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 TWENTY TWO & THREE:
Michelle, a Frankish girl who helped maintain the reputation of Frankish women
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 TWENTY TWO
22.0 TALE OF TWO CITIES (Circa 869 AD)
“There was a Viking presence in Aquitane for centuries,
that is little known of and perhaps shown of a bit in
this chapter of Arrow Odd’s Saga.”
Brian Howard Seibert
(869 AD) Returning from New Ireland, Oddi sailed around the old Ireland and beached Fair Faxi on the sand by Black Pool and went inland to visit Princess Olvor and his daughter, Hraegunhild, in Dub-Lin. “She has grown so,” Oddi exclaimed, as he got dressed. Olvor was still in bed, propped up on one elbow. They had spent the morning talking…she had spent the morning listening…to Oddi’s life these past five years and she was mortified. “You must kill this King Frodi, Oddi. He will never stop. You must find a way to kill him!”
“I shall lay low with Duke Roller in Normandy. Frodi can’t touch us there. It’s part of Charlemagne’s Holy Roman Empire, the Constantinople of the West.”
“There is no Constantinople of the west!” she countered. “The biggest city here is Paris, and your grandfather, Ragnar ‘Lothbrok’, already sacked that!”
“It’s the plan Prince Erik came up with.”
“I told you when I first met you that Ragnar ‘Lothbrok’ was your grandfather and you didn’t believe me. My mother was a Welsh witch and she told me that years before I even met you.”
“Okay, I believe you,” Oddi whispered, as he joined Olvor on the bed.
“Well, thank you,” Olvor whispered back. “It’s just, if my mother knew you were coming and she’s but a healer, how are you going to keep your location from this warlock, Ogmund ‘Eythjofsbane’?”
“My uncle has a spae-witch in Rouen that can block Ogmund’s efforts. I’m to lay low there and work for my uncle in the Hraes’ Trading Company stations. I’ll be able to visit you from there.”
“Why don’t you just stay here? With us?”
“If Frodi finds out that I’m hiding in Ireland, he’ll do what he did to Angleland and the Nor’Way. I can’t put you and Hraegunhild in danger. But I’ll visit you both when I can.”
Oddi sent messengers north to Hrafnista and asked his kin to join him, so Gudmund and Sigurd sent word back that they would come to Ireland as soon as they could. Oddi spent the spring with Olvor and his daughter and Oddi taught Hraegunhild all about Saint Brendan and the land he had found “He’s half Dane,” Oddi chided. “That’s the Dan part of Brendan.” And Olvor worked at repairing Oddi’s plate-mail shirt. At spring’s end there was a joyful meeting between the Hrafnista men and Oddi. All Oddi’s kin in Hrafnista and Varanger Fjord were running his Nor’Way trading operation while he was tied up with King Frodi troubles and Oddi thanked his cousins for all the help given. Afterwards, they set sail from Ireland and kept heading south, hugging the coast, and they crossed the Irish Sea and soon had Wales off their portside, then they crossed the Anglish Sea and the water became much shallower along the coast and Oddi had never been there before. They plundered southern Gaul, Frankland and Alsace. They created havoc as they went until they managed to crash their ships on an unknown shore. They went inland with full weapons and armour and they soon came upon a house. It was of unusual stone construction they had never seen before. It had colorful glass windows and spires on the roof. They went up to it and found that the door was open. Oddi said, “What do you think it’s used for, Sigurd?”
“I’m not sure,” he replied. “What do you think, Gudmund?”
“I am not sure,” he said, “but I suspect that men must live here and will come back soon.”
“We shouldn’t go in,” Oddi added. They sat down on a bench across the road from the house and waited. Soon they saw people hurrying into the house, and they then heard a racket coming from within that they had never heard before. “I think these are strange men in a strange country and we should wait here until they come out of the house.” And it was as Oddi said, and soon people were hurrying from the house.
One of the men walked to where Oddi sat and said, “You look Norse. Can I help you?”
Oddi asked him what country this was. The man said that the country was called Aquitane. “But what is this house you’ve just left?” Odd asked.
“We call this a church.”
“What kind of noise is it you have been making in this church?”
“That we call Mass,” said the local. “But what about you, are you a complete heathen?”
Odd said, “We do not have a religion. We believe in our strength and mettle. We don’t follow Odin at all. What religion do you practice?”
“We believe in God, creator of heaven and earth, the sea, the sun and moon,” said the pious man.
“He who has built all that,” Oddi said, “must be great, that much I can see.”
The stranger gave Oddi directions to a hostel for pilgrims but he and his men found an inn and paid for their lodgings with silver and gold. They rested there several weeks and met with a few of the locals. They asked Oddi and his men if they would like to follow the Christian faith and Gudmund and Sigurd converted. They again asked Oddi if he would follow their faith and he said, “I will accept your faith, but I will still believe in my might and mettle. I will not sacrifice to other gods, but I don’t want to stay here. Therefore, since I will travel from place to place, and be with pagans sometimes and with Christians at other times, I will only practice the faith when I am with Christians.” The locals were satisfied with that, so Oddi was baptized. The Vikings settled in and stayed there for a time.
