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 NINETEEN & TWENTY:
Arrow Odd Trading With Natives of the Newfoundland
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 NINETEEN
19.0 NEW IRELAND, NEW SCOTLAND, NEW ANGLELAND (Circa 866 AD)
Many natives of the Newfoundland suffered from a Pox that was,
quite similar to the Chicken Pox that Europeans carried with them,
but the Pox could be sexual in transmission and was known in the
oldest of times and was called by the ancient Greeks, ‘Syphilus’.
Brian Howard Seibert
(866 AD) After Duke Roller had failed to draw away the fleet of King Frodi, Prince Erik had seen the Hraes’ fleet of his king pulling up behind his fleet, so he pushed Arrow Odd’s fleet harder.
Slabland looked the same, slabs of rock and slabs of stone and not much else. Yet Oddi could not stop there. The Hraes’ fleet of Prince Erik had matched him league for league across the great Atlantean Sea and behind them a half day back was the Kievan Hraes’ fleet of King Frodi. Oddi and King Skolli sailed their fleets past the southern tip of Slabland, then sailed down the coast for New Ireland. They put some distance between themselves and their pursuers, but the Hraes’ knew they had only one way to go…south. When Oddi reached the green island he had named New Ireland, he led his fleets between the isle and mainland coasts.
When their pursuers reached the northern tip of the island they paused to plan their pursuit. Prince Erik saw King Frodi’s foremost man, Ogmund Tussock, at the forestem of Frodi’s flagship and, because King Frodi had the larger fleet, Erik shouted, “You take the channel and scour both coasts and we’ll take the east coast of the island. Once past the island sail straight south and we’ll be waiting for you off the mainland coast.”
Ogmund agreed and the two fleets separated and scoured down the coasts of both sides of the island, with Erik and his Tmutorokan Hraes’ checking the Atlantic side and the larger Kievan Hraes’ force sweeping the channel sides, both island and mainland for the Norwegians. But neither fleet could find sign of them. Erik led his men around the south end of New Ireland and waited for King Frodi at an island on the north end of New Scotland, but the Danish king never showed. He had followed the mainland coast west up the mouth of a great river and accidentally followed it and then, surprisingly, spotted some York boats of the Norwegians upriver spying on their progress up the great river. There were also signs of natives and villages deep in the woods and round bark boats that would scurry up tributaries as the Hraes’ approached. King Frodi sent a ship back east to New Scotland to apprise Erik of the situation and set off in pursuit of the rebels. But Prince Erik had a dream the first night they anchored off New Scotland, and Queen Alfhild came to him and joined him under the awnings and she kissed him and caressed him and made love to him and then she told him that Arrow Odd, had taken a wrong turn into the mainland and was now heading up a great river that was leading to great lakes far inland. Erik woke with a start, realizing that he was supposed to keep himself between his king and young Arrow Odd.
Oddi had led his men upriver instead of down the coast. Then he sent his best rowers in several of the many twelve oared boats with which he had equipped his fleet. They backtracked downriver, watching for signs of the Hraes’ fleet and spotted them camped along the riverbank for many miles downstream, but they only saw signs of the Kievan Hraes’ fleet. The Tmutorokan Hraes’ fleet that had been between them was gone. They retreated upriver undetected and returned to their own Norse fleet to find them beached at a village of some native peoples. Oddi met his returning lieutenants on the riverbank and told them that he had visited with these Mississaugan people on his first trip to the Newfoundland and he introduced them to a young native woman.
“This is Watseka,” he started, “and this is our son, Ahanu, named after his grandfather. The name means he who laughs.” The men gathered around the couple and child and were very obliging. Oddi was going to warn them to be gracious, for their very lives depended on the natives help, but he could see they already understood that. Once the men had given their reports, Oddi told them that the native reports agreed with theirs. The Tmutorokan Hraes’ fleet had been monitored going south along the coast, just as Oddi had expected. “We have to attack King Frodi,” he explained. “While the two fleets are separated. I have it on good authority that, if the Kievan fleet is defeated, the Tmutorokan fleet will leave.”
