepped forward, sword in hand.  The foursome engaged in their deathly combat.  Oddi was angry that he could not face off against Angantyr and Tyrfingr.  He knew the sword, had learned to make arrowheads at the very stone that the sword had been drawn out on, and he’d heard of its blessings and curse:

“It will never rust,           it will forever remain sharp,

 it will neither bend              nor break,

 the most powerful of berserks       shall never blunt its edge,

 and the blade must always be sheathed       still smothered in the blood

 of its last victim,            or it will be the death of its owner.”

This ode Oddi cited under his breath as he fought patiently, prodding his opponent back with the great oar.  Hjorvard was still weak from his fit and Oddi watched Tyrfingr take a bite out of Hjalmar’s chainmail shirt.  As Hjalmar fell back a step, Angantyr watched Oddi and he wanted his head, but Hjalmar came at him anew.  Hjorvard overcommitted himself on a stroke and did not even see the great spinning blow that crushed him and killed him and sent his weapons clattering.  Oddi kicked his shield over to Hjalmar, who took it up quickly in a move none had ever seen before.  Hervard stepped forward to take his brother’s place and Oddi rested as the young berserk readied himself.  Hjalmar and Angantyr had been going hard for a while so they took a break as Oddi waited.

“We should swear an oath to bury the dead,” Angantyr shouted between breaths, “whoever they may be.  And with our weapons and arms so we don’t go to Valhall with empty hands.”

“You just want Tyrfingr in death, as you’ve had her in life,” Oddi shouted, eyeing the blade, then charging at Hervard.  A few pokes and prods, then a mighty blow and Angantyr watched another brother fall.  Then Hrani stepped forward and he quickly fell.  And the famed sword took another bite out of Hjalmar.  Bild and Bui were next, and they fell to the great club one after the other.

Once more Hjalmar and Angantyr rested while Oddi waited.  Barri stepped forward.  He was recovering from the exhaustion of his fit and was able to fight more vigorously, so Oddi had a difficult time finally striking him down.  And Hjalmar managed to strike a blow that wounded Angantyr.  As Toki prepared to face Oddi, Angantyr once more insisted that they take oaths to provide full and proper burials for the slain.  Hjalmar was losing blood now and was more prone to agreeing with the request.

“We shall provide for burial with weapons,” Hjalmar shouted, as he prepared to renew his battle with the eldest berserker brother.  Just as Oddi was about to protest, Tyrfingr once again bit into the chainmail of Hjalmar.  Oddi took the fight to Toki hard.  He knew he would have to defeat the rest of the brothers quickly or his friend was going to die.  A few club blows later and another brother was dead.  But it was too much.  Tind and Tyrfing both attacked simultaneously and Oddi was pressed defending himself, but he kept to the one side of the brothers and he slew Tind first and then Tyrfing.  The Hadding twins attacked in a similar fashion and got a similar result.

Oddi then turned his attention to Angantyr.  “Let me finish him for you,” Oddi shouted out to Hjalmar, again patting the haft of his bloody rudder oar.

“I must finish him off,” Hjalmar replied angrily.  “If I do not win this combat, the hand of Princess Ingibjorg is forfeit.  King Hlodver could well withhold her hand.”  And the exhausted combatants carried on with their duel.

Oddi could see Hjalmar was dying.  It was the curse of Tyrfingr:

“The blade is             heavenly poisoned;

 the steel,         when forged to an edge

 is the death of          any man it cuts,

 for, no matter               how insignificant

 the wound,       it never heals.”

Jarl Brak had told Oddi this in his youth.  And Hjalmar’s wounds were anything but insignificant.  He was slowing down now, as the poison took hold.  “It matters not if Ingibjorg is forfeit,” Oddi shouted over the din of battle.  “Angantyr shall not be leaving Samsey alive.”

“I will not be leaving Samsey ever!” Angantyr shouted.  “And I don’t give a damn about Ingibjorg.  You can have her for all I care.  We came here for Odd’s head and his head alone.  King Frodi wants it bad, and he’ll want it even more now that Odd has slain his twelve berserker grandsons.”  Angantyr swung Tyrfingr in a high arcing blow that sliced off the leading edge of Hjorvard’s shield and buried the blade tip deep in the ground.  Starting to pull the blade out of the earth, Angantyr suddenly stopped himself and he placed both hands on the blade’s Tonstone pommel, left atop the right, and he leaned forward, fully exposing himself.  “We pledged full burial with weapons,” the great berserker reminded Oddi, as Hjalmar thrust his sword deeply into Angantyr’s chest.

“Eleven berserker grandsons,” Hjalmar corrected, as, foot upon chest, he pulled his sword free of the dead berserk.  Hjalmar sat and rested on a huge flat stone, leaning forward weakly, his elbows on his knees.

Oddi said:

“What ails you, Hjalmar?                Your colour is gone;

 Wasting your strength:            many wounds many ways,

 cleft is your helmet,            your ring-mail is done

I think you have seen            the sum of your days.”

Hjalmar replied to his comrade in arms:

“Wounds have I sixteen,         slit is my corselet,

 Sight is darkened,               I see not my way;

 To my heart pierced me,          poison-hardened,

 Angantyr’s Tyrfingr,             bitter is that blade.