After a while, Oddi asked Sigurd and Gudmund if they would come with him to find his Uncle Roller in Normandy. “We like it here,” they replied, “more than anywhere else. And the women here like us too.”
“Then I’ll have to set out on my own,” said Oddi.
“You said you wanted to lay low in Frankia,” said Gudmund. “This seems as good a place as any.”
“I’ve been bored because nothing ever happens here.” He didn’t ask them again and, one day, he just left of his own accord.
And when Oddi was leaving the city, he saw a large group of people heading towards him. A man was riding an ass while others walked about him. These people were all dressed well and no one was carrying weapons. Oddi stood at the side of the street as the group walked past him. Then Oddi saw four men rush up carrying long knives in their hands. They ran up to the man who was riding and they stabbed him and cut off his head. Then they ran back past Oddi, and one of them had the man’s head by the hair and it swung and sprayed them as he ran. Odd figured they were up to no good, so he ran after them but they charged into a forest and entered an underground earth-house like Oddi had seen in Ireland. He chased after them into the ground chamber. Oddi attacked them with his sword, but they fought fiercely, four long knives against one long sword in a very crowded room. But he battled with them, using the Tonstone pommel of his sword to batter them until he had killed them all. He then took their heads and tied them together by the hair and went out with the four heads together in his left hand and the one they had carried in his right. Oddi went back to the city and he saw there were others who had returned to the church with the body of the man who’d been killed. Oddi took all the heads into the church and said: “Here is the head of your man of the cloth and I have avenged him with the heads of those who had slain him.” The people of the church were very thankful and thought very highly of the deed he had accomplished. Oddi asked who he had avenged and they said he was their bishop. “I’m glad I killed them then,” Oddi told them, but now they kept an eye on him because they didn’t want him to go. He was now more bored than ever and things were worse because they kept a watch on him. He waited for a chance to get away and when that chance came, Oddi vowed to do no more good deeds on the way out.
He headed northeast until he reached the Seine River. He took off his plate-mail shirt and his clothes and walked into the river and washed himself. Then he got out of the river and let the warm summer sunshine dry him off and he got back into his clothes and his special shirt that Olvor had made and repaired for him. It felt as powerful as ever. He put his quiver on his back and followed the Seine to Paris. He marvelled at the city walls and they reminded him of Gardariki and he thought about what his father had told his uncle when they fled Angleland from King Frodi. “Find Bishop Prudentius and tell him he owes me a mark of silver,” he had said. He decided to find Bishop Prudentius, but when he checked at a cathedral as to where he might find him, he was told that the good bishop had died seven years earlier. Oddi then asked where he might find Sister Saint Charles, the nun that the Viking had saved, but nobody seemed to know. He then told the priests that he was the recently converted Viking who had avenged the killing of a bishop in Aquitane, and he had an audience with the nun that afternoon.
“You told Father Pieter that you avenged the death of Bishop Rancier of Bordeaux, young man,” Sister Saint Charles said in perfect Norse.
“I wish I could have saved the Bishop, but his assassins were very fast,” Oddi started. “I am also the son of the Viking that saved you.”
The sister perked up instantly. “You are the son of Prince Erik?” she asked. “I’m so glad to meet you. I hope you are staying in Paris,” she added. “I’ll give you a tour of the city. It has changed so much.”
Oddi looked at the nun and he imagined her as being twenty years younger and he thought she may have been pretty. “I talked to my father, Erik, about you. He told me you were strictly business and a great teacher of languages. The Latin you taught him saved his life. The Emperor Theophilos of Constantinople wrote out a death warrant for my father, then had him deliver it to King Louis the Pious in Ingleheim, but my father read the message on the way and changed it to a letter of introduction and it saved his life.”
“And they say Latin is a dead language,” the sister laughed. And the sister kept her word and gave Oddi a tour of Paris that would hold him in good stead in the future. “They are building walls around the island portion because of your grandfather, you know.” And Oddi watched as great stone blocks were being craned up to the top of the walls in progress. “I am going to Flanders in a few days”, the nun explained, “and I was wondering if you would have time to come along? There is someone there that I would like you to meet.”
“I was planning to meet my Uncle Roller in Rouen tomorrow,” Oddi answered.
“Perhaps some other time then?” the nun asked.
“Yes. I shall be here for a while and I plan to visit Paris often.”
“You know, there is a train of Hraes’ Trading Company wagons going to Rouen tomorrow morning, yes? Perhaps you could ride with them? They travel often between Paris and Rouen. There is no Hraes’ trading station here in Paris…the king won’t allow it…nor Viking ships, but your uncle has set up deliveries. He is so…innovative.”