So, the Norse fleet rested in the Mississaugan village of Kanata for a day, then went back downriver to meet the Danes and the Kievan Hraes’. Oddi knew from experience just how hard these men were, especially the Hraes’, and he knew that the half-troll warlock, Ogmund ‘Eythjofsbane’ would be waiting for him as well. King Frodi would let his foremost man do the fighting for him. The Mississaugan Chief Ahanu sent warriors along and they helped camouflage his ships under trees and branches along the river’s edges. Although the Norwegians were heavily outnumbered, Oddi wanted to take the fight to King Frodi. So, they waited for the Hraes’ fleet to resume rowing upstream, and a few native warriors, in their birchbark boats, paddled ahead of the Danes and warned the Norse fleet of their approach. Oddi watched the fleet go by and saw Ogmund at the forestem of their shield-bearing lead dragonship and when he had gaged that the vanguard of the Dane fleet would have reached the rear of the Norse fleet, he ordered the attack and the Norwegians, Swedes and Angles attacked from both riverbanks. They threw off their camouflaging foliage, fired volley after volley of arrows, then rowed out from under the overgrowth with their bright blue swords and spears flashing in the early sun. The battle raged for hours until the afternoon sun began to wane, and still more Danish ships tried to pull into the fray, encumbered by the wrecks floating down from the battle upriver. King Skolli fell in the latter half of battle and under cover of darkness the remnants of the Norwegian fleet fled upstream. They unfooted their masts and flooded and sank their ships in the middle of the river and Oddi asked Watseka to watch over his hidden ships. And they rowed their twelve oared boats upstream to make better time. The Danes pressed them hard from behind, but they were in large ships, so they could never really catch up to the Norwegians. The chase went on for a week upriver and then the river became a lake…a huge lake, and the ships of the Danes could use their sails and were catching up to the Norwegian boats, but the lake turned into a river again and the Norse put distance between them. But the river narrowed and started getting very fast, and the rowing got hard and the ride got rough. When they got around a bend in the river the rapids became impassable, so Oddi had his fleet row to shore and there on the riverbank was Chief Ahanu and hundreds of his warriors to help portage the boats around the raging waters. Then back into the river the boats went and the rowing was much better, but soon there was a low rumbling sound that got imperceptibly louder as they rowed until it grew into a deafening roar, and they could see a huge curving wall of water fifty fathoms high.
“It is called Nia Gara by some,” Oddi told his men as they pulled into shore. “Others call it the Gitchee Nibi, meaning great waters.” There to help them were more Mississaugan warriors, and they helped the Norse portage their boats around the falls. Then they put their boats back into the river and followed it into a second huge lake. A third lake came upon them in similar fashion, and Oddi followed directions he had gotten from Watseka and they found a river on the western edge of the lake and the Norwegians in their twelve oared York boats escaped into the wilds.
Prince Erik and his fleet caught up to King Frodi just as he was preparing to build a portage road along the rapids and falls so he could haul his ships around them.
“How many miles of road?” Erik asked.
“Twenty or thirty,” Frodi replied.
“That’s a long way.”
“No longer than the roads we built for the Danepar rapids.”
“We took a full year building those.”
“We didn’t have two armies.”
“We had experienced builders and oxen and tools. We have to return to Europe in the fall, at the latest.
“We’ll have the road built in three weeks!”
The road was almost completed in three months, just in time for King Frodi’s return trip to Europe. Their men were tired, their supplies almost gone and they still hadn’t hauled one ship out of the water.
“We must head back now or we shall never make the return crossing,” Erik told his king. “If we can even find them, they can lead us on a goose chase across a land that could be as vast as Europe, itself. If we don’t leave now we may never make it back.”
“I’ll not leave till I have Arrow Odd’s head to bring back with me,” King Frodi replied. “My Empire be damned.”
“The Tmutorokan Hraes’ shall stay behind and catch them,” Erik offered. “The great army must return and maintain the Peace of Frodi.”
So, the great army headed back the same way it had come and the fleet of the Tmutorokan Hraes’ set up camp on the riverbank by the falls and waited. Erik had a twelve oared boat readied and set off upriver after Oddi. While longships seem to have intimidated the natives, the boat did none of that and soon there were native warriors paddling their round birch bark boats a safe distance away from the twelve oar boat. A white shield was strapped to the forestem of the boat and after a few hours of rowing, they were joined by a half dozen Norse boats.
“You were supposed to keep sailing south,” Erik started, as a boat with Oddi at the helm approached.
“We lost our bearings,” Oddi shouted over the waters. “And we paid for it. Where were you?”
“We had positioned ourselves to be between you and King Frodi, but you and Frodi seemed to have taken the same wrong turn.”
Oddi joined the Prince in his twelve oared boat and they began to plan their next moves. Soon dozens of Norse boats joined them in their downstream return to Erik’s ships. They camped a week on the beaches of the river mouth, meeting and trading with the local natives then retraced their steps back across the Gitchee Lake and Gitchee River to the spot Oddi had scuttled his ships. Their best swimmers then dove to the river bottom and removed some rock ballast from the ships’ hulls and they re-floated the smaller Nor’Way ships of Oddi’s fleet. When they re-floated Fair Faxi, Erik suggested he take the Nor’Way ship back to Kiev and King Frodi as proof that the natives had killed Arrow Odd, but Oddi had decided to take Fair Faxi and his smaller Nor’Way ships further inland, because he had seen a great river there that the natives call Mis Sis Sippi. When Prince Erik asked him why we wasn’t refloating his dragonships Oddi answered, “I’ve decided to overwinter in the Newfoundland. I found a great river inland that is full of huge mounds that I wish to explore.”
“Are these mounds full of silver, like those of Bjarmia?” The Prince asked.
“No. They are full of cities. I have seen native cities the size of Paris and London. The further south along the river we went, the larger the cities got. Perhaps they have a Constantinople at the southern end, just like our Nor’Way.”
“I’d love to stay and explore with you, but I must get back.”
