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 SEVENTEEN:
Copyright Claim 3.6 on the Origins of the Great Heathen Army
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 SEVENTEEN
17.0 THE GREAT HEATHEN ARMY ATTACK ON ANGLELAND (Circa 866 AD)
(866 AD) Over the summer, news filtered into Gardar, the Land of Forts, the Land of the Hraes’, that the grandsons of King Frodi ‘the Peaceful’, Ruler of Kiev, the twelve berserker sons of Jarl Arngrim and Princess Eyfura were dead and buried on Samso Island in Denmark. And it was Arrow Odd who had killed them. The raider who had killed five berserker champions of King Frodi’s in Zealand had now killed twelve berserker grandsons on Samsey. King Frodi sent out envoys to Erik ‘Bragi’ in Gardariki, to King Olmar in Tmutorokan and to Jarl Arngrim in Novgorod. An army was to be assembled to venture north and avenge the deaths of the berserker brothers.
“King Frodi has raised a host to attack us,” King Roller told Oddi. “He wants your head.”
“The berserker sons of Arngrim were after my head when I fought them on Samsey. And it cost Hjalmar ‘the Brave’ his life,” Oddi complained. “I should flee.”
“He will pursue you to the ends of the Earth,” the king warned him. “You must go to King Hlodver and get whatever force he can muster. I shall raise a force to support you, but no king can help you openly. We are all under the rule of King Frodi. You must take your fleet and your forces to Britain and to your King Skolli there. We shall face Frodi in Angleland. His host is vast and we have no way of beating him, so we must wear him down, we must retreat up through the Jute Lands, the Saxon Exes, the Anglelands, Northumbria and on up through Scotland, where our fleet will be waiting, then we’ll go to Ireland and, if need be, New Ireland. There was a reason I sent you on that mission to find the western lands.”
‘Thus the ends of the Earth just got a lot larger,’ Oddi thought, and at that moment he felt that King Roller must be the most fortuitous king he had ever met. So he left immediately for Sweden to garner King Hlodver’s support.
“Do you know that at that moment he thought you were the wisest king in the world,” Gunwar said as she joined Roller in bed. He hadn’t seen her spirit for months. Then after Samsey, when Frodi sent envoys out proclaiming Arrow Odd an outlaw, she came to him again, pleading for the life of her son. But she needn’t have, for Roller knew, after he’d learned of Heid’s prophesy, that Oddi was his nephew, the son of his brother, Erik ‘Bragi’, Kagan-Bek of Tmutorokan. He would have a lot of explaining to do when he met his brother in Valhall he thought, as he pulled Erik’s naked wife closer.
For the second time in his life, Erik received the war arrow, this time in Tmutorokan. He was going to the hall of the Alchemists’ Guild when King Frodi’s envoy passed him the blackened arrow. After he had received his first war arrow as a youth, it became he who sent out the war arrows during his tenure as leader of the Hraes’ and now, decades later, he was receiving his second. “Tell your king,” Prince Erik told the envoy, “that I shall meet him with my fleet at the Thames Estuary, for it is said that Oddi and his raiders have conquered that land, so that is where we must start our search. I shall take the Nor’Way in case they try to escape to the north.”