Sister Saint Charles walked Oddi over to a Hraes’ Inn and dropped a few names and the inn manager gave Arrow Odd the guest suite to rest in until the wagon train was ready to roll. The next morning, Oddi caught a ride with the Hraes’ Trading Company wagon train and it took him to his Uncle Roller in the City of Rouen, north of Paris.
CHAPTER TWENTY THREE
23.0 THE CITY OF ROUEN (Circa 870 AD)
“When Virgil wrote The Aeneid about Prince Aeneas,
He was presaging the retaking of Troy (Constantinople).”
Brian Howard Seibert
(869 AD) Arrow Odd overwintered with his Uncle Roller in Rouen and the duke introduced him to many fine and beautiful young women of the city and Oddi grew very close with several of them, but he waited patiently for spring and his next visit to Ireland to visit with his wife and daughter there. Princess Olvor had become friends with Princess Blaeja of York, Oddi’s wife in Angleland and she’d agreed to come to Dub-Lin for a Guild healers conference in the spring and the two wives wanted to surprise Oddi with the visit when he came. King Frodi had returned to the east, to Kiev, for the winter, but his Great Heathen Army remained in Angleland under command of one of his Angle generals, Guthrum, who Thorbjorg ‘Litilvolva’ warned Oddi was actually Ogmund Tussock in disguise, so it was not safe for Oddi to go anywhere near York, hence Princess Blaeja and her daughter by Oddi, Hraegunhild, would come to Ireland. But spring was a long way off, so Oddi borrowed a small river ship from Duke Rollo and a few young ladies and Norman officers joined him for a cruise up the Seine to Paris before Yulefest. Oddi had left his ship, Fair Faxi, in Aquitaine, even though it had been fully repaired, because the ship was being watched all the time, but the river yacht was well equipped and had bright red awnings that could be quickly lowered if the weather turned, but the good weather held and the men rowed while the women sat beside them and drank wine and encouraged their fine strokes and when a breeze came up, so did the sail, and the men drank some wine as well.
In Paris Oddi met with the nun and they made plans to sail up to Brugge, in Flanders, to visit with her son, Oddi’s half-brother, Baldwin. Oddi would pick Sister Saint Charles up on the morrow and take her back to Rouen with him and from there sail by sea to the low country. Once Oddi and their party had gotten all their shopping done, he took them all to the finest inn in Paris where he had booked lodgings and the feasting began. The couples had paired up on the way to Paris and they shut down the dining hall before retiring to their rooms. They were all a little hung over when they picked the sister up at a quay on the Seine, and she had come early and they arrived a little late, so Oddi decided to impress everybody with a little Raven Banner Hrafnista magic. He stood upon his rowing bench and looked off in the direction of Rouen and said, “This is a little trick the Hrafnista men showed me,” and he put out his arms and a gentle breeze came up from behind them and his officers yarded up the sail and they were off.
“That’s very impressive,” the nun told Oddi as he sat on the bench by the rudder and steered. His girlfriend sat on the bench with him and Sister sat backwards on the bench ahead and watched the young couple and reminisced. She could see Erik in the eyes of Oddi and it took her back to their trip down the Dnieper River past Kiev when she and Prince Erik spent their days together sailing and teaching each other languages and nights together keeping each other warm. “They say that Paris got its name from the local Parisii tribe of Gauls that live nearby,” she started, “but that’s not what your father, Prince Erik, told me.” She could see that they were both a little tired and hung over from too much wine and a little too much keeping each other warm.
“What did he tell you?” Oddi asked as his girl just smiled and held onto his arm with both of hers.
“He told me that the people here picked the name Paris from Prince Paris of Troy of Trojan War fame because the Romans were giving all the cities Latin names after Julius Caesar’s conquest of Gaul, but the Romans said it was too close to the Gaulish tribal name of Parisioi, so they named it Lutetia. When the Romans left Gaul, the Franks allowed Parisians to openly call their city Paris after the Trojan Prince and in spite of the Parisioi. Erik also told me that Julius Caesar hadn’t planned on conquering all of West Gaul, that he didn’t have enough troops for it. He had only brought three legions north to punish one southern tribe for its transgressions against Rome. This was just before the time of Christ,” and the nun made the sign of the cross, “and Caesar learned that Danes and Goths and Viking tribes had been conquering the Gauls of eastern Europe from the north, so he decided he had to conquer all of western Gaul from the south before the Vikings did. So he did it. He conquered all of western Gaul with just three legions against the equivalent of ten Gaulish legions or more and that’s what made him famous. And, to other Romans, dangerous and that’s what got him killed, murdered in his own Senate.