“Thank King Frodi for the fine road he built for us.”
Prince Erik smiled and gave Oddi a big hug and whispered, “You didn’t get lost at all, did you?”
CHAPTER TWENTY
20.0 THE VALLEY OF THE MOUND BUILDERS (Circa 867 AD)
“Like a moth drawn to a flame, the Spirit of Queen Alfhild
was drawn to her Tiger Totem, and she visited ‘Arrow Odd’,
one night in a dream that was, both physical and spiritual.”
Brian Howard Seibert
(867 AD) It took all the people of Watseka’s village to portage six small Nor’Way ships around the Nia-Gara Falls. And, with the dozen York boats and supplies, it took the whole village a month at the Nia-Gara site and so they built a temporary village there and called it Kanatatoo, meaning ‘Village two’. Once the portage was completed, Watseka’s Mississauga people returned to their permanent village and Arrow Oddi took Watseka and their son, Ahana, across the great lakes and south to the Mississippi River to overwinter in warmer weather and explore.
“My father liked the name of your village,” Oddi told Watseka as they slept under the awnings of Fair Faxi. “He says Kanata sounds like our word knute, or knud, which means knot and he likens our Hraes’ Trading Company as a great trading network composed of many trade stations or knots in a trading net that has been cast out to encompass trade from Cathay and the Land of the Rising Sun in the far east, and now, to Kanata and the Land of the Setting Sun in the far west, a truly world-wide company of merchants.”
“I like that,” Watseka said, snuggling into Oddi’s arm. “A village is but a knot in a vaster net cast across the world for the benefit of all. Your father must be a poet.”
“That he is, and more!”
“Is he really planning to make us a part of his trading net?” Watseka asked.
“I think he’d like to,” Oddi answered, “but he’s more in charge of the Varangians, the eastern Vikings, and my Uncle Roller, Duke Rollo, handles the western end of the business. They’ll have to discuss it. And right now my uncle and I are in trouble with our King Frodi who is trying to kill us both.”
“Is that the evil King that you fought with? The one who paid us gold and gifts to build the portage road you are now using?”
“Yes, the very one and the same.”
“I don’t like him,” Watseka said. “His face looks like it’s been clawed by a woman, like he’s a rapist of some poor girl who made him pay for his conquest.”
“He strangled his wife,” Oddi told her, “and she’s the one who clawed his face up in her last dying breaths. Her spirit told my Uncle Roller this one night as she slept with him. She told him that as she was dying she saw me being conceived by my father, Prince Erik and my mother, Princess Gunwar, and she saw that my conceptual spirit was a tiger and it gave her the strength to fight back and she tore up his face before he murdered her.” He didn’t tell her that it was actually his father Erik that had related the story to him after the spirit had also slept with him.
“That is such a powerful spirit story!” Watseka said, shivering and clutching Oddi. “But what is a Tiger?”
“It is a very big cat, very fierce…a maneater!”
“We have those here in our Puma, and the Mayans have Black Panthers. That is a very powerful totem. No wonder your rapist king ran back to his trading empire.”
“Tell me about these Mayans,” Oddi begged.
“The Mayans have their own trading empire that is full of many evil kings,” Watseka started, “but we shall be seeing that for ourselves, Gitchee Manitou willing. Tell me more about this murdered spirit queen who was sleeping with your uncle. How did he make love to a ghost?”
“He claims he didn’t, but I suspect that he did, and from what I’ve heard about it, the ghost gets astride the man,” and Oddi pulled Watseka atop himself, “and she rides him like a Valkyrie,” and Oddi entered her and pushed her up and began bouncing her atop his loins.
Watseka began her ride and, as she sped up, she whispered, “What is a Valkyrie?”
Oddi told Watseka all about Viking shield-maidens and how they became Valkyries after they died in battle and they served the God of Hosts, Odin, and selected who, among men, were to die in battle and they carried the fallen warrior spirits to Valhalla on their white chargers and their Valkyries were their first lovers in the great hall of Odin. Then he told her of the Shield-Maiden Stikla and how he had helped her fight in the Battle of Stiklestad and that he made love to her the whole night after their victory and he’d blessed her with a son, he’d later heard.
Watseka was amazed that they had women warriors in Hraes’, and the Nor’Way and Denmark and Sweden. Women that fought in battle and queens that fought in bed and spirits that carried off men and made love to them in Valhalla. Such things were not allowed women in the Newfoundland.
“I promised your father that I wouldn’t get you pregnant this time,” Oddi told her. “I think I may have just broken that promise. Now he’ll be angry with me again.”
“He has never been angry with you,” Watseka reassured him. “He just pretends to be angry.”
“Really?” Oddi blurted.
“I’m a princess of our tribe,” she went on, “and I would have to marry outside our tribe as most of our royal women must. By marrying you, a prince from a distant land, he is allowed to keep me and my children in his home, and for a chief, a king of his stature, this is an unusual blessing, especially if our alliance brings him much lucrative trade. Don’t worry about his anger. He is blessed having a princely son-in-law like you!”