When Erik entered the hall of the Alchemists Guild he took a small red Coptic style book out of his shirt and he joined eleven other Prophets and Alchemists that knelt in a circle and he opened his book and began to chant with them. There were Mages from Baghdad and Jerusalem, Cathay and India, Sheba and West Africa and one from the Nor’Way. They squatted on their knees in their wide circle of twelve and they chanted for hours, reading from their ancient texts, all different, yet so much the same, and soon Erik felt a presence in the room, an ancient being in the room behind him and a future being ahead of him, just beyond the ring of Mages. There was a problem. Something that had worked before no longer worked as it once had – the science was flawed or changing. Erik realized he was only a messenger. Zarathustra, Zoroaster, the original prophet of the book, the first prophet of the one true god religions had a problem and the answer could only be found in the future, so far in the future that an intermediary had to be found to communicate through and Erik had shown promise of being just such a Mage. The problem was in the primary Arc itself, and its ability to generate power. The secondary or receptor Arc worked fine, but the primary would not provide enough power for the receptor Arc to do its job quickly and a new application had arisen for which it was not suitable at all. Erik had no idea what was being discussed, or even the language it was being discussed in. It was images and ideas, nothing verbal. A great oaken chest filled with plumbium plates and fruity acids and copper and silver rods both rigid and flexible. The science had worked for centuries, but now it would not. Physics was changing as the three dimensional world was changing and Erik could understand this part…he had seen it before; when he was in Kraka’s coma for nine days, he had seen the universe form from a singularity to a linear existence then to a planar form and into a three dimensional world that was evolving still and what had worked before no longer did. And concepts and terms such as batteries and capacitors were being bandied about, through and sometimes around Erik, and some things he could follow and others he could not fathom, but the future being that stood in front of him fully understood it all, like Erik understood steel, and the ancient being behind him was an apprentice who knew much of it and could guess at the rest. Silver plates and posts replaced lead, and acids were replaced with oils, and static generators of fur and cloth charged up the Arc and it became a power storage device rather than a generator and its output increased exponentially. Zarathustra was satisfied. History would be kept on track. Erik wasn’t sure what was meant by that, but he knew the messaging was over.
King Frodi assembled his fleet on the Dnieper at Kiev and he led it north up the Danepar. He took his troops from the homeland of the Poljane to the land of the Drevjane and through the forests of the Radimichi and they portaged across to a tributary of the Dvina River and entered the land of the Sclavs. They rowed and sailed north up the Dvina until they entered the Baltic Sea. They sailed west across the Baltic until they reached Zealand and entered Liere to replenish supplies and bolster their forces. The Danes then sailed north around Jutland and entered the Anglish Sea and headed for the Thames Estuary and waited for Prince Erik and his forces.
King Roller and Oddi had led their force of Swedes, Goths and Norwegians north to London, where they joined up with the army of King Skolli. Their fleet they had sent north via the Irish Sea to Scotland to await their retreat. King Frodi, Great Kagan of the Hraes’, was growing tired of waiting for Kagan-Bek Erik and his forces at the Thames Estuary and was about to lead his vast array west when half of Prince Erik’s forces finally arrived and the Hraes’ army fought the rebels on a plain in Cantia. King Roller fought beside Arrow Odd and King Skolli, wearing his ancient Vanir armour all painted black. It had a heavy fully enclosed iron helmet that covered his head, with but a T-slit to provide for sight and breath, a massive black iron breast plate that protruded from under his dark cloak, studded and banded black leather leggings and sleeves that covered his limbs and heavy boots and iron banded gloves that completed the armour.
The rebels fought a retreating skirmish all day and were joined in the late afternoon by the King of Wessex and his Saxon forces. Under cover of darkness, they retreated through London and awaited the vast army on the plains of Mercia. It took several days for the Danish supply trains to set up transport lines and fortifications, so Oddi’s men had time to rest and recover. King Roller was gauging the difference in mobility of the two forces, so, when they engaged again on the Peterborough plains, it was another retreating skirmish designed to maximize Hraes’ and Danish loses while minimizing rebel casualties. King Roller was planning to retreat to York and a bit of revenge, but he had to make sure they would have time, so he sent out cavalry forces to harass King Frodi’s supply lines. The Danes had learned much from the Huns about setting up supply lines and handling hosts, but the Norwegians had learned much about destroying them. King Frodi hunkered down in the abandoned city of London while forts were established to protect supply routes.
King Roller set up fortifications on a plain north of London and made it seem they were awaiting the Danes, but one night the rebels slipped away from their Saxon allies and began a forced march to York. There, Roller met up with his brother, Erik and said, “Gudmund Grimson showed up a day ago and Oddi took off to the Nor’Way with him. He said the Danes were destroying the countryside.”