“Your father also told me that the Scandinavian Germanic tribes originally hailed from Aran and followed the Aran tripartite gods religion, but when they settled in the Baltic lands in the Bronze Age while trading for Briton tin via the riverways of Scythia, they became the Aesir, the northern branch of the eastern Aran religion. So the Danes were originally Persians and they worshipped the same gods as the Trojans and Greeks. Eventually the northern Danish Aesir and the western Vanir Greeks collided and the Aesir triumphed over the Vanir, sacking Troy in the long final siege and battle. The Greeks became Aesir and Erik said that according to the great Roman writer, Virgil, Rome was founded by the Trojan refugees of that war. It took the Romans a thousand years of conquering all before them before they finally re-conquered Troy, which had become the Aesir Greek city of Byzantium and Emperor Constantine made the city the new capital of Rome and he named Troy Constantinople, after himself. Your father says that the Aesir, Vanir, Aran and Brahman tripartite gods religions are the one same religion with different gods names and they are all religions of conquest. He says that for the thousand years that Rome fought to regain its old capital, Troy, in every century the Romans could count the years they had not been at war on one hand. They’ve been conquering and plundering peoples ninety five percent of the time for the last millennia.
“So, the northern Persians, the Danes and Swedes and Norwegians, ended up fighting the western Persians, the Romans, over who got to conquer the Celts of Germany, Gaul, Britain and Ireland. The Scandinavian Vikings ended up winning by conquering all those lands when Rome abandoned them and then Viking Goths, Vandals and Longobardi took over in Italy, Spain and even North Africa. Rome had fallen and only the Eastern Roman Empire eluded them, but the Romans didn’t care because they had their beloved Troy back, their Constantinople.” The nun had been enjoying her talk in the Anglish Danish tongue, it was rusty, but was flowing back to her. She paused because Oddi seemed to have a question.
“A decade ago,” Oddi began, “Prince Erik led us on an attack upon Constantinople. Was this an extension of that old Aesir Vanir conflict? Because he claimed it was for a better trade agreement, a written contract, and my grandfather, Ragnar ‘Lothbrok’, claimed that his sons wanted to conquer Constantinople without him to one up him on his conquest of Paris fifteen years earlier, so he helped me and my ship of boys follow the Norwegian fleet across the Mediterranean to the Golden Horn. A storm came up and King Frodi and Prince Erik lost a lot of ships to it, but we still managed to get a trade contract out of it, but the city didn’t come close to falling. I later heard that their Christian bishops dipped holy vestments into the waters of the Bosporos and raised the storm. Is that possible?”
“First off,” Sister answered, “if Erik said he was after a contract, that was likely what he was after. I don’t know if you’ve noticed this, but The Prince isn’t very religious, one way or the other, so an Aesir Vanir conflict wouldn’t interest him at all. But he is a very shrewd businessman and a good contract certainly would. Secondly, our Christian God is known for his miracles, so, if the Orthodox Christians dipped holy vestments into the Bosporos Sea, then God probably did raise a storm to save them. I know that you, as well, have no interest in religion, but you should at least consider preliminary baptism as a Christian and see if it appeals to you.”
“I have been baptised,” Oddi replied, and the girl on his arm looked quite pleased and she squeezed his arm with both of hers. “I was baptised in Aquitaine. They begged me to get baptised after I avenged their bishop. They kept bringing their young women to my room to bless me and preach to me and sometimes even sleep with me. Well, quite often, actually, I must confess. I told them I would convert but that I would only practice the faith when I was in Christian lands and I would practice no religion when I was in heathen lands. They seemed to be happy with that because girls kept coming to see me. They tried to convince me to stay in Aquitaine, but I’d already promised The Prince that I would visit you in Paris and lay low with Uncle Roller in Rouen.”
“So you’ve been going to church?” Sister asked.
“With Michelle here,” Oddi said, and he gave her arms a squeeze with his free arm and adjusted the rudder with his other. “Some Sundays I miss church because of business, but Michelle keeps me going quite regularly.”
“He’s trying hard,” Michelle piped in. It was the first time Sister had heard her talk and she had a sweet voice.
“Perhaps we can all go to church together in Rouen tomorrow?” the nun asked. “I believe it’s Sunday tomorrow.”
Sister Saint Charles was correct about the day and so they went to mass with Duke Rollo the next day and left for Brugge in Flanders the day after that. The young ladies and officers all came along, but it was no longer a river cruise in friendly territory, so they took a full longship, a fast warship, with a full crew of marine warriors, and they were in Bruges in two days. Sister introduced Oddi to his half-brother, her son, Prince Baldwin. Oddi was surprised at how much Baldwin looked like their father. He had the same dark hair and dark eyes and Sister laughed and said, “When you stand together, you both look like Erik and Roller standing side by side!” They all laughed about it, but Oddi had mixed feelings about someone looking more like his father than he did. Not only had Prince Erik gladly acknowledged Baldwin as his son, but he had made Baldwin the managing partner of the Hraes’ trading station in Brugge serving all of Flanders, while he had barely acknowledged Oddi as being his son. It was his Uncle Roller who had uncovered the proof of Oddi’s birth and it was the duke who seemed to be supporting him most. Prince Erik seemed hesitant to admit that his son by Gunwar was even yet alive, as though he feared something, and then it hit him like a ton of bricks. It was the curse, Witch Heid’s prediction that a snake would crawl out from under the skull of Faxi and strike him dead. The Prince had always thought that the curse was meant for himself and then, when Witch Heid had repeated the same prediction to Oddi, The Prince then realized that the curse was meant for his son. He had already lost his son Helgi once and now he was fated to lose him again. Perhaps if he didn’t acknowledge too vigorously that Oddi was his son, perhaps the curse would not strike him down. Prince Erik had gone through his whole life with that axe above his head, that blood-snake at his leg, and just when he was at the age to start believing that old Heid was wrong, to learn that his long lost son was actually the target of the curse, to have to restart wondering when the axe would fall, the snake would strike, perhaps it was too much for him. ‘Fock!’ Oddi thought. ‘That focking witch!’