“Blessed?” Oddi blurted.
“Yes!” Watseka stated. “But not nearly as blessed as I am!” and she gave Oddi a great hug. It made her happy to learn that the Vikings were eager for trade, for her own Mississaugans were trading partners with the Mississippians who were trading partners with the Mayans and her husband would likely have come from the south to fetch her home with him and she was afraid it would have been a Mayan prince who would have taken her and she did not like the Mayans. She had heard horrific tales of their human sacrifices and what they did to children and how they treated and traded their slaves. Women there had even less freedom than she did and then to hear about shield-maidens and Valkyries and her own husband having fought alongside women…it was freedom!
As they sailed down the Mississippi River, Oddi saw some familiar cities that he had seen in the spring as they had fled King Frodi in their York boats, but from the higher vantagepoint of Fair Faxi’s longship deck he realized that the cities were not on mounds but were stockaded cities sitting on level ground behind ceremonial mounds that were shaped as snakes or other animals and Watseka told both Oddi and his son Ahanu of the significance of the edifices.
“Some tribes have the snake as their animal totem,” she explained, “so they have their slaves build a long snake mound of earth to show their respect for the snake. Other tribes will have their slaves build deer mounds or wolf mounds or whatever their chosen animal totem is and they place ceremonial offerings upon the mounds.”
“Do the Mississaugans have an animal mound?” Oddi asked.
“Oh no,” Watseka replied. “It is too much work. We don’t practice slavery. We only keep the captive warriors we have spared in our wars and they usually work their way to freedom or end up falling in love with one of our women and they marry into the tribe and replace warriors we lost in our wars.”
“Well, couldn’t these captives build mounds?” Oddi asked and Ahanu chimed in with him, “Yes, mother, can’t they?”
“The captives work for their freedom in the tin pits. We dig tin metal out of the earth and we trade it to the Mayan traders for copper and gold. The Mayans use their copper and our tin to make weapons, sharp bladed war clubs that don’t shatter like obsidian blades. And they make sacrificial daggers out of the combined metals and they slaughter people like animals on their stone temples. The Mayans are great warriors, but they sacrifice all their captives to their gods to ensure future victories. I don’t like the Mayans,” she confessed.
At that moment Watseka reminded Oddi of his lover, Gudrun, back in Norway, whose father had taken her to Gardar just before King Frodi’s general, Ogmund ‘Eythjofsbane’, had ravaged the countryside, and he pulled her close beside him and he hugged her. He thought of Gudrun and her sister, Sigrid, and he wondered if they had started a Freedom Movement in Polotsk in the east.
The further they sailed downriver, the larger the cities got, and the larger the fleets of canoes would be that came out to greet or threaten them, depending on the disposition of the particular tribes. When they pulled into shore one evening Oddi had his men put the York boats upside down onto the ship decks, two to a ship, and he assigned the boatmen to the ships carrying their boats. The ships got a little crowded, but it was safer. The canoes were getting larger as well and their warriors could easily overwhelm a York boat crew, but the warriors could easily be repelled from the vantage of a ship’s deck. The six Nor’Way ships then rowed out to the middle of the river and weighed anchor in a protective circular formation and the crews slept under awnings and under the Yorks. They only went to shore to cook and to hunt fresh game.
When the fleet came across cities onshore, Watseka would gage whether it was safe to trade with them or not. The stockaded cities were often at war with each other, fighting over territory or slaves or game or fishing rights, and when they fought they were not friendly. Strangers seemed threatening to them and curiosity was subdued. Watseka seemed to just know when something was up, when bad vibrations were carrying out over the waters. War drums were heard often in the fall, after the wild rice had been harvested, and the weather was good, and the warriors had some time on their hands. And as they sailed south, the weather kept getting better and better and the drums could be heard more and more often. It was Mississippian summer and many stockades would be put to the test.
At one point in the river where a large tributary flowed in from the east, there were three stockaded cities across two rivers from each other and they all seemed to be at war with each other. Fleets of war canoes would be paddled across river and a sudden attack would be made against a stockaded wall but, watching the warfare from the safety of the middle of the river, it was apparent that women who had been washing down by the river were caught outside the walls and were being gathered up by warriors and were being loaded into freighter canoes and slaves that had been caught working outside the walls were suffering the same fate. And while the one city could be seen attacking the second city, a war fleet of the third could be seen paddling out across the second river to attack the first city.
As Oddi watched the captive women being paddled across the Mississippi in freighter canoes, Watseka said, “As always, it is the women who suffer most in wars.”
“Tragic but true,” Oddi agreed as they made their way down river as quickly as possible. When they passed by and traded with a few more peaceful cities and the weather became quite warm once more, Oddi kept his eye out for some land on which to build an overwintering station. The native tribes were all very martial and warlike, far too dangerous to sleep on shore, and Oddi didn’t want to spend the whole season sleeping on his overcrowded ships in the middle of the winter. He discussed his plans and concerns with Watseka and they decided to find a tribe that was peaceful and encouraged trade and when they found it, they traded iron ships kettles and frying pans for the right to build an encampment on the riverbank on tribal lands. Watseka told them they were Mississaugans and the Mississippians told them they were of the northern Red Stick tribe. Oddi learned that the southern Red Sticks had the lands of the Delta and that they leased land to the Mayan traders on the Delta.