“I just passed through there and I saw no Danes,” Erik said, “but they’d be coming from the south.”
Prince Erik had with him half of his Tmutorokan cavalry forces, two thousand Roman knights or cataphracts, half a legion of death on hooves. They were placed on either side of five thousand Swedish, Norwegian and Anglish foot soldiers in a rushed attack upon King AElla and they crushed his Northumbrian foot soldiers on a plain north of York. The Anglish King was captured, and his two sons died on that plain. The Hraes’ army marched into York unopposed and captured the king’s daughter, Princess Blaeja. King Roller and Prince Erik inflicted the death of the blood eagle upon the Anglish king. But the king’s daughter was another matter. She had to at least be plundered, but by whom? “I may have to convert to Christianity soon,” King Roller explained, “and I don’t need plundering added to my long list of sins to confess to.”
“Well, I’m an Alchemist,” Prince Erik expounded, “and such things are frowned upon in Majestic circles.”
“Oddi!” they both said in unison, and they decided to wait for the return of Arrow Odd.
Oddi had been intercepted on the plains of Umbria by his foster-brother Gudmund and had been asked to join in on the defence of the Nor’Way. The two Ragnarsons thought it wiser to lead King Frodi’s main army away from Norway on a wild goose chase while the Norwegians fended for themselves, but when Gudmund told Oddi that it was Ogmund Eythjofsbane Tussock that was leading a Kievan Hraes’ army up the coast of the Nor’Way, Oddi pleaded with King Roller to be allowed to help. Grim ‘Hairy-Cheek’ and the men of Hrafnista were already on a plain north of Trondheim. The shield-maiden Stikla brought her forces from Stiklastad there too, as did many other northern chieftains.
King Frodi’s foremost man, Ogmund Eythjofsbane, approached from the south with his Kievan Hraes’ army, which he had bolstered with many Norwegian chieftains that were covetous of King Roller’s wealth and title, the youngest of whom was Harald Fairhair from Vestfold, just outside of The Vik Fjord. While King Frodi had been occupied raising troops in Denmark, Ogmund had sallied forth with an army and had plundered The Vik, enlisting the aid of Chieftain Harald with promises of his becoming the first Norse king to rule all of Norway. Once they had completely pillaged The Vik, Ogmund and Harald worked their way west and then north up the coast of the Nor’Way. While they were occupied plundering Trondheim, Grim and Stikla were marking out their field of battle with hazel poles. Grim placed his men on high ground on the north side of a valley so his men would find it more exerting to retreat back uphill than to sally forth downhill and when Ogmund’s larger army confidently came against the smaller but more determined Norse army, they could gain no ground, and as the battle drew on, their greater exertions began to wear on them as though they were swimmers stroking upriver against others swimming down. It became a battle of attrition, with casualties piling up behind the shield walls of both sides. By midday, both armies had lost half their men and that is when Arrow Odd arrived with his force of Norse, Anglish and Irish troops. Ogmund paled as he watched his nemesis charging down the northern slope at the head of a small fresh army. When the Norse shield wall parted to let Oddi and his men charge through, the impact of the fresh northern shields crashing into the southern battered bucklers could be heard across the entire battlefield and it was as if the ground quaked as that section of wall was driven back a staggering number of paces. Ogmund knew he could not afford a battle of attrition against Arrow Odd. He had seen whole ships full of his men fight to their deaths against Odd’s warriors only to come up with a draw. He could not spend the rest of the day watching his remaining army slowly melt away. He had to have some sort of a force to bring to King Frodi in Britain, so they could fight their real enemy, King Roller of The Vik. So, he began the slow process of pulling back his troops in an orderly fashion and minimizing casualties, so it looked as if Arrow Odd and his men had completely turned the tide of battle. When night came and each side withdrew from the field, Ogmund and his forces retreated to their ships in Trondheim and the Hraes’ army sailed away for London, leaving Harald Fairhair and his Norse army to hold Trondelag. King Harald would later claim to be king of all Norway, but he would never lord over the Hrafnista men or Halogaland, the Nor’Way lands north of Trondheim.