“Are we going to the feast tonight?” Michelle asked Oddi.
“I asked Baldwin and Sister if they’d go to the feast,” Oddi answered, “but they’re going to a late mass tonight. I thought I might join them, but you go ahead and I’ll meet you there after mass.”
“You don’t mind?”
“Not at all. You cover for me until I get there.”
Brother Baldwin was not at all like Oddi. He had worked for the Hraes’ company in Brugge his whole life and he was a brother in the local church and, while Oddi had killed so many men he couldn’t even take a stab at just how many, Brother Baldwin had likely not killed a one. And his mother, Sister Saint Charles, had gained her fame by turning her Varangian captors into her Viking saviours, through patience, and diligence, and the grace of the Christian god. In her story of ‘The Viking and The Nun’, was the theme that, no matter how bad things seemed, a good Christian could turn them around into something good, and it was a powerful message that gave hope to the enslaved and had enabled the conversions of many Vikings to Christianity, or so was the belief. Oddi did not see anything powerful in Christianity, but yet here was the nun, free and strong, and here was her son, very religious, but successful, nonetheless. His thoughts about his father and Faxi’s curse had depressed him enough that he deferred a banquet so, he decided to spend some time with his brother and see the mettle of the man.
After the mass, the boys walked the mother to the convent she was staying at and then Oddi walked Baldwin to his home and wife and children, more because it was along the way to the banquet hall than any other reason, but to be polite he did ask Baldwin if he cared to join him at the hall for a bit.
“I know that you think I’m too religious,” Baldwin answered him, “but my mother’s a nun and I do so love her and all that. Still, my father is a Varangian and a Viking, and, quite frankly, I consider myself more a Norman than I do a Frank. I train with the sword and, though I’ve never fought for my life, I’m quite proficient with it. I’ll come to the feast,” he said, “just let me tell my wife so she doesn’t worry about me.”
They stopped at his longhall, a fine Danish style construction, and Oddi met her briefly. She was a beautiful pale blonde Flemish girl and she apologised that their three children were already in bed asleep, but she said she would stay up until Baldwin returned. As they walked to the banquet hall Oddi asked Baldwin if he cared to train with him the next day. “I can teach you a sword pattern Jarl Brak taught me from the orient,” he offered.
“I know quite a few sword patterns,” Baldwin told him, “and I’m quite proficient at them.”
“This one is special,” Oddi countered. “Jarl Brak learned it from a Katana master in Damascus. Now the Katana is a single edged sword from the land of the rising sun in the farthest east, and is a very deadly weapon, but Brak forged the master a double edged sword to his Katana requirements and, in payment, the master taught him a secret Katana pattern and they worked together on it and converted it to a double edged weapon pattern. Once you become proficient at it, nobody will be able to best you.”
“Jarl Brak is father’s foster father in Rouen, the man who married Witch Kraka after King Ragnar ‘Lothbrok’ sacrificed himself to Odin, right?”
“Married might be a strong word to use around The Prince and Duke Rollo. They prefer to think of it as Jarl Brak and Princess Aslaug pledging themselves to each other.”
Baldwin laughed and said, “You Aesir are so complicated!”
“I am Christian when I’m in Christian lands,” Oddi corrected him, “and when I’m in Aesir lands I believe in no gods. And Prince Erik is an Aesir who believes in no gods all the time.”
“I’m sorry,” Baldwin said, shaking his head, “it’s just that Aesir atheists are the most complicated of us all.”
They went to the banquet hall which was at the inn that Oddi and his group were lodged at and Oddi showed Baldwin the warship he had brought from Rouen. “It looks fast!” Baldwin said as he studied it in the moonlight. “Is it yours?”
They walked down the quay and along the boarding plank and onto the deck of the ship a little way from the two crewmen who were on guard. Oddi nodded to his men and they nodded back. “No,” Oddi admitted. “Duke Rollo loaned it to me along with a crew.”
“Well, I’m sure that someday you will own your own ship,” Baldwin told him encouragingly.