“Did you see the size of their snake mounds?” Oddi asked Watseka when they got back to the ships. “They were huge!”
“The Red Sticks have a lot of slaves,” Watseka replied. “They buy slaves from the Mayans and they use slave labour to build the biggest mounds. Only the Mayans build bigger mounds on the Delta and they put their sacrificial stone temples atop them. Only the Mayans have more slaves than the Red Sticks and they need them. My father says the Mayan stone temples keep sinking into the delta mud and they have to rebuild them every few years.”
“Why don’t they build them out of wood?” Oddi asked.
“They’re from the south, from across the Mayan Sea, and there, it is said, they build everything out of stone. It is their way.”
Oddi gave her a shrug of ‘whatever’ then added, “We’ll be building out of wood,” he said. Earthen berms and wooden buildings. No stone. Riverbanks can get as muddy as deltas and I want us as close to the river as possible. On the river we have the advantage. It is our escape route. It is our sanctuary.” They hired some Red Stick guides who helped them find a suitable site and then Oddi had to sit and think about what his grandfather had taught him about building a Roman ring fort. The old Vik king had told all the youths of Oddi’s ship of boys how to build a Roman ring fort as they’d camped along the coast of the Mediterranean Sea and the old man had claimed that marking out the site properly was the first and most important part of the process.
“I had just returned from fighting in the Hellespont,” the old king had said, pacing around the campfire circled by boys listening with all ears, “the land of the Greeks, the Eastern Roman Empire, and I had personally seen the construction of a Roman ring fort on the Scythian steppe just off the Dnieper River north of Cherson. Although their ring fort had not saved them from the wrath of Ragnar ‘Lothbrok’,” and the old man waved his arms and their visions of the Roman legion vanished right before their eyes, “when I had to build a quick temporary fort in south Jutland, I employed what I had learned from the Romans and I set a millstone in the center of the fort site,” and he had pointed to the center of the campfire, “and I put a short pole into the hole of the milestone and I looped a long anchor rope around it, and I paced out a hundred steps with the rope in my hand and I tied the rope to my spear with a knot, a square knute, and I began tracing a circle into the dirt as I walked around the millstone.” And Ragnar walked inside the circle of boys around the campfire, tracing an imaginary line in the dirt behind himself. Ragnar then stepped outside the circle of boys, saying, “Then I paced out another ten steps and tied another knute about the spear and walked around again, tracing out the outer perimeter of the berm we would be constructing,” and Ragnar had paced once more about the fire, a little further out and in the opposite direction. The boys eyes were all glued upon the old man as he paced about without, and then he had paced out another ten steps and did the same for the outer perimeter of the ditch they would be digging to get the material for the berm, but again, he reversed his direction. “That is why I made sure to use square knutes that would stay in the rope when I withdrew the spear because the Romans had also used the knots to square up the fort into equal quadrants.”
King Ragnar then went into detail of how the rope could be used to square up the two access roads that would criss-cross through the fort and he told the boys how he had sent half his men into nearby woods to fell trees for a palisade and he had set the other half to digging the outer ditch and throwing the earth between the two lines for the berm. It took two days for his men to throw up the berm and another two for them to erect the palisade. The old man had then warned the boys, “It is the gates for the entrance roads that take the longest to properly build so, while four entrances are best, in a rush job, one will do.”
Because they had made peace with the local Red Sticks, that night was the first night they would sleep on shore in a long while, so, that evening around the campfire, Oddi explained to all how they would be building a Roman ring fort in the Valley of the Mound Builders, and, although his son, Ahanu, was the only boy around the campfire, Oddi described the plan just as King Ragnar ‘Lothbrok’ had explained it to his ship of boys decades earlier. And as they were building the Roman ring fort, the local Red Stick men, women and children came downriver in canoes and sat on hilltops to watch what the ‘Vikings’ were doing, just as the Anglish Danes had watched what Ragnar’s Norse Danes had been doing in the Valley of the Schlei.