Oddi knew he would have to get his men back to Northumbria, but they had a victory to celebrate that night, and the people of northern Norway voted to name their lands Halogaland after Arrow Odd’s true name, Helgi, meaning Holy. And Shield-Maiden Stikla spent the night with Arrow Odd and showed Helgi that she, too, was holy and she prayed he would bless her with a son. The next day, Oddi and his men sailed off for the defense of York.
After King AElla had been killed, word reached Prince Erik and King Roller that the vast Danish army had come up against the lone Saxon army and the king of Wessex had immediately sought terms and sent gifts to King Frodi and offered the Danes banquets and feasts. The king of that island, perceiving that he was unequal in force, went to Frodi, affecting to surrender, and not only began to flatter his greatness, but also promised to the Danes, the conquerors of nations, the submission of himself and of his country; proffering taxes, assessment, tribute, what they would. Finally, he gave them a hospitable invitation. Frodi was pleased with the courtesy of the Briton, though his suspicions of treachery were kept by so ready and unconstrained a promise of everything, so speedy a surrender of the enemy before fighting; such offers being seldom made in good faith.
When Oddi reached Northumbria, he learned that York had been taken and King AElla and his sons were dead. Then he learned that the daughter of King AElla was to be plundered and that he had been drawn the short straw.
“I promised Hjalmar ‘the Brave’ that I would never take a woman on my ship against her will,” Oddi said. “I yet honour the wishes of my fallen comrade.”
“It must be done,” The Prince explained.
“I will only do it if she willing joins me on Fair Faxi,” Oddi said.
Oddi then made a proposal to Princess Blaeja and she only had one question.
“Will it end the curse King Ragnar put on my family?”
Oddi got Prince Erik and King Roller, the two sons of Ragnar Lothbrok, to accept his proposal and also their assurances that the curse would be ended.
“I have been told by the sons of Ragnar Lothbrok that the curse will be ended after you are plundered,” Oddi assured the princess.
“Good. Let’s get this over with then,” Princess Blaeja replied.
“I promised you and your family forever, all the land in Northumbria that you can encompass with a hide, and this has been agreed to by the brothers,” Oddi explained. “So, we will cut this great walrus hide into one fine strip and wrap it around the walls of York.” And Oddi and Blaeja and all her handmaidens got to work slicing the hide into silk-like threads until they wrapped it around the city walls. By evening, the city was hers again. Northumbria was still held by the brothers, but York would always be hers and her daughters, patriarchal inheritance being excepted. No sons of AElla would ever rule York, the sons of Ragnar had stipulated.
That evening Arrow Odd invited Princess Blaeja aboard Fair Faxi and they dined under the awnings and then prepared to sleep together. Some would say that Oddi was too much of a gentleman to take advantage of the princess, but for a young Christian woman, she seemed very afraid of Ragnar’s pagan curse, and she was ready to work very hard that night to ensure it was erased. She took Oddi over to the bed that had been placed by the mast and began undressing him.
“We don’t have to do this,” Oddi started, as Blaeja then began undressing herself.
“I would say from the look of you, that we do,” she responded, “or does your ship now sport two masts,” and she laughed gently, “ like the two masted Knars that King Ragnar brought from Frankia?”
“Tell me more about Ragnar. Do you know how he died?”, Oddi asked, pulling Blaeja onto the bed with him.
“I see we’re down to one mast again,” Blaeja said disappointedly. “My father made me watch it all. I’m a healer and he made me watch it all.”
“King Ragnar told me that he wanted a most famous death, a warrior’s death,” and then Oddi asked, “did he get it?”
And Blaeja told him everything. She told him about the battle on the northern plain and about the capture and torture of Ragnar. “I told my father not to torture him, but he tortured him and then made me heal him so he could torture him some more.”
She told him about Ragnar’s final feast and about the death by poisoned blood-snakes.