“Oh, I’ve had many a ship,” Oddi assured him, “and I’ve lost many a ship in battle.”
“I’m sorry,” Baldwin repeated. “How many have you lost?”
“Hundreds of them, maybe near a thousand, not all of them mine, mind you. A lot of them were Duke Rollo’s back when he was King Roller of Norway. But most of them were King Frodi’s and he’s really pissed about it.”
Baldwin sat down on a rowing bench. He knew it was more than just lost ships that Frodi was pissed about. He’d heard many times about the Duel on Samso and how his brother, as Arrow Odd, had deprived their king of a dozen grandsons. “Is that why we’re not allowed to talk about you?”
“You can talk about me, but you should call me Helgi, not Prince Helgi, just Helgi. And never call me Arrow Odd. While I work in Rouen for the Hraes’ Trading Company, I am just plain old Helgi, not a son of Prince Erik. Either should you be. You might be mistaken for me.”
“Oh, I don’t think anybody’s going to mistake me for you. We’re kind of opposites if you’ve noticed.”
“You’re all the parts of Prince Erik that I’m not and I’m all the parts that you aren’t.”
“I know! It’s quite amazing. If you put us together we’d make a whole Erik!”
“I think it would take four of us to make a whole Erik,” Oddi said.
“He’s that good?”
“He’s that good!”
When they went into the banquet hall, Michelle came running up to them, half cut, and she pulled them into the ring dance their group was into. A skald was reciting verses and playing a lyre and a drummer was beating his hand drum and the line dancers were all repeating the chorus loudly. Oddi had a lot of drinking to do to catch up and Baldwin, surprisingly, kept up to him until he had to leave.
“Where do you want to train tomorrow?” Baldwin asked Oddi, as he got ready to depart.
“It has to be somewhere very private. It’s a secret pattern and I’ll have to swear you to secrecy before I show you it or Brak will have my hide.”
“We can train in my back yard,” Baldwin offered. “It’s very secure and private and then you can meet my children and Michelle can meet Anya.”
Oddi agreed to his place and he watched Baldwin as he walked up the road. Michelle joined him at the doorway and tucked herself under his arm and they watched Baldwin walk away together. “How do you like your new brother?” Michelle asked.
“I didn’t,” Oddi confessed, “but there’s more to him than I first thought. He’s my older brother, but I think I’m going to like him better as a younger brother. I think I’ll be teaching him a bit about the world and I’m hoping I learn a bit in the teaching.”
Michelle was a little drunk and she took a while to process his words then said, “I like a teacher who is willing to learn. Let’s go to bed.”
Michelle was a Frankish girl who helped maintain the reputation of Frankish women all over the world. She was blonde and beautiful and had a surprisingly strong leanness about her that made her an exceptional lover and they were always learning new ways to express their growing love. “Yes,” Oddi answered, only half cut, “let’s go to bed.”
The next day Oddi and Michelle arrived at Baldwin’s longhall and Baldwin introduced his wife, Anya, to Michelle and his three children, two boys and a girl, to both of them. Oddi had brought a couple of his swords with him and two training bucklers, lighter shields that allowed one to train longer without exhausting oneself. They both had the new lipped bosses that duellists were starting to use. Oddi usually cruised with a half dozen swords of various construction, but the two he brought were Stavanger blades of the old pure Swedish iron that was baked with carbon, not the newer Indian steel blades that Brak had learned to smelt inside stacks in Damascus. The old San Mi tri-steel blades were still the lightest and strongest in the world, matched only by the Katanas from the east, which were also of pure iron, but the carbon was forged into them in long red hot strips that were dusted with carbon and folded over on themselves many times over before just the right amount of carbon was hammered into the iron to make strong flexible steel blades. Oddi’s favourite sword was one he had called ‘Leg-Biter’ but he was still depressed about the Curse of Faxi and he no longer liked the name as much. He offered the blade to Baldwin.
“I already have a fine Frankish sword,” Baldwin protested, and he showed it to Oddi. Oddi held it and looked down its length and felt its heft. “It’s half sharp,” Oddi said, “and a few Roman ounces more than it should weigh. That slows you down.”
But Baldwin wanted to use his own sword so, Oddi used ‘Leg-Biter’ and they parried for a bit and Oddi swept ‘Leg-Biter’ across at an odd angle and it bit into Baldwin’s blade and took it right out of his hand and the blade flew across the yard in two pieces that banged against the six foot high wattle fence that surrounded the yard. The women heard the tings from inside the longhall and they went to the back door and watched. Baldwin accepted the sword ‘Leg-Biter’ from Oddi without argument this time, then Oddi took an oath from Baldwin to keep secret the special oriental pattern.
“I swear to never show or divulge Brak’s secret pattern to anybody, live or dead, and I would like an oath from you as well, dear brother Oddi, that you will not kill me in this training session.” Oddi’s few strokes with ‘Leg-Biter’ had shown Baldwin that he was being trained by a master swordsman, probably unlike any swordsman he had seen before.