King Ragnar ‘Lothbrok’ had built his fort in four days, but he had a full army. Prince Helgi ‘Arrow Odd’ had lost half his army fighting King Frodi the prior spring, so it took them a full week. And Oddi took Ragnar’s advice and limited the fort to one entrance and it faced their sanctuary, the Mississippi. To save time, instead of building longhalls, he had his men roll three of their longships into the compound on log rollers and, with surprisingly great difficulty, they turned one longship over in each of three quadrants and they balanced the upside down ships on their forestems and aftstems, using the keels and strakes for roofs, and quickly filled in the outer walls with vertical logs. The ships had become surprisingly heavy over the summer. Oddi limited each longhall to one door as well, for added security. But, because he had used ships for the roofs, he did not want to put smokeholes in the roofs, as that might affect their later reuse as ships again, so he knew he could not build standard hearths. He had to take the smoke out the sides of the longhalls just below the topstrakes of the hulls. He got himself and Watseka invited to the Red Stick city and he was surprised how large it was. They had done trading outside the stockade, but once inside, the large population within the walls became immediately apparent. It was larger than Paris or London, but the streets were all very narrow because they had no horses or wheeled carts and foot traffic was very compact. The Mississippian and Mississaugan languages were related and very similar so Oddi could converse with the locals and he found that their houses were quite similar to longhalls and had hearths on the floors down the center of them with smokeholes in the roof to carry out smoke. While the fall weather was very mild that far south, the Red Stick builders assured Oddi that he would still need hearths in the dead of winter, as, on very cold days, a skim of ice would form on water puddles. Ice used to form on the river centuries ago, the older builders told him, but the weather had warmed and it no longer froze over, still, they warned, fires would be needed.
Oddi described what he needed to the builders and they traded him some local mortar that could be used with river sand. He returned to the ring fort and he told his men that he was going to build a little house for the fire out of stone, four houses actually for each longhall and the fires would be placed two per long side down each outer wall and he would build a stone smokestack for each stone house that would go up past roof level. The smokestacks would be quite similar to the smelting stacks they would build when they made Indian steel back in the smithy shop of Hraegunarstead. He had built lots of those over his years working with Jarl Brak and they would burn the excess carbon out of pig iron to make low carbon steel and then they would smash apart the stone and sand and mortar smelting stacks to get at the fired steel blooms and they would build a new stack for the next firing of Indian steel, so Oddi had built an awful lot of those smelting stacks over his years at King Ragnar’s stead.
He had a few steel smiths in his merchant marine crews and he got them together to help him build twelve of these firehouses and smokestacks. When Watseka saw him and his men working with mortar and stone she said, “I thought you said: ‘No Stone’.”
“What?” Oddi asked.
“You said you were going to build our longhalls out of wood. No stone, like the Mayans do.”
“I believe I said I was going to build our houses out of wood. These four little houses are the fires’ houses, and only they shall be built out of stone.”
“So the fires get fine stone houses and we only get wood,” and she looked up at the longship above her head and added, “and it’s used wood at that.”
“It may be used,” Oddi said, realising that Watseka was pulling his leg, “but it will never leak.” The first firehouse and stack was complete so Oddi showed his wife how it worked. The mortar was still curing so Oddi built a very small fire at first, but she could see how all the smoke from the firehouse was magically drawn up the smokestack and out of the longhall.
“That’s amazing!” she said. “Where did you learn how to do that?”
“I just invented it!” he admitted, proudly. Even he was surprised how well the firehouse and smokestack had worked. He had eyeballed everything from the size of the firehouse to the diameter of the smelting stack and even the thickness of the flat slate stone that served as a roof above the firehouse. They soon discovered that the flat slate roof got hot enough that one could cook food in frying pans atop it. Watseka even began frying fish right on the slate and it seemed to give some types of fish a unique and pleasant flavour. But the thing that Watseka found so amazing was that the flat stone stopped the smoke from rising into the longhall, but it was flat, so why did the smoke only roll out the back side and go up the stack as if it had been commanded to only roll up one way?
“It is because hot air rises,” Oddi told her. “We steel smiths do our forging over hot coals and fires and hot air and smoke rises and we have to come up with ways of drawing the smoke up and away from our work or we won’t be able to see what we are forging. So we’re always creating draft paths to carry the smoke away from our eyes. The smokestack creates a path for the hot air to rise and it draws the smoke out along with it as it rises, so when the smoke piles up under the flat slate, it doesn’t roll up and out on both open sides because cool air is being drawn into the firehouse to replace the hot air that is rising up the smokestack.”
“So, because you know that hot air rises,” Watseka started, “this knowledge allowed you to invent something that has never been done before. That is even more amazing than your firehouse.” She looked up at her husband and she suddenly realized just how special her ‘Arrow Odd’ was.
“And tonight I will show you proof of hot air rising,” Oddi added. They finished the rest of the firehousings and smokestacks in the main longhall and had a river fish meal cooked on the hot slates for supper. After the meal Oddi took Watseka into their bedchamber and unpacked a gift from a trunk. “I was going to give this to Ahanu, but I realized it was too dangerous for a boy his age,” and Oddi showed her a small flat package. “It is a sky lantern from Cathay, in the east, and it will serve to demonstrate that heated air becomes lighter because it expands and this causes it to rise up and float in colder heavier air.” They went back out into the hall to a table in the highseats area and Oddi sat Ahanu on a bench beside him and began assembling the sky lantern. He expanded and ballooned out the thin tissue bag that formed the top of it and he used four fine brass wires to attach a small candle basket below it.