“My father made me brew the poison that was slaked onto the swords and he made me attend the banquet even though I told him I was against everything he was planning to do. So, I mixed some pain medicine in with the poison, so the later cuts wouldn’t cause as much distress. When the feasting started, King Ragnar was brought into the hall and chained to a tall post that had been set into the floor in the center of it. I was surprised when my father had only the choicest cuts of the highseat spread served to Ragnar, and only the finest wines. Everybody else was served mead, but he got wine. The servants all treated Ragnar with the utmost respect and, although he remained chained, they brought him an armchair to sit upon and his trencher platter went from arm to arm, serving as a table.”
“It is fitting he got wine,” Oddi said. “King Ragnar had marked himself with a spear and sacrificed himself to Odin and only Odin can drink wine in Valhall.”
“After the feasting, the servants took the chair away and stripped off King Ragnar’s white silk shirt. Twelve nobles, selected by my father for their loyalty, were given the twelve swords and they circled around Ragnar, who fiercely faced off against whoever he thought most likely to attack him, but the slash would invariably come from the rear or the side. After six cuts, it was easier for Ragnar to face his opponents because he knew the six with bloodied swords would no longer be lashing out at him, but the poison was at work and I could see him starting to slow and by the ninth cut he was really slowing down. But then suddenly he looked refreshed and he would look off into the dark corners of the hall as though watching something and when a lash came from the rear he would sidestep it, even though there is no way he could see it.”
“He sees Valhall,” Oddi explained. “Valhall has a hundred doors and all would be closed to him while alive, but he is peering over the doors to see his relatives drinking mead and fighting in combats. In his heightened state, he can sense the blades coming for him.”
“Then King Ragnar began reciting his verses,” she continued, “all about his life and accomplishments and then he conjured up a curse verse:
“If the porkers knew the punishment of the boar-pig,
surely they would break into the sty and hasten to
loose him from his affliction.”
And all the while that he was reciting them, the nobles would lash out at him from behind and he would effortlessly sidestep the strike. This effortlessness angered the nobles, so one would lash from behind and, when Ragnar sidestepped it, another lord would slash him from the side. Now it wasn’t the poison affecting Ragnar anymore, but rather, loss of blood. He didn’t even try to avoid the twelfth strike, although it would be the easiest to evade, coming from only one man. He just stood there with one hand over the other as though he was leaning all relaxed on the pommel of a sword, and the stroke came straight in and stabbed him in the abdomen and he fell forward and cried ‘I die laughing!’ and when he hit the floor he was dead.”
“And those were Ragnar’s exact words of this curse?” Oddi asked.
“Yes. My father wanted me to revive him, but it was too late,” Blaeja said, near tears, “he was already dead.”
“King Ragnar’s curse is pitting swine against snakes,” Oddi warned, “and we all know how that ends.”
“I know,” Blaeja said. “I told my father we were focked. I’m so angry with him.”
“Don’t be angry with him,” Oddi said, stroking her long auburn hair. “When I was a boy, I sailed the Mediterranean with King Ragnar, and he told me that he had sacrificed himself to Odin, and that he wanted a most famous death, but that Odin didn’t seem inclined to give him one. I told him that Odin would give him a death that people would talk about for a thousand years. Your father just may have answered his prayers.”
“Do pagans pray?” she asked coyly.
“I’m praying to Odin right now,” Oddi said. “Dear Odin…pray teach me how to sail this two masted ship of mine.”
“Once again, Fair Faxi sports two masts,” she agreed. “But I must be plundered by you if the curse is to be ended,” and she pushed Oddi away from herself. “I came aboard your ship willingly, but now you must plunder me!” She made as if to run around the bed and added, “Promise me a royal rape, my prince. We must get this right…once and for all.”
Chapter 17.1: THE PLUNDERING OF PRINCESS BLAEJA of BOOK 3: THE SAGA OF PRINCE HELGI ‘ARROW ODD’ ERIKSON shall follow on next Post. Warning: May be Objectionable to Some!
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' 