“I’m here to train you only,” Oddi assured him. “If I put so much as a scratch on you, I’ll have failed in my own training. Just try not to accidentally stab me.”
They parried a bit with the Stavanger blades and Baldwin could hear the difference in the tinging of the steel and he could feel that the few lighter ounces made him just a bit faster.
“Speed is everything!” Oddi said, and he parried with Baldwin and every time they parried, Oddi’s blade would end up stopping just short of Baldwin’s throat. “All the power of a blow comes from the speed that you put into the blade,” Oddi said. “Very little power is transmitted from the wrist into the blade. Strength is used for control. A slight person with fast reflexes can generate a faster stroke than a person with strong arms, but a strong quick arm, a surprisingly rare combination, works best. Always work on speeding up your reflexes when not working with your sword and you’ll see an increase in your sword stroke speed when you do work with it.” Oddi was explaining these basic concepts as they were parrying because a lot of them seemed common sense, but were seldom really understood. Acceleration put four times more power into the blow of the blade than strength did. The two were very similar, in that it took strength to put acceleration into the blade, but the training for it was quite different. One built up strength by training with a heavier sword but one increased speed by swinging a lighter sword so, one had to train with both and most warriors trained only to work with heavier swords and their speed stayed the same. Giving up a few ounces of weight for an increase in speed gave the best result. Speed was everything with swords because the razor sharp edge, the odd, was so devastating upon flesh. Whoever drew first blood usually won, not necessarily because of the initial wound, but because it usually indicated who had the faster blade. “Speed is everything,” Oddi said as he drew Baldwin into a faster pace without Baldwin even realizing it. “Always repeat this to yourself as you train. Shout it! Speed is everything!”
“Speed is everything!” Baldwin hissed. He was too gassed to shout.
The women were now watching from the back porch. They’d closed the back door to keep the children inside. “He is very quick for a big man,” Anya noted.
“I’ve seen many great warriors come through Rouen,” Michelle agreed, “but none are as fast and strong as Oddi. Some are as strong, but nobody is as fast.”
Baldwin rested on the pommel of his sword as Oddi showed him the oriental pattern and he did it at top speed and much of the time Baldwin couldn’t even follow the blade. It flashed here and glinted there and every time it changed direction it quivered and sometimes it moved so fast that Baldwin could hear it cutting through the air, almost as if the ether was screaming.
“I’ll go through it slowly now,” Oddi told Baldwin. “Have a seat while you rest,” he added. “You only rest on your pommel to receive a death blow.” Baldwin had looked for a moment like Prince Angantyr when he rested on the pommel of Tyrfingr to receive his death blow from Hjalmar ‘the Brave’. A lot of bad memories seemed to be stirring up lately. Oddi could hardly wait for spring to come so he could visit his wife and daughter in Ireland. He had good memories in Ireland, except for the one really bad one.
Oddi went through the pattern slowly and explained that it progressed through a distinct set of strokes and strikes that allowed an increase in speed to be generated as the pattern progressed, and it incorporated every conceivable stroke or strike that could be made with a blade. Then he went through it again slowly and then once more at full speed. Then he had Baldwin do it slowly a few times, explaining that the pattern was composed of four quarters that covered the four aspects of swordsmanship. Once Baldwin had completed a few slow repetitions of the pattern, he rested and Oddi gave him a runestick that had runes for each stroke down one side of the square stick and up another then down the third and up the last side. He was a little surprized that Baldwin could read the runes, but Baldwin reminded him that he often felt more Norman than Frank.
Then Oddi taught Baldwin how to pace his speed.
“Count out the seconds in the old Roman manner,” Oddi said. “Secundus, secundus, secundus, secundus,” Oddi counted out. “The Romans used to calibrate their water clock orifices by counting Primus, Secundus, Primus, Secundus, Latin for One, Two, One Two, for one drip each secundus, but some technicians found it more accurate to just count out secundus, secundus, secundus and that is where we get the Anglish word seconds from. There are sixty secundus in a minute part of an hour and sixty minutes in an hour. At quarter speed we can do the pattern in a hundred and twenty secundus or two minutes and at full speed it should take thirty secundus or half a minute. It will take time to work down to that.
“For the speed of each stroke or strike we can count in fractions of a secundus, a stroke being half a secundus and a strike a quarter secundus. Certain movements we try to get to one eighth of a secundus which is about as fast as a blink. We can get about eight quick blinks into a secundus and when you can get a movement to under an eighth of a secundus, it becomes very difficult to see it and therefore to defend against. Roman gladiators were taught not to blink, because some arenas fighters could kill in the span of one eighth of a secundus.
“We can tally the secundus on our fingers, folding one finger per secundus and then raising it and once we go through our fingers once we hold down a finger to mark the ten and then a second to mark the next ten and on and on until we get to thirty for full speed, sixty for half speed and a hundred and twenty for quarter speed.”