Watseka saw what he was up to and she went over to the fire and lit a small kindling stick from it and returned to the table. Oddi took the firestick from her and he held up the tissue bag while he lit the small candle below it. “The hot air and smoke from the candle will rise up into the bag and displace the heavier cold air that is in the bag because it is hotter and lighter.” Soon the bag floated on its own and Oddi let go of it and it stood above the candle on its own. “In a few seconds the whole sky lantern will rise up and float because its hot air is lighter than the cold air around it.” And just as Oddi had predicted, the sky lantern rose up off the table and began to float up into the darkness above.
“It’ll set the hall afire!” one of Oddi’s captains shouted. “It’ll be fine,” Oddi said. “The ship’s wood is still waterlogged from being immersed under the Gitchee River for six months. That is why it was so heavy when we hauled it up into the ring fort.” The sky lantern rose up into the longship hull and was stopped by the deck planks, but only the bag was rising so the candle basket still hung safely below it until the small candle burned out. “Now that the candle is out, the air in the bag will start to cool and the sky lantern will start its descent back to the tabletop.” In a few minutes the lantern began its slow descent and almost landed on the tabletop so Oddi caught it. All the people in the hall gave out a great cheer once the experiment concluded. “Do it again,” Ahanu pleaded.
That night after they tucked Ahanu into his small bed and he fell asleep, Watseka snuggled up to Oddi in bed and whispered, “Can you teach me how Frankish women make love?” The request surprised Oddi and he asked her what she had heard about the women of Frankia. “I heard your captains talking and they agreed that the Frankish women were the best focks in the world. They said they did things that no other women do. I want to learn their ways.”
“I can teach you their ways,” Oddi started, “for I have been in Frankia quite a while and I have been with many Frankish women, but you have to learn all their ways if I am to teach you. Can you handle it?”
“If they practise it, I can handle it,” Watseka said confidently.
That night Oddi taught Watseka all about Frankish oral sex. She found it a bit strange until it was Oddi’s turn. While Oddi was going down on Watseka’s honeywell he noticed that she had several sore spots on it, but he asked nothing about it and they soon went away. Oddi spent the winter teaching Watseka about the sex practices of many lands while Watseka taught Oddi about the Valley of the Mound Builders.
In the spring the Viking fleet sailed back up the Mississippi River and then back across the western great lakes to the temporary village of Kanatatoo. Chief Ahanu was waiting with a large portion of the Mississaugan tribe to help portage the ships back around the Nia-Gara Falls, using the road King Frodi had paid them to build the previous summer. While they were portaging the ships, Oddi took several Viking crews to where they had submerged their ships and then dove under water and removed all the stone ballast from each ship. Still, the ships did not refloat themselves. They had been too long under water. Oddi had his men empty ship water barrels and reseal them airtight and they tied ropes to the barrels and then dove with the ropes and took them under a ship’s crossmembers and then back up to the surface so they had the barrel floating in the river above the ship and then they passed the ropes to a crew in a York boat and they yarded on the ropes until the barrel was drawn all the way underwater to the crossmember. When the men complained of how hard it was to submerge the barrel, Oddi explained that it was a good thing, for the force it took to pull the barrel under was equal to the upward force the barrel now exerted on lifting up the ship. Then he had his men tie another barrel to the end of the ropes they had been pulling upon and he told his men to pull excess rope from the first barrel to pull the second underwater. He told them that this barrel would be much easier to pull under because the first barrel would help pull it under as it rose up a bit. It took eight barrels per longship to get them dislodged from the river mud and get them halfway to the surface, then they could tow the ship closer to shore and drag it up along the river bottom with ropes they passed to men on shore. It took a week to get all the longships re-floated and they repaired and dried the ships for another week.
A much larger Viking fleet now sailed down the Nia-Gara River and through the last great lake to the Gitchee River or Kanata River, as Prince Erik had called it, which would take them to New Ireland from whence they would make the very dangerous ocean crossing to Old Ireland. But first they spent a few days gathering provisions in the Kanata Village of the Mississaugans, that the Vikings were also calling Kanata Town. By now Princess Watseka was showing signs of her pregnancy and Chief Ahanu was once again angry, but Oddi knew it was for show and the chief threw a celebratory feast for the young couple on the last night they would be together. Because they would be apart for a long while, Chief Ahanu assigned them a bridal house that was usually reserved for newlyweds and Oddi and Watseka were taken to it after the feast and the couple settled into bed together and practised some Frankish sex before going to sleep in each other’s arms.
Oddi woke up in the middle of the night to find Watseka on top of him, riding him like a Valkyrie. He was both surprised and pleased with the experience and as they were speeding up and about to climax together, Watseka bit him on the arm and delayed his orgasm and enjoyed her own and then she rode him some more and when they were again nearing orgasm she bit him on the other arm and delayed him once more while enjoying her own. These were not sexual tricks that Oddi had taught her, but he was enjoying the extended ride and the third time they approached climax they shared it together. Watseka was exhausted and she collapsed on his chest and hugged him. “I am so going to miss you,” he whispered and she hugged him some more then used Frankish oral tricks to get Oddi excited again and Oddi made love to her this time. Again she used some other techniques to delay Oddi and enjoy herself some more and, again, these were methods that Oddi knew from somewhere but had not shown her. After they had come together several hours later, Oddi rested and realised that these were techniques used in witchcraft for special ceremonies, sexual ceremonies.