Farms I owned there           five together,

my lot in that land                yet loved I never;

now I must lie here              of life bereft,

here on Samsey                   by the sword wounded.

Mead they are drinking,      adorned with gems,

the throng of his folk            in my father’s hall;

ale overmasters                    many a warrior,

but the marks of the blade   torment me here.

I went away                           from that white maiden

on the outer shore               of Agnafit;

her fore-telling                      true will prove now:

I shall return not                   ever again.

The red gold ring-                from my wrist take it,

to Ingibjorg                            I ask you, bear it;

it will give her                        grief long-lasting

when I come not ever          to Uppsala.

I went from delight               of women’s singing,

for joy eager                          east with Soti,

sped my journey                  to join the host,

left for the last time              loyal companions.

From the high treetop          hurries the raven,

from the east flying,      the eagle his escort;

food for the eagle                 I find for the last time:

he shall make his meal       on my blood now.”

Then Hjalmar died.

Oddi carried Hjalmar out of the woods and across the beach, then rowed him out to Fair Faxi and laid out the body of his friend on a rowing chest.  He covered him with an awning and returned to the scene of the holmganger.  He sat down beside Angantyr and cursed Hjalmar for promising the berserks a burial with weapons.  “You should have stayed in Holmgard,” he told Angantyr.  “You’re all too young to be playing this game by yourselves!” he shouted to the rest of them.  Then he thought of Ogmund Eythjofsbane, who was even younger and impossible to kill.  “These are hard young men coming out of the east these days,” he muttered as he got to work.

He dragged the berserks bodies into a side by side line, with Angantyr and Hjorvard in the middle and he covered them with a sail, then he threw all eighty of his men into the sea and he waded in the water and herded them toward shore.  He washed the blood from their bodies as they floated in the shallow water and he cleaned and dressed their wounds as best he could before dragging them up onto the beach.  He laid them out on several sails and covered them with the sailcloth, then put large rocks around the edges to keep the wind at bay and the wolves in the woods.  He unfooted the masts of two ships and guided them as they fell into the sea, then he floated them to shore and dragged them up onto the beach.  He went back into the water and dragged the twelve oared ship of the berserks onto the beach.  He left Hjalmar’s ship at anchor, but he tied it to Fair Faxi in case a storm arose.  He went back inland with more sailcloth and he covered the berserks bodies with several more layers and weighed down the edges with deadfall.  Then he went back to his ship and he let down the awnings and he gripped a bow in his left hand and held the three arrows called Gusir’s Gifts in his right and he watched the misty shores of Samso Island for wolves and eagles until he nodded off in the moonlight.

The next morning, he sawed rollers out of oars and he used the masts and yardarms to support the rollers from the sand and he portaged the twelve oared ship of the berserks across the beach and up to the grassy lip of the forest.  The great rudder oar he had used to batter the berserks, he now used to pry the ship up over the lip and into the woods.  He strung out the masts and laid them across with rollers and he pushed the ship into the forest to where the berserks lay in a line.  He tipped the ship over them to form the roof of a howe and he laid their weapons under their bodies.  He could stand up under the ship, but he had to stoop under the port topstrake to get out from under the howe.  He sealed up the open side with deck planks that he nailed in place.  He then realized that the twelve oared ship had the clinch-nailed strakes that he had invented as a youth.

While he was working on a howe for his men, some local farmers came along and Oddi hired them and paid them silver to cover the first howe with turf.  He paid them for draught horses to drag Hjalmar’s thirty oared ship out of the water and onto the rollers and up the masts.  When they reached the grassy lip, even with the two horses, they could not get it over.  Oddi stepped back and looked out at the view of the beach of Munarvagr Bay on Samsey and he told the farmers, “I think my men wish to watch the sea rolling into the bay and out again.”  They laid up the ship much as before along the grassy knoll and Odd laid out his men without weapons so they could rest in peace and sealed off the view with deck planks.  He paid the farmers more silver to haul turf out of the woods and cover the ship and the sand around it.  They were still working at that when Arrow Odd sailed away from Munarvagr Bay with Hjalmar’s body in Fair Faxi.

Back in Sweden, Princess Ingibjorg died of grief when Oddi announced Hjalmar’s death and King Hlodver buried the two lovers in a great mound together in Uppsala.

The king had watched his daughter’s champion, Hjalmar, and his friend, Arrow Odd, struggle as their sea battles and combats with the Danes and then the Hraes’ of Gardar grew more and more desperate and the rivalry of champions spiralled out of control.  The harder the two young men had fought, the harder the champions they faced became.  And now they were dead….his daughter and his foremost man, his future son in law.  Never had he met men as hard as the Hraes’ warriors from Gardar.  They were hard men living hard lives.  And he knew Oddi’s growing desperation was not over.  He could see it changing the young man….wearing him down.  He would need friends now, more than ever.

Chapter 17: THE GREAT PAGAN ARMY ATTACK ON ANGLELAND of BOOK 3: THE SAGA OF PRINCE HELGI ‘ARROW ODD’ ERIKSON shall follow on next Post.

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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.

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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.