“If we can only tally to one hundred using our fingers,” Baldwin started, “how do we tally to one twenty?”
“That is why the gods gave us two feet,” Oddi said.
They spent the whole afternoon going through the minute details of the oriental pattern and its intricate training regime and it became apparent to Baldwin that the whole process was devised to build up speed in a recognizable manner. One could monitor and record the improvements and Baldwin brought out a quill and ink and parchment and he began recording some of it in the new Miniscule Font of Alcuin, Saint Alcuin of York in Northumbria, who devised the font to replace runes with Roman letters to record liturgy and history in the Anglish Danish of the Angles of Jutland who made up the Anglo portion of the Anglo Saxons of Angleland of which Northumbria was a very scholarly component. Alcuin had spent the last part of his life teaching the font in the royal court of Charles ‘the Great’ as he was known in Anglish or Charlemagne as he was known in French, the Roman Gaul of the Franks.
Baldwin was surprised to learn that Oddi could read the Font of Alcuin and Oddi told him he had been taught it as well as the runes while living at Hraegunarstead in Stavanger Fjord.
“I thought that you were the long lost son,” Baldwin said, “and here you were living right on King Ragnar ‘Lothbrok’s stead, being raised where our father was raised, without even knowing Erik was your father, and here I was known to be Erik’s son and I was being raised in Frankia and Flanders and hardly ever saw any relatives outside of my mother.”
“Pretty focked up, eh?” Oddi replied.
“Pretty focked up,” Baldwin agreed.
“Now I’m going to repeat this pattern one hundred times at the full speed of thirty secundus each, so, if you could count off the hundred for me using your fingers in the pattern’s manner and stop me at a hundred, it would be appreciated. Get comfortable. This will take about an hour. Oddi went full speed into his pattern and his sword quivered and gleamed and was a blur for much of it and by the time Oddi got into his tenth rep, Baldwin was mesmerized. By the twentieth rep, the girls had come down from the porch to watch it and were sitting beside Baldwin on his bench. By the fiftieth rep, sweat was flying off Oddi and the quivering blade would catch sweat droplets and shatter them into the afternoon rays of the sun and little rainbows would form as the aerosol settled. By the seventieth rep, Oddi was struggling for control and the blade was threatening to take over the pattern and by the ninetieth, Oddi was completing each pattern even more quickly, twenty nine secundus, twenty eight, twenty seven, twenty six and then twenty five till he hit the hundredth rep and Baldwin called for him to stop. Oddi was flushed and wet when he stopped and Michelle ran up to him with a dish cloth and began wiping him down. It was soaked in no time, so Anya ran up and gave her another. Oddi was bent over with his hands upon his knees and was breathing in great rapid gulps while the women fanned him with their towels.
Baldwin sat on the bench amazed. His brother was a killing machine. The Romans had a name for such a warrior and it was Morta Machina, Vitae Terminus.
“If you can do thirty patterns full speed,” Oddi said, sitting down beside his brother, “You’ll be able to kill ninety percent of the warriors alive. Only Berserks and duellists could cause you grief!”
“Can Prince Erik do this pattern?” Baldwin asked.
“He can do thirty for sure, but I doubt if he can do a hundred anymore. Uncle Roller used to do a hundred years ago, but he’s slowed down since converting.”
“If you gave me your sword ‘Leg-Biter’,” Baldwin asked, “what do you call the one you have?”
“I think I shall call her ‘Frodisbane’,” Oddi answered.
“Oh…” Baldwin said, crossing himself.
The next day, Oddi and his entourage sailed for Rouen and a few days later Oddi borrowed a river ship and took Sister back to her nunnery in Paris. He brought in the Yulefest with Michelle and friends in the court of Duke Rollo and they celebrated Christmas as Christians mid Yule.
(870 AD) In the spring, Oddi returned to Aquitaine to visit with Gudmund and Sigurd, who were still very happy with their new Christian Frankish wives there. He picked up Fair Faxi and sailed for Ireland to visit Princess Olvor and his daughter, Hraegunhild, and was surprised to find Princess Blaeja of York and their daughter Hraegunhild waiting for him as well. Oddi visited with them for a month and they all had a fine time before Oddi returned to Frankia to lay low once more. This was to become Oddi’s life for the next few years, laying low and staying out of trouble. Once in a while a fleet would come out of the east and it was King Frodi’s troops searching for traces of King Roller of Norway. King Frodi had been informed that Arrow Odd had died in the Newfoundland and now Frodi only had the Norwegian King Roller, Oddi’s greatest supporter, to deal with. For some reason, the Warlock Ogmund ‘Eythjofsbane’ Tussock never told his king that he had fled his battle with Arrow Odd after killing his son Vignir in the Newfoundland. Failure was not an option to be discussed with King Frodi and his Danish Hraes’.
Chapter 24.0: GEIRROD THE GIANT AND OGMUND 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' 