“Are you going to miss me?” Oddi asked Watseka, looking into her eyes in the dim candlelight.
“You can’t go back the way you came,” she told him and there was a strange coldness in her eyes.
“Why not?” Oddi asked and he looked into her eyes suspiciously.
“If you try a direct sailing return to Ireland, as you came here last spring, your fleet of open ships will be caught in a storm and many of you will drown,” she explained. “Your fleet will be scattered and many ships will take weeks longer to get home and many will die or lose their lower limbs from a disease called Scurvy, which, combined with another disease called Syphilis, can cause the loss of one foot or the other. You must sail a more northerly route to avoid the storm, sailing to Slabland, then east to the Glacier land you saw off your stearingboard side and then east to an island that your Captain Floki saw when you made your first trip to the Newfoundland. He is building a settlement on the west coast of the island he has called Iceland and the settlement is called Reykjar Vik, meaning Smoky Bay, and you can get fresh water there and sail southwest safely to Ireland. Sail south down the west coast of Ireland. My husband, King Frodi has a vast army in Angleland watching for your return there, so go down the west coast and sail straight to Frankia where your uncle, Duke Rollo awaits you in Rouen. Don’t even stop for water.”
“Who are you?” Oddi asked incredulously, but he knew from the witchcraft and the slip of tongue that the spirit of Queen Alfhild had taken possession of his wife. “King Frodi only had one wife, but she is dead.”
“Dead is such a strong word,” Alfhild replied. “I prefer spirited away. I spirited away from my husband, after tearing his face off, and it was your Tiger Totem that gave me the strength to avenge myself that way. Your mother, Princess Gunwar, was spirited away by the Huns and I promised her I would come and warn you. Your Uncle Roller too. They both send you their greetings and ask that you follow my warning to the rune. Will you promise to do that?”
“How can I trust you? You were one of the most powerful witches in all Norway!”
“Because I witnessed your conception as a Tiger Spirit, it gave me the strength to fight back. I owe you a lot for that. And I shall be severely punished by the gods for warning you, but that will make us even. Your mother would help you, but she is in the Christian heaven and you are Aesir.”
“How will the gods punish you?”
“I was made a Valkyrie by Odin because I died fighting back, thanks to seeing your Tiger Spirit in conception, but that will be taken away from me and I shall have to earn it back. That will take a long time and it shall be without sex.”
“I will follow your advice to the rune,” Oddi told her. “I am sorry you will be punished. Will you give me back my wife?” This was more a request than a question. He had learned a lot about witchcraft from his battles with the warlock, Ogmund ‘Eythjofsbane’, and had grown to both respect and fear it.
“Oh yes,” Alfhild started, “I almost forgot that Ogmund ‘Eythjofsbane’ has built a fortress on the cliffs overlooking the strait between New Ireland and the mainland. He is not there right now, but he has left ships and troops and junior warlocks there to watch for you in case you survived the wilds of the Newfoundland. You’ll see it up on the cliffs and you’ll have to sneak by it at night in the darkness.” Alfhild shivered warmly in her new body and Watseka shivered with her. “I have to say, from the sex we’ve just had, that you have not only survived, but thrived in the wilds. I shall ride you like a Valkyrie again, I am still a Valkyrie until they punish me, and halfway through it, I shall hand your wife back to you and she won’t even know that I have been in possession of her. Do you mind if I bite you again?”
“Not if it will bring Watseka back.”
“Good,” she said, “because the first two orgasms will be for me and the third one will be for your wife.”
Queen Alfhild decided to use witchcraft techniques to get Oddi erect again and then she straddled his hips and began her ride atop him and as they were speeding up and about to climax together, Alfhild took his right nipple into her mouth and began to nibble at it and instantly Oddi was inside Watseka and sharing her orgasm with Alfhild and when the witch released it from her mouth he returned to his own body and its delayed orgasm, and then Alfhild rode him for a very long time, as one who would not be having sex for a very long time might, and when they were finally nearing orgasm she bit him on the other nipple and, again, he shared the female orgasm with Alfhild and it delayed him one more time so that Alfhild could continue her ride and the third time they approached climax they all shared it together and then Alfhild was gone and an exhausted Watseka collapsed on his chest and hugged him and said, “I am so going to miss you!”
“Watseka? Is that you?”
“Yes, it is me. I’m back.”
“Let me explain what happened,” Oddi began.
“I know what happened. I have been enjoying the sex as well, the whole time that your queen had taken control of my body.”
“But she said you wouldn’t remember anything.”
“She lied. She’s been a very naughty witch who knows that, like her, I shall be going without sex for a very long time, so she took full control of me but allowed me to experience witch sex along with her. Boy that woman can fock. I don’t think I’ll be able to walk tomorrow.” She snuggled up under Oddi’s arm and she fell asleep right away.
Chapter 21.0: VIGNIR 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' 